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]]>Golb’s case is a long, sordid affair. This tale of a middle-aged (now disbarred) lawyer harassing and impersonating his father’s academic critics—assuming aliases to accuse them of plagiarism and misdeeds—and then getting caught, charged, and sentenced to time in prison is finally coming to a close.
Raphael Golb created false email accounts and blog posts, maligning numerous Dead Sea Scroll scholars. These scholars disagreed professionally with his father, Norman Golb, about the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the nature of the community at Qumran just off the shores of the Dead Sea. Disputes of this kind are common in the academy, but Raphael’s actions in response to the divergent opinions are not. He even went so far as to impersonate specific scholars, including New York University’s Lawrence Schiffman. He sent fictitious confessionals in Schiffman’s name of having plagiarized Norman Golb’s work.
As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.
It did not take long for the truth to come out, and the digital trail led back to Norman Golb’s son, Raphael Golb, who was subsequently indicted. In 2010, he was found guilty of 30 counts of identity theft, forgery, and harassment. He was sentenced to six months in prison and five years of probation. He appealed.
The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court heard his case in 2013 and upheld 29 of his 30 charges. After another appeal, his case went to the New York Court of Appeals in 2014. This court dropped 10 charges, but reaffirmed the remainder and resentenced him to two months in prison and three years of probation. In 2015, Golb filed a writ of habeas corpus in the district court, which resulted in two more charges being dropped.
Having been unsuccessful in overturning all of the convictions against him, he appealed once more—this time to the Supreme Court of the United States. Last week, the Supreme Court declined to hear Golb’s case. Barring some further creative appeal on Golb’s part, his eight-year appeal process appears to have come to an end.
Raphael Golb has effectively been hoist with his own petard. He sought to damage the careers of various scholars—by accusing them of false dealings—and promote his father’s scholarship. Instead, he was convicted of his own crimes, thereby irreparably destroying his own reputation and tarnishing his father’s lifework.
Strata: “Scroll Scholar’s Son Indicted for Identity Theft to Support Father’s Views,” BAR, November/December 2009.
Strata: “Raphael Golb Convicted,” BAR, January/February 2011.
Strata: “Dead Sea Scroll Scholar’s Son Off to Jail,” BAR, May/June 2013.
Strata: “Is He Headed to Jail?” BAR, September/October 2014.
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]]>Isaiah’s Signature. This bulla (seal impression) reads “[belonging] to Isaiah nvy.” Is it the signature of the Prophet Isaiah? Photo: Ouria Tadmor/© Eilat Mazar.
If the reconstruction stands, this may be the signature of the Biblical prophet Isaiah—the figure we encounter in the Books of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Isaiah. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announces this exciting discovery in her article “Is This the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature?” published in the special March/April/May/June 2018 double issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
Mazar’s team found the seal impression in an undisturbed area of Iron Age debris (dated to the eighth–seventh centuries B.C.E.) right outside the southeastern wall of the royal bakery, a structure that had been integrated into the city’s fortifications and had operated until the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E. All of the excavated dirt from this area of the Ophel was wet-sifted, meaning that it was placed on a sifting screen and washed with water. This process revealed multiple finds—including Isaiah’s seal impression and an impression of the Judahite king Hezekiah—which had been missed during traditional excavation methods. Since each of these impressions has a diameter of about half an inch and is the same color as the dirt, it is easy to understand why they were not spotted in the field.
Although most of the upper half of Isaiah’s bulla is now missing and its left side is damaged, archaeologists have been able to identify its imagery and inscription from what remains. The bulla is divided into three registers. The remains of a grazing doe, a symbol of blessing, can be seen in the top register. Written in ancient Hebrew, the name Yesha‘yah[u] (the Hebrew form of Isaiah) appears in the middle register, and the letters nvy are visible in the lower register. If the Hebrew letter aleph were added to the end of the word nvy, it would then become the word nvy’ (“navy’”), which means “prophet” in Hebrew. It is likely that the Hebrew letter vav appeared at the end of the middle register, representing the final letter of “Isaiah” (the “u” of “Yesha‘yahu”). Further, if the definite article heh (“the”) were added to the end of the name Isaiah (after the vav), the seal impression would read “[belonging] to Isaiah the prophet.”
Isaiah the Prophet? The Isaiah Bulla is divided into three registers. The remains of a grazing doe can be seen in the top register. Written in Hebrew, the name Isaiah appears in the middle register, and the letters nvy are visible in the lower register. The drawing shows several reconstructed letters in blue: the Hebrew letters vav and heh at the damaged end of the middle register and the letter aleph at the damaged end of the lower register. If these letters were added, then the seal impression would read “[belonging] to Isaiah the prophet.” Drawing: Reut Livyatan Ben-Arie/© Eilat Mazar; Photo: Ouria Tadmor/© Eilat Mazar.
“Because the bulla has been slightly damaged at end of the word nvy, it is not known if it originally ended with the Hebrew letter aleph,” explains Mazar, “which would have resulted in the Hebrew word for ‘prophet’ and would have definitively identified the seal as the signature of the prophet Isaiah. The absence of this final letter, however, requires that we leave open the possibility that it could just be the name Navi. The name of Isaiah, however, is clear.”
The close relationship between the prophet Isaiah and King Hezekiah is reflected in the Hebrew Bible. Hezekiah, who ruled from c. 727–698 B.C.E., relied on Isaiah’s counsel throughout his reign—and especially when Jerusalem was besieged by Assyria.
When Hezekiah assumed the throne at age 25, Judah was a vassal-state of the Assyrian empire and paid tribute to Assyria regularly. Hezekiah stuck with this program for many years, but eventually he rebelled and stopped sending tribute. Anticipating an Assyrian attack, Hezekiah refortified Jerusalem. He strengthened its walls and, memorably, carved a 1,750-foot-long water tunnel from solid rock that ensured the inhabitants of Jerusalem would not be without water during a siege (2 Chronicles 32:2–4).
The prophet Isaiah said that Jerusalem would not fall to the Assyrians, and it did not—despite the Assyrians’ military might. This victory helped solidify the idea of the city’s invincibility. Even on the Sennacherib Prisms, where King Sennacherib recorded his victories, he never claims to have conquered Jerusalem—only to have besieged it, received tribute, and locked up Hezekiah “like a bird in a cage.” 2 Kings 18:13–19:36 records that the Assyrians continue to assault Jerusalem even after Hezekiah pays them tribute; they do not withdraw until God sends a plague among them. The Sennacherib Prisms make no mention of a plague.
The seal impressions of Isaiah and King Hezekiah were found less than 10 feet apart in the Ophel excavations. If the recently identified bulla does indeed bear the prophet Isaiah’s signature, it seems fitting that it should be found so close to Hezekiah’s personal seal impression. Their legacy—together—continues even after death.
Learn more about Isaiah’s seal impression in Eilat Mazar’s article “Is This the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature?” in the special March/April/May/June 2018 double issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.
The Ophel Treasure
A “once-in-a-lifetime discovery” at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount
King Hezekiah in the Bible: Royal Seal of Hezekiah Comes to Light
53 People in the Bible Confirmed Archaeologically by Lawrence Mykytiuk
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]]>HEZEKIAH IN THE BIBLE. The royal seal of Hezekiah, king of Judah, was discovered in the Ophel excavations under the direction of archaeologist Eilat Mazar. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor.
The bulla, which measures just over a centimeter in diameter, bears a seal impression depicting a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols and containing a Hebrew inscription that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.” The bulla was discovered along with 33 other stamped bullae during wet-sifting of dirt from a refuse dump located next to a 10th-century B.C.E. royal building in the Ophel.
In the ancient Near East, clay bullae were used to secure the strings tied around rolled-up documents. The bullae were made by pressing a seal onto a wet lump of clay. The stamped bulla served as both a signature and as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the documents.
As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.
Hezekiah, son and successor of Ahaz and the 13th king of Judah (reigning c. 715–686 B.C.E.), was known for his religious reforms and attempts to gain independence from the Assyrians.
The Ophel excavation area at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Andrew Shiva.
In Aspects of Monotheism: How God Is One (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1997), Biblical scholar P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., summarizes Hezekiah’s religious reforms:
According to 2 Chronicles 29–32, Hezekiah began his reform in the first year of his reign; motivated by the belief that the ancient religion was not being practiced scrupulously, he ordered that the Temple of Yahweh be repaired and cleansed of niddâ (impurity). After celebrating a truly national Passover for the first time since the reign of Solomon (2 Chronicles 30:26), Hezekiah’s officials went into the countryside and dismantled the local shrines or “high places” (bamot) along with their altars, “standing stones” (masseboth) and “sacred poles” (’aásûeµrîm). The account of Hezekiah’s reform activities in 2 Kings 18:1–8 is much briefer. Although he is credited with removing the high places, the major reform is credited to Josiah (2 Kings 22:3–23:25).
Hezekiah’s attempts to save Jerusalem from Assyrian king Sennacherib’s invasion in 701 B.C.E. are chronicled in both the Bible and in Assyrian accounts. According to the Bible, Hezekiah, anticipating the attack, fortified and expanded the city’s walls and built a tunnel, known today as Hezekiah’s Tunnel, to ensure that the besieged city could still receive water (2 Chronicles 32:2–4; 2 Kings 20:20).
The Sennacherib Prism on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Photo: Hanay’s image is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0/ Wikimedia Commons.
The bulla discovered in the Ophel excavations represents the first time the royal seal of Hezekiah has been found on an archaeological project.
“Although seal impressions bearing King Hezekiah’s name have already been known from the antiquities market since the middle of the 1990s—some with a winged scarab (dung beetle) symbol and others with a winged sun—this is the first time that a seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king has ever come to light in a scientific archaeological excavation,” Eilat Mazar said in the Hebrew University press release.
Bullae bearing the seal impressions of Hezekiah have been published in Biblical Archaeology Review. In the March/April 1999 issue, epigrapher Frank Moore Cross wrote about a bulla depicting a two-winged scarab. The bulla belonged to the private collection of antiquities collector Shlomo Moussaieff.1In the July/August 2002 issue, epigrapher Robert Deutsch discussed a bulla stamped with the image of a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols—similar to the one uncovered in the Ophel excavations. Both bullae published by Cross and Deutsch bear a Hebrew inscription reading “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.”
The symbols on the seal impression from the Ophel suggest that they were made late in his life, when both the royal administrative authority and the king’s personal symbols changed from the winged scarab (dung beetle)—the symbol of power and rule that had been familiar throughout the ancient Near East, to that of the winged sun—a motif that proclaimed God’s protection, which gave the regime its legitimacy and power, also widespread throughout the ancient Near East and used by the Assyrian kings.
The prize find of the so-called Ophel treasure unearthed in the Ophel excavations is a gold medallion featuring a menorah, shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll. Photo: Courtesy of Dr. Eilat Mazar; photo by Ouria Tadmor.
The renewed excavation of the Ophel, the area between the City of David and the Temple Mount, occurred between 2009 and 2013. Under the direction of third-generation Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar, the excavation unearthed another extraordinary find: the so-called Ophel treasure, a cache of gold coins, gold and silver jewelry and a gold medallion featuring a menorah, shofar (ram’s horn) and a Torah scroll.
1. See also Meir Lubetski, “King Hezekiah’s Seal Revisited,” BAR, July/August 2001.
Hezekiah’s Religious Reform—In the Bible and Archaeology by David Rafael Moulis
Ancient Latrine: A Peek into King Hezekiah’s Reforms in the Bible?
Isaiah’s Signature Uncovered in Jerusalem
Evidence of the Prophet Isaiah?
Precursor to Paleo-Hebrew Script Discovered in Jerusalem
Discovering the Solomonic Wall in Jerusalem: A Remarkable Archaeological Adventure
Did I Find King David’s Palace? by Eilat Mazar
As published in the January/February 2006 issue of BAR
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]]>Archaeologists excavating at Ein Hanniya outside of Jerusalem discovered a Byzantine-period complex (c. 500 C.E.), seen here. The dig also unearthed seventh-century B.C.E. finds that suggest the presence of a palace in the First Temple period. Photo: Assaf Peretz, Israel Antiquities Authority.
At places like Megiddo, Hazor, Gezer, and Qeiyafa to name a few, luxurious palaces adorned in decorative frescoes and stocked with sumptuous goods for feasting were homes to the royalty and elite orders of the Iron Age kingdoms. At Samaria, capital of the Northern Kingdom, for example, a palace embellished with beautifully carved ivories dates to the 9th century B.C.E. rule of King Ahab.
The function of these palatial estates in the dynamic landscapes and local economies of the Iron Age remains the subject of considerable scholarship by archaeologists, historians, epigraphers, and anthropologists. Analogs from across the Mediterranean include Greek oikoi (traditional homes) and Etruscan villas, which served not only important roles in public administration, but were also places of entertainment, gathering, craft and ceramic production, and storage and redistribution of goods. The roles of palaces in antiquity were far greater than administrative buildings and royal residences; palaces were often local centers of manufacturing and food processing as well as extravagant reception spaces where elites and rulers would entertain guests and conduct diplomacy.
By the seventh century B.C.E., Jerusalem was a bustling capital city of the Kingdom of Judah. Just outside of the city limits in the Valley of Rephaim National Park, archaeologists have discovered the location of a rural estate occupied for more than a thousand years, from the seventh century B.C.E., the First Temple period, to the early Byzantine period, around 500 C.E. After six years of excavation and restoration, Ein Hanniya Park was dedicated with a festive tree-planting ceremony last week and attended by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Director General Israel Hasson, and others.
As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.
Excavation of the site took place between 2012 and 2016 under the direction of IAA archaeologists Irina Zilberbod and Yaakov Billig, with assistance from Jerusalem district archaeologist Dr. Yuval Baruch. By the end of 2018, the IAA hopes to open the park to visitors.
Among the finds at Ein Hanniya was a fragment of a Proto-Ionic order capital, the top piece of a decorated column or pillar. Baruch says that this style of capital is common for large palatial estates during the First Temple period. This style of pillar has also been found at sites like Megiddo, Hazor, Samaria, and Ramat Rahel—also near Jerusalem—and at contemporary sites in Moab, Ammon, and Phoenicia in present-day Syria and Jordan. Today, the Proto-Ionic capital appears on the Israeli 5-shekel coin.
In an IAA press release, the archaeologists suggested that the presence of the capital means the site could have been a First Temple period royal estate for the kings of Judah in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. However, until further exploration at the site can be conducted, it’s premature to assume the site was home to royalty. Instead, it is possible that Ein Hanniya was one of many such lavish rural estates that sprang up during the Iron Age I in response to new bureaucratic hierarchies after the founding of the supposed Israelite dynasties.
Located in the foothills around Jerusalem, Ein Hanniya was likely the site of a moderate rural estate on the roads to Jerusalem and the coastal plains. Archaeological investigations into first millennium highland settlements suppose that in addition to the head of the household and immediate family, the estate would have been inhabited by landed workers, servants, perhaps slaves, and all sorts of domestic animals. Pastoralists may have shepherded herds in the nearby hills and craft centers at the estate would have produced utilitarian or luxury goods including wine, glass, iron, or textiles.
At sites like Hazor and Megiddo, craft productions of textiles and ceramics are often closely associated with palatial estates. To glean functions of the Iron Age settlement at Ein Hanniya, much more work is yet to be done. Discovery of such rural estates is often rare in comparison to more obvious, large, urban tells, but often reveal a lot about how ancients organized themselves and their economy.
Palatial estates can tell us a lot about the political and economic landscape. As craft centers, archaeological remains at palaces often determine the types of resources populations used and processed and can elucidate how ancients manufactured and utilized goods and tools. Further, it can begin to accentuate the complex political organization of the Iron Age. Debates about whether there was a United Monarchy in the 10th century B.C.E., or a low vs. high chronological timeline for the rulers of the Israelite kingdoms, or questions about the historicity of Biblical figures such as David and Solomon, often forego complicated discussions about what was more than likely an extremely diverse, stratified, and sophisticated political landscape.
Other finds at the new park at Ein Hanniya include a silver coin called a drachma, minted in the city of Ashdod by Greek rulers between 420 and 390 B.C.E.The IAA further reports that a number of finds date to the Byzantine period from the fourth through sixth centuries C.E. They include Byzantine-era coins, glass, roof tiles, and mosaic tesserae (the pieces that make-up a tile mosaic) and most notably “a large and impressive pool from the Byzantine period,” according to Zilberbod. A large outdoor complex stood at the site during this period and included a church and a series of roofed colonnades that led to residential spaces with the pool at the center.
“It’s difficult to know what the pool was used for,” Zilberbod explained in a press release, “whether for irrigation, washing, landscaping or perhaps as part of baptismal ceremonies at the site.” The pool drained through channels into a nymphaeon, or an elaborate fountain.
For more than a thousand years, the site of Ein Hanniya remained an important oasis in the hills around Jerusalem, first as a likely elite palatial estate and centuries later as a Byzantine Christian church.
Restoration of the site over the past few years was carried out by the Jerusalem Development Authority, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and the Israel Antiquities Authority. The team that restored the intricate water systems was led by conservator Fuad Abu Ta’a, with architectural planning conducted by Avi Mashiah and Yehonatan Tzahor. The group used historical photographs and paintings to return the facade of the nymphaeon to its original beauty.
The Palace of the Kings of Israel—in the Bible and Archaeology
Did I Find King David’s Palace? by Eilat Mazar
Crafty Israelites: Iron Age Crafts at Tel Hazor
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