The first installation to be identified as an ancient Jewish ritual bath (
miqweh
) was discovered by Yigael Yadin at Masada in 1964, and consisted of a stepped pool connected to an adjacent pool via a hole in the wall shared by the two installations. Yadin identified one installation as the immersion pool of the
miqweh
, and the second as an
̓ôṣār
(lit. ‘reservoir’), used to ritually purify the water in the immersion pool. Yadin’s explanation regarding the functioning of this double-pool ritual bath has gone unchallenged since it was first suggested half a century ago, and set the stage for future identifications of
̓ôṣār
installations found adjacent to other Second Temple-period ritual baths. This article argues that the
̓ôṣār
is an innovation of the modern period, and that the commonly accepted view that an
̓ôṣār
was employed in ritual baths dating to as early as the Second Temple period is no more than an unqualified anachronism.
Chalk vessels became common at Jewish sites throughout the Southern Levant beginning in the late first century BCE, apparently because Jews considered stone to be impervious to ritual impurity. It is commonly thought that a drastic decline in the phenomenon occurred after 70 CE as a direct result of the temple’s destruction—on the assumption that the central motivation for Jews’ observance of the purity regulations was the temple cult. These notions are reconsidered here in light of an impressive assemblage of chalk vessels recently unearthed at Shuʿafat, occupied during the brief 70–132 CE interwar period. The character of this assemblage, presented here preliminarily, suggests that both use and production of chalk vessels continued unabated for decades after 70 CE, contradicting the notion that the chalk vessel industry was reliant on a functioning temple and that observance of the purity laws was inexorably linked with the Jerusalem cult.
The origins and early history of the pentateuchal prohibition against eating finless and scaleless aquatic species (Lev 11:9-12; Deut 14:9-10) has yet to merit a detailed investigation. The present study is an initiatory attempt to attend to this lacuna by analysing 56 zooarchaeological assemblages of fish remains from 30 sites throughout the southern Levant from the Late Bronze Age through to the end of the Byzantine period (ca. 1550 BCE to 640 CE). A central conclusion of the study is that consumption of scaleless fishespecially catfish-was not uncommon at Judean sites throughout the Iron Age and Persian periods. Unlike the pentateuchal prohibitions against eating pork, the ban against finless and scaleless aquatic species apparently deviated from longstanding Judean dietary habits. The pentateuchal writers appear to have legislated this dietary restriction despite the lack of an old and widespread dietary tradition at its root. This conclusion should encourage us to rethink commonly held assumptions that other pentateuchal dietary proscriptions emerged out of earlier dietary 'taboos'.
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