(INST No.1) ISRAEL — ARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORICAL RECORD

An Evidence File of Archaeological Finds, Primary Documents, Maps, and Historical Records

INSTALLMENT NO. 1

LET THE HISTORICAL RECORD SPEAK

There is a great deal of argument today about Jews, Arabs, “Palestine,” and the history of the land.

Rather than begin with modern political slogans, let us begin with evidence.

The Jewish connection to this land did not originate with the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, with the Zionist movement of the nineteenth century, or with the British Mandate.

Archaeology takes us much farther back.

THE 2,000-YEAR-OLD MIKVEH AT KIRYAT GAT

A remarkable archaeological discovery at Kiryat Gat provides an excellent place to begin.

Archaeologists uncovered an approximately 2,000-year-old Jewish ritual bath, or mikveh, dating to the Second Temple period.

A mikveh was a specially constructed pool used for ritual purification according to Jewish religious practice.

“Second Temple period” refers broadly to the centuries during which the rebuilt Jewish Temple stood in Jerusalem, ending with its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE. Thus, this discovery belongs to the historical world surrounding the time of Jesus and the earliest Christians.

The Kiryat Gat structure was considered sufficiently important that, rather than destroy it during modern construction, the approximately 25-ton installation was removed for preservation.

Whatever conclusions one draws concerning present-day politics, an ancient Jewish ritual installation of this kind constitutes physical archaeological evidence of Jewish religious life in the land approximately two millennia ago.

And it is only one piece of a much larger archaeological record.

Ancient Jewish coins, Hebrew inscriptions, seals, synagogues, ritual installations, manuscripts, settlements, and discoveries throughout Jerusalem and elsewhere document Jewish civilization in the land centuries before the seventh-century Arab-Muslim conquest.

NOW MOVE FORWARD TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine explicitly recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home there.

The Mandate provided for facilitating Jewish immigration and encouraging close Jewish settlement while also requiring protection of the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish population.

There is another historical fact that is frequently obscured by modern terminology:

“PALESTINIAN” DID NOT EXCLUSIVELY MEAN “PALESTINIAN ARAB.”

During the British Mandate, Palestine was a territorial and civic designation.

There was Palestinian citizenship, and Jews as well as Arabs lived under the designation Palestine.

Article 7 of the Mandate specifically provided for facilitating the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who took up permanent residence there.

Consequently, seeing the word “Palestine” on an old document, institution, passport, stamp, coin, or other Mandate-era object does not by itself demonstrate the existence of an exclusively Arab national entity bearing today's meaning of “Palestinian.”

THE ARAB POPULATION MUST ALSO BE DESCRIBED ACCURATELY

Historical accuracy works both ways.

Arab communities existed in the country before the major modern Zionist immigration waves. Nineteenth-century surveys document permanent towns and villages.

At the same time, population and settlement were highly uneven, and substantial regions were much more sparsely populated.

Therefore, neither extreme formulation accurately describes the historical evidence.

It was neither simply “an entirely empty land” nor a land lacking an ancient Jewish civilization.

Likewise, a specifically Palestinian Arab political movement existed before Yasser Arafat. A primary document preserved by the Library of Congress records the Third Arab Palestine Congress of 1921.

Arafat therefore did not invent Palestinian Arab political identity.

But that fact does nothing to erase the vastly older Jewish historical connection demonstrated by archaeology and ancient documentary evidence.

AND THAT IS PRECISELY WHY ARCHAEOLOGY MATTERS.

The Jewish people's connection to this land is not merely a twentieth-century political assertion.

It is:

written in ancient inscriptions,

stamped upon coins,

preserved in manuscripts,

built into synagogues and ritual baths,

and buried beneath the soil itself.

We do not need to erase Arab history in order to establish Jewish history.

Nor do we need modern political slogans to manufacture an ancient Jewish connection to the land.

The evidence already exists.

So rather than asking people to begin by choosing which modern political narrative they prefer, this series will take a different approach:

EXAMINE THE ARTIFACTS.

READ THE PRIMARY DOCUMENTS.

STUDY THE MAPS.

CHECK THE DATES.

THEN REASON FROM THE EVIDENCE.

That is the purpose of this continuing series:

🇮🇱 ISRAEL — ARCHAEOLOGY & HISTORICAL RECORD
An Evidence File of Archaeological Finds, Primary Documents, Maps, and Historical Records

Claim noted. Evidence examined.

— End of Installment No. 1 —