BONUS Episode: Cynthia Shafer-Elliott - What Archaeologists Do & Why it Matters

Summary

In this bonus episode of "The Bible for Normal People," hosts Pete Enns and Jared Byas reissue Episode 37 featuring Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, an archaeologist who sheds light on the importance of archaeology in understanding biblical texts. The discussion explores how archaeological findings provide insights into everyday life in ancient Israel, challenging common assumptions and offering a tangible connection to the past. Highlights include the significance of household archaeology, the interplay between biblical texts and archaeological evidence, and how these findings influence interpretations of ancient societal structures and religious practices.

Highlights

• Cynthia Shafer-Elliott discusses the thrill and rigor of archaeological work in Israel, emphasizing the hard labor and early mornings involved. 🌞
• The episode reveals the significance of finding fingerprints on pottery, providing a tangible connection to the ancient past. 🕵️‍♂️
• Cynthia explains the role of household archaeology in illustrating the life of everyday ancient Israelites. 🏡
• The challenges of interpreting biblical texts and archaeological findings are highlighted, showing their distinct but complementary disciplines. 💭
• Various evidences like the Merneptah Stele and Tel Dan Stele anchor the historical presence of Israel. 🌄

Key Takeaways

• Cynthia Shafer-Elliott shares intriguing insights into archaeological practices and their pivotal role in biblical studies. 🏺
• Everyday life in ancient Israel is unearthed through Cynthia's engaging explanation of household archaeology. 🏠
• Exploring the past through artifacts reveals stories of ancient peoples, deepening our understanding of biblical narratives. 📜
• Archaeology bridges the gap between modern interpretations and ancient realities, showing diverse cultural practices. 🌍
• Household artifacts like pottery pieces play a major role in recreating historical timelines and daily lifestyles. 🍶

Overview

Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, a passionate archaeologist, joins Pete and Jared to explain the essential role of archaeology in unraveling the historical contexts of biblical texts. Her enthusiasm is evident as she details the labor-intensive work of excavating sites, often starting at dawn to beat the intense Israel heat. Her insights invite listeners to think differently about the past, not as stale history, but as vibrant stories told through the residue of daily life.

One of the most captivating aspects Cynthia introduces is household archaeology. She shifts focus away from the monumental finds that often make headlines, like temples and palaces, to the everyday objects left behind by common people. These artifacts, such as pottery fragments or household tools, provide rich details about domestic life, societal roles, and religious practices during the Iron Age. Her work illuminates the lives that intersect with biblical narratives, moving beyond the grand tales of kings and prophets.

The conversation delves into the nuanced relationship between archaeological evidence and biblical scripture. Cynthia emphasizes that while these disciplines have their methodologies, they often intersect to offer a fuller picture of ancient Israel's cultural and religious landscape. She illustrates this by discussing various artifacts and inscriptions, such as the Merneptah Stele and Tel Dan Stele, which affirm biblical accounts and contribute to a broader historical understanding. The episode highlights how archaeology enhances our comprehension of scripture and ancient societies, making these stories more meaningful and relatable.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction and Course Announcement In the introduction and opening announcement, the hosts of 'The Bible for Normal People' podcast reintroduce an episode from their second season featuring Cynthia Schaefer Elliott, an archaeologist. They express excitement about her new course offered through their platform, titled 'Everyday Life in Ancient Israel.' The announcement sets the stage for the episode's reissue and promotes the additional educational content available from the guest expert.
• 02:00 - 05:30: Interview with Cynthia Schaefer-Elliott: Role and Work of Archaeologists The chapter focuses on an interview with Cynthia Schaefer-Elliott who discusses the significance of understanding everyday life in the ancient world, particularly in ancient Israel.
• 05:30 - 15:00: Findings in Archaeology: Pottery and Daily Life The chapter 'Findings in Archaeology: Pottery and Daily Life' discusses an upcoming event starting on October 6th, held over four consecutive Tuesday nights, from 8:30 to 10:00 PM Eastern Time. The event includes an hour-long lecture followed by a question and answer session with an expert named Cynthia. The chapter highlights the accessibility of the course as it operates on a pay-what-you-can basis, emphasizing the inclusivity and flexibility provided to participants. The course promises to be engaging and informative, centered around archaeology and its findings.
• 15:00 - 21:00: Relationship Between Archaeology and Biblical Studies This chapter discusses a course offering that explores the relationship between archaeology and biblical studies. It's highlighted that the course has a flexible pricing model, allowing individuals to pay what they can, although the typical price is around 99 dollars. The package includes access to live courses, Q&A sessions, downloadable audio files, and slides for each lecture. For more details, interested participants are encouraged to visit the website provided (petens.com).
• 21:00 - 33:00: Understanding Ancient Israel: Social Structure and Religion Understanding Ancient Israel delves into the social structure and religious practices of the time. The episode references the fluctuating faithfulness of the Israelites as depicted in the Old Testament, highlighting times when they devotedly worshiped the Lord and other times when they failed, introducing other deities like Yahweh into their worship. This chapter provides insight into the complexities of religious adherence and the duality in ancient worship practices.
• 33:00 - 45:00: Call to Action and Credits The chapter includes a greeting and introduction to the episode where the host welcomes the listeners and introduces Cynthia Schaefer Elliott as the guest. They briefly chat about Cynthia's location in California and the recent changes in weather, indicating the onset of winter with mild temperatures.

BONUS Episode: Cynthia Shafer-Elliott - What Archaeologists Do & Why it Matters Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 you're listening to the bible for normal people the only god ordained podcast on the internet i'm pete ends and i'm jared bias hey everybody welcome to this episode of the bible for normal people this is a reissue episode of episode 37 way back in season 2 with cynthia schaefer elliott an archaeologist and we're really excited to announce that cynthia is teaching a course for us here at the bible for normal people and that course is called everyday life in ancient israel here's a subtitle listen to this a
• 00:30 - 01:00 journey through everyday life in the ancient world and why it matters for how we read the bible you bet it does and we're going to be looking at things like you know well what does everyday life in ancient israel actually look like and what kind of religion for example did the people actually practice based on archaeological evidence and here's an important issue how were household and family roles determined in ancient israel again based on archaeological evidence and i know you're saying pete tell us
• 01:00 - 01:30 when tell us when well it begins october 6th it runs for four consecutive tuesday nights from 8 30 to 10 and that is eastern time folks and i can't stress that enough eastern time it's not our fault that the nation's divided into four time zones so 8 30 to 10 eastern time and for that time you're gonna hear an hour lecture and a nice hefty q a session with cynthia afterwards and it's just going to be a blast and here's the best part is if all the rest wasn't good enough this is a pay what you can course no
• 01:30 - 02:00 one's going to be turned away for what they can or can't pay it's what you can normally a course like this would be like 99 dollars but it's pay what you can and we mean that yay us and for that pay what you can price you get of course the course itself the q a and all the live course with the q a and also you can access all the slides and you get a downloadable audio file for each week's lecture so that's pretty cool if you want more information absolutely please go to petens.com forward slash
• 02:00 - 02:30 every day all the information you need is there and we really really hope to see you there beginning tuesday october 6th now sit back and enjoy this week's reissue episode with cynthia schaefer elliott well i asked somebody well how much of the old testament have you read because it says it often that the israelites sometimes worship the lord one-on-one just really well and then other times they didn't okay well i worship yahweh but i'll also say
• 02:30 - 03:00 a prayer to ashuret too and that really throws people off a lot of times when you say well they worshipped yahweh and okay welcome listeners to another episode and uh welcome to cynthia schaefer elliott for being our guest today hi cynthia how's it going well how are you you're from california i am and it just started winter like the other day uh what's winter like 70 degrees it has been yeah but now it's now it's
• 03:00 - 03:30 raining so i feel really bad for you all as you had that big arctic it was horrible we're like game of thrones our winner last year yeah yeah a thousand years ago oh you poor people hey listen cynthia in case you haven't noticed you are an archaeologist i am yeah you are you know i i studied that a little bit in graduate school but i'm not an archaeologist myself i don't like getting dirty and i don't like getting up early so apart from those two things
• 03:30 - 04:00 help help us just you know what do you do what do archaeologists do and that that's something that you know if you think of any indiana jones or something like that but yeah that's not it but what do you do and why do you do it yeah you know i have to explain this to my students all the time because i'm trying to bribe them to come with me to israel to dig so what we do is we're trying to understand ancient israel better and we do that by well i do that
• 04:00 - 04:30 by both examining the biblical text and examining what we call material culture and material culture is all that physical stuff that they left behind that could be buildings architecture features of a house say like an oven or a cistern that could be what we would call the artifacts that they left behind like pots and oil lamps and things like
• 04:30 - 05:00 that and so what we're trying to do is uncover what they've left behind in order to understand ancient israel better so we do have to get up very early because we're there in the summer and it's very hot yeah so we work early hours and it's not for the faint-hearted you know it's it's hard work it's kind of like a akin to the academic fat camp
• 05:00 - 05:30 uh where you go and you're working so hard and you're using muscles that you didn't remember that you had and you are having a hard time because it's hot and it's dirty and you're in the sun but at the same time you are the first person to uncover something that hasn't been seen or touched in thousands of years yeah what's the
• 05:30 - 06:00 most interesting thing or exciting thing that you've ever uncovered or maybe you were a part of a team that uncovered something yeah i get asked that a lot i think all of us in that field get asked this question a lot it's a really interesting question though because what i like is probably not what most people find exciting but i would think what most people would find exciting is i was part of a one season on a phoenician tomb excavation back in 2002
• 06:00 - 06:30 i think yeah i think that's when it was with elote mazar and this tomb this little tomb hadn't been excavated and it also hadn't been robbed and so we had this little tomb full of artifacts that people would take to when they're you know revering their ancestors so these are high-end materials these aren't everyday artifacts like cooking pots or
• 06:30 - 07:00 something but these are fragile or precious things like a metal sword or bronze sword excuse me or some scarabs or jewelry and then all this if i can say this all the skeletal remains too but we're not supposed to talk about that but that's really that was really exciting and the fact that it was right on the mediterranean probably didn't hurt either but for me
• 07:00 - 07:30 personally it's when we're i'm right now i'm excavating houses and one of the things i love this sounds so light you should see my basement horrible anyway one of the things i love that i find as simple as it sounds is sometimes you find a handle of a vessel like a jug or a pot or something and while the vessel itself is wheel made the handles
• 07:30 - 08:00 are pressed on usually by hand and so sometimes you see and feel the potter's thumb print surfing and sometimes you even find their thumb print and to see their thumbprint on this vessel it just it takes my breath away every time i think it's just wow look at this reminds me that somebody made this pot and it begets all those
• 08:00 - 08:30 questions of who made it and why and what did they do with it and why did they leave this behind and for me it's the stories behind the artifacts behind the architecture the stories of the people that use these items and lived during this time that i find the most fascinating so at some point we'll talk more about some of those findings and and what does that mean for your understanding of daily life
• 08:30 - 09:00 in ancient israel and the time periods that you study but maybe talk some about how does biblical archaeology impact how we've read or have read the bible like what's the interplay between the scriptures and archaeology that's another really good question and depending on who you ask you'll have a very different answer but part of the issue that a lot of us and our field have to answer
• 09:00 - 09:30 is kind of even how you phrased the question using that term biblical archaeology you have people within the field who say well yes you should be calling it biblical archaeology and you should be digging with your trowel in one hand and your bible in the other and then you have others who say absolutely not because archaeology is its own discipline and you have no other archaeology that
• 09:30 - 10:00 uses a text to define or interpret its answers so people often think that archaeology is it's more scientific there's less interpretation than say in biblical studies but i would say that's not the case i would say that there is maybe just as much interpretation within archaeology as there is in biblical studies
• 10:00 - 10:30 and as much as i love doing both biblical studies and archaeology i understand that there and i try very hard to notice that they're two different disciplines and that these disciplines need to be done in their own ways and the interpretation from those studies and some of those artifacts need to be done in an appropriate methodological way now that's not to say though
• 10:30 - 11:00 that you can't use the bible to help us understand the physical world of ancient israel or vice versa that you can't use archaeology to help us understand the bible you absolutely can but i think it has to be done so carefully that you can't just be digging in israel and say oh i found let's see for example i
• 11:00 - 11:30 found this gate for this city and we think it might be from the time of the iron age the iron age one and so therefore we know solomon built gates so therefore we know we think this is solomon's gate you know it's kind of a big jump you have to have a little bit more evidence than that so even kind of in that crosshairs between those two disciplines you absolutely want to use everything at your disposal to
• 11:30 - 12:00 understand ancient israel better you want to use hebrew bible or old testament you want to use other artifacts like textual artifacts like ancient near eastern texts also archaeology and iconography which is representational art like figurines and things like that it's my opinion we want to use everything at our disposal but we also want to do so carefully that we're not allowing
• 12:00 - 12:30 these other disciplines to kind of take our interpretation into a direction that maybe the actual physical evidence isn't or maybe is going and does that make sense oh yeah that makes a lot of sense um cynthia you you used a phrase i think iron age one yeah sorry explain that explain uh you know the the the epics the eras the stages that you archaeologists have to work with all the time and maybe how they overlap with the
• 12:30 - 13:00 biblical story a little bit if that's possible yeah you know depending on who you read or which scholar or archaeologist you talk to those dates are going to fluctuate a little bit especially with when you think of possibly very early israel those dates are not set in stone because we realize that some things transition a lot longer than other things so basically we break down just like in any history
• 13:00 - 13:30 in any archaeology we've got different historical time periods or archaeological time periods that we look at ancient israel and the time period that most seems to represent when israel would have existed is the iron age and the iron age can be further subdivided into smaller ages like iron one iron two some even say iron three
• 13:30 - 14:00 but some would call iron iii by a different name so it kind of depends on who you read and you know what kind of school you belong to but israel is fairly firmly planted in the iron age now when israel comes on the scene and how they come on the scene is another question but for me personally the time period i'm most interested in is the second iron age and that's roughly
• 14:00 - 14:30 from around 1 000 on to uh when jerusalem was destroyed in 586 by the babylonians and iron age one that's 1200 right 1200 to about a thousand right and that's a pretty small time period but that transition you know that time period early israel is still very much debated by archaeologists and biblical scholars on how israel came on the scene and when and and so that's a whole big discussion but
• 14:30 - 15:00 yeah so iron one is roughly from 1200 to 1000 iron two is roughly from 1000 to 586 and then you go on into the you know neo-babylonian periods and persian and so on yeah yeah it's it's you know when you get to the origins of israel i guess one reason why scholars debate that back in iron one around 1200 is because there isn't a lot of archaeological evidence right right
• 15:00 - 15:30 correct yeah that's a shame it is a shame because as you know historians and archaeologists we want as much evidence as possible and unfortunately we don't get a whole lot outside of the bible what we do know is the earliest mention of a people group called israel is from outside of the bible is from a stele called the mernepta stele and mernepta
• 15:30 - 16:00 was a pharaoh of egypt after ramses ii i believe and he did a military campaign into canaan and in this stele which is a stone monument it's a victory monument in this victory monument he talks about this campaign where he destroys a few city-states he names ashkelon but he also names a people group called israel and this is our first mention
• 16:00 - 16:30 of a people group called israel in what becomes known later as the land of israel and that's from about i think the steely dates from around 1207 bce and then we don't have extra biblical anchor for king david until the tel dance delay was found and the tel dan steele doesn't date until the ninth century which is after david would have existed but the stele another again a stone
• 16:30 - 17:00 monument erected by hazael king of aram of damascus talks about his campaign against israel judah and he mentions bait david or the house of david which could mean the dynasty of david and that's our and that's from the 9th century so what's interesting is because of those two artifacts we have the earliest reference of israel with the mere neptus delay and then we have the earliest reference
• 17:00 - 17:30 to the kingdom of israel established by david which provides a solid beginning and end for the emergence of israel in a kingdom called israel and so unfortunately we don't get a lot of monumental type artifacts that talk about this people group called israel or this kingdom called israel or judah or talking about david or solomon and that's the stuff that most people like
• 17:30 - 18:00 to hear about is the monumental stuff but most yeah so most of what we do isn't the monumental it's most of the you know oh hey i found this pot so so before we go to kind of the pots and pans of everyday life i think it would be good to even talk about some of that and some of the interesting things there but can you just replay because use a lot of language i think it's pretty common in archaeology the stele and the in the tells
• 18:00 - 18:30 um tell dan you mentioned can you just rehearse real quick uh that lesson of those languages like what's a stele what's the tell and maybe if there's other common language that you guys as that you as archaeologists would use to describe places or things that might be helpful to orient us right the term that you would need to know is the word tell and tell being a not like a poker tell but basically a a hill a mount
• 18:30 - 19:00 it's an artificial mound and you find them all throughout you know israel the southern levant and the southern levant is a geographical territory that israel belongs to so that would include the modern day states of israel west bank and gaza palestine jordan southern parts of lebanon and syria and so atel is basically a artificial mound that they realized back in the pioneering days of archaeology of ancient israel that
• 19:00 - 19:30 these mounds are basically the remains of layers of a buried city or town and that when we excavate them you are basically going back in time so the most recent occupation of that city is at the top and the further down you excavate you are going through the different layers of when that city or town existed and what was left behind so how many uh
• 19:30 - 20:00 how many tells would there just a scope that we'd be talking about in this region that archaeologists work on oh geez that's a really good question and one i don't know the answer to but there's tons and they right yeah so it's many many yeah there's a high volume and they range in size you know there you've got some very small ones that maybe it was just a little village that existed for a short amount of time and then you have some really large ones like lakeish where lakish was the most second
• 20:00 - 20:30 most important city in the kingdom of judah and it was occupied for you know many many many centuries it's just a huge sight so when we excavate most of the time we're excavating on these tells and most archaeologists though we realize well that's one reason why it's so laborious is you you're moving all this dirt from all these different layers and your wheelbarrow skills get really
• 20:30 - 21:00 good taking care of all this dirt but we basically have a very slow methodological process which is why excavations take so long because you have a process and you have a questionnaire or time period that you're trying to concentrate on but you have all these other layers before your time period so for instance i'm interested in the second iron age
• 21:00 - 21:30 like we already talked which is roughly the time of the divided monarchy the kingdoms of israel and judah and that's the time period i'm most interested in but the site i'm digging in tell khalif that site was occupied after the iron age too it was occupied during the late roman excuse me before that even the persian late roman byzantine and so we have to go through those other layers and treat those other layers like they're just as
• 21:30 - 22:00 important as the layer we're interested in so we have to document everything take heights and measurements and keep everything and analyze everything so it's a really lengthy process but when you get to a towel and you realize that these are layers of a buried city stay tuned for more bible for normal people we are supported by the dwell bible app listen i'll tell you a little secret i've been slowly moving to audiobooks for how i
• 22:00 - 22:30 learn information lately so a few months ago when i was starting to put together my episodes on the book of jonah i downloaded the dwell app so i could listen to jonah in the car and it was a great experience dwell's mission is simple help you get into the bible and stay in the bible with loads of inspiring voices bible translations and even background music you're going to love listening to scripture but dwell is so much more than a traditional audio bible app here are a few of the features that i liked one they have a dwell mode this was my favorite since i wanted to focus on
• 22:30 - 23:00 jonah so with the dwell mode you can set to repeat a chapter or a book and even create a pause between repeats so you can be thinking about what you just heard so it's been a great tool for reflection two volume control and background music i like that i can control the volume of the music change the music or just have nothing in the background at all as i listen but for me i like to have something else going on while someone is reading next they have a search function now they have a search feature so you can go straight to a verse or collection of
• 23:00 - 23:30 verses with just a few taps on the keyboard they also have a for you section so you can see your favorites your plans your downloads your recent listens and more so dwell is is for you now listen a lot of times in an episode we will reference a passage from the bible this is a great way just to push pause on the podcast flip over to the dwell app listen to the passage for some context and then flip back over to the podcast and keep listening though folks at dwell are offering normal people a discount so if you're
• 23:30 - 24:00 listening to this visit dwell app dot io front slash normal and you'll get a twenty percent discount that's dwell app dot io front slash normal for twenty percent off an annual or a lifetime subscription so how do you know when you are so the you dig down and the further down you dig the further back in time you go how can archaeologists tell what century they're in or what age they're in whether iron age or bronze age or whatever sure the biggest indicator that we use
• 24:00 - 24:30 is pottery so the pottery just changes over time so we call that typology your pottery typology how that those types change so the example i usually give in class is let's say we walked into a room and we had all these different cell phones in a box and we said you need to put these in chronological order and you would
• 24:30 - 25:00 more than likely do a really good job at putting those phones in order from when cell phones began to today because cell phones when they first started they were actually car phones and they were really big and they had these huge antennas and then they get to a flip phone and then a smartphone and you know they kind of evolve over time and pottery evolved
• 25:00 - 25:30 over time and so when we look at let's say a jug we know by looking at the handle the rim and the base of that jug we can tell what time period it's from because time periods have very certain features of their pottery and and to clarify i mean i'm just clarifying with you but in my head pottery seems like a strange like decor
• 25:30 - 26:00 element but back then it would have been the basic building blocks of domestic life right and you have pottery everywhere you have broken pieces which we call shards sometimes you'll have sometimes whole vessels or we put vessels back together again and so if you were to say look at oil lamps and oil lamps are the little lamps that you would put oil in to help see at night and they changed they evolved over time they went from being just a simple bowl
• 26:00 - 26:30 with like a slight pinch all the way to being you know more enclosed with decoration and so when you see these oil lamps you see how they refined how they made these lamps maybe they realized that if they made them with multiple spouts they'd have they could see better or maybe they were influenced by other people and so we look at pottery typically
• 26:30 - 27:00 to date things and that's one way that we especially do it on the digs like hands-on when we're excavating we say okay we're looking at all the pottery we excavated today we're looking at all these pieces the indicative pieces like the rims and the handles and the bases or if it happens to have decoration on it we look at those pieces and we say okay this is very clearly from the late bronze age or this is very clearly
• 27:00 - 27:30 persian because it has very distinguishing features from those time periods yeah pottery just the everyday stuff that you know you might not think much of and broken pieces and all that they can tell a tale of the past well you're obviously very excited about what's wrong with you anyway um getting up early and digging but i imagine you talk about this with your students a lot too but what are you know the benefits of knowing some things about everyday life
• 27:30 - 28:00 in the ancient world and i i want to try to really ask that question more succinctly maybe they could be theological benefits or just faith benefits you know like has this changed you at all in in terms of how you think of the nature of christian faith by digging things up out of the ground yeah absolutely i don't think you can be involved in this and not have it impact you when i first started
• 28:00 - 28:30 excavating it was history that i could feel history that i could touch it was that tangible connection to the past and i feel that very profoundly still like when i was talking about the fingerprints on the pottery and i think it connects us to the people our own spiritual ancestors in ways that we may not realize how it can because
• 28:30 - 29:00 you're there you're uncovering the stuff and you think these are the people that the hebrew bible talks about these are the people who were connected with their kingdom i mean the site i'm at right now is a site called telhalif it's in what would have been the kingdom of judah and it was destroyed by the assyrians in 701 when they came down to judah after they conquered the northern kingdom of israel
• 29:00 - 29:30 and to think about these people fled this house because the enemy was at the gate and it was either flee or be killed and when i think about their lives and i think about that i'm handling what's left of their physical existence their daily lives that touches me in a way that i think gosh no that's not going to happen for me
• 29:30 - 30:00 when i'm dead i think about how those people lived and how their story is still being told and i wonder what story am i telling with my life and how is that affecting not only my own spiritual journey but those that i encounter on a regular basis and it really makes me wonder if what i'm doing is gonna be as profound as what i find
• 30:00 - 30:30 that those people left behind that's really well put cynthia and maybe you can go more in depth in just you know you talked about their life and and the things that you're uncovering what was family life like in the iron age like what have you learned about these people that are written about in the hebrew bible that are living these uh stories out what was life like yeah you know it's archaeology helps us a lot because the biblical text the hebrew
• 30:30 - 31:00 bible it wasn't we don't get a lot of daily life stuff in it the narratives that and things that we have in the hebrew bible they're mostly talking about significant or monumental people places events and things and sometimes we get a glimpse of what daily life would have been like but that's not the point of the scriptures it's we're not going to find a collection of recipes
• 31:00 - 31:30 in there you know as much as i would love that so when we excavate these houses and we're focusing on daily life so we want to shift our attention from what historically has been within archaeology of ancient israel has been the focus has been the monumental the temples the palaces the city gates all of those reflecting the elite people
• 31:30 - 32:00 and that's really interesting but i'm interested in the everyday your average ancient israelite man woman and child what was their life like and so we when we excavate we need to shift from the monumental things to the everyday and that would be the home and so at halif we're doing what we call household archaeology where we're focusing on houses primarily from the 8th century so
• 32:00 - 32:30 within the second iron age this would be the time of king hezekiah of judah and isaiah the prophet and were uncovering their lives and when i'm studying what we find and then also what we can learn from the biblical text i find that daily life was much more can't decide if i want to choose the word complex or simple
• 32:30 - 33:00 but you hear yeah they mean the same thing you hear from from people who keep talking about the patriarchy within the text right and we hear a lot about that and there have been scholars who have been doing this work far longer than i have and i primarily think of carol myers from duke university where if you are focusing your attention more to the daily life the social structure would have been less patriarchal in fact she would call it heterarchy
• 33:00 - 33:30 where depending on the circumstances there is more room for negotiation and roles of power and authority within the household if we look at the household level who was part of that household well that would be a multi-generational family grandparents there married son and his family that family could include unmarried daughters or aunts it could include
• 33:30 - 34:00 his married sons and their children it could include hired workers and servants and all sorts of people that were related or maybe not related but we're working together on the household farm if you will and when you take a look at the household and just daily life you realize that we are putting on them this notion
• 34:00 - 34:30 of i think what people would call gender roles that people in ancient israel any ancient society really if their one focus on a day-to-day basis is survival you would probably not have that so-called luxury of gender roles that men do this and women do that everybody on board yeah everybody on board especially in times of planting and harvest and if
• 34:30 - 35:00 you think about it too when the men were called to war the women would be left behind at the house and they had to be able to do everything because they had to you know it wasn't oh i'll wait till joseph gets home and have him do it no everyone had to participate regardless of your age regardless of your sex regardless of any
• 35:00 - 35:30 other differentials for the survival of the family and i think that keeps being the one thing i i find as i'm studying these households in this daily life is we keep putting things on it that we're saying oh it's part of our society or we're living biblically well what does that mean you know what does biblical worldview mean and which worldview are you talking about i mean are you yeah
• 35:30 - 36:00 who's world view and if you really want to talk about what life was like in ancient israel i'd be more than happy to have that conversation but i don't think it's gonna sound like the way a lot of people think it would yeah you know we sometimes think and maybe i shouldn't generalize but i'm right anyway uh you know i know people think of you know ancient israelites as sort of running around with their bibles and all you know listening to the voice of god and what god is telling them
• 36:00 - 36:30 about worship about this and that but that's probably not the case right i mean would you agree they're just trying to survive and i sort of think of like in our contemporary culture people who just sort of go to church because that's what they do but they're not actually thinking theologically about everything right you know which is a little unsettling because you read these things like every everybody is supposed to know this and well they don't you know one thing i remember this blew me away when i was in graduate school and i took
• 36:30 - 37:00 my one archaeology course because as i've mentioned i don't want to get dirty or get up who did who did you take that with larry stiger oh yeah who just passed away a week ago or so yeah right around christmas time yeah i had my course with him which was wonderful but i remember these figurines these these uh fertility figurines that apparently thousands of them were found oh yeah in your time period and well you're not supposed to worship with idols but it seems like that was a pretty
• 37:00 - 37:30 common practice yeah you know what were israelites like well they probably did that because that's just what you do when you're religious right exactly we find those figurines they're mostly found in domestic or households in houses yeah like up on a mantle or something like we would have right and so when you think about it you think well these figurines some people think they might represent the canaanite fertility goddess asherah others have argued that it could be
• 37:30 - 38:00 really a number of fertilities but goddesses but they also you see them in different forms and most of them are female figurines there are some male figurines there are some animal figurines but the discussion is that these figurines were used in israelite households to worship at home they all didn't go to jerusalem every week to go to the temple you know most of the time it was done at home
• 38:00 - 38:30 and that the fertility of the people and of the land was of utmost importance and if you're trying to just survive then that's what you're going to pray for you're going to pray for rain you're going to pray that your wife is able to give birth to a healthy child that's going to be able to help on the farm and you can imagine if you're this you know i give this kind of story to my students where if you can imagine you're you know an israelite farmer and say
• 38:30 - 39:00 your canaanite neighbor his field's doing really well but yours isn't and you say to your canaanite neighbor hey how is your field doing so well and they say oh well i pray every day to asherah and i you know offer libation offerings to her you know and you go huh okay well i worship yahweh but i'll also say a prayer to ashura too and you know pete that really throws people off
• 39:00 - 39:30 a lot of times when you say well they worshiped yahweh and and then i tell them well i asked them i said well how much of the old testament have you read so you're snarky too okay good but because it says it very often that the israelites sometimes worship the lord one on one just really well and then other times they didn't and then archaeologically we have inscriptions like they found at cantilla
• 39:30 - 40:00 azrud which is a site way down uh south in sinai where it talks about an inscription that says yahweh and his asherah and so sort of his wife right that they were practicing you know worship of yahweh and and the biblical text states it you just got to make sure you not a lot of people read the old testament anymore i think about the ten commandments you know and you shall have no other gods before me and no idols and you know we read that today and we
• 40:00 - 40:30 say well obviously how hard could that be yeah that's counterintuitive in the ancient world that's that's asking an awful lot of people to have this belief that only one deity is worthy of any sort of worship because you know your neighbor's fields are doing pretty well right and and yours aren't i mean that's i think you know that really drives home the offense of belief in yahweh in an ancient culture it's not an easy thing like don't you remember all those old
• 40:30 - 41:00 stories have don't you guys see miracles every five minutes or something like that they don't see anything right you know they're just trying to hang on and and i to me that's a humanizing part about what you do yeah it is in a way texts they're not they're not these texts that we read are not equipped exactly and again the texts are their purpose isn't to the purpose is you know people talk about how they're written by elite urban men
• 41:00 - 41:30 and so it's not like they're purposely trying to ignore just women for instance but they're ignoring your average person they're ignoring the daily life of the average men women and children except for when it intersects with the story that they're trying to tell and so that's where archaeology really is helpful because it gives that humanizing view of the past yeah absolutely well we're coming to the end of our time
• 41:30 - 42:00 cynthia so thank you so much for really educating us i think on you know archaeology and the basics of what it is you do and why it it matters and intersects our faith is there any any uh projects that you're currently working on or where can people find you online if they want to learn more about the work that you're interested in the work you're doing we welcome people on our excavations you don't have to be a student you don't have to have any prior experience or knowledge you just have to have a good attitude and be somewhat physically
• 42:00 - 42:30 able um but well pete would be out on both accounts [Laughter] the attitude part yes but exactly not allowed after he's you know talking trash about it yeah that's great so that's where would people go to like know how to do that like i'm sure they shouldn't just like buy a ticket to israel and like try to find you well they can contact me directly um you know my jessup email is all over the place but also if
• 42:30 - 43:00 the bar biblical archaeology review their dig issue i think just came out they do a issue every january just for digs and they give a list of the digs that are gonna be going on the following summer and to give you a breakdown of what time period they're on what they're working on and how much it costs and what the accommodations are like and you know all those sorts of details
• 43:00 - 43:30 and when they're digging and how to apply to go on a dig and they also have some scholarships you can apply for too that's excellent i'm thinking maybe i should you should you can come with me i have four little kids so i don't mind getting up in the morning or getting dirty or being away for six months exactly the digs are normally you have to go usually you can they want you to volunteer for at least two weeks and the digs are usually four weeks long oh man well yeah that'll be fortunate if
• 43:30 - 44:00 i say i have to go for two weeks yeah i'm on facebook i'm on twitter i'm on instagram and all my digs and when i take students or tours over to israel do you instagram your actual digs like pictures and post them yeah i'll put them on facebook and instagram and twitter you know i've got my profile website at jessup.edu and projects yeah i'm always working on projects so last year
• 44:00 - 44:30 the five-minute archaeologist book that i edited came out and that's been great because it's one of those books that is trying to help people who are interested in archaeology of ancient israel in particular what do we do and why and who pays for this and do you get to keep things and the idea was to take questions that people often ask an archaeologist when they meet them like on the plane or something and and so there's about 30 different
• 44:30 - 45:00 archaeologists and there's really short essays in there but the next couple of things i'm working on is one i'll be writing and analyzing the house at halif that i've been excavating for the last four years so i'll be at the albright institute in jerusalem there doing that and then i'm co-editing a project with jan ling fu from harvard and carol myers from duke on a handbook of food in the hebrew bible in ancient israel and we're just
• 45:00 - 45:30 getting started on that and that will be with uh tnt clark that's great thank you cynthia that's that's a lot going on and yeah again we appreciate your time with us and you know giving us a glimpse of daily life and archaeology and intersection and all that sort of stuff it was very very interesting it was great to have you well thanks for having me okay folks thanks for listening and remember our pay what you can course everyday life in ancient israel with cynthia schaefer elliott beginning october 6th 8 30 to 10 p.m more info go to
• 45:30 - 46:00 pdense.comforwardslash every day see you next time thanks as always to our team executive producer megan kamik audio engineer dave gerhart creative director tessa stultz marketing wizard reed lively transcriber and community champion stephanie spate and web developer nick streagle for pete jared and all of us here at the bible for normal people thanks for listening
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