Evolving monotheism site
M6937att Gi1050wer
ratehr than being some kind of revelation from one high. Then note there is
just enough bible story mention for this story to be rewritten as the
discovery being the export of monotheism to the region.
Lebanese news
Temple reveals secrets of the one God
Archaeologists believe they have uncovered origins of monotheism in northern
Jordan
Stephanie Saldana
Daily Star Staff
5-3-02E.JPG (18512 bytes) AMMAN: In a remote corner of Jordan,
archaeologists have uncovered a room that may transform the way we think
about God.
Its massive stones still clinging to the damp hills of the Jordan River
Valley, the Migdol Temple at first appears to be little more than an ancient
network of fortified walls. Yet when Jordanian and Australian archaeologists
working at the site of ancient Pella began piecing it together in 1997, it
didn't take them long to realize that they were reconstructing something
extraordinary: a 3,600-year-old textbook in stone.
The Migdol Temple charts within a single room one of the most important
events in human history: the transition from polytheism to the belief in one
God.
Measuring an impressive 29 by 22 meters, the Migdol Temple is the largest
Bronze and Iron Age Temple known to man, an enormous structure justified in
its size and emotional impact to the worship of a single God, and which may
at one point have functioned as a four-storey temple to the Canaanite god
El. These days, however, religious and historical scholars are far less
excited about the temple's size than by the magnitude of its historical
importance.
Continuously in use from 1650 BC to 850 BC , the Migdol Temple holds within
it hundreds of religious artifacts that point to five very distinct phases
of occupation and rebuilding.
Constructed, destroyed, and reconstructed time and time again, the Migdol
Temple records changing cult practices during the Canaanite Hyksos
ascendancy, then again during the Egyptian New Kingdom Empire, the
Philistine Era, and the Age of the Local Kingdoms.
A stone spectator to a period of intense religious and political upheaval,
every single one of the periods bruised, scarred, and left its mark on the
temple, transforming the unassuming circular stones into a time capsule that
is transforming the understanding of religious history.
Archaeologists have already found 250 artifacts from each of the periods of
occupation, and that means that the Migdol Temple is no longer being seen as
simply a temple.
Scholars are hoping that this simple stone room will help tell the story of
God.
Today, a scholar with enough archeological and historical background can
view the evolving layers like an epic film describing the birth of
monotheism. Stephen Bourke, the University of Sydney archaeologist who has
led the Pella excavations since 1992, explains that the temple allows
historians to actually "read" religious history through the artifacts it
left behind, such as idols and the remains of a "Holy of Holies."
"The Pella Midgol Temple, because of its many building and occupation
phases, its richness in finds, effectively contains local religious history
fossilized in stone," he told The Daily Star over e-mail. Moreover, the
"local religious history" in the Migdol Temple just so happens to have
occurred at the same time and in the same region as the founding of
religious monotheism recorded in the Old Testament. The Migdol Temple was in
use during the arrival of the Israelites and the establishment of the
kingdoms of Israel and Judah an event that marked the foundation of Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. It is in this respect that the excavations have had
another bit of exciting and somewhat shocking religious history to reveal.
During the approximately 800 years of its occupation, those who used the
Migdol Temple slowly changed their Bronze Age polytheistic beliefs into Iron
Age "henotheistic" beliefs, a period during which officials allowed
communities to believe in more than one god, but encouraged them to
concentrate their veneration on one god over all others. Known as "state
monotheism," the most famous example of this change in belief is that of
Yahweh in Israel. But according to Bourke, archaeological evidence is
revealing that this new emphasis on one god was not reserved for the
Israelites, but occurred simultaneously in several nation states throughout
the Middle East, with Yahweh in Israel, Hadad in Damascus, Milkom in Amman,
Chemos in Moab (in present-day Jordan) and Qos in Edom (in present-day
Israel).
The newest finds at the Migdol Temple suggest that the region had its own
distinct form of monotheism, and that monotheism arose in several areas of
the Middle East at once in order to unify small nation-states.
"The Migdol Pella Temple evidence suggests that the pathway to national
consciousness occurs in many different centers at around the same time in
effectively the same way," said Bourke.
"There is nothing unique about the Israelite experience, as the same sort of
development happened at the same time, all over the region. And the Pella
Temple records this unfolding in northern Jordan." And the excavations are
only the beginning of Pella, a site that has slowly been transforming into
an archaeological textbook of Middle Eastern history. Unlike other Roman
cities that have become archaeological theme parks, excavation at Pella has
continued methodically for over a century.
Described by Bourke as "Jordan's Jericho," today Pella is a contender for
the title as one of the oldest inhabited cities on earth, with nearly 9,000
years of occupation, including thriving periods during the Decapolis and
Byzantine eras. When excavators went to work on the Migdol Temple, they had
to dig through, literally, 30 meters of ancient cities.
"The site of Pella is unique, not for its Roman columns or its Byzantine
churches, but for the length of its occupation," Burke insists. With the
longest sequence in Jordan, the Pella site allows archaeologists to study
how human culture in a single place evolved over 10,000 years. "No other
site can study history in such depth," Burke concludes. "That's why Pella
matters."
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