Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981–2022

Edited by Lee I. Levine, Zeev Weiss, and Uzi Leibner
(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, The Institute of Archaeology – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jeselsohn Epigraphic Center of Jewish History, 2023), xx + 300 pp.
Reviewed by James Riley Strange

Click here to purchase Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981–2022.

Archaeological exploration of synagogues in the land of Israel has been going on since at least the late 19th century, and debates about synagogues have always been energetic. The chief disputed issues are chronology (When were the first synagogues built? In what periods did different styles emerge?) and activity (What practices happened in synagogues? Were these primarily religious or non-religious practices?).

Why do people care about these questions? One reason is that, if we can answer them, we will know more about the earliest centuries of two great world religions in the land where they began: Judaism and Christianity. Not only so, but we will also gain insights into Judaism’s response to Christianity’s control of the region under the Byzantine Empire and the arrival of Islam in the seventh century.

It turns out that more than archaeologists and scholars of early Judaism and Christianity care about these things. For this reason, in 1981 the Israel Exploration Society published Ancient Synagogues Revealed, edited by Lee I. Levine, a luminary in the field of synagogue origins. It has taken 42 years for the companion volume to arrive: Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981–2022, edited by Levine and two other noted archaeologists, Zeev Weiss and Uzi Leibner.

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A significant aspect of the book is the editors’ willingness to preserve disagreements among archaeologists. In the editors’ essays and in various chapters, readers will see elements of debated issues, and what is at stake in the debates is clear as well.

Whereas the first volume presented excavated buildings in half of its 36 chapters (the remaining 18 chapters contained discussions of such things as typology, architectural prototypes, and art and architecture), the new volume surveys 35 buildings in 36 chapters! That lets us know how much work has happened in the intervening years. In the first volume, for example, we learned about two Second Temple-period synagogues at the sites of Masada and Gamla, whereas in the second volume we have chapters on six synagogues from this period. The first volume had a single chapter on the art and architecture of synagogues of the Golan but no chapter on an excavated building, but now we can read about six buildings in that region.

Turning to the book’s contents, opposite the title page (p. ii) readers will find a helpful color map of synagogue sites in Israel and the West Bank. The text begins with three introductory essays by the editors: the first on how archaeology has made an impact on the study of Judaism in Late Antiquity, the second on synagogue art, and the third on the dating of synagogues. Chapters on synagogue buildings are presented in five sections: Galilee (15 chapters), Golan Heights (six chapters), Samaria (only one synagogue has a chapter; the other chapter is a brief discussion of Samaritan synagogues as a distinctive category), Judea and southern Israel (eight chapters), and synagogues outside of Israel (five chapters). A list of abbreviations and a brief yet helpful glossary end the book.

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Chapters contain many quality images, often including aerial photos of the site (a regular feature made possible by the use of drones) and images of objects and inscriptions associated with the buildings. Readers will no doubt also appreciate the many three-dimensional artistic renderings of what the buildings might have looked like when they stood, for it can be difficult to make sense of an architectural floor plan or stone-by-stone drawing.

It’s worth noting, however, that some chapters have a limited bibliography or none (e.g., Qaṣrin). In some cases, this lacuna is due to the lack of final publications. Still, one goal of such a volume is to point readers to additional important resources. BAR readers may fill in some gaps at the Bornblum Eretz Israel Synagogues website.

Ancient Synagogues Revealed 1981–2022 is not available through most popular booksellers (including Amazon) and, if purchased from the United States, costs around $120, including shipping from the Israel Exploration Society. Owning a copy, however, is not an insurmountable challenge, as the IES’s website allows credit card purchases. And, despite the cost, this is a book that people interested in the topic, both specialists and non-specialists, will want on their shelves.

James Riley Strange is the Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Professor in New Testament at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and Director of the Shikhin Excavation Project.

This article first appeared in Bible History Daily on March 20, 2024.

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The Ten Commandments: Monuments of Memory, Belief, and Interpretation

By Timothy S. Hogue
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023), 340 pp., 15 figs.; $130 (hardcover and eBook)

Reviewed by Lauren Monroe

It can be disorienting to see something familiar in a new light. This is a common experience for students who stumble into courses on the Hebrew Bible and discover texts that often have more to do with the ancient Near East than the Judeo-Christian world in which they typically encounter them. For scholars, such moments of surprise are rare and wonderful.

Timothy Hogue’s recent monograph, The Ten Commandments: Monuments of Memory, Belief, and Interpretation, provided me with just such an opportunity to become unsettled. Reading Hogue’s eloquent prose is like witnessing the unveiling of a new discovery, except what is revealed is something we thought we already knew: the Ten Commandments, the very embodiment of scripture or, as Hogue argues, of God himself. According to Hogue, Yahweh, like other gods and kings of the ancient Near East, constituted his people (Israel) through the Decalogue’s participation in the tradition of ancient Near Eastern “I Am” monuments. These monuments were inscribed with texts that invariably opened with an “I Am” statement identifying an individual (usually a ruler) who spoke and manifested himself through the monument. Examples of such monuments include the Tel Dan Stele, the Zakkur inscription, and the Mesha Stele.

Previous treatments of the Decalogue have focused primarily on the literary and historical development of the accounts in Exodus (20:1–17) and Deuteronomy (5:6–21). Hogue is aware that bringing the tools of historical criticism to the literary form of the text is important for understanding the socio-historical context(s) in which the text was produced, but this is not what occupies his attention. Rather, he posits that at the center of the biblical accounts of the Decalogue is a particular type of ancient Near Eastern monument that began to change at the very time when Israel’s scribes were producing accounts of this essential material object. Hogue makes a persuasive case that the biblical scribes consciously engaged this familiar discourse, inviting their audiences into the spatial, cognitive, and geopolitical world of the “I Am” monument. The texts describing the giving of the Decalogue thus demand that we take seriously the decidedly material aspect of this iconic literary text.

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In addition to his command of the Akkadian and West Semitic (Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, and Moabite) written evidence, Hogue brings rare expertise in Luwian hieroglyphic to bear on his subject matter. His mastery of this material and the effectiveness with which he engages it raises the question of why the field of Hittitology has remained largely cordoned off from the study of the Bible in its ancient Near Eastern context.

In Hogue’s study, certain phrases, the meaning of which we might have taken for granted as clear, suddenly become less so. For example, in what Hogue designates “the monolatry commandment,” he offers a corrective to the common, monotheizing translation: “You shall have no other gods beside me,” translating instead, “you shall have no other god(s) above me.” In light of “I Am” monuments, Hogue interprets this as a reference to the removal of rival claimants to Yahweh’s position, a common motif in “I Am” monuments. Where translations have historically rendered, “You shall not swear falsely by (or take in vain) the name of the Lord your God,” Hogue translates, “You shall not maliciously erase the name of Yahweh your God.” Hogue defends this translation through careful study of the Hebrew idiom in the context of “I Am” monuments, where the name is a metonym for the inscribed monument itself. He demonstrates that “lifting up” a name was a technical description for name erasure in Levantine monumental discourse. These and other subtle reinterpretations of the language of the Decalogue situate it within a particular Near Eastern context that stands at a considerable conceptual difference from its reception in Judeo-Christian tradition.

Deuteronomy’s reworking of the Decalogue represents an early stage in how the text was remodeled to meet changing historical circumstances. Hogue situates this recasting in the context of shifts in the use of “I Am” monuments during the period of Assyrian domination (eighth–seventh centuries BCE), which he identifies as the “Age of Court Ceremony.” He explains Deuteronomy’s revisions in light of changing practices of monumentality as well as a “refugee crisis” created by an influx of people from Israel into Judah after the Assyrian annexation of the north.

In his chapter on the afterlife of the Decalogue, he explores the text’s inner biblical reception especially in late monarchic and post-monarchic additions to Exodus and Deuteronomy. However, he acknowledges that the interactions between text and community that are at the heart of his study technically extend to the present day. Indeed, in this moment when monumentalizing the Ten Commandments is of current import in the United States, Hogue’s work invites us to reflect on our own interactions with the Decalogue in the context of a long and always historically situated chain of tradition.

Lauren Monroe is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. She is a specialist in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israelite religious and social history.

Related reading in Bible History Daily

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The Syriac World: In Search of a Forgotten Christianity

By Françoise Briquel Chatonnet and Muriel Debié, trans. by Jeffrey Haines
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2023), 304 pp., 68 b/w figs., 11 maps; $35 (hardcover and eBook)

Reviewed by Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent

Go east across the Euphrates River and journey to meet the Syriac Christians. They are still there and continue to speak, teach, and worship in both the classical and modern dialects of their own language—Syriac. When you pack your bag, don’t forget a guidebook: Françoise Briquel Chatonnet and Muriel Debié’s The Syriac World. This book touches upon nearly every aspect of the Syriac Christian tradition, bringing its people, religious legacy, language, and history to life. By attending to the Syriac heritage, you will see the Christian tradition and its Aramaic-speaking founder (Jesus) with a fresh pair of eyes. This book is beautifully illustrated with photos and maps, providing a visual journey even for armchair pilgrims.

The Syriac tradition, whose literary heritage is almost exclusively Christian, has gained more attention in the Anglophone world in the past three decades due to increased scholarly focus. Despite this growing recognition of the Syriac tradition in academic circles, a comprehensive book was missing—until now.

In the first few centuries following the death of Jesus, Christian missionaries moved east along the trade routes to Upper Mesopotamia and as far as India. Christian legend teaches that one of the 72 missionaries Jesus commissioned was Addai, who converted the city of Edessa to Christianity. The people of Edessa, modern-day Şanlıurfa (Urfa) in southeastern Turkey, spoke an Aramaic dialect known as Syriac, which became a critical cultural language of Syro-Mesopotamia. The contributions of Syriac-speaking Christians produced the third-largest Christian corpus of texts after Greek and Latin. The standard Bible for the Syriac churches, the Peshitta, is a vital attestation of its prominence, since its text of the Old Testament was translated directly from Hebrew. The enduring legacy of the Syriac-speaking Christians and their resilience in the face of historical adversities is a testament to their enduring spirit.

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The Syriac World opens the Syriac tradition in an accessible way with chapters addressing the origins of the Syriac language and community, its distinctively Christian identity and literary heritage, and early legends about the beginnings of the Syriac Christian community. Although Syriac Christians never enjoyed the freedom of their own country, they have made far-reaching contributions to a wide range of fields. The crown jewel of Syriac literature is perhaps theological poetry, demonstrated most profoundly in the works of the fourth-century poet and theologian Ephrem the Syrian. Ephrem wrote hymns about the Bible and composed them for women’s choirs. His hymns illustrate how the Syrians privileged metaphors and images from the Bible and nature to speak about God and God’s interactions with humanity. However, the contributions of the Syriac Christians do not end in the fourth century.

As this book shows, the Syriac Christians studied all branches of learning and offered their study as a holy gift to God. They composed theological texts, established schools and monasteries, studied and translated the Bible, and composed stories about their saints. They worked as doctors, philosophers, and scientists under Muslim rulers. They traveled as missionaries, bringing their language and brand of Christianity with them. This book brings the reader into the monasteries of the Syriac-speaking Christians, places of rich scholarly formation that trained the bishops who would be critical players in the theological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries. One meets not only the Syrian Christians but also the cultures with which they came into contact. The authors shed light on the rich translation culture of the Syriac traditions: Greek into Syriac and Syriac into Greek, as well as Latin, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Middle Persian, Arabic, Sogdian, Uighur, Turkish, and Malayalam translation efforts.

The Syrian Christian heritage has persisted since the late antique period, radiating from its geographical roots in Upper Mesopotamia to Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Gulf States, Central Asia, China, and India. Now, Syriac Christians have planted new churches in the diaspora, in dialogue with the modern cultures of Europe and North America. The living heirs of this Syriac Christian heritage include the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, the Syrian Catholic Church, the Maronite Church, the Malabar and Malankara Churches of India, and the Chaldean Church. The Syriac World celebrates the persistence of this venerable tradition and its ancient and modern communities that identify with their Aramaic roots and continue to commemorate the heroes and minds who shaped their tradition.

Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent is Associate Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Theology at Marquette University. She is an expert in Syriac studies and early Christianity, with a special interest in hagiography.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

First Question Mark Identified in Syriac Manuscripts

Review: The Bible Among Ruins

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Lost Syriac Text Gives Magi’s View of the Christmas Story

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The Bible Among Ruins

Time, Material Remains, and the World of the Biblical Writers

By Daniel Pioske
(Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023), 308 pp., 50 b/w figs.; $110.00 (hardback and eBook)

Reviewed by Aaron A. Burke

In recent decades, biblical scholars have begun to explore topics at the intersections of archaeological, biblical, and anthropological studies. Of special interest are questions relating to memory, like Daniel Pioske’s recent The Bible Among Ruins. The book’s relevance is readily apparent to Bible readers familiar with the repeated use of the phrase “to this day,” which appears no fewer than 80 times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Joshua 8:28; Judges 6:24; 2 Kings 10:27). This expression was deployed to assert that ruins and ancient monuments were still visible to biblical writers, as they remarked upon how they related to Israel’s past. As Pioske notes, biblical traditions were correlated with ruins to lend credibility to the writer’s claims, grounded as they allegedly were in visible facts that could be confirmed on the ground.

While it is relatively easy to recognize that ruins were a part of ancient landscapes, Pioske challenges us to recognize that ruins were perceived quite differently by ancient peoples, who had an entirely different conception of time than do people of the modern world. He highlights, for example, the lack of interest shown in the biblical text for the exploration of the past, despite an awareness of the antiquity of ruins that surrounded ancient writers. Pioske observes that until about 250 years ago, individuals had no ability to gauge their own historical distance from the ruins around them, much less between ruins belonging to different periods. Not only did archaeology not exist, but historical frameworks, as we understand them today, were entirely lacking in daily life. Although there were ancient calendars, they were almost exclusively employed to measure or record events with respect to a single ruler’s reign.

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Pioske’s book presents three case studies centered on three biblical sites that explore different aspects of ruins and ruination in the Hebrew Bible: Shiloh, Rachel’s Tomb, and Jerusalem. Shiloh held central cultic importance to early Israel given that it was remembered as having hosted the tabernacle during the pre-monarchic period. Shiloh’s commemoration in early Israel was important, even though—as is easily overlooked—the site was not inhabited during the monarchy, existing only as a ruin, as the prophet Jeremiah (7; 26) and Psalm 78 both underscore. Analysis of the textual tradition alongside the archaeological remains reminds us of the contrast between Shiloh’s significance in biblical tradition and the quite limited contribution of its archaeological remains to our actual understanding of early Iron Age Israel.

The discussion of Rachel’s tomb concerns a monument that, according to the Bible, was constructed in remembrance of an event and therefore functioned to evoke the presence of the past (Genesis 35:20). Pioske notes that the Bible often identifies similar features in the landscape as existing “to this day.” Notably, conflicting traditions around particular ruins emerged in ways that were often contradictory. Was Shiloh home to the tabernacle, an early temple, or both? How did two places come to be identified as Rachel’s resting place? Such inconsistencies were, Pioske notes, perhaps less consequential in antiquity, since the traditions functioned for different purposes and were not compared side by side.

The last locus discussed, Jerusalem, is employed in the context of reflections on future ruination, a theme upon which the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel often reflected to warn their contemporaries of what may come to pass. Here, too, Pioske observes that explanations concerning the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians illustrate variations on the theme of disobedience to Yahweh but also the possibility of restoration.

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Perhaps worthy of more discussion in the book would be the greater interest in the past that seems to come about in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, not just in Judah, but also, as Pioske opens with, Nabonidus of Babylon’s early excavations and Herodotus’s historical work. The alleged discovery of the book of the law (possibly Deuteronomy) during Josiah’s reign, just as much as the passages from Jeremiah discussed by Pioske, all point to the past being more important in the closing centuries of the Iron Age. What shared circumstances might have made this phenomenon so widespread?

The Bible Among Ruins is a thoroughly researched and exceptionally well written book. For scholars, it offers a great deal for future consideration, particularly regarding many additional places mentioned throughout the Bible that remain to be discussed in a similar fashion. All readers, however, will benefit from the discussions of social memory, landscape, and ruin studies as they pertain to the biblical, Near Eastern, and Mediterranean worlds.

Aaron A. Burke is Professor of the Archaeology of Ancient Israel and the Levant, and the Kershaw Chair in the Archaeology of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Related reading in Bible History Daily:

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Excavating the Land of Jesus

How Archaeologists Study the People of the Gospels

By James Riley Strange
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023), 192 pp., 29 b/w figs., 2 maps; $29.99 (hardcover and eBook)

Reviewed by Matthew J. Grey

In recent decades, scholarship on the New Testament has reflected a growing interest in the archaeology of Roman Galilee and how its material culture illuminates the historical Jesus, the social setting of his earliest followers, and the Jewish context of the New Testament. As a result, the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of archaeological activity around the Sea of Galilee. This includes the excavation of villages, synagogues, and industrial centers within the vicinity of Jesus’s ministry as well as new research on the region’s first-century politics, economy, networks, religious dynamics, and daily life. However, for New Testament readers with a limited background in archaeology, it can be difficult to know how to access, approach, and interpret the relevant archaeological evidence responsibly.

In response to this challenge, James Riley Strange has written a short but very helpful volume, Excavating the Land of Jesus: How Archaeologists Study the People of the Gospels. As both a professor of New Testament and an archaeologist with extensive excavation experience in the Galilee, Strange is uniquely well-positioned to bridge the disciplinary divide that often exists between those who read the Gospels as literary, historical, or scriptural sources and those who explore the physical setting in which the early Jesus movement emerged. His book skillfully introduces non-specialist readers to the field of archaeology, with an emphasis on the critical intersection between the New Testament and the material culture of the Galilee from the second century BCE through the second century CE.

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Although other volumes have recently provided updates on specific aspects of this topic—such as surveys of newly excavated sites or studies of Galilean daily life—Strange’s book focuses on the process of archaeological research itself. It begins with providing clear definitions of what archaeology is (the systematic recovery and interpretation of ancient remains) and is not (a resource for either proving or merely illustrating the Gospels) as well as a brief history explaining how the archaeology of Roman Galilee emerged as a distinct discipline, somewhat separate from traditional biblical archaeology. The bulk of the book then walks the reader through the main types of problems archaeologists try to solve and the various methods they use to solve them, with each issue illustrated by case studies drawn from the local material culture. In short, this book helps its reader understand how archaeologists think and work, particularly when dealing with such significant historical or religious texts as the Gospels.

Strange covers basic problems such as knowing where to dig and how to identify biblical sites (for example, highlighting recent efforts to locate and excavate first-century Magdala), how to dig, what questions to ask, and which methodologies would provide the best answers (describing, as an illustration, the construction, occupational phases, and subsequent excavation of a hypothetical village home). He further explores the problem of knowing how to use both ancient texts and archaeology to understand the past. To demonstrate the value of this, Strange shows how it might look to place into conversation the information about locations and travel found in the Gospel of John with the remains of first-century road systems and village networks between Galilee and Jerusalem.

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Along with these useful examples, Strange also considers other important issues faced by archaeologists working in the Galilee of the Gospels. These include the need to understand ancient technologies, such as the complex process of olive oil production assumed by the numerous biblical allusions to dining, healing, or the lighting of homes. Finally, he explores the importance of understanding the social values of group identity as reflected in the common profile of “household Judaism” (with its distinctive pottery assemblages, ritual purity features, and dietary practices) and the role of synagogue buildings as gathering places within Jewish settlements. Each of these archaeological issues, Strange demonstrates, significantly illuminates our understanding of the social, cultural, and economic context of the New Testament in a way that would not have otherwise been obvious.

Illustrated with maps, plans, reconstructions, and photos, Excavating the Land of Jesus is an easily accessible and valuable resource for any New Testament reader, student, or scholar who seeks to better understand how careful archaeological work can be placed into conversation with the Gospels and how that conversation can provide critical perspectives on the material world of Jesus.

Matthew J. Grey is Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture and an affiliate faculty member of the Ancient Near Eastern Studies program at Brigham Young University.

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Mount Machaerus

An Introduction to the Historical, Archaeological, and Pilgrim Site Overlooking the Dead Sea in the Kingdom of Jordan
By Győző Vörös
(Amman: The American Center of Research, 2024), hard cover, 171 pp., 96 figures; free download available from the ACOR website.

Reviewed by Konstantinos Politis

With Mount Machaerus, Győző Vörös has authored an invaluable summary of his superb four-part publication series about the spectacular Herodian citadel that dramatically overlooks the eastern shore of the Dead Sea in Jordan.^[i] It is written in an easily accessible style for students and visitors to appreciate the ancient site without compromising academic content. The colorful illustrations and architectural reconstructions are particularly useful in bringing to life a hitherto unknown but important palace of the early Roman period.

This concise book includes a century of the most important studies and discoveries of Machaerus. The first chapters begin with a comprehensive review and interpretation of John the Baptist’s days at the citadel as mentioned in the New Testament (Matthew 14:1–12) and by Roman accounts (esp. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.109–119). Colorful maps, images, and sketches indicate the strategic location of the site. Next, the early 19th-century “rediscovery” of Machaerus and its identification near the modern village of Mukaur or Mukawer is described; it is intriguing that a form of the name was preserved for millennia and alludes to the persistence of an oral tradition about John the Baptist in the vicinity.

The first hundred years of research (up to 2007) is recounted with labelled topographic photographs and plans. The successive archaeological excavations and finds of both American and Italian scholars are recounted. Vörös also gives his own analysis and interpretation of the discoveries, which in some cases were enigmatic. But his perseverance and dedicated scholarship succeeds in bringing some of these “lost” finds to light.

In Chapter 3, Vörös spells out the aims of the new Hungarian mission that he directs: “to document all available information and to describe the ruins of the citadel.” This decade-long project (2009–2019) not only carried out extensive fieldwork, but also conducted comparative architectural investigations. The result was a clear understanding of all the structures at Machaerus and the drawing of rectified plans along with accurate (and beautiful) architectural restorations. The theoretical reconstructions and physical restorations of Doric and Ionic columns in the Herodian palace are particularly impressive, as only a few fragments survived.

Vörös skilfully and convincingly defines “two distinct components” of his investigations in Chapter 4: historical sources and archaeology. He demonstrates that “Machaerus is a perfect example of historic archaeology” and that there is concordance between the two disciplines. Archaeological discoveries have verified ancient accounts. This important conclusion is expanded in chapters 5, 6, and 7, where architectural reconstructions coupled with imaginative biblical illustrations make the site and its legendary episode come to life.

The last chapter highlights the fact that Machaerus and Kallirhoe, its port on the Dead Sea, continued to function during the Byzantine and early Islamic periods as pilgrimage sites. This explains why the latter is prominently portrayed (and undoubtedly the former, had the depiction not been damaged) on the unique sixth-century mosaic floor map at Madaba in Jordan.

Vörös not only exceled in updating our academic understanding of Herodian Machaerus but also conducted professional conservation and restorations of the buildings (particularly the palace complex). This succeeded in preserving and presenting the ancient site for future generations. Furthermore, his tireless and enthusiastic public outreach, through lectures and various programs, has kept the site alive and relevant to locals and visitors alike.

Notes:

[i] See Machaerus I: History, Archaeology and Architecture of the Fortified Herodian Royal Palace and City Overlooking the Dead Sea in Transjordan. Final Report of the Excavations and Surveys 1807–2012 (Milano: Edizioni Terra Santa, 2013); Machaerus II: The Hungarian Archaeological Mission in the Light of the American-Baptist and Italian-Franciscan Excavations and Surveys. Final Report 1968–2015 (Milano: Edizioni Terra Santa, 2015); Machaerus III: The Golden Jubilee of the Archaeological Excavations. Final Report on the Herodian Citadel 1968–2018 (Milano: Edizioni Terra Santa, 2019); and Machaerus: The Golgotha of John the Baptist. The Herodian Royal City Overlooking the Dead Sea in Transjordan, Where Princess Salome Danced. Archaeological Excavations of the Hungarian Academy of Arts 2009–2021 (Budapest: Publishing House of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, 2022). Machaerus III won the 2021 BAS Publication Award for “Best Scholarly Book on Archaeology.”

Konstantinos Politis is a seasoned field archaeologist of the eastern Mediterranean lands ranging from prehistory to Ottoman times. His focus has been on late antiquity to the early medieval period.

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God: An Anatomy

By Francesca Stavrakopoulou
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022), 592 pp., 3 maps, 57 b/w figs., 33 color photos; $35.00 (hardback)
Reviewed by Erin Darby

What does God look like? Sound like? How does God smell, taste, or touch? These are the fundamental and, for some, controversial questions that frame Francesca Stavrakopoulou’s newest book. For those who have grown up in religious communities, Stavrakopoulou tells a story at once familiar and strange. Her masterful synthesis of ancient Near Eastern texts (including the Hebrew Bible and New Testament), archaeology, and the history of interpretation emboldens her reader to engage these fundamental human questions about the divine without fear of theological censure. In so doing, the reader embarks upon a journey to a time before the strictures of orthodoxy or modernity, to a place in human history where deities walk, talk, breathe, speak, touch, snort, and lust.

The pictures we humans draw of the divine dictate not just the way God(s) is/are conceptualized but also how we imagine our own place in the world and how we treat each other. Stavrakopoulou’s fresh take on these questions explores the physicality of divine-human interactions one body part at a time, moving from God’s legs and feet, to the genitals, the torso, the arms and hands, and finally the head. In so doing, the reader encounters familiar passages in the biblical text but with a new sensitivity to their literal rather than allegorical interpretation.

Although the book is written for a general audience, it is also teeming with scholarship ranging over miles and millennia. It describes the way biblical passages may have been understood during the time they were created as well as the changes in Jewish and Christian interpretation that have led to the way people tend to read these passages today. This attention to the history of interpretation is crucial. When we better understand why we read these texts in particular ways as a modern audience, our eyes are opened to the possibility that ancient authors, creators, and audiences understood descriptions of the divine in different, far more visceral terms.

Reading biblical texts within the context of ancient Near Eastern mythologies, ritual texts, and legends leads to a radical reevaluation of many descriptions of Yahweh that modern readers assume are metaphorical, helping the reader reconsider the accuracy of English translations that have rendered anatomical language figuratively (e.g., the face of Yahweh) or euphemistically (e.g., Yahweh’s phallus).

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By focusing on the physical body of the divine, we also gain a new appreciation for the sensory landscape of ancient human ritual life. From the clouds of sweet-smelling incense in temples to the expressions of awe experienced by worshipers encountering a cult image, to the realia of ejaculates, menstrual blood, and pus, we gain a deeper understanding of the holistic experiences through which humans understood themselves as encountering the divine. As a corollary, we also must consider which humans are allowed in which spaces and under what conditions, drawing our attention to the diversity of ancient ritual experiences and the power dynamics of who had access to deities and their physical presence.

Because this book covers a staggering amount of material and is written for a general audience, there are times when the reader is left wanting to know more details about a translation or interpretation. There is a rich history of scholarly debate over many topics covered in God: An Anatomy, including whether a statue of Yahweh existed in the Temple, whether Asherah served as Yahweh’s consort, the extent to which ancient authors portrayed God as lustful, how to understand images of Yahweh committing or condoning sexual violence, and which passages in the Bible include vestiges of a Canaanite pantheon. As a thought-provoking, thorough, and accessible introduction to the physicality of the divine in the biblical world, this book will serve as a starting point for deeper engagement and ongoing dialogue.

Erin Darby is Associate Professor of Early Judaism at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is an expert in the archaeology of Israelite religion.

Related Reading in Bible History Daily:

Asherah and the Asherim: Goddess or Cult Symbol?

God and Sex

Is This the Face of God?

Face of the Greek God Pan

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library:

Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel
When God Sleeps
Images of God in Western Art
Ways of Knowing God

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The Magi

Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate
By Eric Vanden Eykel
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2022), 218 pp.; $28 (hardcover), $25.99 (eBook)
Reviewed by Christopher A. Frilingos

One of the many funny set pieces in John Irving’s spectacular novel A Prayer for Owen Meany is a Christmas pageant at a small New England church. After a children’s choir rehearses the carol “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” a boy in the choir asks, “Where are ‘Ory’ and ‘R’?” It’s been 20 years since I last read Owen Meany, and remembering the scene still makes me giggle.

But are they kings, the Magi of the New Testament? (No.) Are there three of them? (There are three gifts, but the precise number of gift-givers is not stated.) “R” they from “Ory,” or put another way, where are they from? (“From the East” is the vague geography.) These are some of the questions that Eric Vanden Eykel addresses in his engaging new book, which sets out to examine various traditions and ideas surrounding these mysterious figures in the Gospel of Matthew. Vanden Eykel also describes a fascinating legacy. Third-century frescoes of the Magi, wearing Phrygian caps, can be found in the Roman Catacomb of Priscilla.^[a] A sixth-century mosaic in the Basilica Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna includes the traditional names of the Magi: Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar. The apocryphal Armenian Gospel of the Infancy adds even more details to the canonical story, portraying the Magi as both kings and military commanders. To scholars like me, who have studied and written about apocryphal infancy gospels, the early Christian impulse to “fill in the gaps” of Gospel narratives is well known.^[1] Even so, it remains exciting to be shown these examples by an expert guide like Vanden Eykel.

Readers of BAR, I suspect, will be most interested in what Vanden Eykel has to say about the slender account of the Magi in the New Testament. Their sole appearance comes in a dozen verses in the Gospel of Matthew (2:1–12). The Magi emerge first as figures “from the East” who, because of a star they see, travel to Jerusalem in search of a king. When Herod hears about their quest, he summons the Magi and asks them to report back on what they find. Warned by a dream, the Magi never pass along the intelligence Herod seeks about an apparent rival.

What could this story mean? Vanden Eykel’s theory is based on exploring the range of meanings attached to the Greek word magoi, and the use of the term in ancient narratives.^[b] From these sources, Vanden Eykel identifies a theme of proximity to power. So too for Matthew’s Magi. Their presence in the home of the infant Jesus and their offering of gifts serve at once as proof of the power of the newborn and of the illegitimacy of Herod’s rule.

In his introduction, Vanden Eykel states clearly that the book examines the Magi “not as historical figures but as fictional characters” (emphasis mine). But the subtitle of the book—“Who They Were, How They’ve Been Remembered, and Why They Still Fascinate”—may nevertheless lead some to expect a verdict on historical accuracy. The tension between the book’s subtitle and contents could trigger frustration. If so, it would be a shame, since The Magi, in all other respects, delivers on its promises. Readers learn the literary and cultural context of Matthew’s story in rich detail, and much else besides.

To me, the most important “value added” of The Magi comes from getting to know its author. Vanden Eykel mixes in just the right amount of real-life examples and personal anecdotes. The voice of Vanden Eykel, often witty, comes through loud and clear. He is a thoughtful interpreter of Christian rituals and a sober critic of the ills of anti-Semitism in Christian texts and the use of blackface in pious dramas. But the tone is never preachy. In the final chapter, which surveys allusions to the Magi in contemporary storytelling—examples include O. Henry’s sentimental “Gift of the Magi” and Christopher Moore’s edgy The Lamb—Vanden Eykel poignantly reflects on why the Magi still matter. It’s a fitting conclusion. Reading the book is akin to following a gifted docent around a museum: The works on display come to life because we encounter them through the love of a true and learned guide. We may never solve all the mysteries of the Magi, but, thanks to Vanden Eykel’s new book, readers can gain a richer appreciation for the 2,000-year journey of the Magi through the Christian imagination.

Notes:

[1] See my book Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2017).

[a] See Megan Sauter, “Rome’s Queen Catacomb,” BAR, Fall 2023.

[b] Related to our word “magic,” the term in Matthew has been translated in a bewildering number of ways: “magi,” “wise men,” “astrologers,” and more. Vanden Eykel wisely leaves magoi untranslated in the book. When discussing the Christian literary characters, he uses the calque Magi.

Christopher A. Frilingos is Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University. He writes and teaches about biblical literature and early Christianity.

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Finding Phoebe

What New Testament Women Were Really Like
By Susan E. Hylen
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2023), x + 188 pp.,n 4 b/w photos; $21.99 (paperback)
Reviewed by T.J. Wray

I have spent much of my career researching, writing, and speaking about the lives of women during biblical antiquity. Here in this review, I focus on women living under the Roman occupation of Judea during the first and second centuries AD, the historical period covered in Susan E. Hylen’s book Finding Phoebe. Hylen explores the varied roles of women like Phoebe, a member of the early Christian community who lived near Corinth. While Paul refers to Phoebe as “sister,” “deacon,” and “benefactor” (Romans 16:1–2), Hylen admits that these designations may not carry the same meaning as they do today. Phoebe’s role, therefore, is open to interpretation and may range from “church leader” to perhaps someone who served Paul in a more informal capacity.

The various ways in which we interpret Paul’s references to Phoebe serve as the backbone of Hylen’s book, as she challenges readers not only to explore New Testament women in their historical context, but also to set aside assumptions about them and to imagine what their lives were like.

In our quest to explore the lives of New Testament women, we must first note that the Roman Empire was controlled by powerful men. This included the emperor, who enjoyed a divine status (cf. the Latin title Augustus, or “Venerable”), an all-male senate, various appointed local leaders, and a professional military. Roman citizenship was based largely on wealth and social status, thus making it an elite and exclusionary privilege. Roman citizens could vote, hold public office, own property, and enjoy many other perks that non-citizens might have envied. Unlike their male counterparts, women who held Roman citizenship could not vote or hold public office, but they did have many other rights, including the right to conduct business, own property, and divorce.

It is generally assumed that Jews in Judea also operated under a patriarchal system. Although it is true that men created laws, maintained order, and led religious life and Temple worship, the Jewish system was not as restrictive as we once imagined. For instance, there is ample evidence to support the notion that women maintained a literacy rate comparable to men. Hylen rightly asserts that many women occupied a variety of jobs beyond their expected roles as wife and mother. For example, some women worked as shopkeepers, teachers, and midwives, professions that required some level of education and record-keeping skills.

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After Jesus’s death, women became central figures in the post-resurrection community. The Acts of the Apostles relates the communal life of Jesus’s followers in the immediate aftermath of his death as an egalitarian utopia, where everyone sold their possessions, and everything was distributed equally among men and women (Acts 2:42–47). Over time, small house churches began to emerge, and (mostly) wealthy women presided over them, as Christians met, broke bread, prayed, and remembered Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:11; Acts 12:12). These early church leaders likely included Phoebe but also Mary the mother of John Mark who led services in her home in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12–17), Nympha in Laodicea (Colossians 4:14), and Apphia in Colossae (Philemon 2). Women often worked alongside men as missionaries, notably Prisca and her husband, Aquila. The efforts of countless other women filled the seats in house churches from Judea to Asia Minor and Greece with new converts (Philippians 4:2–3; Romans 16:1–7).

Sadly, the era of the inclusive house churches was short lived, only to give way to larger, more ornate buildings, complete with a hierarchal system of all-male clergy. The fair and equal treatment of women that so characterized Jesus’s ministry gradually dissolved, as women were nudged to the sidelines. The egalitarian utopia described in Acts 2:42–47 was replaced with a form of exclusionary sexism, where women were no longer active missionaries and presiders, but instead were expected to sit down and be quiet (Ephesians 5:22–24; 1 Timothy 2:11–15).

In addition to the New Testament, new archaeological data and ancient documents attest that some ancient women owned property, participated in community life, and even assumed leadership roles and acted as patrons. Hylen’s book does a great job showing that the old model of women as passive figures, wholly subservient to men and necessarily limited only to the roles of wife and mother, must be discarded in favor of a much broader understanding of their complex, dynamic, and multifaceted lives.

T.J. Wray is Professor of Religious and Theological Studies at Salve Regina University. She focuses on biblical women, grief experience, and Bible education.

Read more in Bible History Daily:

Who Was Phoebe?

Bible Women

Women in the Bible

Scandalous Women in the Bible

First Person: Misogyny in the Bible

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library:

Woman, A Power Equal to Man
How Women Differed
Thecla: The Apostle Who Defied Women’s Destiny

Not a BAS Library or All-Access Member yet? Join today.

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By John Dominic Crossan
(New York: HarperOne, 2022), 290 pp., 3 figures, $28.99 (hardcover), $12.99 (ebook).
Reviewed by Zeba Crook

Every book is a product of its time and place. This book’s time and place? The fierce political, cultural, and theological polarization that characterizes contemporary America. The author, New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan, seeks to explore the precarious balance between secular culture and religion, using as his stepping off point Jesus’s rebuke of Peter for his focus on human (rather than divine) concerns (Mark 8:33).

Commendably, Crossan does not fall into the common modern fallacy of equating Jesus’s distinction between ta tou Theou (“the [things] of God”) and ta Kaisaros (“the [things] of Caesar”) with an anachronistic separation of church and state (Matthew 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25). Recognizing that such a separation is impossible, Crossan counsels the reader to understand the two Greek phrases very broadly, to include the cultural and political power (rule) of God and the cultural and political power (rule) of Caesar.

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Crossan’s work is more biblical theology than biblical scholarship, in that his main purpose is to address whether contemporary Christians can “live in a single world with both God and Caesar.” He presents two well-known but problematic answers that the New Testament provides to this question (demonization and acculturation), and a preferable answer (confrontation) that is actually found outside of early Christian literature.

The first problematic approach is to demonize “the things of Caesar.” This attitude is promoted in the Book of Revelation, which ardently imagines the cataclysmic, ruthless, and vengeful slaughter of its opponents. The writer of Revelation warns that Rome is so dangerous, so evil, and so untrustworthy that embracing Roman culture is unimaginable. Because Rome is utterly doomed to God’s eventual wrath, wholesale rejection of Rome is the only feasible option.

The second problematic approach appears in the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, which Crossan argues must be read as an integrated single work. Luke-Acts promotes a wholesale acculturation to Rome: Rome is the future, the way forward for Christianity. The result is an inevitable but also fruitful Romanized Christianity.

Both approaches are problematic for different reasons: demonization because it is unhistorical (God did not slaughter the Romans, as promised) and acculturation because it made Christians turn away from justice to fit into the Roman imperial order. Demonization and acculturation are mutually exclusive and wholly contradictory. The way out for contemporary Christians can be found in a third option, which Crossan provocatively finds outside of the New Testament.

The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus situates Jesus in a trajectory of messianic criticism of Rome, one that involves nonviolent resistance. In Crossan’s opinion, nonviolent resistance does not demonize, because it promotes a view of God as more interested in redistributive justice and forgiveness than bloodthirsty vengeance. Neither, obviously, does nonviolent resistance canonize or wholly embrace criticizes, and holds at arm’s length. It is motivated more by the desire for justice than for either victory or peaceful coexistence.

In today’s America, Christians argue endlessly and sometimes brutally with each other over how the Bible is best deployed as the solution to all the country’s perceived problems. Various sides can cite the Bible to defend their positions on political, economic, and cultural policy; each side represents itself as the more authentically Christian. However, in the end I wonder: Is the root of the problem really deciding whose view of the Bible is more (or less) valid, responsible, or scholarly? Or is the real problem perhaps the very act of trying to use an ancient and culturally distant text to address modern issues in the first place?

The irony is that though Crossan promotes an approach to cultural engagement that critically resists acculturation (like Josephus’s Jesus), this book actually represents wholesale acculturation to the American culture wars. Like the Maccabees, who raged against acculturation to Hellenism despite using Greek language, rhetoric, and logic to do so, Crossan shows himself to be wholly acculturated when he accepts the rules of engagement in contemporary debates over the Bible’s place in American society. Critical resistance to this culture would perhaps mean not merely reading and interpreting the Bible differently, as Crossan has done, but rather showing why the Bible should not be used to shape modern social, political, and economic policy.

Zeba Crook is Professor of Religion at Carleton University in Ottawa. His research focuses on Christian origins and the historical Jesus in the context of the ancient Mediterranean social world.

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