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Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 2004

Another Temple to the Israelite God

Aramaic Hoard Documents Life in Fourth Century B.C.

By André Lemaire

The scholarly world is abuzz. During at least the past 20 years, and more likely during the last 33 years, more than a thousand potsherds inscribed in Aramaic have come onto the antiquities market. About 800 of these have now been published.1 They are richly informative—one inscribed sherd even refers to a previously unknown temple to the Israelite God. Yet this article is the first popular presentation of these inscriptions in English. In ancient times, potsherds were used as a kind of notepaper; the scholarly name for inscribed sherds is ostraca. The newly published ostraca all date to the […]

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Footnotes

1.

Robert Deutsch, “Lasting Impressions: New Bullae Reveal Egyptian-Style Emblems on Judah’s Royal Seals,” BAR, July/August 2002.

2.

See Bezalel Porten, “Did the Ark Stop at Elephantine?” BAR, May/June 1995.

Endnotes

1.

Israel Eph’al and Joseph Naveh, Aramaic Ostraca of the Fourth Century B.C. from Idumaea (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew Univ.), Israel Exploration Society, 1996); André Lemaire, Nouvelles inscriptions araméennes d’Idumée au musée d’Israël (Suppl. N° 3 à Trans; Paris: Gabalda, 1996); Lemaire, Nouvelles inscriptions araméennes d’Idumée, II. Collections Moussaieff, Jeselsohn, Welch et divers (Suppl. N° 9 à Trans; Paris: Gabalda, 2002).

2.

David A. Dorsey, “The Location of the Biblical Maqqedah”, Tel Aviv 7 (1980), pp. 185–193.

3.

Compare to William G. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from the Area of Khirbet el-Kôm,” Hebrew Union College Annual 40–41, 1969–1970, pp. 139–204.

4.

André Lemaire, Naissance du monothéisme. Point de vue d’un historien (Paris: Bayard, 2003), pp. 24–25.

5.

Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, I. Letters (Jerusalem: distributed by Eisenbrauns, 1986), p. 76.

6.

See Yitzhak Magen, “Mt. Gerizim—A Temple City,” Qadmoniot 33/2 (2000), pp. 74–118.

7.

Lemaire, “Taxes et impôts dans le Sud de la Palestine [IVe s. av. J.-C.]” (to be published in Transeuphratène).