Daniel Vainstub

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev | bgu · Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Throughout this paper, two factors were discussed concerning the feasibility of gathering a few thousand people at the site of Qumran once a year for a period of one week to ten days from Judea, Galilea and possibly, from Transjordan: the existence of suitable roads connecting those regions with Qumran, and the necessary amounts of food and water t...

This paper proposes the discerning of two different original etymons in the biblical Hebrew root אדר . In addition to the one most known, which evolved from the original Protosemitic root ’dr meaning “enormous”, there is another one from the original biradical base dr meaning “abundance”. This root, well attested in other Semitic languages, expande...

In Eilat Mazar’s excavations in the Ophel in Jerusalem, a partially preserved inscription engraved on the shoulder of a pithos was found in 2012 in a context dated to the 10th century BCE. Although close to a dozen interpretations of the inscription have been offered over time, its reading remains highly disputed. All of these interpretations consi...

In the excavations conducted by Y. Shiloh in the City of David in Jerusalem during 1978-1985, an impressive hoard of 45 Hebrew bullae was found in the stratum destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Two of them, stamped by the same seal, were read ‫אוהל‬ ‫בן‬ ‫.לאליקם̇‬ The plene spelling with waw for the vowel o in the name ‫אוהל‬ was a novelty i...

An inscription in early Canaanite script from Lachish, incised on an ivory comb, is presented. The 17 letters, in early pictographic style, form seven words expressing a plea against lice.

The large group of Samaritan magical artifacts that is presented here for the first time comprise a group of thirty-seven bronze Samaritan amuletic rings and pendants and represent a significant contribution to our knowledge of Samaritan amulets in the Late Roman-Byzantine period, as they more than doubled the number of the hitherto known twenty-fo...

Unlike any other group or philosophy in ancient Judaism, the yaḥad sect obliged all members of the sect to leave their places of residence all over the country and gather in the sect’s central site to participate in a special annual ceremony of renewal of the covenant between God and each of the members. The increase of the communities that compose...

In 2015 during refurbishment activities in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, two inscriptions engraved in an inner wall of the cave were revealed. The first one consists of the personal name Tanḥum. The second, published here fully for the first time, reads: רביעקב חזנה ואחוי “Rabb(i)Yaʿaqov the ḥazzān and his brother/s.” The inscription was ex...

On the back of “an archaic figurine of an eastern deity wearing a polosˮ1 discovered in ancient Stageira on the Chalkidiki peninsula in Greece, famous for being the birthplace of Aristotle, was engraved an inscription, from which only a few letters of at least two rows were survived. According to the excavators, the figurine represents a female dei...

The aim of the article is to publish fourteen Hebrew, two Phoenician, and one Edomite ostraca from the David and Yemima Jeselsohn’s collection. The provenance of the inscriptions is unknown.

Excavations conducted approximately 100 m west of the Western Wall in 2005–2009 by Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah and Alexander Onn revealed an impressive building, probably a four-room house, that was constructed in the seventh century BCE. The article first discusses inscriptions incised on three pottery fragments that were found in the fills beneath the...

The two unprovenanced Samaritan amulets presented here were donated to the Bible Lands Museum in 2006, and belong to a small but growing group of finds: amulets made of bronze as finger rings or pendants by Samaritan engravers during the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. Hitherto, 22 amulets of this kind have been published (10 rings, 10 pendants,...

A bulla of שבניהו יואב was found in Tel ‘Eton in the southeastern Shephelah. Since the name “Joab” was not used as a personal name from the tenth century BCE onward, it represents the name of the historical founder of his family clan. This clan is to be identified with the Joabites mentioned in 1 Chr 4. The textual and toponymical evidence points t...

We assume that from the beginning, the “w”-shaped Canaanite letter represented the sound š, and the triangular letter the sound ṯ. In fact, the latter was a schematic representation of an elementary Middle-Bronze-Age balance called by the Canaanites ṯql. As a consequence of the shift to š, it disappeared as a letter but remained as a symbol and—lik...

The existence of baby sacrifices in biblical times in the Canaanean culture, as well as in Israel, is a matter of diametrical dispute between scholars in the last eight decades. Paradoxically, the more data relating to this phenomenon is retrieved, the larger the distance between the deviating opinions becomes. Some believe that this phenomenon nev...

The interchange between ʾ and q is well known from Arabic dialectology, as the voiceless uvular plosive /q/ is the standard realization of the letter qâf in Classical Arabic, while in some colloquial dialects it is pronounced as a glottal stop exactly like hamza. This phenomenon is generally considered internal to Arabic, a result of a shift among...

This paper offers an interpretation of the astronomical phenomenon described in Josh 10:12-13 as an annular solar eclipse. According to NASA data, this type of eclipse was seen in the skies of central Israel, where the ancient city of Gibeon was located, on October 30, 1207 BCE . A philological analysis of both Joshua 10 and Habakkuk 3 shows that t...

The two stelae published here entered the collection of the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem decades ago. Although their exact provenance is unknown, the fact that they belong to a well-known kind of artifacts enables us to supply significant information about them. Undoubtedly, the stelae belong to the massive corpus of more than six thousand epigraph...

Near the Bedouin township of Hura in the northern Negev, in a monastery dated to the 6th-7th centuries was recently discovered a bilingual Greek-Christian Palestinian Aramaic inscription. The purpose of this article is to publish the CPA part of it. As can be clearly seen, the CPA text was executed by two different hands, each of them composing thr...

This article describes and discusses a private Hebrew seal and a fragment of a Hebrew ostracon recently found in an archaeological excavation at Tel Hebron (Roumeida). The items were uncovered in the context of Iron IIB fortification elements, in a layer dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. The seal bears the name Shepatyahu (son...

The ostracon published here was found in a stronghold of the Persian period in the northern Negev. The language of the ostracon is Aramaic, and it is associated contextually with a large corpus of ostraca believed to come from, or are related to, Khirbet el-Kom, a site identified by many as biblical Maqqedah, a name recorded in the present ostracon...

Excavations conducted approximately 100 m west of the Western Wall in 2005-2009 by Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah and Alexander Onn revealed an impressive building, probably a four-room house, that was constructed in the seventh century BCE (Plan 1; see Keel, this volume; Ornan, this volume; Ornan et al., this volume). The article first discusses inscripti...

This paper examines three features common to the biblical narrative of Deborah and Cretan myths. In the biblical story two heroines, Deborah and Jael, bear names of fauna, bee and ibex (mountain goat), respectively. Deborah/bee's prophetic gift enables her to determine the auspicious moment for a victorious battle. Jael/female ibex, gives milk in a...