Biblical Negev Field Study – October 13, 2013

Today was packed full of learning, so I doubt that I’ll be able to touch on everything. We started out at Tel Arad. It is interesting at this site how the different periods of time each have their own area and are very distinct from each other. We started out in the Israelite fortress on top of the tel. The temple that was found there was blocked off because they had been digging through that to see other layers, so we couldn’t walk about inside there. 

At this small temple they found quite a few interesting things. In addition to finding an altar and a holy of holies, there were also two incense altars and three standing stones were also found there. The two separate incense altars seem to suggest that there was worship to more than one deity in this temple.  They know that God was worshipped here, but it appears that there was another god worshipped here too.

            A little ways way they found a storage jar with an inscription reading ‘to Yahweh and his ashera’. I have to say that I found this slightly disturbing, but we talked about the concepts of religions back in that time. The idea that there was many gods was all over the place. Henotheism was in almost every single religion. There was multiple gods and people chose one or any number of the gods to worship depending on what they needed. The idea that there was only one God would be a difficult idea to grasp. It was tried in Egypt once and it didn’t take long after that Pharaoh died that the idea was discarded too.

            Why was this happening? Was it the idea of fertility gods? (it takes more than one...) Was it tolerance of the neighboring religions or influence of them? Was it an idea that was so deeply engrained in the people of that time that their worldview could only see it that way? Whatever the reason change in Israel to what we understand as strictly monotheism happened in the second temple period, and this site was still during the first temple period. We are often too quick to place the 2^nd temple period on the first temple period practices and in reality they are quite different.

            This isn’t a completely foreign concept. The past 500 years have had dramatic change on the way that we view churches and understand theology. Once the church worshipped as one, and now there are many different churches. Our ideas and practices have also shifted and change and each new era believes that they finally have understood what the Bible is really teaching.

The second stop of the day was that Tel Be’er-sheva, the site of Beersheba. This site was quite well constructed and much can be seen. Outside the city gate there is a well. Apparently they have dug at least 80m down and they were still removing fill, there was probably a good 5-6 seconds between dropping a rock in and hearing it hit the water in the bottom. 

There is the story of Abraham securing a covenant at Beersheba with Abimelek the king of Gerar. After that he plants a tamarisk tree. These are quite fun trees! The looks kind of scraggily, almost like a weeping evergreen. The needles of the tree are actually quite salty to the taste. These trees are actually self watering. The salt attracts the water in the air in the morning and it gathers on the needles and waters the tree. The tree still requires some water to survive on, but it can survive quite well in arid places such as Beersheba.

                Trees are an important image in the Middle East. They are quite well connected to deities. If there is a tree, there is water, where there is water, there is fertility, and where there is fertility there is divine activity. They are starting to figure out that cultic sites often precede settlement.  This isn’t new. Trees play an important role since the beginning of time. There were two important trees in the Garden of Eden. And tree motifs run throughout the Bible. 

The other idea that occurred to me is that Jesus says in Matthew 5: 13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”  In Jesus’ reference to being salty could he be thinking of that Tamarisk tree that Abraham planted at the southern part of the Promised Land? Salt that attracts the life giving water. Trees that are a sign that my God is alive and active here! A Tamarisk tree that is planted as a sign of looking forward to the future and settling down here, in the place where God has called us. 

Here are some pictures from the rest of the day.

Beersheba's water system

Ibex

we went for a hike in Wadi Zin

Up the cliff, it is a lot of stairs

Stopped at Avdat there was remains of a Byzantine settlement far in the South. We tried to see how many we could fit in the baptismal. We could have fit more.

Machtesh Rammon - the world largest erosion crater