Archaeologists Find a Stone Quarry from the Time of Jesus in Nazareth

[Music] begins in 2001 when family from the neighboring village Reina who owns this land were flattening out the area in order to build a gas station [Music] and they brought an attractor they removed this part of the mountain II love that part of the hill over there and when they were removing this part of the hill they happened upon a cave underground cabin now these realities Authority inspector for the area was was driving by and he noticed antiquities [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] the Israel Antiquities Authority conducted a three-day probe under the direction of dr. David a meat that he doesn't want and he found here was about six hundred cores from stone vessels and he was able to determine that this was a quarry and a workshop for the production of stone gothic in the first century BCE during the time of Herod the Jews invent a new family of vessels this new family of drinking cups food bowls and storage jars or made out of stone instead of the traditional clay archaeologists found these vessels all across the country but only in the Jewish sights okay so for example in Sumeria where there were Samaritans we don't have pencils we don't have these system lists on the cities of the Decapolis Beit Shean none a single fragment of a stone vessel but in the area of the pariah Jews we do have stone vessels okay it's couldn't be clearer the distribution is only where we have Jews so the question arose why why these stone vessels were only used by the Jews the answer has to do with the practice of the Jewish law from a textual perspective the first reference we have to use Jewishness in stone vessels is in John chapter 3 Gospel John 2:6 in the Gospel of John chapter 2 Jesus performs the miracle of turning water into wine this water was held in six jars but not any type of jars it says these jars were made of town and it says that the reason for it was the purity law of the Jews but why stone and not clay why was this important for the Jews and why did they use clay for 1,500 years since Moses and started making stone vessels only during the time of Herod later we find in the rabbinic sources the rabbi's assume that that stone is a material which does not become impure so any decimated stone cannot become impure where did that come from it doesn't say anything about this in the Torah but I think actually that's exactly the point according to Leviticus chapter 11 verses 32 to 34 if something unclean touches an item made of wood cloth skin or sack then this item becomes unclean however it can be purified again by putting it in water but items made of clay cannot become pure again once unclean instead they must be broken and here's the interesting part stone is not mentioned in this list of materials so at the time of Herod the Jewish entrepreneurs conceived a brilliant idea what appears to be going on is that at this point in time people are interpreting if stone is an analyst it doesn't become impure at all and so they some entrepreneurs everywhere the second stone doesn't come impure make so now so Pat is that how do these thunders work my understanding is that you would have stone vessels in your home and you don't have to worry when they become your fire you would've come with you're probably it is the impure people in the house way to use the stimulus because they are the ones that would make the pottery impaired and then the pure people would use the the pottery that's my it's my assumption so what are we looking at this is where stone nothing were produced in which function both as a quarry to remove the raw material and as a workshop where the vessels were threatened and all along on the walls on the floor what's we have left of the ceiling there pick marks from from the ancient warriors this is the cup this is the Mira ago most of your own stone exactly so this is this is the mug itself this is the real thing this is the real thing but it broke at some point during production and possibly over here and you can see the marks from the chisel from the blade that was used to produce it it broke so they discarded it okay this is production waste this is what would have become the handle we have production waste like this from all stages of production and so we have you know things like this that are worked a little bit more work a little bit more and then it broke and then it just discarded it's actually I just had the idea a few days ago of taking pictures of the various stages of production and turning event like a movie [Music] [Music] another kind is is a different shape this is a bulb okay this would eventually become a bowl so I have here just for you get an idea that this is worked almost to the end it still has the marks this was turned on the lathe this wasn't made by hand this was turned ugly if you can see the lines so this is this is stone this just knocks it down this is stone this is the stone that Tristan taught not glazed I'm looking if the diameter is exactly the same as this so this would have been put on a lathe turned and become this it's the same kind of tools the same kind of source of pottery turning wheel turning I think this is know something like a woman knows that I how excited I got when we admit Joseph yeah the carpenter at the Nazareth of the village because the tools that he was using I mean this is these are the kinds of tools the chisel and then put on the lid so I think it was the same kind of a skill that was used for working the stone how those are work used for working wood it's a similar kind of idea that's very very stuff so there's a technical job not it's not a Potter's job Tecton okay so if you had a tech tone from the area you know I mean the tech tones that were working here came from the air you guys didn't catch them yeah where I understood what you're implying the check tones that were working here came from the earth until recently I thought that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters but this knowledge comes from an incorrect translation in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament Joseph and Jesus are described as Acton's which means a builder and it applies both to carpenters and stonemasons and since this site is located just a few miles from downtown Nazareth Joseph and Jesus could have used this quarry one of the craziest things is that this side is located just half a mile from the home where I grew up [Music] the home where my parents still live today and when I was a boy I used to explore these hills not knowing what lies beneath and now it is incredible to find out that Jesus might have possibly in here work with these stones and took them to Nazareth what interests me most is the question of until when were Jews producing and using these stone whistles today no Jew uses stone vessels for purity purposes it's nothing today nor for many many hundreds of years and the reason is that Jews no longer keep the purity laws so they're still here and they're leftovers from that so for example hand washing that's still just it's a left or it's not really the purity was in terms of the purity of vessels beds chairs cooking pots anything like that nobody nobody keeps the laws anymore you don't I mean you go to a Jewish home and ask where do you break all your pottery that's impure don't look at you and what are you talking about it's just not done the most observant poem doesn't keep the laws yes these are the laws that are in Leviticus no they start keeping them I think people should know about this this is something which people tend to not really know about it it's super-super people for understanding life and times in the first century purity was a big deal this is something that people were thinking about all the time you wake up in the morning and you think about your purity status okay you go out to work if you're working in the fields if you're working in the vineyard and you're crushing grapes you need to think about if you're pure or not because if you're impure you're gonna be in the grapes and the wine impure if you work in a Olive Press and you need to know what your purity status is because if you are impure you're gonna be making the olive oil this is something which affects daily life it affects if you go to the marketplace and you come back from the marketplace did I come into contact that I brush up against somebody who is impure marketplace you have no idea who's there maybe it's someone from a different sect maybe it's someone who doesn't have the same kind of understanding the purity laws as I do maybe I can't trust them so the assumption is I come back from the marketplace I'm going to immerse myself before I sit down to eat where do we find that does it sound familiar Martin I'm returning for the marketplace all the Jews would immerse before eating the message that Apostle Paul preached would have been revolutionary to the pious Jews just imagine having invested your entire life in observing the pure laws to gain favor with God and then have someone tell you that you no longer need to keep them it was revolutionary to some who accepted this message with joy but to others it could have been an insult but this freedom that Apostle Paul preached the freedom that God provides to all who believe in Jesus changed the course of history forever we are so thankful for dr. Jonathan Adler for painting a better picture of what life looked like in the first century how difficult the purity law was and on top of that all he also gave us a very special gift so this is this is I don't see very clearly here the the chip marks there's only chisel marks on one side so I'm not convinced that this was the beginning claiming like this could have been in a part of the wall or something from the cave thousand years ago [Music] here is the stone that dr. Adler gave us as a gift this is 2000 years old it's uh it's pretty incredible to even hold us you can see the chisel marks here so somebody started making this into a drinking cup what somebody started 2,000 years ago we are going to finish it today and while we're doing this check out dr. Adler's website it is incredible there's so much information there is done so much work on the subject of purification laws and much much more you'll really enjoy it and also check out the our Yale University website where dr. Adler teaches it is beautiful located on the Judean Hills a great place to study archaeology indeed and you can find the links in the description of this video below it looks pretty good what do you think [Music]

Channel: Sergio & Rhoda in Israel

Views: 143,405

Rating: 4.918189 out of 5

Keywords: Sergio and Rhoda, Israel, Travel, Bible, Travel in Israel, Einot Amitai, Stone Vessels, Clay Vessels, Purification laws of the Jews, purity law, levitical law, daily jewish life, jew life

Id: bB59Byju_5c

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 18 2018