Archeological Finds in Israel Proving Bible History

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

                                                        The Exodus

In 2011, archaeologists Uncovered  the  ruins of  the biblical city  of Shechem, or as we know it today as Nablus,  in war-torn Israel.  The biblical ruin lies inside a Palestinian city in Judea-Samaria; the (West Bank,) where modern researchers are writing the latest chapter in a 100-year-old excavation that has been interrupted by two world wars and numerous rounds of Mideast upheaval.  Excavation on Shechem was started in 1913 to  1934 by German archaeologists.   From 1948 to 1967 this land was in Jordanian territory illegally and since the 1967 War is under Israel's control.  It's earliest walls date back to 2000 BCE.  It was under Egyptian control as early as the 12th dynasty BCE.  Our biblical patriarchs camped under its walls and it was pillaged by Simeon and Levi as told in Gen.34.   Later, it was in the territory of Ephraim, and was a Levitical city and a city of refuge as well as the center of the House of Joseph.  Joseph is buried there.  

Before naysayers say that the Old Testament is just a bunch of myths, they should check out what archaeologists have already proven.  

Nelson Glueck took a Transjordan survey which is thought by some scholars to show that the Israelite entry (Exodus into Canaan) did not happen earlier than the 13th century BCE.  My encyclopedia has Moses dying by 1271 BCE  and our history is that he was not able to enter the land as he was already 120 years old by then, so had chosen Joshua to lead the Israelites in.  So they are in agreement with this.  It would not have happened, say, in the 14th century.  

The Merneptah stele which is dated c. 1231 BCE sets a terminus ad quem   (to which there) for the Exodus.   Others thought the same and this resulted from the researches at Jericho, Bethel, Lachish, Tel Bet Mirsim, Hazor, etc.  
                                                                     

                        King  Solomon's Temple, from Description

Pottery study has identified the Philistines, and work at Gibeah (Tel el Ful and Jerusalem which we also call Zion has cast light on King Saul's and King David's reign, just as digs at Tel el-Hesi and  other places may have revealed King Solomon's chariot stables, and Tel el-Khalife, which is also called Ezion Geber, his trade and mining center.      

Bible study is illuminated by archaeology both in and outside what was then, Palestine, now mostly Israel.    The Mesopotamian discoveries of Ur of where Abraham was born do indicate a period of great floods which are reflected in the biblical Flood Story found in Genesis.  

Both the Egyptian Execration of the 20th and 19th century BCE and the Mari along the Euphrates of the 19th and 18th century texts show the patriarchal period.  Transjordan researches show contemporary Middle Bronze Age life as semi-nomadic.   

There are the well known Tel el Amarna tablets from the 14th century BCE which illumine the Israelite advent.  The Hammurabi  and similar legal codes of the 18th century give us the background of Mosaic legislation  and the legal habits of the patriarchal period.   

Edward  Robinson in 1838-1852 was an archaeologist who tried re-identification of biblical sites.  "Robinson traveled to Palestine in 1838 in the company of Rev. Eli Smith, leading to the publication of Biblical Researches in Palestine and Adjacent Countries for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1842 He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1847. Robinson, together with Smith, made scores of identifications of ancient places including the tunnel dug by King Hezekiah shortly before the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in 701/02 BCE, though the inscription at the southern end of the tunnel was to be found later.  The Robinson's Arch in the Old City of Jerusalem is named after him."  Edward was a farm boy from Southington, Connecticut born 4/10/1794.  He is a direct descendant of the Reverend John Robinson who sent the Pilgrims over from Holland to America on the Mayflower in 1620.  Most likely his Christian religion was the motivation for his digs in Palestine.  

He was followed by a lot of travelers in the 19th century.  F. de Suley carried out the first excavation of the Tombs of the Kings in Jerusalem in 1850.  The English Palestine Exploration Fund in 1865 started C. Warren's Jerusalem excavations in 1867 and a survey of Western Palestine was done in 1872 to 1878 by Conder and Kitchener.  His digs coincided with important work by C. Clermont-Ganneau, G. Schumacher and others.

By 1890, W. Flinders Petrie was at Tel el-Hesi and devised the system of pottery dating by looking at the stratification and cross dating it with Egyptian finds.  This started the methods used afterwards at Gezer, Samaria and other places.  They were able to go back to the Old Stone Age, or the Middle Paleolithic Age found in the Carmel and Nazareth skeletons, intermediate between Neanderthal man and Homo Sapiens. The Mesolithic's Middle Stone age culture is represented by the Natufian cave-dwellers, the first cultivators who lived around 8,000 BCE, and Neolithic, most strikingly by the Yarmukian settlement of Shaar ha-Golan.   

By 5,000 BCE, walled village settlement had evolved as in Jericho.  The use of copper began c 4,500 which started the Chalcolithic age in Jericho, Telulat Ghassul, and in the Beersheba district.  In 3,200-2,100 BCE we find the Early Bronze Age.  The Middle Bronze Age was from 2100 to 1500 BCE.  The Late Bronze Age was from 1500 to 1100 BCE which had walled towns that were spread out as revealed by excavations at Bet Yerah.  Megiddo, Jericho, Bet Shean, Tel Bet Mirsim, and so on are examples of that period.  

Research has even revealed the famous Hyksos of the 18th century BCE with fortresses at Hazor, Shechem and Horite or Hurrian migrations from the 17th century and growing Mediterranean contacts under Egyptian rule such as in Bet Shean from the 1500 to 1100 BCE period.  

Discoveries of the Ugarit (Ras Shamra) include  old Canaanite texts from 1880 to 1200 BCE. They shed light on the earliest poetical parts of the Bible.  Epigraphical finds at Sinai, Gezer Calendar, Siloam, the Moabite Stone, Lachish letters and the Arad Ostraca show the development of the Hebrew alphabet.  

Archaeology in Samaria has uncovered the palaces of Kings Omri, Ahab, and Jeroboam II and show the Phoenician affinities of their culture.  Many sites such as Megiddo and Lachish have  given us dates and show the extent of the destruction that came before the Babylonian exile.  

Excavations at Samaria, Beth Zur, Marisa, Beth Shean and Transjordan Tobiad Palace of the 2nd century BCE date form the Hellenistic period of the 3rd to 1st centuries BCE.  

The later Second Temple Period has brought researches into the tombs and ossuaries of the Jerusalem area and into the Herodian structures of the southern and western walls of the Temple area, the Jerusalem Citadel, Mamre and Masada with its remains of Herod's palace, the Zealot living-quarters and the Roman siege-lines.  
                                                                                 

Finally, in the 1st century belong the DEAD SEA SCROLLS with their affect on Bible study and knowledge of Jewish sectarianism.  Another important find in caves of the Judean desert was the correspondence of the Bar Kokhba period.  He was the leader who fought against the Romans from 132-135 CE but was finally killed.  

The catacombs at Bet Shearim gave us information about Jewish art, language, and religion of the 2nd to 5th centuries CE.  The Israel Government Department of Antiquities has from  1949 carried out the supervision and protection of antiquities, investigation of chance finds and systematic excavations.  The Israel Exploration Society has worked at Bet Shearim and Masada.  

PS 3/5/14:  Besides all this, check out Simcha Jacobovici and his TV programs where he shows what he has discovered and worked on.  Entertaining as well as factual, he's a delight.  Simcha Jacobovici was born on April 4, 1953 in Petah Tikva, Israel. He is a producer and director, known for The Naked Archaeologist (2005), The Lost Tomb of Jesus (2007) andCharging the Rhino (2007).

50 people from bible confirmed archaeologically from the reference-mosaic magazine cites below.  

A web-exclusive supplement to Lawrence Mykytiuk's “Archaeology Confirms 50 Real People in the Bible” feature in the March/April 2014 issue of BAR.  Purdue University scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk lists 50 figures from the Hebrew Bible that have been confirmed archaeologically. The 50-person chart in BAR includes Israelite kings and Mesopotamian monarchs as well as lesser-known figures.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/03/right-out-of-the-bible/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=e9a97c3ced-2014_3_5&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-e9a97c3ced-41144429
Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Robinson_(scholar)
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/07/22/in-palestinian-city-diggers-uncover-biblical-ruin/

Chanukah on Thanksgiving: A Jubilee Year

Nadene Goldfoot
This is a very special year.  It's been 125 years since Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah coincided.  It won't happen again for a very long time.  We American Jews find we are a stew of heritages and food traditions, so our menu this year should be as commingled as our own DNA.  This year we're having turkey with our latkes and pumpkin pie served much later as it contains milk, so we'll have to figure out a non-milk dessert.  Apple pie will do.  Maybe we'll have pumpkin pie during the lunch hour to go along with yogurt the next day.  Since lasts for 8 days, we can always extend the tasty treats of Thanksgiving that long as well!

Thanksgiving is really  the celebration of Succah by Christian Pilgrims, though they may not have realized it.  Jews have had Thanksgiving offerings for over 4,000 years.  Sacrifice brought by an individual as a token of thanks to G-d  was observed in ancient days.  They were brought after traveling the seas or the desert, after recovery from illness, and after release from prison.  Pilgrims had a terrible time of existing for their first few years upon landing at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts-just wild land in those days.  When they finally, after several years, had a successful harvest, they invited their neighbors, the "Indians"-people that Columbus  thought were people of India, to a feast that lasted for 3 days.  Actually, the Indians had helped them to feed themselves by showing them how to plant a new veggie, corn.  Indians always planted the seeds with some fish they had caught, which was a great fertilizer.  No wonder the corn grew so well.  This was some party!  The Indians brought deer they had hunted to add to the menu and they had a wonderful time thanking G-d for the abundance of food they had provided for themselves.

Pilgrims, who were Englishmen who had moved to Holland because they disagreed with England's form of religion, had been very brave to decide to sail to this new land from Holland on the ship, the Mayflower.  It was Pastor John Robinson who told them to go ahead and forge the way.  In England, you had to follow the state's religion or else.  These were free-thinkers.  How lucky they were to travel to a new continent.  It was like being space ship travelers.  Where would they land?  They thought they were going to a warm place, like the south of North America, but their ship got off coarse, and here they were, in a much colder place.  No wonder so many died the first year.  They were not prepared.  Their harvest was plentiful in the following years!

Sukkot is also a harvest festival.  Sukkot lasts for 7 days with the 8th day being a special one called Shemini Atzeret.  This is the celebration remembering how the 600,000 with Moses, having been liberated from slavery in Egypt by him, had to live in little booths-like structures, similar to tents-while they traveled for 40 years to their Promised Land, Canaan-land of Moses's ancestors. We celebrate it by building our own booths to live in and decorating it with our harvest foods, for it's also a harvest festival.  We must have had to wait for the time when we were actually in Canaan, and like the Pilgrims, finally got to plant and harvest our own food and had a similar Thanksgiving meal.  That's because for the 40 years they traveled to get there, they had to exist on Manna.   One of the Dead Sea Scrolls containing a number of prayers were found to open with the words, "I thank Thee, O Lord."  We remember and give thanks at every meal we have.  A prayer is said before and after a meal.

These Pilgrims were very religious people, coming to this new land for this very reason, having freedom for themselves of religion, and were familiar with Hebrew and the "Old Testament".  They knew all about Sukkot.

Chanukah, our holiday that usually coincides with Christmas, is also a holiday of freedom.  Judea had been occupied by the Syrian Greeks and they  had tried to stop Judaism by forcing people to believe in their multi-gods of their religion.  They took over and occupied our Temple.   The Greeks wanted us to stop following our Torah because of its G-dliness.  They were pragmatic materialists in their Greek culture and this left no room for our special relationship with G-d. They had figured rightly that our strength as a people came from Torah, not from our muscles.  

 This 8 day holiday (we really know how to celebrate with many days, don't we?) is commemorating the victory of Judah the Maccabee over Antiochus Epiphanes.  The Maccabees were able to re-dedicate the Temple and the altar by cleaning it out, removing any idols put there by the enemy and relighting the eternal light with a cruse of the needed oil they found stashed in the Temple.  .  They had to send a runner to get some more. This oil continued to burn for 8 days until the runner came back, and is considered a miracle because there was really only enough for about one night.

Perhaps after sitting there for a long stretch it had become very concentrated.   It was a great and much needed miracle.  If the Maccabees hadn't been successful, Judaism could have been stamped out and we all would be bowing to Greek gods today.  Chances are that there wouldn't be any Christianity as you know it or any Islam, either.  That's because history is like a set of dominoes whereas when one falls it pushes the next down and so on.  One historic fact is built upon another fact that preceded it.  This is where we get into time machines and going back in time but not changing anything.  If you do, you might find out you were never born in the first place.

Turkey is traditional for Thanksgiving.  It almost became America's national bird, but the eagle won out instead.  However, the Indians, who we now refer to as Native Americans, delighted us at that first meal by bringing in many turkeys to cook for the dinner besides all their deer to eat.  I wonder if they were ever faced with so many veggies to eat?  We know they had corn.

We eat potato latkas because it is a potato dish that is fried in oil, and oil is the central theme in our Chanukah story.  Anything fried in oil is used such as donuts (suf-gan-iote.)  These are delicious donuts with jelly in the center.  Yum!  Latkes are a grated potato and onion with egg and a little matzo meal to hold it together and fried like a pancake.  Served golden brown with either apple sauce or-for a milk meal-with sour cream and red jam, they are scrumptious!  Great party food!

5 large potatoes, peeled, 1 large onion, 4 eggs, 1/3 C matzo meal, 1 t salt,  Mix and fry in 1/4 C oil.  
A modern dish:  Ground flaxseed and water combined to make an eggless binding agent in vegan Cauliflower-chive Latkes.  from Jennie Cook.
Zucchini pancakes-used instead of potatoes.  

So bring on the hoe-doo (turkey) and the latkas for November 28th, with Chanukah beginning at sundown on the 27th and Thanksgiving on the 28th and Shabbat on the 29th.  We're in for a lot of feasting this year!  Oh yes, don't forget to light your Chanukah candle on your menorah.  We are to realize through all this fun that the world in which we live is not an end in itself, but exists to serve a higher spiritual purpose.  Our candles are illuminating the darkness.  We have to rid the world of ignorance, negativity, hatred and greed.  We are to light the lights of knowledge, generosity, hope and love.  

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper 11/13/13, page L-foodday+Living, when Thanksgiving, Hanukkkah collide by David Firestone and Susan Brenna NY Times
Your Chanukah Guide from Chabad
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Using DNA to Learn About Our Jewish Ancestors

 Nadene Goldfoot 
 With the discovery of DNA and the ability to figure what haplogroup we all belong to, we can now find out how far back in time our roots go in this time period of Homo Sapiens on earth. For instance, my Jewish family’s Ydna haplogroup of Q1b1a's go back about 1,000 years to a common ancestor.  Our original ancestor of Q lived  in and around the Altai Mountain range in Russia/Siberia/Mongolia/and parts of Turkey and possibly were a Turkish type of people. In fact, we’re distantly connected to Native Americans who are Q3's. They had separated from us a long time ago and wound up entering North America in their wanderings.

 To the surprise of some, we only constitute just 5 % of the Jewish population. It is thought that we were of a tribe that was part of Khazaria. Though we entered Eastern Europe in Poland, Lithuania, Russia, etc, we were a very small minority of the Jews.

 My interest in history has deepened. What was happening in those days? Where do we Jewish people fit in? How far back do we go? Abraham was the father of Judaism. It was his descendants who wandered into Egypt and wound up having to remain there for 400 years.

 Abraham was born in the year 1948 or as we understand it, 1800 BCE.-before the common era. He was the son of Terach, an idol merchant. So even in the beginning we were merchants and not farmers. This was in Ur, which is in present day Iraq.

 Joseph was his descendant that marked the period of the Exodus’s beginning. This has been dated to have happened during the Hyksos domination of Egypt in the 18th to 16th centuries BCE. The Hyksos were semitic people who had taken over Egypt. Their names were similar to Hebrew. Remains have been uncovered in Palestine. They ruled in Egypt 1720-1580 BCE. During this time it is said the Hebrews entered Egypt. Bondage of Hebrews began after the Hyksos were expulsed. The name is Egyptian meaning “rulers of the foreign lands.”

 In the beginning there weren’t many people. Moses left Egypt with 600,000 slaves; Jewish ones and others that had been kept against their will. That’s about the size of Portland and Gresham, Oregon which would make about 617,191 people. This happened in the year 2,368 or as we know it, 1400 BCE.  I've heard a discussion on TV where the speaker thought the math using "aleph", Hebrew for 1,000, was wrong and that it also meant troop or unit, making the group taken out to be only 600.  I feel this is an incorrect theory.  Where do they come up with this stuff?

 Moses was the son of Amram of the tribe of Levi. His mother was Yocheved, Levi’s daughter. The Egyptian princess who adopted him named him Menios, and the Hebrew translation is Moshe, so we call him Moses.

 They were the tomb builders, the pyramid workers. This was the nastiest of jobs, perfect for slavery. They didn’t even get a chance to nibble food such as field workers would. It was mix mud and straw to make bricks, and tote those rocks, bend and carry all the time. They worked every day without any rest. The religion of the Egyptians demanded that this task be done.

 There was Moses after leaving Egypt, happily living a great life in the desert with his family, the only thought in his mind was the welfare of his sheep. Then one day, probably as he was walking in the morning, he heard a voice telling him to go back to Egypt and bring out the Jewish slaves that had been incarcerated there for about 400 years. He alone could do it. He had the Pharoah’s ear and knew how to argue, even though he stuttered. The poor man was already 80 years old and rather out of shape to be trecking back to Egypt in the hot sun.

 The Egyptians were devastated when Moses actually carried out his threat and led out their workers. There was no one left to continue the tasks. The peasants that were native Egyptians had other important tasks to work on; baking, farming, clothing workers, etc. Their life as they knew it had come to a halt.

 Can you imagine looking out at such a sea of people and traveling for 40 years with them? One wonders how they did it. What did they eat? They missed the food they were used to as slaves. Now on the march they were depending on something left on the ground in the morning called “manna” which sounds to me like some sort of mushroom that was left there and would disappear with the rising sun. They were told that if they picked more than one loaf, it would rot, and it did. It was full of vitamins, however, and kept them going. But one thing we can count on is that these 600,000 were as thin as can be. There were no fatties in the group. I just hope that this “manna” had an appetite appeaser in it so that they weren’t constantly hungry.

How was Moses receiving all these instructions? It sounded like the words were amplified into bushes by an outside force. Was Moses the only one who heard these conversations? I could swear that some UFO was up in the sky leading them onwards from the descriptions.  I heard another discussion about the brain where doctors are testing for the G-d gene.  They are finding that people who pray live longer. If they're really into prraying they do transcend and can concentrate so hard that they are unaware of their surroundings.  This shows up on MRI testing.  They thought it possible that he did hear a voice.  I love it when science gets involved and proves things in the Torah are indeed possible.  

 He was educated and could read and write, so he constantly wrote what came to be known as the “Five Books of Moses”, which is our Torah. All the other 600,000 had been  slaves and were uneducated. That came to a halt.  Jews started having schools, teaching reading and writing right away.

 The world’s population hadn’t had a chance to multiply much in those days. Between bottlenecks killing off groups such as earthquakes, volcanoes, slaughter of baby boys and starvation, it was growing slowly. Because of the small numbers, viruses were kept in check and hadn’t really had a chance to develop as they do in dense populations like ours today. People could live very long lives. Moses was destined to live for 120 years. His brother, Aaron, lived a little longer.

 He never made it to his new homeland with all his 600,000 people, but almost did. He had lost his temper along the way and his punishment was not to enter the homeland. That was an occasion of getting high blood presssure, no doubt. Trying to handle 600,000 was of course stressful. No one knows where he's buried on purpose.  He didn't want to be worshipped.

 He picked Joshua to lead the people there. He was much younger and physically fit. All this happened about 3,409 years .ago. Our haplogroup came on the scene about 2,409 years after Judaism’s beginnings.

Our dna is not the more widely seen J1 haplogroup of Jewish people of the area of the Middle East. . However, the people who converted to Judaism were exposed to Judaism by Jews from the Middle East, and who is not to say that there could have been some romancing and intermarriage going on between them and the royal dynasty? Some of us could be carrying a few genes of intermixing from that period.

 Then again, we eventually mingled with the Jews of Europe and no doubt there was more intermixing of dna. We had at least 40 generations of mixing and mingling of dna to deal with to pick up a few more genes from J1. What we have learned is that there was very little mixing of the population they were living amongst of the gentiles. It was against the law for them to marry us and the same for us in our religious views to marry gentiles. This kept us with the same dna for such a long period of time that we are now a most interesting case study for genetic science.

Reference: Torah

Pharoah and Palestinians in the Days of Exodus

In thinking about the Exodus from Egypt or Mitzriyeem, as it is called in Hebrew, I've thought about the hard hearted Pharoah who didn't want to release the 600,000 Jews from bondage but in the end did when his son died as well as the first born males of all families. He then renigged and had his soldiers chase after them before they crossed the Red Sea to bring them back, breaking his promise of freedom.



This fear must be in our minds as we try to talk to the Palestinians whose Fatah group is the only one to recognize our right to a Jewish state and that being finalized in 1988 when they proclaimed their Palestinian State in Judea-Samaria, so called the "West Bank." We've spent the past 62 years fighting to survive, a time much longer than it took to convince Pharoah to let us go. We still have the Hamas terrorists who have vowed to drive us into the sea.



The Hamas have hardened their hearts to us by their backing of the other Arab nationals and their constant education of hatred for Jews. I wonder what it will take to change their minds? Even the deaths of their children do not phase them. They seem to glory in their sacrifice if it causes our downfall in the eyes of the world.



President Obama is attending a seder at the White House this year. I wonder what he will think as he hears the Hagadah being read with the words, "Next Year in Jerusalem." He's pressing our Moses, Netanyahu, to give up our share of East Jerusalem populated with many Jews as well as other areas in Jerusalem that have never been on the sacrificial altar. Will he have a revelation and change of his hardened heart as he hears the words? His religious upbringing has not been that considerate of Jews. I think he is ambivalent towards us being at least one of his reverends has been most anti-semitic in his teachings. Saying he didn't hear the homilies or wasn't there when this man has spoken out against us so often isn't swaying me. His decisions today speak for themselves.



In the end, our ancestors crossed the sea and many Egyptians died in the act of chasing us. We managed to get into our land of milk and honey. May we have a good ending to our present day tribulations in keeping Jerusalem and all of our Israel.