Amanda Hope Haley's Blog

Archaeologist Buys a House

I don’t know if it’s an archaeologist-thing or just a me-thing, but I adore old houses. For the last 10 years, we had the honor of owning a 1908 Foursquare on a prominent street in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was built before electricity, so it had 50 windows in the main house and the carriage house. It was constructed of heart pine and was impervious to termites. The triple-layer brick facade literally saved my life when there was a shooting on our corner in 2023. And it was just plain pretty, with its giant moldings, pocket doors, brass fixtures, solid-wood everything, and large square spaces.

Friends often heard me call it my “lifetime project.” I spent 10 years removing the DIY lipstick applied by previous owners and attempting to restore the home’s original charm. We had to hire professionals for the big messes, such as the clawfoot tub whose feet didn’t fit and the back windows that lacked flashing and flooded our mudroom, but I personally spent years stripping away a dozen layers of paint and varnish from woodwork. I planned and cared for gardens that were beautiful and fragrant year-round, which I hope my neighbors enjoyed as they walked with their families down our street. I gave my shoulders to the effort (and had to have surgery!), and I had many more years of work to restore it to its former glory.

But on November 15, my husband was RIFed. When he walked back through the Craftsman door an hour after leaving that morning, I was recovering from a 5-week-long battle with pneumonia and preparing to fly to Boston the following week. The world stopped when he told me, “I didn’t make the cut.” We didn’t know there were going to be cuts, but we soon learned he was only the first of several that day who were marched out of the office.

Within hours, David had scheduled interviews. He had an offer the following Monday from a local company, which gave me peace of mind while I was at the Boston conference spending money we didn’t have, and after dozens of initial and repeat interviews, he had 10 offers in 4 states. I’ve always known my husband is talented at his work, but it was nice to see so many people clamoring to have him join their teams.

For many reasons, we decided he would accept a job in Nashville. We are both Middle Tennessee natives, so this would bring us closer to our parents and old friends. We had watched Nashville’s population explosion from afar, so we knew housing would be a challenge. Yes, the market was more expensive (if our Foursquare had been in Nashville, it would have cost triple what we sold it for), but we were not prepared for the low-quality inventory in our price range. 

Historic homes on the market for half a million dollars needed that much more in structural work—and that’s why homeowners aren’t buying them. As is happening in most major cities, it seems, developers and speculative builders are buying 1930s Craftsmans, knocking them down, and building 3 row homes on the lot.

We agonized over what to buy, and our time was pinched because the Chattanooga house had sold in 5 days. We knew we needed to prioritize location because Nashville’s transportation system is notoriously terrible. There are too many cars for the roadways, and mass transit has not been well developed. To be where we needed to live, we had to compromise on what we purchased. We settled on one of those row homes, thinking that a new house might make sense as we are both working and traveling more than ever.

The move hasn’t been a smooth one. The day our furniture arrived, we had a gas leak in the attic. Our basset hound was almost a “canary in a coal mine,” getting very sick from the carbon monoxide. There are a million smaller problems that we will be able to fix, but as we get unpacked (and my shoulder pain has returned with a vengeance), I realize that we don’t know how to live in this house. We’ve gone from square rooms with walls, pocket doors, and privacy to long, narrow, totally open spaces. 

Archaeology is about learning how people lived (not just finding fun, valuable objects). I’ve spent quality time in ancient kitchens and courtyards, and even a few days in a 3,500-year-old latrine trying to figure out what family and community life looked like in the past. Depending on the culture and the age, we often find stone and mudbrick houses and walls with square rooms. Living spaces such as dining and sleeping areas were separated from work areas such as kitchens and stables that would generate heat and smells. Houses were designed to fit the people who lived inside them because they were built by the people who would use them.

But in the modern world, it seems trends (and profits) influence design more than function. David and I (and our long-suffering real estate agent!) toured 51 houses in 4 days over 2 weekends. Often the listings featured nice finishes such as fancy tile, stone fireplaces, and maybe even refinished hardwood floors, but again and again, we would find that the houses were designed for vacationers, not families. Pretty kitchens might be nice for displaying take-out, but the layouts lacked storage, and appliance doors could not fully open into tiny pathways. So-called finished basements had furniture covering termite damage, and similarly “finished” attics boasted primary suites in which no one could stand up straight. Such quirks are fine for a weekend but not for a lifetime.

And so I have a new “lifetime project”: making this vacation house into a beloved home. We’ve already added a reclaimed heart pine mantel to the fireplace (because mantels are necessary for pushing heat into the room, and the heart pine reminds us of our old home). We are making new habits of immediately cleaning after cooking (because 5 days later, I can still smell Saturday’s maple bacon in the living room!), and we are considering changing our furniture to better fit the space.

I know one thing: the changes we make will be quality. If we ever sell this house, it will be better than it was when we bought it because it will have been fixed by a family who lived their daily lives here: who cooked in the kitchen, gardened in the backyard, and swung on the back deck with their grumpy old (sometimes smelly and hot) basset hound!

Out of Time: My Trip to “Noah’s Ark”

In the late 2000s, my husband David and I were living in Murfreesboro, Tennessee—my hometown and the geographical center of the state. We had left Somerville, Massachusetts, a few days after my graduation from Harvard Divinity School (because we could not afford one more month’s rent there!) and were working to pay off student loans and a car debt. Our starter home sat only one mile from my childhood home, both on former farmland. Across the street was another large farm, whose heirs were looking to make a big change.

Bible Park USA had been pitched by New York-based entrepreneurs to the elderly Christian landowner as his final opportunity to share the Gospel message with the world. This “edutainment” destination would hold spaces that looked like ancient Jerusalem and an amphitheater that would host plays and musicians. Being in the “Bible Belt” of the southern United States, the developers wrongly thought the rural residents would welcome the traffic, lights, and noise associated with a theme park that, they claimed, would not proselytize but would offer “fearful” Americans the opportunity to experience the Middle East without going there.

Less than a decade after Bible Park USA was ousted from Murfreesboro, the Ark Encounter opened four-and-a-half hours north on farmland in Williamstown, Kentucky. It was built in 2016 by Answers in Genesis and describes itself as “a full-size Noah’s ark, built according to the dimensions given in the Bible.” It is actually a massive concrete-and-metal building that looks like the ark on one side and is surrounded by a small “zoo” and many pay-to-play ziplines and adventurous attractions. It very much exists to proselytize.

David and I had heard mixed reviews, everything from, “It’s amazing, and I’m buying a season pass!” to, “Its existence is an embarrassment to Southerners and Christians.” While writing my next book (Title TBA, Revell, September 2025), I decided I needed to visit and determine the theme park’s value for myself.

On the most perfect, blue-skied April day of 2024, we arrived at the Ark Encounter alongside one busload of students, a few families, and hundreds of retirees. The structure is spectacular in scale, both inside and outside, and so I scanned my pass with an open mind, genuinely wanting it to be more “amazing” than “embarrassment.”

At first I was in awe of the space, but soon I noticed anachronisms everywhere: the pithoi (large storage jars) strapped to the walls are Bronze- and Iron-Age inspired, but the hanging “oil” lamps throughout the building feature Roman glass. Both surround the featured exhibits: dozens of cages displaying obscure dinosaur models being sustained by giant hamster-style feeders and water bottles.

Moving up the decks, vignettes and storyboards illustrate their vision of the antediluvian world. Members of Noah’s family have fictional backstories and are shown living in luxurious cabins, working with Iron Age tools, and collecting Hellenistic scrolls. Dinosaurs, giants, and slaves battle in a medieval-style arena while scantily-clad archers in Prussian spiked helmets secure the festivities.

I kept looking for footnotes on the didactic wall panels that might explain why millennia of archaeological evidence was being backdated and condensed. Upon entering, a large sign explained that “significant amounts of artistic license” had been employed, but on what actual history—or Scripture—was all that fiction based? I saw only one footnote (which was self-referential) in the whole structure, and so I went back to the Welcome Center. Surely they had lists of citations for nerds such as me wanting to better understand what inspired the Ark Encounter? Alas, no.

As we continued ascending the decks of the building, it became clear that “nerds such as me” who have spent our lives studying the Bible, its languages, and ancient civilizations to better understand God’s Scripture in its original context do not fit the Ark Encounter’s definition of Christian. On panels titled “One World Two Views,” archaeologists are mocked as atheists and Darwinian evolutionists only because we don’t agree that this planet is only 6,000 years old.

On those upper decks, dates were finally used. Since the 1970s (and much earlier for Jewish scholars), archaeologists and most theologians have used BCE and CE, which mean “before the common era” and “common era,” when dating events. This dating system numerically matches the BC–AD dating system that was invented in the sixth century, mandated for government documents by Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century, and popularized by Pope Gregory XIII’s calendar in the sixteenth century. (It also happens to be incorrect, as Jesus was born several years before AD 1 according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.)

I expected to see lots of BC and AD, but the Ark Encounter’s dating system was unique. They dated events in YA (years ago), placing Creation at 6000 YA and their single Ice Age at 4400 YA. I guessed this was in an attempt to make their claims seem not-quite-as young and to avoid comparisons to historical chronologies. Obvious contradictions to their timeline—such as Stonehenge’s date of creation and core samples from Mesopotamia—were simply left out.

Bible readers may scratch their heads at the idea of a “biblical view” of an Ice Age.

And in case someone noticed the flaws, they would be distracted by other ideas: “Why do so many scientists reject a massive flood on Earth while accepting one on Mars?” or “Capital Punishment: God stressed the value of human life by sanctioning the death penalty for acts of murder…”

Tired from four hours of climbing ramps, reading panels, and watching a bizarre news interview with Noah in two versions—”ancient” and modern—we sat outside under an umbrella for an hour and ate the truly delicious fudge they sell in the gift shop through which everyone exits. We wondered, why? Why was so much money thrown at this theme park and its sister attraction, the Creation Museum (which cost an adult couple $250 and isn’t all inclusive)? In such a “monumental” undertaking, why are historical timelines and physical artifacts ignored? Why were biblical archaeologists and Mesopotamian geologists not consulted?

As my husband would say, the “build quality” was outstanding, but the content was (as they stated at the entrance) more artistic than historical because Young Earth Creationists believe that millennia-worth of scientists’, theologians’, and linguists’ labors have been “bankrupt” (a word widely used on the parent company’s website). They interpret English translations of the Bible “literally,” and they leave no space for other Christians to disagree with them. They claim, “Where the Bible is silent or unclear, we don’t pretend to know more than we know or be divisive,” but they do and they are.

There are many Christian archaeologists, geologists, linguists, and (of course!) theologians. Few of them would agree with any claim made inside the Ark, and it isn’t because they reject Scripture. As a Christian who has devoted her adult life to studying the ancient world for the express purpose of better understanding the Bible and deepening her relationship with God, I am bothered by a “ministry” that seeks to sell Christians a shallow interpretation of Genesis, fill their minds with fictional images, and ignore actual history.

The Ark Encounter exists to support a narrow human interpretation of an English translation of the Bible. It calls most believers like me heretics, it makes a mockery of theology and the good conversations Christians might have over the Bible’s inherent mysteries, and it unnecessarily pits Scripture against scientific exploration. Those are the true problems with the Ark Encounter—not the anachronisms, gladiator fantasies, or exorbitant price tag.

This article first appeared in my monthly subscribers-only email, the First Friday Freebie. Sign up here to stay in-the-know!

Revisiting the “Inn”

How do you envision the place where Mary and Joseph stayed the night Jesus was born?

My family’s Nativity Set featured a wooden barn with Spanish moss “hay” hot-glued everywhere and plastic figurines of the Holy Family in richly colored robes, domesticated sheep and bulls, and three “kings” (who are only mentioned in Matthew, not Luke) looking like Muslim rulers. Scenes such as this come to us from the early Italian Renaissance, when wealthy Christians would present living tableaux in barns outside the cities, wearing their own finery and re-creating the Near East as they thought it looked during the 14th century.

Luke described Jesus’ first-century birth in one short verse: “And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). That one verse, plus the following account of the shepherds and angels out in the fields, give us the basis for our Christmas nativity scenes but not the particulars. Archaeology can help us understand what the setting might have looked like historically, as opposed to how subsequent traditions and modern translations have colored his meaning.

Consider a word in Luke 2:7 that gives English speakers the wrong impression of what happened that night: katalyma (translated “inn”). To be more precise (and far less elegant in translation), it is best to read “lodging place” where most English translations have “inn” because we can’t be entirely sure what Luke is describing. Yes, Bethlehem would have had an inn for travelers, and yes, it is entirely reasonable that it was full because every single descendent of King David was visiting that city to complete the nation’s census (Luke 2:1-5).

However, if Luke means katalyma in the sense of an “inn,” then he expects his readers to fill in the gap in the story between the No Vacancy sign on the inn and the manger where Jesus took His first nap with knowledge of 1st-century Jewish hospitality: in Bethlehem and the rest of Judaea, Jews were obligated by their faith to welcome guests no matter the circumstances. Because it was so common that strangers would lodge a night with any family along their route, Luke may not have been describing an inn at all. It is more plausible that Mary and Joseph went straight to a family’s home and asked to stay in their katalyma, or “upper room.”

Houses within the walls of a city were designed with the kitchen and stables on the first floor and the cleaner living quarters on the second floor. There may simply have been no space in the “upper rooms” of the house, where beds were laid and food was eaten during the first century. With no room in the “upper room,” Mary and Joseph stayed in the next-best place in the working part of the house, which would have been warmer because of the animals and more private for the birth.

This translation has precedent, as katalyma is used by Luke in 22:11 for the “upper room” where Jesus would host His Last Supper.

Adapted from the December 2022 edition of the RHA’s First Friday Freebie. Sign up here!

The Red Sea of Reeds

What was the name of the sea which God separated for the Israelites?

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the waters may come back upon the Egyptians, on their chariots, and on their horsemen.” And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and when the morning appeared, the sea returned to its full depth, while the Egyptians were fleeing into it. So the Lord overthrew the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. Then the waters returned and covered the chariots, the horsemen, and all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. Not so much as one of them remained. But the children of Israel had walked on dry land in the midst of the sea, and the waters were a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.

Exodus 14:26-29

In this prose description of events, notice that the body of water is simply called “the sea.” There is no proper name for it.

The following chapter, Exodus 15, is a poem known as the “Song of the Sea.” It’s a nominee for the Oldest Part of the Bible Award along with the “Song of Deborah” (Judges 5:2-31). It praises God for saving the Israelites from the Egyptians and then goes on to describe how other Israelite enemies such as the Canaanites and Philistines were terrified by His strength:

“Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea;

His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.

The depths have covered them;

They sank to the bottom like a stone.

“Your right hand, O Lord, has become glorious in power;

Your right hand, O Lord, has dashed the enemy in pieces.

And in the greatness of Your excellence

You have overthrown those who rose against You;

You sent forth Your wrath;

It consumed them like stubble.

And with the blast of Your nostrils

The waters were gathered together;

The floods stood upright like a heap;

The depths congealed in the heart of the sea.

The enemy said, “I will pursue,

I will overtake,

I will divide the spoil;

My desire shall be satisfied on them.

I will draw my sword,

My hand shall destroy them.”

You blew with Your wind,

The sea covered them;

They sank like lead in the mighty waters.”

Exodus 15:4-10, emphasis added

On the surface, it seems that the older poetic source of the story knows exactly where it happened: at the Red Sea. It is the younger prose description that lacks detail. But your Bible translation is deceiving you unless it includes a footnote on verse 4 that reads something like, “Lit. Sea of Reeds.” (If your Bible doesn’t have that footnote, then I strongly suggest you find and read one that does.)

In the Hebrew, the words that our Bibles tend to render as “Red Sea” are yam suph. Yam means “sea.” No problem there. But suph is a little trickier. Let’s start by saying what it is not: “red.” The word we would translate as “red” is adam, as in that guy named Adam whom God created from rich red-colored dirt and whose skin can be reddened by the sun. Obviously this is a common word that would have been known to Moses as he composed the Song of the Sea, so if he had meant “Red Sea,” then I think he would have sung it. And if somehow Moses had gotten it wrong in the original version, then the generations of people who sang yam suph for hundreds of years would have changed it, or the scribes who finally wrote the song down would have corrected it. And if all those people missed the “error,” then so did every other Bible character who ever mentioned the event! Check out Joshua 24:6; Deuteronomy 11:4; Psalm 106:7,9,22; Psalm 136:13-15; and Nehemiah 9:9. Those all say yam suph, too, not yam adam.

So why have Bible translators knowingly wrongly translated yam suph for so long? Tradition.

The first translation of the Hebrew Bible—and oldest complete manuscript in any language by about one thousand years—is the Greek translation called the Septuagint. It made the first attempt to “correct” what presumably had been written in the even older Hebrew manuscripts we no longer have today. It replaced what we would call an improper noun and adjective, yam suph, with a proper noun, Red Sea, presumably in an attempt to help readers more quickly understand where the actions were taking place. This is a common translational practice. I can promise you there are tons of places where your Bible reads, “Jesus said” or “Paul said” or “Methuselah said,” but the Greek or Hebrew originals just have “he said.” In a string of he-saids, he-saids, he-saids, adding the antecedent is helpful and often necessary.

Other translations then followed the Septuagint’s lead without really questioning whether the addition was correct. The Latin translation did it in 400 CE, the King James Version did it 1611, and almost all modern translations in all languages have followed suit. The one exception on my bookshelf is the Jewish Study Bible, and that’s because it doesn’t use the Septuagint as its basis for English translation of this phrase as do all the others I own.

It is impossible to know exactly why the translators of the Septuagint decided to edit the Hebrew, but the best idea I’ve heard is that yam suph is used in other places in the Bible where other geographical details make it clear that those writers were referring to the Red Sea, as we call it today. For example, “King Solomon also built a fleet of ships at Ezion Geber, which is near Elath on the shore of the yam suph, in the land of Edom” (1 Kings 9:26). There is little doubt that this passage is talking about our Red Sea based on the three other locations mentioned. But the problem is, we can’t assume that yam suph always means the Red Sea. It would be like assuming highway always refers to Route 66 or ice cream always means Baskin-Robbins’s World Class Chocolate (if only it did!).

So if it doesn’t mean “red,” then what does suph mean? Most scholars today will tell you it comes to Hebrew from an Egyptian word that means “reed.” Yam suph translates to “Reed Sea” and describes a shallow body of water where papyrus reeds can grow. A lot of researchers really like this idea because it makes God’s dividing of the sea physically possible and not necessarily miraculous: a strong wind would be enough to carve a path in a papyrus marsh. (Of course it is difficult to then imagine an entire army drowning in the same papyrus marsh, but those researchers tend to ignore that problem with their interpretations.)

But isn’t it odd that passages such as 1 Kings 9:26, which very obviously is referring to the Red Sea, would describe that body of water as a sea of reeds when it has always been too deep and too salty to grow papyrus on its shores? Of course it is. You might as well call frozen yogurt “ice cream”!

Allow me to suggest that we don’t actually understand what the ancient writers meant by suph. In 1984 a religious studies professor suggested to Biblical Archaeology Review readers that suph might not be an Egyptian loan word meaning “reed,” but may in fact be related to the Hebrew word soph, meaning “end.”[i] This results in yam suph meaning something like “sea at the end [of the world].” In that case, the improper noun yam suph could describe any large body of water where a distant shore could not be seen or had not been discovered. In the ancient Near East, this could have described the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, or even the Persian Gulf.

The “end” translation never caught on in theological circles, but its sheer reasonableness reminds me that no one knows everything when it comes to Scripture. Even simple solutions to big problems such as yam suph can be overlooked when thousands of years of tradition have so trained us to believe what may or may not be correct. Today, thanks to two separate traditions, we have the people who believe wholeheartedly that God split the Red Sea only because that’s what King James said. We also have the people who scoff at the Red Sea tradition and say God (or no one) let a medium-sized wind or tide move about twelve inches of water somewhere along the Nile River. Might I suggest they both may be wrong?

My mother-in-law likes to say, “When we all get to heaven, we will all know that we were all wrong.” As the Grimm brothers would never learn the “original” story of Cinderella, we probably won’t ever know what body of water God parted. This may, in fact, be by design. God doesn’t want us to spend our lives trying to track down every movement of the Exodus only to hang our faiths on what we find based on our translations. He wants us to recognize how mighty and loving He is—so loving that He would alter His own creation for a day to protect His people.

Excepted from Mary Magdalene Never Wore Blue Eye Shadow: How to Trust the Bible when Truth and Tradition Collide (Eugene: Harvest House, 2019), 145-150.

[i] Bernard F. Batto, “Red Sea or Reed Sea?” Biblical Archaeology Review 10, no. 4 (1984): 56–63, https://members.bib-arch.org/biblical....

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When Did We Lose the Ark?

The night before I left for Israel in 2019, my husband and I snuggled up to watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is such a fun film and has no doubt been that proverbial “seed” of inspiration that grew inside many future archaeologists (although it features zero actual archaeology and takes a lot of Scriptural liberties).

The Bible tells us that the Ark of the Covenant was a fancy gold-covered wooden box made by the Israelites to protect and carry the second set of God’s Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 10:1-5) while they were waiting to conquer Canaan. For the next 700-or-so years, wherever the ark went, so did the presence of God. When the ark was taken by the Philistines, their cities were afflicted with something like the bubonic plague. When it rested inside Moses’ Tent of Meeting, or at a sanctuary in Shiloh, or later at its permanent home in the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple, it acted as God’s footstool on earth (1 Chronicles 28:2). It was not a weapon of war capable of melting the skin off Nazis’ faces, but more like a royal standard reminding friends and foes alike that God was with His people (and, of course, God Himself could do plague-striking or even face-melting if necessary!).

This holy of holies at Tel Arad was the first holy of holies to be discovered in Israel. After the Temple was built in Jerusalem, its use was illegal, but Judahites apparently worshiped there throughout the Israelite and Persian reigns.

According to the books of Kings and Chronicles, Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem was attacked at least 3 times by foreign armies before being flattened by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. I always unconsciously assumed that the Ark of the Covenant somehow survived all the attacks and the exile to be placed in the Second Temple by Ezra, but I was wrong. No Ark ever rested in the second Holy of Holies; the Jewish Mishna describes only a stone foundation “three fingers high” that sat empty until that Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

The Bible doesn’t tell us when or how it went missing, but an Apocryphal text (accepted as Scripture by Catholics and traditionally attributed to Ezra) records a lamentation over the desecration of the Temple and the plundering of the Ark of the Covenant:

Do not do that, but let yourself be persuaded—for how many are the adversities of Zion?—and be consoled because of the sorrow of Jerusalem. For you see how our sanctuary has been laid waste, our altar thrown down, our temple destroyed; our harp has been laid low, our song has been silenced, and our rejoicing has been ended; the light of our lampstand has been put out, the ark of our covenant has been plundered, our holy things have been polluted, and the name by which we are called has been almost profaned...  (2 Esdras 10:20-22 NRSV).

The disappearance of the Ark is explained in many Jewish traditions; some are historically plausible while others are quite fantastic. All agree that the Ark of the Covenant was gone prior to the Babylonian Exile, never to be seen again.

This post was adapted from the May 2021 edition of The Red-Haired Archaeologist’s Journal. Get it in your inbox each month when you subscribe here!

Armageddon

Few words evoke such strong feelings of terror, dread, and pain as Armageddon. We envision asteroids colliding with Earth, sea levels rising to Lady Liberty’s chin, machines exterminating us, and aliens nuking our cities. In our vernacular it means Doomsday. Dystopia. End of the world. Fire and brimstone. Apocalypse Now. (Thanks, Hollywood.)

But for all that notoriety, the word Armageddon only appears one time in one primary source. It is in the last book of the New Testament, called the Revelation of Jesus Christ: “And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon” (16:16, NKJV). Every other instance of its use is derivative.

For many hundreds of years, readers of the Revelation have longed to know more about the prophecies within John’s letter. This single verse contains many unknowns: Who are “they,” and who (or what) are being gathered together? Are “kings” gathering their “forces”? Are “evil spirits” gathering the “kings”? (The Greek itself is unclear because the pronouns have no clear antecedent.) And where is this otherwise-unmentioned Armageddon?

Although the location of Armageddon was debated by some Early Church Fathers, most people agree today that Armageddon corresponds to the Old Testament city of Megiddo. John’s spelling of Armageddon in the letter agrees with the Greek spelling of the word Megiddo in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Bible from c. 300 BCE that is quoted by Jesus Himself in the Gospels and was used by John and other Jews and early Christians in the first century).

In the Old Testament, we read about Megiddo as a Canaanite city eventually conquered by Joshua (Joshua 12:7, 21), as one of Solomon’s great military cities (1 Kings 9:15), and as the place where kings Ahaziah and Josiah were killed in battle (2 Kings 9:27; 23:29). It is later mentioned in a prophecy about Jerusalem’s destruction (Zechariah 12:11). All of these references and stories describe a well-fortified city that was often involved in wars.

Archaeology agrees that Megiddo was an important city in the ancient world. It was located at one of the few passes through the Carmel mountains, and it was part of Via Maris trade route connecting Egypt, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. It sat 60m above the surrounding valley, so inhabitants could easily see approaching armies or traders. For these reasons, everyone wanted Megiddo. The city’s name appears in the records of all of Israel’s neighbors’ war annals, and excavations have found many destruction layers that correspond to written descriptions of the city’s invasions. Megiddo was famously war torn.

Eventually the name of the place called Armageddon became conflated with the world-ending battle that will happen there (much as the word Waterloo now means a “decisive defeat” because of Napoleon’s famous loss near that Belgian city). Armageddon means “world annihilation” to most of us today, thanks to popular culture and centuries of widespread misuse by arm-chair apocalypse enthusiasts. But that definition isn’t accurate; it is simply the name of a place. We do well to remember that what we say about the Bible is not and never will be Scripture.

Armageddon will be the place where the final battle occurs, as it was the location of so many critical battles in the past. That is all the Bible tells us!

Esau’s Lost “Death-right”

Today’s Western Christian culture has a habit of using Bible stories to justify rules and traditions humans have created. This is ironic, as Scripture describes how God Himself habitually violates societies’ expectations in the advancement of His Kingdom. One tradition He frequently ignores (especially in the Old Testament), is our law of primogeniture (the idea that the firstborn inherits all or most of his father’s estate). God has a habit of exalting and favoring younger brothers (whether or not we think they deserved such special treatment!).

The Cenotaph of Jacob at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

In Genesis 25, twin brothers Esau and Jacob are born to Rebekah. Esau enters the world first, but under the prophecy that “the older shall serve the younger” (v. 23). What follows are stories of how Esau sells his inheritance to Jacob for a bowl of lentils (v. 29-34) and then misses his father’s deathbed blessing when Jacob and his mother conspire to steal it (Gen. 27).

We can’t help but feel sorry for the twice-duped Esau, the firstborn who was the favorite of his father, Isaac. He wasn’t perfectly innocent–he had married two Canaanite wives (which would have mortified his dead grandfather, Abraham)–but the way he is outwitted by his mother and “weaker” brother feels unfair, mostly because it is easy to miss that he and Isaac had conspired to do the exact same thing to Jacob.

In the Old Testament, fathers on their deathbeds called all of their sons to their sides for blessings, but Isaac only called Esau (27:1-4). Isaac seems to be playing favorites, attempting to circumvent the prophecy, and cutting Jacob out of any blessing. Esau goes along with Isaac’s plan enthusiastically! It is only because Rebekah overheard Isaac’s plan (27:5) and outwitted him that Esau was left with nothing.

A deep exegetical study of these stories reveals that not one of these four family members is perfect or heroic, and no one escapes the negative effects of his or her actions. It also shows how God–once again–overturned human convention to exalt Jacob no matter where he came from or when he was born. The stories aren’t in Genesis to exemplify justice but to explain why the prophecy of 25:23 was necessary.

Esau did okay for himself. He married a third woman (a daughter of Ishmael of whom Abraham would have approved), and he made peace with Jacob (Gen. 33). He became the father of the Edomites (Gen 36), a sometimes-friend sometimes-foe of Israel. Then he disappeared from Scripture–but not tradition.

The cenotaph honoring either Joseph or Esau.

According to Jewish tradition, Esau’s frustration with Jacob did not end in Genesis 33. In a midrash (which is ancient, revered Jewish rabbis’ commentary about Scripture), Esau challenged the sale of his birthright as Jacob’s body was being interred in the Cave of Machpelah with his parents’. Read the story in Sotah 13a:7-10:

Once [Jacob's sons] reached the Cave of Machpelah, Esau came and was preventing them from burying Jacob there. He said to them, "It says: 'And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kiryat Arba, the same is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned.'" . . . Esau said, "Jacob buried Leah in his spot, and the spot that is remaining is mine." The children of Jacob said to Esau, "You sold your rights to Jacob." Esau said to them, "Though I sold the birthright, did I also sell my rights to the burial site as an ordinary brother?" The brothers said to him, "Yes, you also sold to Jacob those rights, as it is written that Joseph stated: 'My father made me swear, saying: "Behold, I die; in my grave that I have dug for me in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.”'" Esau said to them, "Bring the bill of sale to me" [i.e., you can’t prove your claims]. They said to him, "The bill of sale is in the land of Egypt, and who will go to bring it? Naphtali will go, for he is as fast as a doe, as it is written: 'Naphtali is a doe let loose, he gives goodly words.'” Hushim, the son of Dan, was there and his ears were heavy [i.e., he was hard of hearing]. He said to them, "What is this that is delaying the burial?" And they said to him, "This one, Esau, is preventing us from burying Jacob until Naphtali comes back from the land of Egypt with the bill of sale." He said to them, "And until Naphtali comes back from the land of Egypt will our father’s father lie in degradation?" He took a club and hit Esau on the head, and Esau’s eyes fell out, and they fell on the legs of Jacob. Jacob opened his eyes and smiled. And this is that which is written: “The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”

This gruesome story (and subsequent slightly different versions of it) began the legend that Esau’s head–and only his head–rests in the Cave of Machpelah with his brother and ancestors. It is honored with a cenotaph on the synagogue-side of the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

However, the very Muslims who constructed that cenotaph in the late 14th century disagree about who it memorializes. Islamic traditions hold that Joseph’s body was removed from Shechem and reburied in Hebron’s Cave of Machpelah.

Learn more about the Tomb of the Patriarchs by listening to S2E9 of my podcast!

Esau’s Lost “Death-right”

In Genesis 25, twin brothers Esau and Jacob are born to Rebekah. Esau enters the world first, but under the prophecy that “the older shall serve the younger” (v. 23). What follows are stories of how Esau sells his inheritance to Jacob for a bowl of lentils (v. 29-34) and then misses his father’s deathbed blessing when Jacob and his mother conspire to steal it (Gen. 27).

We can’t help but feel sorry for the twice-duped Esau, the first-born who was the favorite of his father, Isaac. He wasn’t perfectly innocent–he had married two Canaanite wives (which would have mortified his dead grandfather, Abraham)–but the way he is outwitted by his mother and “weaker” brother feels unfair, mostly because it is easy to miss that he and Isaac had conspired to do the exact same thing to Jacob.

In the Old Testament, fathers on their deathbeds called all of their sons to their sides for blessings, but Isaac only called Esau (27:1-4). Isaac seems to be playing favorites, attempting to circumvent the prophecy, and cutting Jacob out of any blessing. Esau goes along with Isaac’s plan enthusiastically! It is only because Rebekah overheard Isaac’s plan (27:5) and outwitted him that Esau was left with nothing.

A deep exegetical study of these stories reveals that not one of these four family members is perfect or heroic, and no one escapes the negative effects of his or her actions. It also shows how God–once again–overturned human convention to exalt Jacob no matter where he came from or when he was born. The stories aren’t in Genesis to exemplify justice but to explain why the prophecy of 25:23 was necessary.

Esau did okay for himself. He married a third woman (a daughter of Ishmael of whom Abraham would have approved), and he made peace with Jacob (Gen. 33). He became the father of the Edomites (Gen. 36), a sometimes-friend sometimes-foe of Israel. Then he disappeared from Scripture–but not tradition.

The cenotaph honoring either Joseph or Esau.

According to Jewish tradition, Esau’s frustration with Jacob did not end in Genesis 33. In a midrash (which is ancient, revered Jewish rabbis’ commentary about Scripture), Esau challenged the sale of his birthright as Jacob’s body was being interred in the Cave of Machpelah with his parents’. Read the story in Sotah 13a:7-10:

Once [Jacob’s sons] reached the Cave of Machpelah, Esau came and was preventing them from burying Jacob there. He said to them, “It says: ‘And Jacob came unto Isaac his father to Mamre, to Kiryat Arba, the same is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned.'” . . . Esau said, “Jacob buried Leah in his spot, and the spot that is remaining is mine.”

The children of Jacob said to Esau, “You sold your rights to Jacob.”

Esau said to them, “Though I sold the birthright, did I also sell my rights to the burial site as an ordinary brother?”

The brothers said to him, “Yes, you also sold to Jacob those rights, as it is written that Joseph stated: ‘My father made me swear, saying: “Behold, I die; in my grave that I have dug for me in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.”'”

Esau said to them, “Bring the bill of sale to me” [i.e., you can’t prove your claims].

They said to him, “The bill of sale is in the land of Egypt, and who will go to bring it? Naphtali will go, for he is as fast as a doe, as it is written: ‘Naphtali is a doe let loose, he gives goodly words.’”

Hushim, the son of Dan, was there and his ears were heavy [i.e., he was hard of hearing]. He said to them, “What is this that is delaying the burial?”

And they said to him, “This one, Esau, is preventing us from burying Jacob until Naphtali comes back from the land of Egypt with the bill of sale.”

He said to them, “And until Naphtali comes back from the land of Egypt will our father’s father lie in degradation?” He took a club and hit Esau on the head, and Esau’s eyes fell out, and they fell on the legs of Jacob.

Jacob opened his eyes and smiled. And this is that which is written: “The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.”

This gruesome story (and subsequent slightly different versions of it) began the legend that Esau’s head–and only his head–rests in the Cave of Machpelah with his brother and ancestors. It is honored with a cenotaph on the synagogue-side of the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

However, the very Muslims who constructed that cenotaph in the late 14th century disagree about whom it memorializes. Islamic traditions hold that Joseph’s body was removed from Shechem and reburied in Hebron’s Cave of Machpelah.

Learn more about the Tomb of the Patriarchs by listening to S2E9 of my podcast!

Leveling Temples and Tels in Gaza

In 2004, five volunteers from the Ashkelon dig rented a car to go tour some archaeological sites in the Negev. We were barely outside Ashkelon’s city limits when we made a wrong turn and found ourselves approaching a heavily militarized crossing between Israel and the Palestinian territory called the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, we turned around and got out of the area as quickly as possible.

Today Gaza is frequently in our news feeds because of its clashes with the modern state of Israel, but it also appears in the Bible several times. It was a Canaanite stronghold before it became one of the Philistines’ five capital cities, but it is probably most famous as the site of Samson’s demise.

During the Late Bronze Age, Israel had been under Philistine oppression for a generation when their newest judge, Samson, arose. He was supposed to be a Nazirite, meaning he should never drink wine, cut his hair, or touch anything unclean (such as foreign women and dead things). But Samson married a Philistine, abandoned her, got mad when she remarried, and then killed 1,000 Philistines with nothing but a dead donkey’s jawbone (Judges 14-15).

At some point and for some unknown reason, Samson was in Gaza one day and decided to visit a brothel. The Philistine men plotted to murder him, but Samson slipped out of the brothel at midnight, picked up their city gate, and moved it from the edge of the city where it had been of use to the very center of the city. The Philistines knew he was a tough guy, but now they had witnessed his superhuman strength (Judges 16:1-3).

One last time, Samson “touched” a foreign woman. This time it was Delilah from the Valley of Sorek (the border between Israel’s tribe of Dan and Philistia). Philistines bribed her to find out the source of Samson’s strength–which was his uncut hair that resulted from his Nazirite vows–so they could capture him, torture him, and take him down to Gaza. The Philistines celebrated his capture at the temple of their god, Dagon, where Samson then killed them all (Judges 16:6-30).

No tumbled columns, collapsed Bronze-Age temples, or ill-placed gates have been found in Gaza yet. There are no well-funded, university-led archaeological expeditions to the area, as you will find in the other 4 cities of the ancient Philistine Pentapolis. Any artifacts that have been uncovered (too often by bulldozers) find their way onto the black market or are stored by history-loving Gazans who hope for a day when they can be properly studied and displayed. Archaeologists can’t even get the excavating tools they need through Israeli security and into Gaza for fear that militants would turn them into weapons.

The lack of archaeological excavation in Gaza is a result of complex and emotionally-charged political conflicts that have persisted for centuries. In brief, the 1994 Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority, which was intended to govern both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as one Palestinian nation. But the territories are physically separated by Israeli land, and the PA did not exercise its political power or serve its citizens in remote Gaza as it did in the West Bank where it is headquartered. A power vacuum developed in Gaza, where over 1.8 million people live in an area that is only 130 square miles. (That’s like taking the entire population of Phoenix and cramming everyone into one-quarter of the city limits.) As Gazans struggled with failing or absent infrastructure that the PA was not addressing, Hamas seized political power by doing the civic projects the PA had ignored. In 2007, Hamas was officially elected to power in the Gaza Strip. Today there is concern that they might win wider elections in the West Bank and gain control of the entire PA.

In addition to being cramped and poverty-ridden, the Gaza Strip is physically and militarily blocked off from the rest of the world. Situated only 13 kilometers south of Ashkelon, Hamas’s rockets can (and frequently do) hit the Israeli city, but Gaza’s citizens cannot so easily go to Ashkelon themselves to shop, work, vacation, or worship.

Today Gaza is rich in archaeological artifacts but poor in livable space, so the city leaders and developers continue to level tels in favor of new construction. Preserving and improving the lives of the living takes precedence (as it should), but valuable information and historical context about the Canaanites, Philistines, Israelites, and later inhabitants are being permanently lost so long as Gaza is isolated.

Where “Indiana Jones” Gets Archaeology Wrong

When you imagine an archaeological site, do you see white tents, pith helmets, and sand dunes? Is the dig director a middle-aged man with a thick British accent, bossing around his local workers and charging into newly opened tombs with abandon? That image isn’t too far from the truth of the late-19th- and early-20th-century excavations that sought to find ancient, beautiful objects for national museums and personal collections.

Those first archaeologists were romanticized by writers and inspired some great film characters (Boris Karloff’s The Mummy and Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones leap to mind). They popularized the field, inspired Halloween costumes, and had children like me answering “archaeologist” when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Unfortunately, the linen-clad men and women were mere treasure hunters. Their methods of extraction disconnected their finds from the historical calendar and left spectators to marvel at the items instead of understand who had created them and why.

Archaeology means “the study of ancient history.” It is a branch of anthropology that attempts to reconstruct the lives of ancient people based on what they left behind. The further one goes back in time, the fewer written records remain, so archaeologists study mundane objects and architectural ruins to discover who people were, how they lived, and why they died.

Archaeology has become increasingly scientific in the last century. In the 1930s, William F. Albright invented the first method of dating ancient sites based on the shapes and colors of the ceramics excavated. He found that cities throughout a region could be connected to one another in time based on their styles of pottery. Today archaeologists still do their primary dating based on the pottery, but they can learn even more about artifacts with technological tools such as radiocarbon dating, DNA testing, GPS location, and microbiology.

Within the field of archaeology is biblical archaeology, which was also “created” by William F. Albright. It exists to contextualize Scripture—to come alongside God’s Word and help us better understand it.

Read this description of the water-basin stands that Hiram created for Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 7:27-30:

And he made ten bases of brass; four cubits was the length of one base, and four cubits the breadth thereof, and three cubits the height of it. And the work of the bases was on this manner: they had borders, and the borders were between the ledges: And on the borders that were between the ledges were lions, oxen, and cherubims: and upon the ledges there was a base above: and beneath the lions and oxen were certain additions made of thin work. And every base had four brasen wheels, and plates of brass: and the four corners thereof had undersetters: under the laver were undersetters molten, at the side of every addition (KJV).

Based on those words, artists and theologians and Sunday School children would draw wildly different versions of the stands because that description is unintelligible unless the object has been seen in real life. But in the 1980s, such a stand was found in Ekron. Informed by that discovery, read how a more recent Bible translation describes the stands:

Each water stand was 6 feet long, 6 feet wide, and 4½ feet high. The stands had side panels and panels between the crossbars. On the panels between the crossbars there were lions, oxen, and winged creatures. There was a pedestal over the crossbars that would support the basin, and there were garlands of ornaments below the lions and oxen. There were 4 bronze wheels and 4 bronze axles for each stand. The 4 legs of each stand also had 4 bases. There were bases with garlands on all sides below the basin (The Voice).

What Trude Dothan and her team found at Ekron helps us to envision what Scripture is describing. Her find may not be exciting, but it helps us to imagine ourselves worshiping at Solomon’s Temple among God’s other followers.

Neither Albright nor Dothan were adventure-seeking, artifact-stealing rogues wearing leather jackets and escaping rivals (or authorities) on motorcycle. They didn’t find the ark of the covenant, but they and their successors have helped Bible readers understand God’s Word just a bit better.

Originally published on the Harvest House Publishers Blog.