Historical Geography of the land of Israel

נסיכה הולנדית עשירה שהקימה בעיר הקודש בית מידות למי שישרוד את סוף העולם, הרופא היהודי של סולטן זנזיבר שפירק בעצמו את אוהל המשיח, מנהל בית החולים היקֶה שדרש מעובדיו למלא את כל הטפסים בכתב רש״י – אלו רק מקצת הדמויות שחיים באר מעלה מנבכי ההיסטוריה של ירושלים ומדובב את סיפוריהם המרתקים.
לצד זאת הוא חושף פרקים פחות מוּכּרים בחיי אישים ידועים, שגורלם נקשר בגורל העיר, בהם אליעזר בן יהודה, י״ח ברנר ובני חבורת ״האחדוּת״ (רחל ינאית בן צבי, יצחק בן צבי, דוד בן גוריון ואחרים).
כך נוצרת תמונה ייחודית ומפתיעה של ירושלים, מתקופת ״היישוב הישן״ ועד זמננו, בדרך המשלבת את כישרון הסיפור של בן העיר עם יכולת מחקרית מרשימה המובילה לתגליות מעוררות השתאות ולבחינה מעמיקה של מהות העיר, על שלל ניגודיה, בגשמיותה וברוחניותה.
בַּספר כונסו לראשונה רשימות ומאמרים שחיים באר פרסם במשך למעלה מיובל שנים, לצד רשימות חדשות. הספר משיב אל קדַמת הבמה פן אחר בכתיבתו של באר, מחבר הרומנים 'נוצות', 'עת הזמיר', 'חבלים', 'לפני המקום', 'אל מקום שהרוח הולך' ו'חלומותיהם החדשים', וספרי העיון 'גם אהבתם גם שנאתם: ביאליק, ברנר עגנון - מערכות יחסים', 'מזיכרונותיה של תולעת ספרים: מסעות בעקבות סופרים וספרים' ו'חדרים מלאים ספרים'.

A book about three controversial topics.
1. Messiah son of Judah or Joseph, which tribe was chosen?
2. Shiloh or Jerusalem , which place was chosen for the temple?
3. An alternative interpretation of the Land of Israel according to the book of Torah and Joshua alone without interference from the Bible.

One of the many quranic terms whose meaning has long vexed the minds of traditional Muslim commentators and students of the secular discipline of quranic studies alike is the word al-raqīm, a hapax legomenon that appears in Qur’ān 18:9, at the beginning of the story of the ‘companions of the cave’. The present study aims to show that this term is a toponym that should be identified with Petra, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Nabataea.

The Shephelah was densely settled in the Late Bronze Age, but most of the settlements were gradually abandoned during the transition to the Iron I period. Only a few Iron I settlements existed in the eastern part of the region (excluding the Philistine sites at the northwestern edge of the Shephelah), forming a small Canaanite enclave. During the Iron II period the region was gradually resettled, and it became part of Judah. This process lasted until the 8th century BCE, when the region reached an unparalleled demographic peak. Sennacherib’s campaign brought wide-scale destruction, and the region recovered only partially before being devastated by Nebuchadnezzar. After reconstructing the region’s settlement history, the article reassesses its political and demographic
history in comparison to the neighbouring regions of the Judean highlands and the southern coastal plain, it is concluded that the Shephelah had a lesser role in the history of Judah than some recent studies suggest.

The Word ‘Euphrates’ used in most translations of the Old Testament, stems from the Hebrew ‘perath’ meaning ‘to break forth’ or ‘rushing’ . This paper examines the context of the Biblical verses in which the name is used and shows that, in many instances, the translation to ‘Euphrates’ cannot be correct.

In this study I examine one of the more critical details in the discussion of the dating of the Joshua town lists – the northern border of Benjamin as defined by the boundary description and the town lists. Specifically, I will examine the archaeological and historical evidence for the identification of the "wilderness Beth-Aven" (Joshua 18, 12-13) in the boundary description, and Emek-Keziz and Zemaraim, among the towns of eastern Benjamin (Joshua 18, 21-24) in the town list.

Hurbat Husham lies in the Judean Foothills at the summit of a hill that overtops its surroundings (elev. 380 m above sea level). It is located in the northern section of a ridge that is part of the High Shephelah, between the Nahal Soreq and Nahal Elah basins. The ruin covers some 50 dunams at the top and along the slopes of the knoll. It affords a view in all directions, including towards the coastal plain, the Shephelah, the Soreq valley, and extensive stretches of the Judean Hills as far as the Beit El Hills. The name of the site, Hurbat Husham, or, in Arabic, Kh. el Kheishum (i.e., “nose”) reflects the fact that it towers prominently over its surroundings.
Beginning in the late 1990s, the authors documented and mapped underground cavities and other archaeological features there, in the wake of intensive illegal excavations carried out by antiquities looters. We documented a variety of elements, including mikvaʾot (ritual baths), underground storage cavities, a hiding complex, agricultural facilities, a small fortress at the top of the hill, and burial caves. These findings bear witness to a large Jewish settlement at the site from the Second Temple period until the Bar Kokhba Revolt. An uninscribed milestone, found in the wadi north of the site, indicates the existence of a Roman road nearby.
In 2013, looters uncovered the opening of a large underground cistern, 18 m long and five m wide, rock-cut on the site’s northern slope outside the ancient settlement. The cistern is similar in its layout and design to others that have been found on the slopes of Hasmonean/Herodian fortresses throughout Judea, both in the Judean Desert—Masada, Hyrcania, Herodium, Dok, Kypros, and Alexandrion—and in settled areas—Kh. el Urmeh, Tel Kefira, Kh. Tura, and Kh. al-Jumjum. During this year, the authors carried out an excavation (on behalf of IAA) in a Second Temple–era ritual bath on the northern slope. The doorposts were marked with Christian graffiti, which include crosses and schematic representations of birds. During this excavation, we also collected shards from a hiding system on the same slope near the ritual bath. The pottery makes it possible to date the periods of activity at the site: the second and first centuries BCE, from the late Second Temple era through the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the late Roman and Byzantine era, and the Ottoman period.
The site’s unique topography, the name, the existence of a long rectangular cistern from the Second Temple era, and pottery from the second century BCE all suggest the existence of a Hasmonean/Herodian fortress intended to guard the western approach and one of the major access routes (the Soreq valley) to Judea in the late Second Temple period. The existence of a ruin known as Kh. Tibneh near Hurbat Husham allows us to suggest, albeit with due caution, that the ancient name of this site was “Timna” and that the name was transferred to and preserved in the nearby “Tibneh”—a phenomenon known from many other places. We therefore propose identifying this site with Thamnata, one of the fortresses erected by Bacchides in response to the Hasmonean Revolt.

מיכאל ארליך הציג  את מסלול המתואר בספרו של בנימין מטודלה משכם דרומה עד לירושלים לאורך דרך גב ההר הראשית והציע לזהות את האתרים המוזכרים בו. ניתוח של תוואי הדרך על-פי המרחקים שמתוארים אצל בנימין יחד עם בחינה מחודשת של שמות האתרים כפי שמוזכרים מאפשר להציע זיהוי חדש לשלושת האתרים המופיעים בקטע שבין שכם לאל-בירה. את "הר הגלבוע", המכונה גם "מונט גלבואי" ניתן לזהות עם ג'בל טרוג'ה, ההר הבולט מעל לכפר לֻבַּן א-שרקיה, הנמצא על הדרך הראשית משכם ומופיע במקורות רבים מתקופת ימי הביניים. את האתר השני ששמו נשתמר רק בצורה קטועה ניתן לזהות עם המצודה הצלבנית בבורג' ברדויל. העמק המכונה על-ידי בנימין "עמק איילון הוא כנראה העמק שבין הכפרים ג'יפנא ועין סיניא, המכונה במפות העת החדשה 'ואדי ג'לזון'.
Michael Ehrlich presented the route described in the book by Benjamin of Tudela, from Shechem (Nablus) south to Jerusalem along the main mountain route, and suggested an identification of the sites mentioned in it. An analysis of the route based on the distances described by Benjamin, along with a reexamination of the names of the sites as given, enables us to propose a new identification of the three sites in the section between Shechem and El Bireh.
"Mount Gilboa," which is also called "Mont Gilboi"? can be identified with Jebel Taruja, the prominent hill above the village of Luban al-Sharqiya, which is on the main road from Shechem and appears in many medieval sources. The second site, whose name is preserved only in an abridged form, can be identified with the Crusader fortress in Burj Bradville?. The valley that Benjamin called "the Ayalon Valley" is apparently the valley between the village of Jifnia and Ein Siniya, which on modern maps is called "Wadi Jelazon."

This essay provides a brief overview of an educational board game developed by the author for use in upper division Old Testament classes. The game, extending in stages across the semester, heightens student learning by requiring strategic thinking about various historical, political, and geographical relationships. Appendices and links to online material provide full details necessary to adapt the game in local classrooms.

This book constitutes a unique attempt to write a quantitative history of settlement in ancient Israel, from the fourth millennium BCE to the end of the Byzantine period (briefly addressing later periods). The analysis in the book is based on two datasets, one of published salvage excavations and the other of published large-scale excavations (as presented in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land). The first is strongly biased toward small, rural sites (a form of settlement that is greatly underrepresented in traditional "histories") while the other is of course biased toward large, urban sites. Taken together, the two datasets represent both the rural and urban sector. Notably, the datasets are not meant to be comprehensive and to cover all sites, but rather representative, allowing us to understand settlement processes, and to identify differences between regions, trends in urban and rural settlement across time, patterns of settlement continuity and discontinuity (across the country and in the various sub-regions), the "visibility" of burials in the archaeological record across time and regions, and much more.
Large parts of the book are devoted to methodological discussions, relating both to the advantages and limitations of the datasets, and the ways in which they can be used (and how they cannot be used!), as well as what methodological lessons can be learnt from the research, for example about the reliability of different types of data such as surveys, when their results are compared with those of salvage excavations. The majority of the book comprises an attempt to reconstruct the settlement history of ancient Israel and its various sub-regions. Many of the discussions in the book are preliminary in nature, and present the initial results of the research and a brief analysis of the patterns observed. It is hoped that the book will encourage more research in general, as well as influence it, leading to more in depth research on the history of settlement in ancient Israel and to the furthering of a more quantitative study of the archaeological evidence and to a more systematic utilization of the vast amount of archaeological information at our disposal, which is unparalleled in any other region of the world.

In the summer of 69 C.E. Cerealis, commander of the Fifth Roman legion marched through Upper Idumea. Two places are mentioned by Josephus in his account of the events: Caphethra and Capharabis (War IV, 550-551).
The article discusses the geographical identification of these places in light of archaeological excavations and surveys performed by the author in the Judaean Shephelah (Foothills). This study suggests new identification options: Caphetra could be identified with Horbat ‘Ethri, a well preserved Jewish village from the Second Temple and Bar Kokhba periods, and Capharabis could be Horbat Burgin, a large but previously unexplored site located on a commanding position and surrounded by an impressive Second Temple period necropolis.

A sundial, claimed to have been given by H. Herbert Kitchener to Gottlieb Schumacher, and preserved at the Schumacher house in Haifa, in 1875, while Kitchener was engaged with Conder on the Survey of Western Palestine. The circumstances surrounding this interesting artefact are examined.

This paper seeks to sketch (for the first time in an orderly manner) the founding, the short-lived development, and finally the destruction of the small Jewish settlement of "Emek Ha`arazim", which existed during the Mandate period between Jerusalem and the Colony of Motza. This, based on a wide range of primary and secondary  sources, as well as a thorough study of the period press and diverse literary descriptions of the colony. Other topics that will be presented are the unique factors that led to the formation of the Jewish presence in this specific location; The various parties - both private and public - who supported it during it`s short-lived existance; The social and economical characteristics of the settlement; And finally, the circumstances that led to the destruction of the small settlement during the 1929 events, and the failed attempts to rebuild it in subsequent years.
In the last part of the paper, Emek Ha`arazim`s story will be set against the background of a number of similar settlement incidents that occurred in the Jerusalem periphery during the same period. This, while attempting to elaborate on the full range of factors that led to the failure of the enterprise, the long-term geographical significance of the 1929 events in the area surrounding Jerusalem, and the implications they had until Israel`s War of Independence.

Luke's ignorance of the interior of Palestine is nearly complete, but he displays not only knowledge of the cities on the Levantine coast but the spatial relationships among them. The paper examines the cartographical knowledge that Luke has, the sources of that knowledge, and, using the spatial models of Henri Lefebvre, discusses the qualities of Luke's spatial conceptions.

Significant aims of the ThWQ are to record as far as possible the vocabulary of Qumran texts and to note the vocabulary’s semantics and development. Also ThWQ means to analyze the development of the Hebrew language in the Second Temple period, the language’s extension by Aramaisms and Graecisms and the shift of its semantic valences on the level of words, phrases and syntactic structures. Contributors analyze the meaning of the lexemes and attend to the use of the lexemes in various literary genres (for example, Pesharim, calendaric texts, Toharot, etc.).

An English version of the entry is available from the author on request.