Michael L. Satlow

Then and Now

Jerusalem

Relaunching “From Israelite to Jew”

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In 2009-2010, I created a podcast, “From Israelite to Jew,” that traced the evolution of the Israelites and their religion to Jews and Judaism. The podcast covers the time period from around the seventh century BCE to the third century CE, the time approximately known as “Second Temple” period. My views have shifted somewhat, and today I am closer to the opinions I discuss in my book, How the Bible Became Holy (Yale University Press). Nevertheless, I still believe that there is merit to the podcast, and I’ve noticed that changes in the platforms I used have made it increasingly difficult to access.

For now, I am simply reposting the episodes to make them easier to access.  They can all be found on this page.

Over the next few months I’ll be rereleasing them in batches. The series will thus be available on most popular podcast sites (e.g., Spotify).  As I release them on these platforms, I will announce them on my blog and through my Substack.  If there is sufficient interest and support, I will also occasionally add written updates and provide resources for them along the way.   Also depending on interest and support (which can be given at my blog), I may even end up continuing it into the rabbinic period, and/or creating episodes that bring on other scholars to discuss these issues.

 

 

 

The “Isaiah Seal”

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Biblical Archaeology Review just published this new, tiny find from the excavations at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem: a clay seal (or bulla) that seems to contain the name Isaiah with (a little more doubtfully) the word “prophet” written underneath.  The top register of the seal seems to depict an animal, perhaps a doe.  The article, “Isaiah’s Signature Uncovered in Jerusalem:  Evidence of the Prophet Isaiah”  can be accessed here and has been picked up quickly by a number of news sites.  Paleojudaica also has a nice write-up about this.

How significant is the find?

Popular media tends to keep rewriting the same story for finds of this sort: they prove the veracity of the Bible.  In this case, however, nobody seriously doubts the existence of Isaiah, who is also attested outside of his own book in the Bible in some of the more historical writings (2 Kings 18).  Finding the a seal of the biblical prophet Isaiah would indeed be interesting but the fact that it would then attest to his actual existence is perhaps the least interesting thing about it.  (The headline, incidentally, is slightly misleading.  It is the seal that is the “signature,” not the writing on it, which was probably carved on the stamp by someone else.)

To my mind, there are instead three things of genuine interest about this seal:

  1. It attests to the formal, institutionalized nature of “the prophet.”  Seals tended to go on official correspondence and the fact that Isaiah would have one with his title strongly suggests that he holds some kind of official position, like “court prophet.”  This confirms other evidence from the Bible that prophets were not only, as we tend to think of them, random people who were believed to have received divine communication but that they also could hold official jobs in the court or temple.
  2. It suggests that either Isaiah or (probably more likely) his retinue was literate.  Prophecy was usually an oral phenomenon.  Other biblical books contain examples of prophecies being put into writing (e..g, Baruch writes down Jeremiah’s prophecies in Jeremiah 36) or otherwise thematizing writing (Ezekiel 3) but the process by which the prophet’s words became text is enigmatic.  Some time ago, a seal that may have belonged to Jeremiah’s scribe, Baruch, was found (there remain questions about its authenticity).  This seal, if authentic, would show the prophet sending correspondence in his own name, not that of his scribe.  This has potential implications for understanding the interplay of the oral and written in prophetic circles.
  3. Finally, I’m intrigued by the iconography.  Why would the prophet Isaiah use a doe?  Is there anything significant about this choice or, for that matter, any of the iconography that appears on ancient Israelite seals (of which we have many)?

The seal is hardly earth shattering, but it is also not insignificant.  If it really is what it is being claimed to be.

The Temple Mount: Conference Report

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I have spent much of the last month attending conferences.  Fun, but tiring.  But fun.

Let me offer a few thoughts on one of them,  “Marking the Sacred: ​The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem,” which took place at Providence College on June 5-7, 2017.  The conference involved about thirty scholars who discussed the archaeology and significance of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives.  Given the intensely political nature of this topic, it was refreshing to be able to engage in a sustained civil, critical, and productive discussion that crossed ideological, political, and religious fault-lines.  Tremendous credit goes to the organizer, Professor Joan Branham, for creating such an environment.

I was unable to attend the last day, but through the first two there were a few leitmotifs that struck me:

1. There was a temple on the Temple Mount.  Now, this might be rather obvious but both modern political discourse and a recent kerfuffle over an inaccurate article in the New York Times a couple of years ago (for my own response to this, see here) led to review of the various kinds of evidence that demonstrate that a Jewish temple existed on this site.  For example, Jodi Magness discussed the literary evidence; Shmuel Gibson the archaeological evidence that can be gleaned from archival sources; and Yuval Branch some of the extant archaeological finds.  It was fascinating to see a discussion of a photograph of a piece of mosaic floor found on the Temple Mount and published long ago (picture above).  While this mosaic floor almost certainly was not from the Jewish temple, there was uncertainty about whether it could be part of an ancient church built on the site or was put in later by the Umayyads.  It was also heartening for me to hear Sari Nusseibeh explicitly condemn the attempts to deny that there was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.

2.  It is a bit misleading to speak of a single “Second Temple.”  There was an original “second” temple that according to literary sources was renovated.  That was followed by what must have been another renovation in the Hellenistic period.  The Hasmoneans then either renovated or reconstructed the temple after they took control in the mid-second century BCE; Lawrence Schiffman argued that the plan of that temple is preserved in Mishnah Middot.  And then, of course, Herod extensively reconstructed the temple.  There was more than one “Second Temple.”

3.  The Temple Mount has always been a political football.  After its destruction, Romans and Christians had a stake in keeping it desolate: the desolation was a living testament to the supercession of Judaism.  This is highlighted by the Christian building program in Jerusalem in the fourth century and beyond.  Thus, as discussed especially by Robert Ousterhout, Jon Seligman, and Tracy Thorpe, the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre intentionally was meant to create a contrast with the devastated Temple Mount.  Christian supercessionism was deliberately etched into the urban landscape.  This very downgrading of the Temple Mount created a strange and newly competitive dynamic when Muslims gained control of and began to build on the site.  Michael Press has an informative post on this issue.

4.  Given the impossibility (and undesirability) of actually digging in the Temple Mount, there are emerging new approaches to the evidence that is available.  Ancient lumber, for example, can be analyzed for age and provenance.  Most interesting to me was the approach to ancient garbage, which can provide some insight (as discussed by Helena Roth) into pilgrimage at the site.

A fuller record of the papers can be found at twitter using the handle: #templemountharam.  A volume of the papers is forthcoming.

There Was a Temple on the Temple Mount

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I have many friends who find the New York Times’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be “anti-Israel.”  By this, I think that they mean that given a (surprisingly large) number of possible narratives through which to present a news story, the Times often picks one that lies somewhere within the Palestinian spectrum.  I never really bought this argument.  The Times to me reads somewhat to the right of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.  While the Times maintains a fairly consistent bias, that bias would fit well within the current Israeli spectrum, and not even all that close to the left edge.  So I have not always agreed with the coverage, but it has rarely riled me.  Today’s article by Rick Gladstone, though, Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place, was so misleading and confused that it really got my goat.

The article claims that there is no definitive evidence that the two ancient Jewish temples stood on the present day Temple Mount.  The article strongly implies that this remains a live historical controversy.  The problem with posing the issue that way is that it confuses several distinct historical questions.  Once those questions are teased apart, it is clear that there is actually very little disagreement among professional historians about most of them.  These questions are:

  • Did a Jewish temple stand on the present day Temple Mount?  Yes.  This is as historically certain a fact as one can get in the study of ancient history.  The Temple Mount was built by Herod beginning at the end of the first century BCE – the Western Wall is the western retaining wall of that reshaping of the natural hill – and on top of it were a number of structures that belonged to the Jewish temple.  These included courtyards, altars, and the Holy of Holies.  Now it is true (and has long been recognized even in Jewish law) that we do not know precisely where on the Temple Mount those structures stood, but there is no question that they stood there.
  • Prior to Herod’s renovation of the temple, did it stand at this site?  Almost certainly.  I would give it a 98% possibility.  The second temple was built around 520 BCE and underwent a few renovations before Herod gave it a major overhaul.  If Herod moved the site of the temple we would know, both from the extensive archaeological excavations conducted all around the temple as well from literary sources.  People notice stuff like that.
  • Was the second temple built on the same site as the first?  Here there is scholarly uncertainty.  The first temple was destroyed in 586 BCE along with the entire city of Jerusalem.  When Jews returned from Babylonia to rebuild the temple, were they careful to find the site of the old structure, clear the rubble, and build it on the same exact spot?  It seems likely, but this we really don’t know.  The question is further complicated by the biblical record, in which God never tells Solomon precisely where in Jerusalem he is to build a temple.  It is possible that the precise spot did not matter very much to the Israelites at this time.  If the first temple did not stand within the confines of the present Temple Mount, though, it would have been within a couple of hundred meters.

The historical issues are thus both more complex and far more interesting than Gladstone implies.  But this article is not really about history, it’s about politics.  For some Jews and Muslims, this history really matters: it stakes claims to this plot of land.  Yet to my mind ancient history can never add clarity or provide a solution to the very real and disturbing conflict presently being played out.  It is just too great a burden for history to bear.  Israelis, Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Christians, and Muslims (overlapping groups that are themselves quite internally diverse) all have legitimate claims and grievances.  To admit the simple historical truth that there was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in no way lessens Palestinian claims or grievances or supports Israeli claims to sovereignty.  Denying it equally serves no useful purpose.  By encouraging a broad readership to focus on the ancient history, and by distorting history in order to promote specific claims, stories like this bring us all only further away from peace.

Was Paul a Palestinian Jew?

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In her review of How the Bible Became Holy in the Wall Street Journal, Sarah Ruden wrote:

He tries to undercut, for instance, the well-founded consensus that Paul was a Diaspora Jew, from a family established in Tarsus (in modern-day Turkey), who first lived in Jerusalem during his youth or young adulthood for study and professional and religious development. For this account Mr. Satlow substitutes a speculative one of Paul as a cradle Palestinian Jew, and he does this seemingly in order to support a widespread characterization of the evangelist as a traitor to his heritage: As far as scripture is concerned, Paul hawked a debased version among people he didn’t know and who themselves didn’t know any better; he wasn’t one of them, attuned to their needs and aspirations; holy writing as he presented it and remade it thus has no deep integrity.
(my bold)

Ruden’s charge that appears after the sentence in bold – that Paul “hawked a debased version” and was a “traitor” –  I found entirely bizarre.  I neither made this charge in my book nor do I believe that it is remotely true.

As for the sentence in bold, I do argue that Paul was born and raised in Palestine.  But is it speculative?  Or, maybe more precisely, is it any more speculative than the “well-founded consensus”?  And what is at stake?  I have recently posted an essay that sketches the existing evidence on both sides of this question and develops in more detail why I think what I do.  A more scholarly version of this argument is forthcoming, and will eventually be posted here.

In the interim, my essay can be found here.