An unlikely television entertainer appeared to a friendly mixed crowd of more than 100 at the Sacred Heart School of Theology on March 9.
Rabbi Richard Freund, Ph.D., not only has written several books, but he has taken part in programs on the History Channel, National Geographic, and PBS’s “NOVA.” He also directs the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford.
With the approach of both Passover and Easter, he spoke on “How is archeology changing Jewish and Catholic identity?” as a part of the public lecture series of its Lux Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies.
Freund drew frequent laughter during his explanation of how new archeological methods have changed our understanding of both religions and their followers 2,000 years ago.
Initially, Christianity was a small sect within what became rabbinic Judaism. Archeology seeks to help determine at what point it broke away to become a distinct religion.
Artifacts such as pottery reveal that Jews and Christians were close until the second century and the Bar Kokhba rebellion, he said.
Archeology itself has changed in recent decades. The old biblical archeologists would go out in the field to what was traditionally identified as a certain place and they would look for clues to confirm what they already know.
“That’s wonderful for denominational studies, but it doesn’t move science forward,” Freund said. “Fifty years ago, the things that we found were analyzed in very simple categories. Anything that didn’t confirm what we already knew was not worth knowing.”
“In the new archeology, they have geologists, physicists, biologists, chemists, every form of environmental studies,” he said. “It’s not just digging; it’s what you do with the digging and how you analyze the artifacts.”
“We use ground-penetrating radar, and we never let you excavate any area if we don’t know that there’s something there to find,” he continued. “It’s exactly the opposite of the old archeology in that instead of searching for artifacts to support the text, now the artifact is central and we use the text to elucidate. At the end of the day, the most important thing that I’m interested in is the people who lived there in antiquity.”
For example, “When we unpacked the artifacts we collected in the northern Galilee, we started to see that people there had imported wine and beautiful jewelry,” he said. “In the last 30 years, we have discovered that this was a very sophisticated group of people who knew about Roman religion.”
Archeology helps identify a group as Jewish by examining what they ate and wore and what kind of pottery and glassware they used.
For about 100 years (from about 50 B.C.E. to 50 C.E.), the Jews of Jerusalem were storing people’s bones in ossuaries on shelves in caves, labeled by family. They made these boxes from white limestone so they wouldn’t impart ritual impurity.
They also created stone drinking cups and vessels that break easily. Jewish pilgrims to Jerusalem also took these artifacts back home with them.
Archeology helps make sense of the famous Christian story of the wedding at Cana. At the time, wine was very heavily concentrated and too thick to drink, so it had to be prepared by mixing it with water.
Freund said archeologists also know from a particular style of coarse Galilean pottery produced for about two centuries after the war with the Romans that Jews lived in a location. Oil lamps with the same chemical signature reveal more information about where Jews lived at the time.
Freund’s conclusions might disappoint anyone hoping to find the synagogue Jesus attended. Although Diaspora Jews may have built such structures, he argues that the second Temple precluded their construction in Jerusalem.
He argued that Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin found a synagogue on Masada only because the old archeology dictated that Masada had to have a synagogue.
Freund argued that as zealots more interested in defeating the Romans than in religious worship, the Masada community would have used the space for meetings, not prayer.
Through the examination of signet ring stamps from the period, Freund also concludes that the Christian cross originated as a boat’s anchor, symbolizing the profession of the apostles and not Jesus’s crucifixion.
Freund has led six archeological expeditions in Israel, and he made an enthusiastic plug to recruit excavators who will work with him next summer at Bethsaida, a site mentioned in the Christian gospels.
Although the devout of both religions will believe what they will believe, Freund said that excavations in the field continue to improve our understanding of Jewish antiquity. “Archeology allows us to take the Bible seriously,” Freund said.
Milwaukeean Susan Ellman, MLIS, has taught history and English composition at the high school level and is a freelance writer at work on a historical novel.
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