Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

The Myth of the Burning Garbage Dump of Gehenna

I have long wanted to do a little work to debunk the endlessly repeated myth that the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) was a perpetually burning trash dump. There simply is no evidence to support the idea, but because it seems a reasonable explanation for the origin of the Hinnom Valley as “hell,” writers and preachers accept and propagate the story.

Yesterday Louis McBride raised the issue (HT: BibleX). He writes:

I consulted over a dozen study Bibles on Matthew 5:22 and no less than eight of them made a reference to the rubbish heap. Almost every major commentary on Matthew that mentions Gehenna also spoke of the garbage dump. I’ve always thought that this was an established fact.

Then he quotes Peter Head, G. R. Beasley-Murray, and Lloyd Bailey in tracing the origin of this notion to Rabbi David Kimchi in AD 1200. Specifically, Bailey states:

[Kimchi] maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources.

As with the legend about the rope around the high priest’s ankle, this popular myth seems to have originated in Jewish circles in the Middle Ages. McBride has more details and the sources in his post.

The explanation for the “fire of Gehenna” lies not in a burning trash dump, but in the burning of sacrificed children. Jeremiah is explicit that such occurred here:

Jeremiah 7:31–32 (ESV) — And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Isaiah had already envisioned Topheth as the fiery destiny of an enemy of God.

Isaiah 30:33 (HCSB) — Indeed! Topheth has been ready for the king for a long time now. His funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone, kindles it.

Thus already in Old Testament times, the Valley of Hinnom was associated with the destiny of the wicked. That the valley was just outside the city of Jerusalem made it an appropriate symbol for those excluded from divine blessing. Isaiah closes his book with these words:

Isaiah 66:24 (ESV) — “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

It is not difficult to see, from these and other texts (e.g., 2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chr 28:3, 33:6; Jer 32:35), why Jesus and his contemporaries used the word Gehenna (“valley of Hinnom”) as synonymous with the place of everlasting fiery torment. Indeed, there is no reason to search further for ancient burning piles of discarded newspapers, product packaging, and junk mail.

UPDATE (4/29): The views of various scholars on the matter is presented in a new post.

Hinnom Valley from south, 1966. Photo by David Bivin.

Tagged Analysis, Jerusalem

Western Wall Clean-Up

If you don’t check your mail for a while, at some point the mailbox will begin to overflow. The problem is increasing at the Western Wall with more and more visitors placing notes in the cracks between the stones. Authorities are now considering adding a third annual clean-up. From the Jerusalem Post:

Armed with wooden poles, Western Wall employees on Wednesday removed millions of handwritten notes, faxes and email printouts from between the ancient stones. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which gives the Kotel such a face-lift twice a year – before the upcoming Passover and ahead of the Jewish New Year – are considering a third annual clean-up, due to the growing influx of requests and notes.
The notes will be placed in a repository in accordance with Jewish law, with the laborers – working under the supervision of Western Wall and Holy Sites Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz – taking care to not read their content.

The full story is here.

Removing prayer notes from the Western Wall

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount, Tourism

Mount Carmel, Then and Now

If you’ve driven through the two Druze communities on Mount Carmel, you may have wished you could have found out more about this Arab group that is loyal to the State of Israel. A recent article in the Jerusalem Post gives some insight into their culture and cuisine.

“Sometimes when people come here and talk to the Druse, they learn about the conflicts that Druse have as young Israelis and young Druse. They learn about how they fit in with the society. One of the conflicts we have is how we are seen by Druse in Syria and Lebanon, who are loyal to the countries they live in. We are often in a position of being between a rock and a hard place. We are seen as enemies of their countries but we are also related to them by faith, religion, and also our family relations.”
Zidane spoke of other conflicts, like the state’s plan to build gas lines passing through the village’s agricultural lands, or the way that he is always taken aside for extra questioning at Ben-Gurion Airport because he has an Arab name, and how that makes him feel as an officer in an IDF reserve unit.
More than anything else, Zidane spoke about Druse and the army. This is mainly because it’s what Israelis most know about the Druse, and what they often want to talk about. Like other aspects of being Druse, Zidane said it is not all very simple.
“I think that when people think of Druse, the first thing they think of is the army. Yes we like the army, we serve in it, but I think all the citizens should do it, even an Arab Muslim or Christian should. We are loyal and we have proven it, and now I don’t want to only be treated by this subject. I don’t think we should stop serving in the army, but it’s not the only thing we can do.

For a perspective on the ancient significance of Mount Carmel, see this recent JPost column by Wayne Stiles.

Daliyet el-Karmel, Druze village on Mount Carmel

Tagged Tourism

Jordan Lead Codices: Evidence of Forgery

A good bit has been written about the lead codices since my last serious post here on Thursday.

Some channels in the media continue to develop the story, though they generally ignore what scholars are writing on their blogs.

The Daily Mail is claiming that one of the codices has the earliest depiction of Jesus. You can take a look for yourself and see if you can make better sense of it than I can.

The article also reports that the owner of the 70 tablets is a Bedouin trucker named Hassan Saida who lives in the Israeli Arab village of Umm al-Ghanim near Mount Tabor. You can see a photo of his smiling mug in the article. That an allegedly illiterate man is the owner of these artifacts is certainly a surprise. If these items are forgeries (see below), one would expect that the owner is the forger looking to make a profit, but that seems very unlikely given Saida’s limited knowledge. If these are forgeries, they were made with sufficient skill to fool (at least briefly) several scholars. But then why would the forger sell them to Saida instead of wealthy international antiquities collectors? If Saida is trying to make a profit, why did he not (allegedly) accept tens of millions of dollars for a few of the codices? The story reports that Saida is the owner of a truck business and a relatively wealthy man in his village. His belief that the books had magical powers led him to purchase a few of the books at a time with the financial help of several partners.

Perhaps the claim of ownership is false and Saida is not the owner. Perhaps he is only playing this role on behalf of the true owner/forger in an attempt to remove doubts. At this point, Saida’s role may point to artifacts’ authenticity (but keep reading).

The Daily Mail also reports that analysis of the metal of several of the codices supports their antiquity. Yet the Israel Antiquities Authority allowed the items to be taken out of the country for analysis because they believed the items to be forgeries.

The role of the Elkingtons is described in a report in the Telegraph. A photograph shows these “archaeologists” in their “remote Gloucestershire hideaway,” and the story describes the threats on the couple’s lives, including guns fired at them near the scene of the discovery. If all of this sounds like a ready-made story for a book (with movie rights), then you won’t be surprised to learn that the Elkingtons’ literary agent is currently shopping their manuscript to publishers.

In order to determine the authenticity of the codices, the Elkingtons turned to Margaret Barker, a former president of the Society of Old Testament Study and an expert on early Christian studies.

While suspicious of forgeries, she recognized that counterfeits are usually based on something genuine, but these are unlike anything known today. Philip Davies, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at Sheffield University, concluded that “if this is a hoax then it is incredibly elaborate.”

Yet it turns out that last year David Elkington had contacted Peter Thonemann, a lecturer on the Faculty of Classics at Oxford University. Thonemann analyzed photos of a bronze codex and determined that the writing was copied from a tombstone on display in the Archaeological Museum in Amman. The modern forger copied a line from the middle of the inscription that made no sense apart from the context. Thonemann concluded:

The only possible explanation is that the text on the bronze tablet was copied directly from the inscription in the museum at Amman by someone who did not understand the meaning of the text of the inscription, but was simply looking for a plausible-looking sequence of Greek letters to copy. He copied that sequence three times, in each case mixing up the letters alpha and lambda.
This particular bronze tablet is, therefore, a modern forgery, produced in Jordan within the last fifty years. I would stake my career on it.

If Elkington was interested in the truth, he would not have hidden this analysis when unveiling his grand discovery to the world last week. While it is possible that proving that one of the tablets is a forgery does not mean that they all are, it does not make sense that Elkington would send a known forgery to an expert for evaluation while holding back other authentic items. Nor does it seem likely that a smaller set of codices were discovered and then the finder decided to supplement them with a series of forgeries. While some bloggers are pointing to similarities in iconography, in my thinking this is less compelling evidence than the textual work of Thonemann because there are only so many ways that one can depict a palm tree and one would expect similar depictions from works composed about the same time.

Among the blog postings on the matter, in addition to those linked above, I would point you to Jim Davila’s “Random Thoughts,” Thomas Verenna’s “New Roundup,” Daniel McClellan’s photo comparisons, and Ferrell Jenkins’ observations on the Kinderhook Plates.

I also recommend Jim Davila’s observations on the mainstream media’s mode of operation, James McGrath’s recognition of the value of the biblioblogging community, and Michael Heiser’s warning to those who believe everything they read.

Tagged Pseudo-Archaeology

Video Lecture: Revealing Dead Sea Scrolls to the World

The Great Courses is offering a free lecture (until April 5) entitled “Revealing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World.” The 30-minute lecture is given by Gary A. Rendsburg and is one of 24 lectures in the Dead Sea Scrolls course. The lecture is described as follows:

To follow the story of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were first translated and interpreted is to witness the great lengths to which scholars will go to learn new insights into the mysteries of the past. It’s a tale filled with controversial publications, scrolls squirreled away in shoeboxes, a revealing New Yorker essay, and a six-day-long war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. More important, it’s a tale whose conclusion revolutionized our understanding of ancient Jewish history. In Revealing the Dead Sea Scrolls to the World, you learn

how some of the original documents first came into the hands of scholars;

how the first series of scrolls were transcribed and translated; and

a few of the many insights learned from work done on the important Temple Scroll.

The lecture may be viewed here.

Tagged Dead Sea, Resources

Protests over the Aravah’s Last Sand Dunes

The area in question is about 30 miles (50 km) north of Eilat. From the Jerusalem Post:

Israel’s Green Movement held a demonstration Wednesday afternoon in front of the Knesset calling for the government to revoke plans to mine Samar sand dunes, the Arava Desert’s last remaining dunes, which host a variety of animal species unique to that “island” landscape, according to Prof. Alon Tal, head of the group. “It’s a biodiversity hotspot – because it’s a meeting of three continents,” said Tal, who is also a faculty member at Ben- Gurion University of the Negev’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. Originally 11,000 dunams, the Samar dune area is already down to about 2,300 dunams due to previous work. The Green Movement, alongside other environmental activists, has been fighting the mining ever since a license was granted for it about a year-and-a-half ago by the Israel Lands Authority, Tal explained. Meanwhile, Tal added, the Samar dunes are a popular place for hikers and children who play in the sand. “Why prevent future generations of Israelis’ access to its one remaining sand dune, and destroy an internationally significant hotspot for biodiversity to reduce the travel time of sand by an hour and a half?” Tal asked. “It bears pointing out that the area of the dunes is five times bigger than the area slated to be mined, and it is situated just to the north of the Yotvata Nature Reserve, and the ILA intends to preserve the entire contiguous area.”

The full article is here.