"Bad Judeans?" -- a challenging study

Jayhawker Soule · May 25, 2021

Today's Times of Israel caries an article with the title

Bad Judeans? Despite biblical ban, non-kosher fish were eaten in ancient Israel

It notes, in part, ...

... what is clear, he said, is that “when the pentateuchal laws are written down and compiled and the prohibition against pig was being written down, if you will, pig was not being eaten by Judeans. And that had been the case for quite some time. Their Canaanite ancestors had not been eating pig for hundreds of years. And the pentateuchal prohibition against pig was written on that backdrop,” he said.

“That was not the case with the fish. Scaleless fish was being eaten by Judeans for hundreds of years and, when the pentateuchal laws came to be written down, they contradicted long-standing Judean dietary behaviors,” he said.

and ends ...

“We don’t have evidence for any of these [Torah] practices or prohibitions prior to the second century before the common era, that is to say from the period of the Hasmonean Dynasty,” said Adler. “We do not have any evidence that the Judean masses, that your regular every day Judean you would have met on the street of Jerusalem, prior to the middle of the second century BCE had any knowledge of the Torah and or that he observed the rules of the Torah.”

Adler is the first to emphasize the archaeology maxim that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

“Judaism could have begun before the mid-2nd century,” he said, but the lack of evidence currently makes that conjecture. “It could have emerged during the long Hellenistic period — sometime during this time is the best time to be seeking the emergence of Judaism.”

Apparently Adler is working on a book due out in 2022. It could be a fascinating, and for some disturbing, read.

dybmh · May 25, 2021

Jayhawker Soule said:
Scaleless fish was being eaten by Judeans

I wonder how they can distinguish between food consumed by people vs. food fed to the animals.

Jayhawker Soule said:
Apparently Adler is working on a book due out in 2022. It could be a fascinating, and for some disturbing, read.

Ya know, this stuff used to bother me; but not so much anymore. Even if there is evidence that Judeans ate cat fish; there are species of cat fish with scales; so, no big deal.

Jayhawker Soule · May 25, 2021

dybmh said:
I wonder how they can distinguish between food consumed by people vs. food fed to the animals.

Ya know, this stuff used to bother me; but not so much anymore. Even if there is evidence that Judeans ate cat fish; there are species of cat fish with scales; so, no big deal.

It's amazing that a team of degreed scientists missed what to you is so readily apparent.

Jayhawker Soule · May 25, 2021

A Haaretz article adds:

For the era from 950 B.C.E. to 586 B.C.E., which roughly coincides with the First Temple period, an average of 13 percent of fish bones unearthed in Jerusalem and other sites in the biblical Kingdom of Judah came from non-kosher species, the study reports.

These were mainly catfish, with a few sharks and rays mixed in. The latter two would have had to be brought from the Mediterranean. As for the catfish, most of these were native to the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and Mediterranean coastal rivers and swamps, but some belonged to species that lived only in the Nile, and would have had to be imported from Egypt.

This is not entirely surprising, as it is known that the ancient Egyptians established a bustling export business of processed fish – probably dried, salted or smoked – across the entire Eastern Mediterranean, Lernau explains.

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. did not put an end to the eating of non-kosher fish. As Judeans repopulated their capital after the exile and built the Second Temple in the Persian period (539-332 B.C.E), catfish bones continue to feature amongst the leftovers of their meals.

For example, under a tower in the so-called City of David – the original urban nucleus of Jerusalem – archaeologists found 195 fish bones dated to this period, with 36 belonging to non-kosher catfish. For the subsequent Hellenistic era, which begins with Alexander the Great’s conquest of Jerusalem in 332 B.C.E., there are still a few remains of non-kosher fish found across Israel, but the total amount of fish bones dating to this period is too small to determine whether the biblical dietary law was followed or not during this time, Adler and Lernau acknowledge.

Flankerl · May 25, 2021

All of the TaNaKh: For crying out loud stop doing the stuff you aren't supposed to do.

How would any of these findings be challenging or even disturbing?
It falls directly into the story.

Harel13 · Jun 23, 2021

@Flankerl put it best. But in case it may interest anyone for a more in-depth analysis of the study, here's one by two scholars:
Those fishy reports on ancient Israelites eating non-kosher seafood

Harel13 · Jun 23, 2021

Jayhawker Soule said:
It's amazing that a team of degreed scientists missed what to you is so readily apparent.

What was more amazing were the flaws in their study, some of which they themselves admitted to.

Jayhawker Soule · Jun 23, 2021

Harel13 said:
What was more amazing were the flaws in their study, some of which they themselves admitted to.

Perhaps not amazing but certainly interesting and worth noting. Would you mind providing a link to those admissions (or did I miss it)?

Harel13 · Jun 23, 2021

Jayhawker Soule said:
Perhaps not amazing but certainly interesting and worth noting. Would you mind providing a link to those admissions (or did I miss it)?

You probably missed it. It's in the study. Here is the stuff I noticed:

a. These scholars noted that when researchers find bones that are punctured, then they know that the fish were not consumed but rather, the fishbones were used as tools or jewelry. Having read the study a few times, I did not see that they ever stated that all of the bones that took part in the study were unpunctured ones. Could have missed it though, I'm not perfect.

b. The scholars chose to include in the survey sites that they themselves admit are accepted as Plishti sites - Ekron, Ashkelon and Timna - i.e. non-Jewish sites - yet do not explain the purpose of including them in the study. Furthermore, they include in the subgroup of the Roman era study sites that were mostly un-Jewish in that specific period, such as Caesarea and Yerushalayim. Why? This information is never divulged.

See Iron Age I table for example:

c. "Although far less data is currently available from sites associated with the Northern Kingdom, a small assemblage of fish remains from Tel Megiddo suggests that scaleless fish were consumed at northern sites as well."

"While more limited data is available to-date from sites associated with the Northern Kingdom, there is little reason to think that scaleless fish were consumed to a lesser degree there than in Judah (the assemblage from Iron IIA loci at Tel Reḥov notwithstanding)."

Despite admitting that there are too few findings from the Kingdom of Israel (AKA "The Northern Kingdom"), the scholars conclude that there is no reason to believe that fish consumption habits between the two kingdoms were any different. The logic appears to be an ages-old assumption that every single site in Israel developed and evolved culturally at the same rate as the other sites. This is incredibly flawed logic that has already been disproven within the archeological world a number of times. For this reason, it was believed for many years that proto-Hebrew (Phoenician) evolved from proto-Canaanite and simultaneously all Davidic or Solomonic sites adopted the Phoenician writing. This has been disproven upon the discovery of proto-Canaanite texts dated to the 10th and 9th centuries, a time that was seemingly entirely Phoenician already. Similarly, it was widely believed that all Canaanite towns moved from bronze tools to iron ones simultaneously. Again, findings do not match the assumption. The entirety of Israel did not develop in the same manner. This is a flawed model pushed by archeologists from the USA and Europe who lacked an understanding of the history and geography of the region (as noted by archeologist Dr. Chagai Misgav). Why continue adhering to the flawed model?

d. "While we should note the almost complete absence of scaleless fish remains at Tel Reḥov (especially in Iron IB loci) and the small number of such remains at Tel Miqne, there seems to be little reason to view the data from these sites as reflecting some kind of food taboo."

The scholars note that hardly any to no scaleless fishbones were found in Tel Mikne (Ekron) and Tel Rechov, but this fact, apparently, is not evidence of any social fish taboo in those places. Why? Seriously, where does this assumption come from? Should the same be said of the widely-accepted pig taboo? "Lack of pig bones don't point to a pig-eating taboo"?

One last point:

e. Conflating questionable theories of Biblical Criticism while ignoring other aspects of the Tanach, all within a study that is supposed to present the seemingly objective results of the study seems not very objective at all.

"Bad Judeans?" -- a challenging study

Jayhawker Soule

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dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש

Jayhawker Soule

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Jayhawker Soule

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Flankerl

Well-Known Member

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai

Jayhawker Soule

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Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai