A Carved Stone Block Upends Assumptions About Ancient Judaism

The New York Times ^ | 12/8/15 | Isabel Kershner

[Faith Presses On]

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — The carved stone block is about the size of an occasional table. It has held its secrets for two millenniums. Whoever engraved its enigmatic symbols was apparently depicting the ancient Jewish temples.

But what makes the stone such a rare find in biblical archaeology, according to scholars, is that when it was carved, the Second Temple still stood in Jerusalem for the carver to see. The stone is a kind of ancient snapshot.

And it is upending some long-held scholarly assumptions about ancient synagogues and their relationship with the Temple, a center of Jewish pilgrimage and considered the holiest place of worship for Jews, during a crucial period, when Judaism was on the cusp of the Christian era.

Known as the Magdala Stone, the block was unearthed in 2009 near the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, where a resort and center for Christian pilgrims was going to be built. Government archaeologists are routinely called in to check for anything old and important that might be destroyed by a project, and in this case they discovered the well-preserved ruins of a first-century synagogue and began excavating.

[Skooz]

Millenniums?

Really?

[Red Badger]

Yes, but in my case the plural of Millenia would be foolish. Never, ever buy a Mazda Millenia or its subsequent renaming ‘626’. It should have been called the ‘666’...................

[Defiant]

My roommate had a 626, back around 1983. It was indeed a piece of crap.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks a fool in paradise and RB for the pings.

[lonevoice]

Very cool

[Pride in the USA]

A very significant find.

[dsc]

“Don’t you mean the dumminati?”

Polysyllabificationizing is strictly forbiddenated.

[BlueDragon]

Polysyllabificationizing is strictly forbiddenated.

You gentlemen have likely seen this before, but still, a blast from the past for old time's sake;
Extract from http://www.kombu.de/twain-2.htm

The Awful German Language

Mark Twain

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty.

If one has the time, the opening preceding portions, inclusive of where the bird and the rain and a blacksmith's shop are being discussed as found, apparently from some kind of German language grammar primer, prior to the above blockquoted extract, are delightful.