In the 1990s, the Wakf, the Muslim organization that administers the mosques on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, committed “an archeological crime,” and “a violation of the most important religious site in Jewish and Christian civilization.”
In these words did Israeli archeologist Gabriel Barkay of Bar-Ilan University describe the construction and bulldozing that the Wakf carried out on the mount in the late 1990s.
However, “In every curse, there is some blessing,” Barkay told the some 90 people packed into a classroom at Wisconsin Lutheran College Tuesday night to hear him speak during a visit sponsored by the Milwaukee Area Biblical Archeology Society.
In this case, the blessing was that Barkay and other Israeli archeologists in 2004 got permission to recover the earth and debris that the Wakf’s workers had dumped as waste, and to sift it. They were able to remove some 400 truckloads, of which more than 100 have been sifted.
And even though the finds are fragmentary and have to be dated by typology (comparison with similar items of known date) instead of by stratum context, Barkay said significant discoveries and fascinating items were uncovered.
Name from the Bible
For example, the archeologists and their volunteer workers found more than 1,500 coins dating from the 20th century all the way back to the Persian era (4th century B.C.E.). They also found remains of weapons used by Romans, Seleucids and Babylonians, testifying to the ancient wars that took place in the city.
One set of finds will require rewriting the accepted history of the Temple Mount, Barkay said. Historians had believed that there was no Christian activity on the mount until the time of the Crusades. But Barkay’s teams found Christian crosses dating from the earlier Byzantine era, “testifying to intensive Christian activity,” he said.
The prize item so far, Barkay said, was a bullah, or seal, discovered in 2005, that gives a name not only found in the Bible, but also associated with the First Temple.
Jeremiah 20 opens with an account of how “Pashkhur son of Immer, the priest who was chief officer of the House of the Lord,” heard about Jeremiah’s prophecies and had him arrested and flogged. The bullah has inscribed on it “Ga’alyahu son of Immer.”
And Barkay said that this “mention of a figure who served in the First Temple” helps to refute claims that the Bible’s account of ancient Israel and the Temple were later fabrications.
Barkay said that in 2000, “when the magnitude of the destruction was clarified,” he and other scholars, cultural workers, politicians and others formed the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount (see the Web site www.har-habayit.org).
Barkay said this committee takes weekly aerial photographs of the mount and does other monitoring. It has “had some success” in preventing further destruction, he said.
In response to a question from the audience, Barkay blamed news media in part for the recent unrest surrounding Israeli efforts to rebuild a bridge leading to the Temple Mount. Palestinians clashed last week with Israeli police at the site, and have charged that the Israeli work there seeks to undermine the Al-Aksa Mosque.
Barkay said the work is intended to build a permanent and secure bridge, to replace the previous bridges, which have been insecure; and that the work is all taking place outside the mount and the mosque. But the news media, some of whom “deal with incitement,” spread the Palestinians’ accusations, he said.
In an interview after his lecture, Barkay, 63, said he is a Holocaust survivor who was born in the Budapest ghetto. He and his family came to Israel in 1950.
He said he grew up in a Jerusalem area that was “full of ancient remains,” which “always attracted me.” He received his doctorate in 1985 from Tel Aviv University.
In 1979, he discovered the Ketef Hinnom silver amulet from the First Temple period on which is inscribed the “Priestly Blessing” (Numbers 6:24-26), the oldest known printed biblical verse.
He said that in his approach to archeology he is a “super-maximalist,” opposed to the “minimalists” who claim much of the Hebrew Bible does not contain authentic history but was invented as late as the Hellenistic period.
“The Bible is not a book of history,” he said, but “it has within it a lot of historical information” that should not be dismissed.”
Barkay is on a speaking tour of the United States that he said would last about a month. He was also scheduled to speak in Madison for that city’s biblical archeology society on Wednesday.
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