Purity and Avraham Faust

Practically every culture distinguishes

between clean and unclean things, actions, and people.
This is true for simple hygiene as well as for ritual or
religious purity. While in most cultures both men and
women can become polluted, impurity is more often asso-
ciated with women, especially during menstruation. Conse-
quently, restrictions on menstruating women were imposed
in a vast number of societies—both ancient and modern—
including ancient Israel, where the Bible regarded all bodily
emissions as defiling and women were regulated by the
niddah laws.1
Throughout history, various societies have developed dif-
ferent ways of separating the pure and the impure, usually
by imposing restrictions on the movement and behavior
of the impure. The question of impurity, therefore, has a
spatial dimension, and rules governing impurity had to be
SKY VIEW AND GRIFFIN AERIAL IMAGING; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION

formulated in relation to space. So how were women and

their families expected to follow such restrictions within
the specific conditions of their settlements and houses?
Given the constraints posed by domestic architecture,
many of the societies in which menstruating women were
forbidden to carry on their usual life secluded the women
altogether and lodged them in special houses, huts, tents,
or even caves and rock-shelters. Such solutions were used,
for example, by many Native American groups, various tra-
ditional societies in Africa, as well as Ethiopian Jews and

THE SUMMIT OF TEL ‘ETON—an archaeological mound in the southeastern

Shephelah—is dominated by a large four-room house (Building 101). Destroyed
during an Assyrian military campaign in the late eighth century B.C.E., this elite
residence holds a key to understanding a purification ritual in the Iron Age,
long before ablution in a mikveh became the norm.

36 MARCH/APRIL 2019
d Impurity
in Iron Age Israel

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 37

PURITY IMPURITY

ancient Arabs. This completely solved the problem of not expected to leave their homes. In such cases,
separating the impure women from their daily envi- women were expected to follow strict guidelines to
ronment, and they could easily avoid the objects they avoid defiling other people or objects in the same
were supposed to avoid while still performing some built space.
daily activities. Seclusion is by far the most effective Naturally, both solutions are difficult to identify
solution to the problem posed by impure individuals, archaeologically. The lack of such findings is partially
who might pollute objects, animals, or people. due to the fact that the isolated structures are likely
Some societies, however, did not prescribe com- to be located outside of settlements in areas that are
plete seclusion, and menstruating women were rarely excavated. Additionally, would such houses
differ from other houses in construction? Would the
finds unearthed within them be different from those
Ekron Jerusalem in other dwellings? These points need to be con-
Ashdod
Gath Beth-Shemesh sidered before one can hope to identify menstrual
Ashkelon huts in the archaeological record. The second sce-
Lachish nario, in which women stayed in their homes, seems
EA
Gaza Tel ‘Eton Hebron DS archaeologically almost impossible to identify, as no
DEA

Tel Halif RITUAL SET IN STONE. Excavated over the course of 10

seasons, Building 101 appears to include a room (J, in the
Tel Beersheba southeast corner) designed to house unclean individuals.
N This detailed drawing captures the four-room house at
the time of its destruction.

SEGEV RAMON, YAIR SAPIR, AND TAMAR OLENICK; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION

38 MARCH/APRIL 2019

AVRAHAM FAUST; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION
physical remains are likely to testify to the presence
of impure individuals.
Given the universality of the idea of impurity, it is
not surprising that the Hebrew Bible is full of refer-
ences to purity and impurity. While more abundant
in the priestly writings of the Pentateuch, this issue is
attested in practically all Biblical genres: from priestly
legislation (e.g., Leviticus 12; 15:19–24), to prophetic
texts (e.g., Isaiah 3:8; Ezekiel 18:6), and historical
books (Genesis 31:35, 1 Samuel 4:19, and 2 Samuel
11:4), as well as the Book of Lamentations (1:8–9, 17).
The widespread attestation of this taboo throughout
the Bible, along with its near universality and preva-
lence in the ancient Near East, suggests that it was
indeed common in ancient Israel. The relevant texts
do not attempt to invent the regulations; rather, they
simply reflect a societal reality.
Given the omnipresent restrictions on the impure
and their expected spatial expression, one would
expect to find plentiful publications on the topic,
but the contrary is the case—due to the difficulties
of identifying these spatial expressions archaeologi-
cally and of interpreting the Biblical texts, whose
historicity and even date are often disputed.2
Shlomo Bunimovitz and I offered some initial
insights in our study of access analysis (the study
of spatial configuration within a built structure and
the hierarchy of accessibility or passage from one
space to the other) of the four-room house, the
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW
IMPURITY PURITY
SOME 38 STORAGE VESSELS with no botanical remains
were found in Room C—the only room not facing
direct sunlight—possibly indicating that it was used to
store liquids.
typical dwelling of Iron Age Israel.* We studied the
structure’s space syntax, with respect to the pos-
sible contact between the dwellers and strangers, as
well as among the dwellers themselves.3 Different
syntaxes hint at different systems or codes of social
and cultural relations.
An analysis of space syntax within the four-room
house reveals a very shallow “tree shape,” in which
all the inner rooms are directly accessible from the
house’s central space, even when there are a large
number of rooms. Notably, other types of dwellings,
such as the Middle Bronze–Late Bronze Age court-
yard house and the “Canaanite-Phoenician” house
of the Iron Age, show either a “path” or a “deep”
tree shape. In these floorplans, there is a hierar-
chy of access between rooms within the house, and
some rooms can be entered only by passing through
other rooms.
Houses are a major vehicle for socialization, and
buildings also structure the worldviews and ideology
of their inhabitants, forming their habitus. One sug-
gestion to explain the unique spatial configuration of
* Shlomo Bunimovitz and Avraham Faust, “Ideology in Stone: Understand-
ing the Four-Room House,” BAR, July/August 2002.
39
 PURITY IMPURITY
AVRAHAM FAUST; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION
HIDDEN FROM THE EYES. Inside the courtyard, right in
front of the entrance to Room J, this plastered installation
and the pottery vessels amassed next to it provided a
screen of sorts that limited access to the space reserved
for the unclean.
the four-room house is that the structure, through
its nonhierarchical configuration, participated in the
maintenance of ancient Israel’s “egalitarian” ethos.*
Another, and more relevant, explanation was that
the four-room house was suitable for a society that
considered privacy to be of importance, and/or when
contact was to be regulated. Since each room could
have been accessed directly from the central space,
there was no need to pass through other rooms, and
undesired contact could be avoided. Purity, there-
fore, could be strictly kept even if an unclean person
resided in the house, because the inhabitants could
avoid the room in which he or, more often, she stayed.
Indeed, one unique feature of most of the Biblical
purity laws (especially the priestly laws) that differs
from many other ancient Near Eastern societies is
that, while imposing restrictions on menstruating
women, the laws do not require them to leave the
house. That the menstruant is not secluded from
her family and home is also reflected in 2 Samuel
11:2–5, where Bathsheba is described as bathing on
the roof to purify herself from her period.
Still, due to the restrictions imposed on them,
it is reasonable that menstruating women spent
some of their time in a separate space. The four-
room house plan was ideally suited for a society
that regulated contact, on the one hand, and housed
* Avraham Faust, “Early Israel: An Egalitarian Society?” BAR, July/August
2013.
40
unclean individuals within the house, on the other.
Thus, it is in fact likely that the house is respon-
sible for the development of the laws as later writ-
ten down in the Bible. That is to say, the architec-
ture of the typical ancient Israelite house appears
to enable the development of the menstrual purity
laws described in the Bible.
The above generalizations are based on the study
of dozens of dwellings uncovered in the land of
Israel—but referred only to their plans. The meticu-
lous excavation of a perfectly preserved four-room
house at Tel ‘Eton enabled us to take the study
of purity one step further and to reconstruct how
purity was actually practiced within the house as
part of the daily activities.
Tel ‘Eton is a large site located in the southeastern
Shephelah. The Iron Age II settlement was destroyed
in the late eighth century B.C.E. during an Assyrian
military campaign, and one of the major findings
within this destruction layer was a large four-room
house (see box, “The ‘Four-Room’ House,” opposite)
that was excavated in its entirety over the course
of 10 seasons.4 Located on the highest point of the
mound, the structure measures about 65 feet (east–
west) by 40 feet (north–south). The corners and
doorways were made of worked stones and ashlars,
and the finds include evidence for storage surpluses,
as well as bullae, sealings, and a seal. The entrance to
this long house was from the east, and it led into a
large courtyard. From the courtyard one could enter
a system of rooms to the north, south, and west.
The building existed for a long period of time,
from the tenth through the eighth centuries B.C.E.
During the major phase of occupation that ended
with the final destruction, there were four rooms in
the northern wing, two in the western, and two in
the southern, all surrounding a big, open courtyard.
On the eve of its destruction, the building’s court-
yard was divided into three spaces by low partition
mudbrick walls.
The building’s size, location, and construction,
as well as the finds unearthed in it, suggest that it
belonged to the upper echelon of the small group
of Iron Age II elite residences. This led us to call
it the governor’s residence. Despite the impressive
architecture, however, the house served as a dwell-
ing, probably of an extended family.
The destruction of the house by fire sealed the
building under 3–5 feet of debris. The finds from the
house include almost 200 complete pottery vessels,
nearly 500 other artifacts, and numerous additional
finds (seeds, charcoals, bones, etc.), thus allowing us
a good opportunity to study the use of space within
the house.
MARCH/APRIL 2019
 IMPURITY PURITY

The “Four-Room” House

The term “four-room house” designates a
typical dwelling in Iron Age Israel whose
“ideal” plan was composed of four main
areas, with three parallel longitudinal spaces
that are backed by a broad space. A “four-
space house” or “four-area house” would be
more appropriate terms, since the basic four
areas are often subdivided into smaller rooms,
and the actual number of rooms varied. The
long spaces were sometimes separated by
pillars, but the existence of pillars is not part
of the definition. The entrance was usually
located at the central longitudinal space.
Subtypes of the “ideal” form comprised
two longitudinal spaces (i.e., three-room
houses) and even one or four such spaces.
The term “four-room” is generic and incor-
porates all of these subtypes. The common
denominator is a long house with a number
of long spaces in the front and a broad
space at the back.
The four-room house developed in the
Iron Age I (c. 1200–1000 B.C.E.), and, from
the early Iron Age II (c. 1000 B.C.E.) until
the Babylonian destructions of the sixth
century B.C.E., it was the dominant type of
domestic building in ancient Israel. The fact
that the spatial and temporal distribution of
the house type corresponds with that of the
Israelite settlement has led most scholars
to associate the house with the Israelites.*
unearthed outside Israelite territories, such
as at Sahab, Tel Qiri, Tel Keisan, and Afula.1
Such assertions, however, should be rejected
on a number of grounds.
First, most of the houses mentioned by
these scholars do not fall in the typological
category of four-room houses. Some of them
do have four rooms—for example, at Tel Kei-
san and Afula—yet their overall architectural
configuration is completely different.
The “example” at Sahab represents
another type of erroneous comparison,
in which a house with a few pillars (in
one room!), but completely different in
form and configuration, is mistaken for a
four-room house.2
Moreover, some of the supposedly
exceptional examples of four-room houses
are located in Transjordan and were prob-
ably used by Israelite groups** living in this
region.3
While there are some exceptional four-
room houses in what appear to be non-
Israelite settlements, we should note that
most of them date to the Iron Age I (e.g., the
few examples at Tel Qasile), prior to the final
crystallization of ethnic groups in the region
and of the house itself.
Notably, Iron Age II four-room houses are
practically missing in areas outside the Israel-
ite settlement. In this period, the distribution
house with the Israelites is strengthened by
the fact that it is the dominant house type of
the Israelite settlements, with most houses
belonging to one of its subtypes. This house
type became a mental template, used also in
the construction of public buildings, palaces,
and forts, so that from the eighth century
B.C.E.—when burying in caves became the
norm in Judah—even tombs followed this
plan. This, of course, makes the sixth-century
disappearance of the four-room house all the
more telling.
The temporal span of the four-room
house therefore also associates it with the
Israelites, as it emerged in the Iron Age I, the
period of the Israelite settlement, became
prominent during the period of the monar-
chy, and disappeared with the destruction of
the kingdom of Judah.
Beyond the temporal and spatial cor-
respondence of the house type with the
Israelites, the structure fits the Israelites’
way of life, reflecting their mindset and daily
practice (including purity) and shaping them
at the same time. Whether the association
with the Israelites was direct (a form of an
ethnic marker) or indirect (it developed as a
result of group behavior), the Israelites used
it extensively, and it can rightly be called
“the Israelite house.”
1€E.g., Gosta W. Ahlstrom, The History of Ancient Palestine

A few scholars attempted to discredit this
association on the basis of some houses
* Hershel Shanks, “The Four-Room House: Ancient
Israel’s Major Architectural Achievement,” BAR, July/
August 2017; Shlomo Bunimovitz and Avraham Faust,
of four-room houses almost overlaps Israelite
territory. The association of the four-room
** Larry G. Herr and Douglas R. Clark, “Excavating
the Tribe of Reuben: A Four-Room House Provides a
from the Paleolithic Period to Alexander’s Conquest
(Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), p. 339; Moawiyah M.
Ibrahim, “Third Season of Excavation at Sahab: 1975 (Pre-
liminary Report),” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of
Jordan 20 (1975), pp. 69–82.
2€Ibrahim, “Sahab,” pp. 72–73.

“Ideology in Stone: Understanding the Four-Room Clue to Where the Oldest Israelite Tribe Settled,” BAR, 3€E.g., Chang-Ho C. Ji, “A Note on the Iron Age Four-Room

House,” BAR, July/August 2002. March/April 2001. House in Palestine,” Orientalia 66 (1997), pp. 387–413.

The northern wing of the house served for stor-
age, as did the northern room of the western wing
(Room C)—with some 38 storage vessels found in
situ in this room alone. The northern wing also
served a more public function, as it was the male
part of the house. The southern wing, along with
the southern room of the western wing, apparently
was used for cooking, weaving, sleeping, and other
activities commonly associated with women and
thereby defined as more feminine.* The number
of finds in these rooms was far more limited, and
* Avraham Faust, “Pottery Talks: What Ceramics Tell Us About the Social
World of Ancient Israel,” BAR, March/April 2004.
the percentage (let alone number) of storage ves-
sels was much lower. The largest concentration of
cooking pots, along with an installation and what
might be the remains of an oven and even a loom,
were unearthed in Room I, which apparently served
for food preparation. In Room B, only eight vessels,
of various types, were unearthed. Room J, however,
was devoid of vessels altogether, giving us pause and
causing us to closely consider this enigmatic room.
Room J was a large (approx. 107 sq ft), broad
room. Given that it is the largest in either the north-
ern or the southern wing, and that nearly 200 com-
plete pottery vessels were unearthed in the whole

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 41

PURITY IMPURITY
building, the lack of ceramic vessels in this room
is striking. Notably, a 2.6-by-3-foot surface made
of crushed limestone was unearthed in the room’s
entrance. This square was located between the door-
posts—and slightly in front of them to the north,
toward the courtyard. At the edge of this surface, a
basin made of soft limestone (kirton, the local name
for Eocene chalk) was uncovered upside down.
We should note that similar “empty” rooms were
identified in other large four-room houses in both
the rural and urban sectors, for example at Hazor
and Khirbet Jemein.5 In the priestly perception
presented in the Bible, as in many other societies,
objects become impure by contact with impure indi-
viduals and subsequently must be purified before
they can be used. Objects that can be purified by
fire (metal artifacts) are first purified by fire and
then by water (Numbers 31:20–24). Objects that
cannot withstand fire (e.g., wood) should be puri-
fied by water only (Numbers 31:23; Leviticus 15:12).
Ceramics, however, cannot be purified. Once pot-
tery vessels become impure, they have to be bro-
ken (e.g., Leviticus 6:28; 11:33; 15:12; and, implicitly,
Numbers 31:20–24).
Should these verses reflect a society-wide
perception during the Iron Age, it would be
42
counterproductive to give pottery vessels to unclean
people. Vessels made of cheaper materials, such as
wood, which is purified by water, would have been
more practical, sometimes alongside more expensive
metal vessels. Rooms devoid of ceramics in large Iron
Age houses seem to suggest that Israelite society did
treat pottery as potentially “dangerous” material and
hence used it with care, influencing its distribution.
This view is supported by other lines of evidence,
such as the lack (or extreme rarity) of imported
pottery in Iron Age Israelite settlements, suggesting
that the view that ceramics can become impure was
indeed widespread.
I suggest that Room J at Tel ‘Eton was used to
house unclean individuals.
During the main phase of the house’s existence,
it was one of eight rooms on the ground floor, all
of which had direct access to the courtyard. (The
same applies to all rooms in the upper floor, access
AT THE ENTRANCE TO ROOM J, a crushed limestone sur-
face points to a purity ritual that took place between and
in front of the two doorposts. This ritual involved pouring
water on the impure person, who emerged from the room
and stood on the white surface, making thus the transi-
tion from the unclean state back to the status of a regu-
lar member of the household.
AVRAHAM FAUST; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION
MARCH/APRIL 2019
 IMPURITY PURITY

to which was through a ladder stationed in the

central courtyard.) Access analysis suggests that
the building could house unclean individuals, but
it does not prove it—and does not direct us toward
the relevant room.
The emptiness of Room J, however, takes us a
step further, since the lack of ceramics in this room
likely resulted from its use by impure people.6 Not
only was the room found devoid of pottery, but so
was a large part of the adjacent courtyard. Mass con-

AVRAHAM FAUST; COURTESY OF THE TEL ‘ETON EXPEDITION

centrations of vessels were found farther inside the
courtyard, which together with an installation proba-
bly created a sort of a screen that limited movement
of people crossing the courtyard toward Room J.
Visibility is another aspect that suggests Room J
was especially suited for housing unclean individu-
als. The location of the room near the entrance to
the building and the fact that it is a broad room with
the doorway located far from its center meant that
most of the room could not have been viewed from
the courtyard even when the doorway was open, and
that large parts of it could have been viewed only
upon entering the room.
The location of the room had additional advan-
tages. The courtyard of the house was quite
crowded, and since the unclean people were not
restricted to Room J, the room’s location at the edge
of the courtyard enabled them to come and go with
minimal chances of unwittingly crossing path with
other members of the household and defiling people
or objects.
In sum, these characteristics indicate that Room
J was ideally suited for containing impure individu-
als within the household and possibly for separating
pure and impure:
1. The overall planning of the house.
2. The location of Room J on the ground floor,
with easy access from the structure’s doorway.
(Establishing the room on the upper floor would
have been impractical.)
3. The room’s location near the entrance to the
building and quite far from the possible paths cross-
ing the busy courtyard to or between the other
rooms.
4. The room’s location in the “feminine” area of
the structure.
5. The room’s location in a relatively concealed
spot, and the location of the room’s doorway relative
to the room itself.
6. The room’s size, allowing spacious activities.
7. The lack of any pottery vessels in the room.
The suggestion that Room J was used to house
unclean individuals fits nicely with the existence
of similar rooms in other large four-room houses.
PURIFICATION BASIN. Found at the edge of the crumbled
limestone surface just outside Room J, this stone basin
complements the archaeological picture of ritual cleaning.
It is made of the local soft limestone (kirton), and water
would have been drawn from it to be poured on the
unclean person.
It strengthens the hypothesis that large, extended
families maintained empty rooms for such purposes.
(That such rooms are typical mainly of large houses
is hardly surprising, as only large households had
enough members to make it worthwhile to devote
a room for such purposes.)
The evidence from the Tel ‘Eton building allows
us to take one step further and reconstruct the ritual
that accompanied the end of impurity. One should
recall the 2.6-by-3-foot white surface made of crushed
limestone that was unearthed at the entrance to the
room. At the northern edge of this surface, we found
a basin made of soft limestone. The empty room, the
square surface at the entrance, and the stone basin
were instrumental in the purity ritual.
The most common purifying agent in the ancient
Near East (and worldwide) was water, which is
explicitly mentioned in the relevant contexts (Leviti-
cus 15; Deuteronomy 23:10–11; 2 Kings 5, etc.). That
water was used in the purification of menstruating
women can also be seen in the story of Bathsheba
(2 Samuel 11:4), in the reference to the water of men-
struation in Numbers 31:23, and in the widespread
C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 6 0

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY REVIEW 43


in style and perhaps also in body, after
the dark night spent wrestling with the
angel.”
If Eutychus limped as he returned
to listen yet again to Paul, he found
an apostle to match his halting step.
For Paul knew what it was like to fall
“as though dead” before the Lord, and
then to rise anew. Similarly, the hope
of Wright’s book is that modern read-
ers might, like Eutychus, give Paul a
second chance. The work is highly rec-
ommended for pastors, laypeople, and
skeptics who have come to see Paul as
boring, inscrutable, or even offensive.
Joshua M. McNall is Assistant Professor
of Theology at Oklahoma Wesleyan
University. His books include Long Story
Short: The Bible in Six Simple Move-
ments (Wilmore, KY: Seedbed, 2018)
and The Mosaic of Atonement ( forth-
coming, 2019). He blogs regularly, at
www.joshuamcnall.com.
S T R ATA A N S W E R S
Do You Remember?
(from p. 13)
Answer: (A) Northern Israel
This bronze bull first appeared in
the September/October 1983 issue of
Biblical Archaeology Review.* Measur-
ing seven inches long and five inches
high, the bull is one of the largest
ever discovered in Israel and dates
to the Biblical period of the Judges,
c. 1200 B.C.E. According to Amihai
Mazar—of the famed Mazar archaeo-
logical family—the figurine was most
likely used in a religious ritual, per-
haps as a throne for a local god.1
This bull comes from a cultic site—
an open-air sanctuary—in northern
Israel near Dothan and Tirzah. The
cultic site rests on the top of a hill in
what would have been the territory of
the tribe of Manasseh.
1 Lee
I. Levine, “Israelite Art in Context,” in
Ann Killebrew and Gabriele Fassbeck, eds.,
Viewing Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeol-
ogy: Essays in Honor of Rachel Hachlili
(Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 309–310.
* Amihai Mazar, “Bronze Bull Found in Israelite ‘High
Place’ from the Time of the Judges,” BAR, Septem-
ber/October 1983.
60
Biblical Views
continued from page 52
have resonated deeply with the Christian
addressees of 1 Peter, who were also fac-
ing social prejudice and marginalization
for their faith. Just as Noah and his fam-
ily maintained their integrity by living an
upright life, so too were Christians called
to a life of exemplary character in the
face of opposition.
The author of 1 Peter used contempo-
rary traditions of Noah and the flood to
weave together a sophisticated pattern
of correspondences.1 Just as the evil of
the former generation was purged with
the flood, a judgment of another kind is
imminent. Noah upheld his righteous-
ness, and Christians are called to do
likewise. Just as Noah and his family
were saved through water, so are Chris-
tians saved through the water of baptism
(1 Peter 3:21). An apocryphal aphorism,
often attributed to Mark Twain, states,
“History never repeats itself, but it often
rhymes.” The author of 1 Peter would
certainly agree.
Katie Marcar is a Teaching
Fellow in Biblical Lan-
guages in the Department
of Theology and Religion at
the University of Otago in
Dunedin, New Zealand. She
received her Ph.D. from
Durham University in the United Kingdom.
1 Forfurther discussion, see Katie Macar,
“In the Days of Noah: Urzeit/Endzeit Cor-
respondence and the Flood Tradition in 1
Peter 3–4,” New Testament Studies 63.4 (2017),
pp. 550–566.
Resurrecting Easter
continued from page 28
1 Fulldetails, see our book: John Dominic
Crossan and Sarah Sexton Crossan, Resurrect-
ing Easter: How the West Lost and the East
Kept the Original Easter Vision (San Francisco:
HarperOne, 2018). We work jointly, Sarah on
photography, technology, and depiction and
Dominic on history, theology, and description.
2 See Jaś Elsner, “The Christian Museum
in Southern France: Antiquity, Display, and
Liturgy from the Counter-Reformation to the
Aftermath of Vatican II,” Oxford Art Journal 32
(2009), pp. 181–295. For a full iconography, see
Hubert Schrade, Ikonographie der Christlicher
Kunst: Die Sinngehalte und Gestalungsformen.
Die Auferstehung Christi, vol. 1 (Berlin &
Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1932). Despite
its name, this only examines the Individual
Resurrection Tradition of the West.
3 In 1916, the brilliant German Jesuit archae-
ologist Joseph Wilpert (1857–1944) depicted
those frescoes in colored reproductions as they
were after a decade and a half of degrada-
tion from outside urban air. Despite recent
preservation and restoration, during which the
complex was closed to the public (until March
2016), Wilpert’s older images are the best we
can ever have of what once was there.
4 Richard C. Miller, “Mark’s Empty Tomb and
Other Translation Fables in Classical Antiq-
uity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 129 (2010),
pp. 759–776; see also Richard C. Miller, Resur-
rection and Reception in Early Christianity
(New York: Routledge, 2015).
5 André Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzan-
tine: Recherches sur l’art official de l’empire
d’orient, Publications de la Facuté des Lettres
de l’Universitee de Strasbourg, Fascicule 75
(Paris: Librairie Les Belles Lettres, 1936);
André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study
of Its Origins, The A.W. Mellon Lectures in
the Fine Arts, 1961, The National Gallery of
Art, Washington, D.C., Bollingen Series 35.10
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968),
p. 126.
6 See Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth, King
of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence
of Christianity (New York: Knopf, Random
House, 1999), pp. 243, 253.
Purity and Impurity
continued from page 43
usage of water in purification else-
where (e.g., Leviticus 15). Indeed, the
use of water for purification is com-
mon throughout the world. To be sure,
the Iron Age Israelite practice of ritual
cleaning did not involve bathing in a
mikveh, which was a later development.
Rather, it involved pouring water on
the impure.
Purification rituals are also rites
of passage accompanying transitions
between different statuses and spaces.
Rites of passage are typically divided
into three phases or parts: (1) separa-
tion, (2) transition (or liminality), and
(3) (re-)incorporation.
Menstruants—and other unclean
individuals—were separated from their
regular, daily routine and transferred to
a different space. During the transitional
phase, they were in a limbo, and many
of their daily activities were forbidden to
them. When the reason for their impu-
rity disappeared, the unclean individuals
MARCH/APRIL 2019
were ready to reenter their ordinary to the room itself, and the rest of the
world and become regular members of limestone surface continued to the
their households and communities. This, courtyard. When the impure individuals
however, required a certain ritual to ended their impurity and were ready to
reconnect them with society. move—symbolically and physically—from
It seems only natural that the ritual the room into the regular space (and
would take place in the physical pas- status), they stood at the threshold, on
sage—where the individual was tangibly the crushed limestone surface between
transitioning from one place to another the doorposts. At this stage, water was
and from one status to another. We sug- poured on the individual, most likely
gest that the ceremony took place in drawn from the basin that stood at the
the doorway of Room J, at the edge of edge of the crushed limestone surface.
the crushed limestone surface between It may be further suggested that this
the two doorposts. The crushed lime- person then crossed the threshold and
stone abutted those posts, which led stepped into the courtyard, still staying
AUTHORS
“Resurrecting Easter: Hunting for the
Original Resurrection Image” (p. 20):
John Dominic Crossan, Professor
Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul
University in Chicago, has written 29 books
on the New Testament. With Robert Funk,
he was co-chair of the Jesus Seminar
(1986–1995) and President of the Society
John Crossan Sarah Crossan
of Biblical Literature (2012). Sarah Sexton
Crossan, a school and district social
worker, became the photographer for the annual Borg-Crossan pilgrimages
across the Byzantine world (2000–2014) and also the visual artist for lectures
and books about its iconography.
“Biblical Archaeology 101: The Ancient Diet of Roman
Palestine” (p. 29): Susan Weingarten is a food historian. She
holds a doctorate from Tel Aviv University, and her areas of
expertise include Jewish history, Patristics, Classical archae-
ology, and Late Antiquity.
“Purity and Impurity in Iron Age Israel”
(p. 36): Avraham Faust is Professor
of Archaeology at the Martin (Szusz)
Weingarten
Department of Land of Israel Studies and
Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, and Director of the Tel ‘Eton
archaeological expedition. His research covers a wide range of
topics, from archaeology to ethnography of ancient Israel dur-
ing the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Faust
“Colossae—Colossal in Name Only?” (p. 44): Michael
Trainor is a Senior Lecturer in the Theology Department at
the Australian Catholic University in Adelaide, South Australia,
and at Flinders University in Bedford Park, South Australia,
as well as a Lecturer in the Biblical Studies Department
at Catholic Theological College in Melbourne. He is also a
Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Adelaide, South Australia,
and co-editor of Colossae in Space and Time: Linking to an
Ancient City (Göttingen: Vadndenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011)
with Alan H. Cadwallader. Trainor
62
on the white surface, while the water
was poured on him or her. This final
step into the courtyard symbolized the
transition from the unclean state to the
new status of a clean individual and a
regular member of the household.
The excellent state of preservation of
the four-room edifice at Tel ‘Eton and its
meticulous excavation have allowed us to
reconstruct the use of space within this
house in great detail and even to recre-
ate the purifying ritual. We hope that the
excavation of additional complete houses
will shed more light on all aspects of
the ancient Israelites’ daily life and will
allow us insights into their social world
and beliefs. a
1 See Avraham Faust and Hayah Katz, “The
Archaeology of Purity and Impurity: A Case-
Study from Tel ‘Eton, Israel,” Cambridge
Archaeological Journal 27 (2017), pp. 1–27 (doi:
10.1017/S0959774316000494) for broader
discussion and additional references. The study
was supported by the Israel Science Foundation
grant “The Birth, Life and Death of a Four-
Room House at Tel ‘Eton” (no. 284/11).
2 Ehud Netzer only quotes Moshe Weinfled’s
suggestion that the rigid planning of the four-
room house might have facilitated “the separa-
tion between purity and impurity—such as the
avoidance of a woman during menstruation.” See
Ehud Netzer, “Domestic Architecture in the Iron
Age,” in Aharon Kempinski and Ronny Reich,
eds., The Architecture of Ancient Israel from the
Prehistoric to the Persian Period (Jerusalem:
Israel Exploration Society, 1992) p. 19, n. 24.
3 Avraham Faust and Shlomo Bunimovitz, “The
House and the World: The Israelite House as a
Microcosm,” in Rainer Albertz et al., eds., Fam-
ily and Household Religion (Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2014), pp. 143–164.
4 See Avraham Faust et al., “The Birth, Life
and Death of an Iron Age House at Tel ‘Eton,
Israel,” Levant 49.2 (2017), pp. 136–173.
5 See Shulamit Geva, Hazor, Israel: An Urban
Community of the 8th Century BCE, BAR Inter-
national series S543 (Oxford: British Archaeo-
logical Reports, 1989), pp. 41–42; and Shimon
Dar, “Hirbet Jemein—a First Temple Village
in Western Samaria,” in Shimon Dar and Zeev
Safrai, eds., Shomron Studies (Tel Aviv: Hakibutz
Hameuchad, 1986), pp. 13–73 [in Hebrew].
6 In theory, the lack of vessels could indicate
that the room was a stable for animals. How-
ever, this room was screened by an installa-
tion and a row of vessels in the courtyard that
prevented easy access. While people could,
carefully, pass the barrier and move toward the
room, animals would most likely have broken
the vessels. Furthermore, the unique surface
at the entrance to the room would have been
disturbed by animals. Additionally, the room
itself lacked any sort of drainage, and the low
frequency of phytoliths in it also runs against its
identification as a stable. Finally, there were no
installations that could feed the animals.
MARCH/APRIL 2019