11-08-2004, 04:24 PM
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Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Los Angeles area
Posts: 40,549
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"Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land" on Nova challenges Yadin's conclusions
US archeologist: Yadin finds are Temple artifacts
Quote:
. . . Richard Freund, director of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford in Conneticut, challenges some of the groundbreaking ideas of famed soldier and archeologist Yigael Yadin.
Freund's most controversial conclusion is that ritual bronze vessels, found by Yadin in the so-called Cave of Letters, were used in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and may be its only surviving items. Yadin, who had discovered them in 1960, believed that the vessels, decorated with a sea goddess and other Roman mythological figures, had been stolen from the Romans.
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Part of Freund's success can be attributed, at least in part, to his advanced equipment that was not available to Yadin, such as ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography, and a medical-imaging endoscope adapted to search beneath boulders.
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Biblical scholars are upset by the idea that the priests would allow vessels with Roman mythological figures in the Temple.
Freund has published a book on the matter: Secrets of the Cave of Letters: Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery - published by Prometheus Books
Description of Nova program
Quote:
But the most surprising outcome is Freund's new theory about the bronze ritual items uncovered by Yadin. Based on fresh discoveries and a cryptic inscription from a copper scroll found among the famous Dead Sea scrolls in the 1940s, Freund believes the bronze items are not pagan, as Yadin held, but Jewish. And he wonders, could they be the only surviving artifacts from Judaism's holiest site, the Second Temple in Jerusalem? The Romans destroyed the Temple, the center of Jewish worship in the year 70, six decades before the Bar Kokhba uprising.
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More controversially, Freund's theory suggests that Jews of the era assimilated decorative aspects of Roman mythology-to the point of including mythological figures on their holiest objects.
Freund makes a convincing case, involving carbon-14 dating, comparison with other artifacts, and the fact that pagan motifs are featured on the Temple's great menorah as depicted on the Arch of Titus in Rome, which commemorates the sack of Jerusalem.
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Interview with Freund
Quote:
Q: Who is Bar Kochba and what was his role in Jewish history?
A: Bar Kochba (whose real name we now know was Bar Kosiba), who up until the discovery of the Cave of Letters was a mythic character, in the category of Abraham, Moses, and King David, was known like other biblical characters only from ancient literary accounts of his exploits. It was the discovery of letters signed by Bar Kochba that confirmed that not only was he a real person but that the literary accounts of his exploits were consistent with the type of person that emerged from his letters. It confirmed for the first and only time that ancient literary accounts of mythic characters needed to be taken seriously by archaeologists.
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