Negev and Dead Sea Field Study

Bait Shemesh (Judges 13:17, 1:27)
In Judges 13:1 there is a miraculous birth from Manoah of Zorah; his name is Samson (“Shimshon” or “Shemesh”- sun). His birthplace sits up on the ridge across the valley from where we stood.
There was an old Canaanite temple and altar that use to stand in the area. At this time the Danites (People of Samson) were pushed back into the high hill country, but Manoah was actually situated on the ridge above the valley near the high hill country. This was between the Sorek and Aijlon valley, which shows that the town was trying to make a statement.

Timnah was a Philistine town that Samson passed through several time. When Samson goes to get his wife and her Dad says no, Samson ties foxtails together and sets all of the wheat and barley on fire during their harvest season! This forces all in the land to experience famine. Samson leaves Timnah and goes over to the Judah high hill country to ask them to back him up; notice he doesn’t go to Dan! The people of Judah say, “No way, we won’t help the Danites.” In Judges 15 &16 Samson passes through all Philistine territories to get to Gaza (Judges 16). Samson gets a prostitute and then he goes from the heart land of Philistia to the heart land of Judah. He escapes being murdered by leaving early. He takes the city gates to Hebron, which is about 40 miles away. Samson falls in love and this is when it all goes down hill. She (Delilah) comes from the Sorek Valley and she has a history of growing up simple like he did; so she says. However, she is a spy from the Philistines and she finally gets him to reveal what his secret is for why he has his strength. Once his hair is cut, he is captured and taken to go grind grain and mill, which is the work of a donkey or a woman. He is forced to work in the grain field to show that their God Dagon was punishing him. Basically they made fun of him. At Bait Shemesh there is evidence of a fallen down temple where the roof caved in. That is awesome!

Arad “Cul-de-Sac”
Nobody wants to live in Arad! Arad had been an Israelite fort built by Solomon and then later destroyed by Nebekenezer. This early bronze site was rough... they had to live with only 6 inches of rain a year... or ate mud instead of water! The open pitted cistern sustained the people here for 500 years. The Biblical Negev was a place that people wanted because it was always valuable for other people. Even though it is a cul-de-sac and sits on bad soil, this fort was in operation for 500 years! Why? This was a place of trade and was on the trade route to the east. This would have been their base before heading on with their trade route.

The Temple found here at Arad had a lot of similarities with the temple in Jerusalem. You take your shoes off before going in because it is a holy place. Like Jerusalem, we can go into the temple court which was for the people. The Holy of Holies was located in the back of the temple, only for the priests. This came in the form of a broad room. In the Holy of Holies there are two tablets and two stone pillars for incense. In Jerusalem, there is only one pillar. Why the difference? The thought here is that the Israelites worshiped two deities here (one male and one female). The two stones probably represented Yahweh and Ashera. They have found ostraca written to Yahweh and Ashera in Hebrew. This was a Judah fort; however they could have been worshiping Ashera, the fertility god just in case. When Josiah centralized worship in Jerusalem he knocked down the false Gods. At this site, they found knocked down pillars which would suggest that this site was one of the ones that he destroyed.

Masada
Masada has always been a mountain that has never been totally covered by dirt. Basically, you don’t even need to excavate because the foundation is still standing for everything. In 74 ad when the Romans conquered this site after they conquered the temple in Jerusalem, this was the last “light” to go out. When Yadeen excavated here there were three things that were found. The pottery is all from the 1st century so this site has become the “type site” for pottery. The exact same stones were fallen off, but able to be reconstructed. Therefore, Masada became the first location to use a reconstruction black line to show where the original rock had been standing. Masada was the first location to use volunteer excavators from around the world, as opposed to paid locals to excavate the site. This site was built by Herod and is very famous. In fact, even today fighter jets dip their wings when passing Masada. There are also many Bar Mitzvahs and people commissioned up here for the special Israeli army forces.

We can see as we walk around that Herod did build to impress. At the top of the building Herod built a pool- in the middle of the desert! He plastered the insides so that water would not seep out. He also put walls up around the complex so nobody could see in; they could just hear people having a good time and splashing around in water. He got his water from En Gedi which was about one days walk away. He would bring in roman foods and store it for his guests.

When the Romans came to attack, Silva was the Roman general at the time and he set up his camp directly below. He built a siege ramp to overtake the zealots who were living there at the time. In fact, this site is also used to tell us the story of what Roman Siege looked like. Josephus tells the story.

Herod the Great died in 4 BC. His son, Archileaus received Masada and the other desert palaces as an inheritance. In fact, Herod divided his kingdom between his three sons. Archileaus received Masada and the Judean desert. However, he was such a bad ruler that Caesar fired him. Rome tried different methods of ruling but they did not work. The Zealous zealots with Sacari eventually came and ruled up here on Masada. They were known for murdering other Jews who were not as zealous as they were. Men, women, and children would kill to make their point. Eleasar, a zealot led the Zealots up on Masada. After the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD they pressed on towards Masada. They built a siege ramp to conquer the Zealots. They even tried to burn down Masada but a hamseen (desert wind) shifted and ended up burying the Romans instead. When the winds calmed, it was obvious that the Romans were going to overtake them, so Eleazar gathered all of the men in the synagogue and gave them all a very inspirational speech. He told them not to fall into the hands of the Romans (slavery). He also shared that they needed to choose the honorable death and not live as slaves by Roman rule because it would be more honoring to God. So they should choose death before slavery. By this time, they knew that they had already conquered Jerusalem. So, the men went back and told this to their families. They then killed their families. The last ten killed each other and then the last person fell on his own sword. Josephus was able to share this story because he says that there were actually kids and women hiding in some cisterns and they were able to tell the story later on.

There are some interesting points to take into consideration when thinking about this story. Josephus was a general of the Jewish army but was really bad at it. Later on, he becomes a traitor and helps the Romans. Here is the kicker: They never found a mass of body remains up at Masada. But they did find a siege ramp on the other side of the palace which would suggest that the Zealots escaped into the wilderness and fled. There were a couple of body remains in the tower, but only a few. If the Zealots would have fled to the desert, then we would never have found their bodies because the animals would have eaten them. Josephus, remember is telling his accounts to the Romans in order to give accounts about the Jews. Some say that because he was a traitor and a horrible army general, he let his conscious get the best of him, so he wrote the lies trying to redeem the Jews and make amends. He writes of three suicide accounts; Masada, Gamla, and Arbel. He did write all of these accounts 15-20 years after the fact. Was he telling the truth?

Qumran
Some people say that Qumran used to be a fort, but it was probably a religious community. It was destroyed by the Romans in 68 AD. Devough excavated the caves #1-11. When he went through the caves, he took pictures of them, but never put up signs marking the caves. In 1st century BC- 1st century AD the Qumran community existed. There were many water installations which suggest that this was truly a religious community with several mikva-ote and numerous aqueducts supplying the Mikva-ote. Psalms, Deut, and Isaiah were the three texts that were found the most at Qumran. These are the same three texts that are quoted the most in the New Testament as well. Many say that the Essene community lived here. Some of the scrolls revealed that the Essenes were critical of those in Jerusalem, so they wanted to be set apart.