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LordOverThis t1_iu1mx8m wrote

Reply to comment by phil_style in Ancient City of Magdala Unearthed Near Tiberias, Israel by GullyShotta

Someone will correct me if I’m mistaken, but as I understand it, this kind of dramatic overselling of an archaeological find with significant leaps of logic is extremely common for “finds” in Israel.

Like “we found a pottery shard, therefore Joshua and the Battle of Jericho!” (an example I made up) kind of fluffery goes on a lot.

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MoreGaghPlease t1_iu3150s wrote

A lot of it is also about how media portrays “biblical archeology / history” and tends to talk over the actual academics.

Like I remember a scholar a few years back who wrote a very thoughtful book about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. It was an examination of how different groups around the world have used the legend as a basis to form a communal identity and to orient themselves in relation to their religious texts. And of course media ran the story as ‘new book located the lost tribes of Israel’ or something to that effect.

(Of course, the tribes were never “Lost”, the Hebrew bible says exactly where they went and what they did, which is totally supported by the archeology and external sources and also common sense: the Assyrians forcibly exiled their political elites, many fled south as refugees to Judea, and rural commoners stayed where they were, with many continuing to practice the Israelite tradition all the way through to when Judea was re-established in the Persian period aka ‘the people of the land’ as they’re called in Ezra-Nehemiah).

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mrtrone t1_iu2zed9 wrote

The coin is real, but from about 1000 AD. See links in this thread.

About what you describe, I think the farther back we go, the more speculative it becomes. About discoveries near Israel, I think the question is usually how it relates to the biblical record, which is always of interest to a lot of people.

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