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Israelite Footprints

Has Adam Zertal Found the Biblical Altar on Mt. Ebal and the Footprints of the Israelites Settling the Promised Land?

By Ralph K. Hawkins

Foot-shaped sites have been found throughout the Jordan Valley, including an extraordinary cultic site on Mt. Ebal. Is this the Israelite altar described in Joshua 8? Were these foot-shaped enclosures built by the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land?

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Footnotes

1. Adam Zertal, “Has Joshua’s Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?” BAR 11:01.

2. Aharon Kempinski, “Joshua’s Altar or an Iron Age I Watchtower?” BAR 12:01.

3. William G. Dever, “How to Tell an Israelite from a Canaanite,” in Hershel Shanks, ed., The Rise of Ancient Israel (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2011), p. 7.

4. Queries and Comments: “Zertal Replies to Anson Rainey,” BAR 12:05.

5. For a description of this temple with its similarities to Solomon’s Temple, see John Monson, “The New ‘Ain Dara Temple: Closest Solomonic Parallel,” BAR 26:03.

Endnotes

1. Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 350.

2. Ralph K. Hawkins, The Iron Age I Structure on Mt. Ebal: Excavation and Interpretation (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), p. 219.

3. A gilgal was the center of activity in Joshua 1–12. The allotments of several tribes, including those of Judah, Ephraim and Manasseh, were also made at a gilgal (Joshua 14:6), which appears to have been a site with cultic functions. The venue for the distribution of land shifts to Shiloh in Joshua 18:1.

4. For more detailed discussion of the meaning of the shape of these sites, see Ralph K. Hawkins, How Israel Became a People (Nashville: Abingdon, 2013), pp. 179–184.