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In the systematic excavation project of the temple area in the lower city of Gath, a team from Bar-Ilan University has overseen the reconstruction of the plants used in Philistine rituals.The mysterious culture of the Philistines that flourished during the Iron Age (1200-604 BCE) profoundly affected the southern Levant's cultural history, agronomy, and dietary customs. More than a quarter century of excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath in central Israel, identified as the biblical Gath of the Philistines and the home of Goliath, has provided a unique window into the world of this ancient civilization.In the systematic excavation project of the temple...

Homebrewers will soon be able to time travel with their taste buds and brew beer similar to what the Philistines in Goliath’s hometown of Gath drank. An interdisciplinary team of researchers, archaeologists and brewmasters in Israel first isolated 5,000-year-old yeast in 2019, as published in the peer-reviewed mBio journal in 2019. But now, the fruits of that discovery are about to become available for hobby brewers and sourdough aficionados everywhere, when the first batch of commercially available ancient yeast ships in December. Pre-orders are open now. “We want to create an opportunity for every person to connect with this story,...

We know that King Solomon fed his guests beef, lamb, venison, and poultry, in addition to bread, cakes, dates, and other delicacies. But … bananas?The amount of water needed to grow bananas makes them an unlikely fruit in ancient Israel, but a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported some unexpected remains were scraped off the teeth of Canaanites and Philistines who died in the late second millennia B.C., the period of Solomon’s reign. Teeth don’t lie: They ate bananas.The dietary evidence indicates “a dynamic and complex exchange network connecting the Mediterranean with South...

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.( Judges 13:1)The Book of Judges is a divine record of the early years of the History of Israel, as they took possession (or failed to take possession) of the Promised Land. It is a tedious and repetitious record consisting of a recurring cycle, in which Israel initially relied on God in Faith, and set out in Battle against her enemies to take the Land, and then would prevail for a season, possess the...

JERUSALEM — Goliath the Greek? Human remains from an ancient cemetery in southern Israel have yielded precious bits of DNA that a new study says help prove the European origin of the Philistines — the enigmatic nemeses of the biblical Israelites. The Philistines mostly resided in five cities along the southern coast of what is today Israel and the Gaza Strip during the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago. In the Bible, David fought the Philistine giant Goliath in a duel, and Samson slew a thousand of their warriors with the jawbone of an ass. Many archaeologists have proposed...

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S MESSAGE J U D G E S CHAPTER 16 When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. Having put him to sleep on her lap, she called a man to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him. Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are...

The Bible In Paintings 2 ENCOURAGEMENT FOR APPRECIATING AND APPLYING GOD'S MESSAGE J U D G E SCHAPTER 15 Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned up the shocks and standing grain, together with the vineyards and olive groves. 1 2 3 4 When the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” they were told, “Samson, because his wife was given to his friend.” So...

When the Aramean king laid siege to biblical Gath 2,800 years ago, the defenders resorted to desperate measures ...the Gittites manufactured the arrowhead from bone when the city was besieged by Hazael’s forces, around 830 B.C.E., because they were short of raw materials to make metal weapons. ...Testament to Hazael’s military power are impressive siege works, including a massive trench and several towers, archaeologists have found surrounding Gath and dated to the time of the Aramean onslaught. Under Hazael, the northern Levantine kingdom of Aram, with its capital in Damascus, briefly expanded into a mini-empire that controlled a good chunk...

VALLEY OF ELAH—After local homegrown terrorist David slew Goliath with a fully automatic, high-capacity sling, Philistine activists began calling for common-sense bans on the dangerous weapons of mass destruction. "Nobody needs a sling that holds five rocks just to go hunting or protect their sheep," said one Philistine woman with pink hair and several face piercings. "This tragedy could have been avoided if only David were forced to use one of the old bolt-action model slings." Investigators believe the shepherd boy, radicalized by religious texts, built up an arsenal of approximately five hollow-point, armor-piercing rocks, "a deadly stockpile." "Can you...

Between 1997 and 2016, researchers at an excavation near Ashkelon in Israel examined the remains of more than one hundred humans, remains that dated from the 12th to 6th centuries before Christ. The researchers hoped to find human DNA in order to answer an old question: Who were the Philistines? Where did they come from? As it turns out, the Philistines were exactly who the Bible says they were, and they came from where the Bible says they did. Amos 9 speaks of God bringing up the Philistines from Caphtor, just as he brought Israel out of Egypt. Deuteronomy 2...

While uncovering an impressive destruction level dating to the second half of the ninth century B.C.E., when Gath was the largest of the five cities of the Philistines and perhaps the largest city in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age, excavators found an exceptionally well preserved horned altar reminiscent of the Israelite horned altars described in the Bible (Exodus 27:1–2; 1 Kings 1:50)... But why does this altar have only two horns, when we know from the Bible and excavated examples that the altars of both the Israelites and, later, the Philistines, typically had four horns? The fact...

The team compiled a database of plant remains extracted from Bronze and Iron Ages sites in the southern Levant, both Philistine and non-Philistine... The species they brought are all cultivars that had not been seen in Israel previously... edible parts of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) which originates in western Europe; the sycamore tree (Ficus sycomorus), whose fruits are known to be cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean, especially Egypt, and whose presence in Israel as a locally grown tree is first attested to in the Iron Age by the presence of its fruit; and finally, cumin (Cuminum cyminum), a spice...

The now-lackluster central Israeli town of Yavneh was apparently once the center of a thriving drug scene, according to Israeli researchers. Cutting-edge technology has allowed archaeologists to find traces of hallucinogenic materials, used over 3,000 years ago by the biblical Philistine people for spiritual rituals, Haaretz reported Thursday. Mind-altering potions and plants were commonplace in many ancient cultures, which believed that using the substances intensified the mystical experience of worshipers. In some cases, in which adherents had to endure physically painful ceremonies, the substances also served to numb the pain. In an upcoming symposium in Jerusalem's Hebrew University, aptly titled...

BET SHEMESH, ISRAEL—Investigators working with the Israel Antiquities Authority have claimed David used an illegal "ghost" sling in his famous battle with Goliath. Experts allege the ghost sling would have been untraceable, which would account for why Goliath was caught off guard so easily. "Goliath, a man who stood about 7'10" by modern reckoning, would not have been defeated so easily if David had a legal sling registered with the proper authorities," said Dr. Phil Gath, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "David probably used a 3D printer or something, maybe he just stole some leather and grabbed...

And after a time he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and, behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion. And he took thereof in his hands, and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them, and they did eat: but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcase of the lion. So his father went down unto the woman: and Samson made there a feast; for so used the young men...

...They have also found evidence of a fierce fire, burnt mud bricks, white ash, burnt wood and numerous destroyed ceramic vessels - which coincides with the biblical account of the city being raided by the Amalekites... Scholars have been divided over the location of Ziklag, with as many as 12 potential sites put forward as contenders. But Garfinkel and co-director Dr Kyle Keimer, Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Ancient Israel at Macquarie University, say the assembled evidence gives Khirbet el-Rai a strong claim to be the lost biblical city... The site has yielded a wealth of artefacts including rich...

The Philistines left behind plenty of pottery. But part of the mystery surrounding the ancient people was that very little biological trace of them had been found -- until 2013. That's when archaeologists excavating the site of the biblical city of Ashkelon found what they say is the first Philistine cemetery ever discovered. They say they have uncovered the remains of more than 200 people there. The discovery was finally unveiled Sunday at the close of a 30-year excavation by the Leon Levy Expedition, a team of archaeologists from Harvard University, Boston College, Wheaton College in Illinois and Troy University...

Trude Dothan, the doyenne of Philistine archaeology, passed away recently at the age of 93. A pioneer in Israeli archaeology, Dothan was a world-renowned expert on the Philistines. She excavated at Athienou (Cyprus), Hazor, Ein Gedi, Tel Qasile, Tell ‘Aitun, Deir el-Balah and Tel Miqne (Biblical Ekron). The excavations at Tel Miqne, which she codirected with Seymour Gitin between 1981 and 1996, unearthed evidence that proved to be dramatically significant to our understanding of Philistine history and culture. Dothan, who had been a Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published many studies on the Philistines, on the...

Midwife Mercada Dasa lived in the Old City of Jerusalem until 1948. In her attic she raised an unusual pet -- a white female snake about a meter and a half long -- and fed it sugar cubes. Just before the entry of the Jordanian Legion she left the besieged city with her family and her pet remained behind. That a midwife, whose family lived in Jerusalem since the time of the Second Temple, carried on a tradition of feeding white female snakes was part of the family's lore, but not something anyone considered significant. Now Mercada's grandson, Benny Avigdory,...

Eric Altschuler from the University of California at San Diego and his colleagues say that Samson showed signs of no fewer than six of the seven behaviours associated with antisocial personality disorder. Samson routinely got into fights, and once killed 1000 Philistines single-handedly and then gloated over it, showing no remorse. He also showed a reckless disregard for his own safety when he told Delilah, a woman who'd tried to kill him three times before, the secret of his strength. The researchers note that Samson also burned Philistine fields, which showed both his impulsivity and his inability to conform to...