Thanksgiving and Iron Age Israel

Sorry for such a long delay since my previous update. I want to say that I've been extraordinarily busy, but I haven't really. I just haven't really had anything to blog about lately. Anyway.

Thanksgiving was last week, and, as you all know, Israel does not formerly commemorate the holiday. Since the majority of the people in my program are American, we decided to do Thanksgiving ourselves. One of my classmates lives in Tel Aviv with her husband and baby daughter and is also from American, and she invited us all over for an Erev Thanksgiving (evening before Thanksgiving) at her apartment. It was potluck style, and everything was incredibly delicious! We all left later that night considerably heavier than when we arrived. Also Thanksgiving also reminded me of the things I am thankful for, including my wonderful family and friends back home who have been so supportive of my crazy dreams and also my new friends here, who really have become a second family to me. :)

In our recent classes, we've been learning about Philistine cities, so on Friday for our tours this week, we visited Lachish, Gat, and Qeiyafa. It was great. Although these sites are well known in the Bible, there are not really huge tourist destinations like Megiddo or some of those sites are. With that being said, Lachish wasn't exactly open to the general public, and we ended up bypassing some yellow tape warning us of the danger of going to the site since parts of it were unstable. We actually had to climb one of the fortification walls and enter through the ancient drainage system. It was so cool, and we of course made several jokes about how we felt like Sennacherib, who was responsible for the sacking of Lachish (as evidenced by the reliefs found in Nineveh depicting the event). 

Lachish: the "capital" of the Shephelah

You can see the vertical stratigraphy here, where the walls are from two different times!

We also visited Tel Qeiyafa and Gath (where Goliath is from). 

Tel Qeiyafa

Two-chambered gate at Qeiyafa

Gath

 We climbed to the very top of Tel Gath.

In academic news, my class on Iron Age archaeology has finished up, and I am quite sad that it's over, since it's probably my favorite time period to study. I have absolutely loved the class and the subject material. I pretty much have written down everything our professor has said and all the articles and books he referenced since I'll be doing further research in Iron Age/Deuteronomistic history in a few years hopefully! We focused a bit on the Davidides and the United Monarchy (when the northern kingdom of Israel was basically assimilated into the southern kingdom of Judah) and the compilation of the early history of the Davidic and Solomonic Dynasty. I really want to do further research on the figure of David and that dynastic succession in my later research! It's so fascinating! We talked a bit about the influences of the northern kingdom of Israel on the Bible. 

In the Book of Samuel (which was probably written around the 8th c. BCE), David is portrayed as a traitor who cooperated with the enemies of Israel, but there is also a spin on the story to blacken Saul and to resolve the allegations against David. Recent scholarship has called this The Great Apologia, which states that there was a need to provide an immediate explanation during Davidic times. There is also a Second Apologia, which is more of a succession history. However, we have no evidence of a compilation of things like The Great Apologia in the 10th c. BCE (the times of David). Another question this raises is the necessity of such a apologia during the 10th c. BCE. For instance, Chronicles (4th c. BCE) shows a different viewpoints on the history than Kings (around the 7th c. BCE). The chronicler portrays David very positively, so why is the same not done in Kings? Perhaps this can be resolved in changing the question to what is the time period when the author cannot eliminate the negative stories from the north. So the author would then need to incorporate these stories and manipulate the text at the end to spin David into a positive light. All of it is the result of the Fall of Israel in the late 8th c. BCE. In the wider scope, we can see here that there are two phases of major Judahite ideology. First, Pan-Israelite ideology directed inside to unite the population and second, Judah would be able to export their ideology after Assyria pulls out in the 7th c. BCE. But that is a topic for another time...

On another note, for more pictures and news, you should all like my program's facebook page! http://www.facebook.com/archaeologyandhistoryofthelandofthebible

I'm starting my class on Exilic and Post-exilic Archaeology tomorrow, so I have lots of reading to prepare for my class tomorrow. Also I'm about to go make a pita for lunch. Also:

!הודיה שמח לכולם