25:14 So, you are saying the translation controlled how the disciples spoke. Perhaps I would agree that there might be some impact on Paul, but the fishermen? I think they would have heard from Jesus and others perhaps Hebrew Scriptures, but would have “created” their own Greek Konie translation, one reference at a time. I suspect they spoke Greek to “make money.”25:14 How would one evangelize without speaking about our Lord and Savior in the language of the listener? Bizarre world view expressed, as I understand what is being said. 31:41 It seems rather than looking for a community of individual translators discussing things, it could also have been a patron: the librarian at Alexandra, providing funding and having subsequent translators, each with a copy of their predecessor(s) work. Not sure how one would differentiate these two, but I like the latter. 31:41

Ahhh Yezreel! Personally, I was a volunteer on Kibbutz Bet Alpha 1980- just up The Valley and luved that whole area. Years later I did an interview with BBC in the ruins of Megiddo and the interviewer asked a Park Ranger there if she believed in The Last Battle there? She, like many Israeli's and Jews cannot relate to this type of question as they are not familiar with their Tanak! Yet, The Christian's are at least familiar with what they erroneously call- 'Armageddon' (Poor translation!) Yet the prophet (Hosea 1.11 prophesied about Yezreel as in- The Last Great Battle as- 'Great shall be the day of Yezreel' and How Mashiach Returns!!!) Consider as now these days its very foreseeable!

When proud israel continues in the rut "His blood be on us and on our children!", will they stop digging.... ever?

Language is an interesting subject, sabbat also refer to 'full moon'

It is clear that both the Shapira and the Dead Sea scrolls are all forgeries, produced by Shapira himself with a help of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, his fellow Jerusalem contemporary .

yahweh is the adversary

In short ... We don't know when it actually began. But it certainly existed in the Iron Age. Obviously it took longer for rabbinical Judaism to form.

Very fascinating interview.

Why are we so surprised to see “idolatry” among the diaspora when that very thing dominated Hebrew culture after Rehoboam as recorded in the Bible?

Good fantastic talk

My thoughts. And I’m just some random person with no PhD. There’s plenty of “fan fiction” styled writings in the DSS that it could be a case of that. But, in support of the pre existence of it, based on the Elohist words being replaced by the Yahwist words, there seems to have been an intentional merging of the deities El and Yahweh after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom (based on what I gather from many scholars). Almost like the Elohists needed a safe haven after they kingdom’s fall, and the Yahwists saw an opportunity to further their Jerusalem deity and come out on top. So grabbing the old books and changing any place you can to represent the new political correctness seems plausible. But has anyone carbon dated the manuscript? If it’s like 1800’s papyri then it’s definitely a forgery. If it’s 2K then, although possible to find a 2K old blank sheet of “paper” it’s not as likely.

I want to hear more about Elephantine. Please interview him again on further parts of this area :-)

I think the Monty Python version is accurate...

Non existent document based on fake letter of Aristeas

Excellent research

3 hours, seriously?

I am not sure I will get a response to the following post, but here I go. Israel has said that he believes David and Solomon existed. I have no problem with that idea. Still, the stories of Samuel, Saul, David and Solomon intrigue me. To me, they seem somehow separated from those that followed them in the Divided Monarchy. So much is known about them, so little of the kings that followed! Here I bring up a name that may cause an automatic eye roll, David Rohl. I am dubious about his New Chronology, but his discussions of Dadua and others in the Amarna Letters, equating them with figures like David and Saul do intrigue me. For the uninitiated, Dadua = David, and Labayu = Saul in his schema. Israel has talked about similarities between Canaan events in the Amarna Letters and the archeology of the purported time of David and Saul, around three hundred years later. If Dadua can be equated with David - bear with me! - how could that be without removing those intervening three hundred years? What if David was an eponymous ancestor? What if the early kings of the Divided Monarchy decided to claim descent from their own (perceived) eponymous ancestor? Could through oral tales, a memory of Labayu and David been passed on? The Hebrew brigand details. Maybe a short lived kingdom under Saul and later David? Perhaps, the uncertainty of events in the time of Akhenaten may have allowed a short lived kingdom or two kingdoms in the northern and southern highlands? Following my very tentative hypothesis: could rulers in Israel and Judah have had knowledge of both Labayu and Dadua? In Judah, a king perhaps claimed the semi-legendary Dadua as his famous ancestor, 28:47 30:01 the Hebrew brigand, perhaps self made king? A local hero? So, the first tales of David are put to paper. Not in Hebrew of course, but in Akkadian? The Lingua Franca of the times. So appears the House of David? Remus and Romulus. That kind of thing. This David acquires some of the biography of the conqueror kings of Egypt, Thutmose III particularly comes to mind. In later times, David’s story gets more intricate and involved. Then we have Solomon = Jedidiah. From my casual research, Jedidiah means ‘Beloved of Yah’. David = ‘Beloved’. So, could Dadua also = ‘Beloved’? If this is plausible, then we may have two David’s based on a Amarna Letters figure. David I and II? Or one individual? Here I wonder if later in the Kingsom of Judah, in Assyrian times, the eponymous hero David is brought into play for varying purpose by a king of Judah after the Assyrian ascendancy post the fall of Israel. In the time of Josiah? Israel has commented about a certain flavour of Assyrian times in the biography of Solomon and his temple (my summation of Israel’s thoughts, not his!) Perhaps, in this tentative schema, the older David story was too well known, or beloved, or still too useful, to push aside, so for new purposes, David is given a son, Je-David? That’s Je-Didiah. Anyway, it’d be interesting to hear thoughts on this. The whole thing fascinates me. Love these two archeologists. Such clear and practical thinkers IMO.

Ma 'truth' dji 'god' du 'temple' (Tongues) 'Temple of the God of Truth'

Pentateuch? This guy Greek? Why would I trust him to tell me about my people? He comes from a tradition of Jew Hate. I don't blame him for it. I do blame him for not doing his own scholarship but relying on the same shit Wagner wrote about before he heralded the holocaust. I was told by my parents and they were told by their parents and they were told by their parents.... GET IT? Isaiah 53 requires understanding Isaiah 1-66, in Hebrew. Come home bubbulah, we love you. How can you not tell?

October 7th 2023

Shimron should be added to the map since it was mentioned

I really enjoy this program and the archaeologist does a good job of explaining things however, I have to disagree in one area and that is the human proclivity of reusing things from a previous era. I know the archaeologist argues from the standpoint of radiocarbon dating, but even there I would argue That the time span between Solomon and the Omrides it’s not that far and could fall within the same radiocarbon dating.Thus couldn’t be arms, simply mark or replace sections of the Megiddo gate with stones from their own quarries that it could throw off the archaeological strata?

52 mins in and still so little evidence of what u have dug Bless u its not iabout u 2 yattering its about evidence

My grandmother was an oliphant ..she is related to lawrance oliphant in 1860 he owned 2 houses in haifa ..his wife owned the land where meggido now is she did sme digging there ..his wife had a lover who wrote the words for the Israeli national anthem

Israel Finkelstein, Israel Knohl and Yonatan Adler have revealed so much to me about the reality and beauty of Torah. Thru the lens of Kedem.

THANK YOU THANK YOU !! This is a wonderful gift package! Now I don't have to search for each episode individually.

This is such an easy topic to answer. Torah dates back to creation. On day 7 was the Sabbath- a day of rest. Man’s job was to take care of the garden of Eden 6 days and rest on day 7. Cain killed his brother. He was aware that murder was wrong and to hide his wrong he lied about it. When God spoke to him- he never said- oh I’m sorry I didn’t know anything about murder. The Torah was oral and later written and given to Moses. Abraham obeyed Torah refusing to worship the idols of his father. He wasn’t called a Jew he was a Hebrew. His lineage goes back to Adam. God didn’t put us here and leave us lost.

I'm interested to know: What age was this Priestess? Was she single? ..., married?, widowed? ... divorced? .... with children? In those days girls generally married around puberty ie 12 or 13! Maximum 15. So highly unlikely she was still a single. Of she still had no children/single, when did she intend to marry and/or have children - therebye having to quit her job or get 3 months maternal leave from this temple? Did this priestess belong to the Aaronite set of priests (if there was one)? (Y Chromosone dba testing of Jewish priests today with different Y haplogroups - show there was "more than one Aaron"!! In fact several! Have the remains of this priestess been discovered on Elephentine? With this sizeable community of 3000 Jews, with a temple on prime land on Elephentine - was there a Jewish cemetery that can be excavated?

I am not a Judean, but I will be forever thankful for the written Scriptures that form Our Old Testament that we have inherited from the Israeli / Judean people. Our NEW Testament is so wonderfully and firmly rooted in the Old or "First" Testament. I am however very disappointed in the way our medieval translators and especially their guiding scholars wrongly replaced the holy name of The ETERNAL ELOHIM / YAHWEH with God, Gott, Deus, Theos, Dios, Pucheckhamme (aborigine Peruvian), Borkan (Mongolian), etc. I believe it was a grave error... I am galloping toward soon being an octogenarian, an autodidactic, I have been working for a new translation in English, for some time. I am using some 10 languages for research and useful comparisons, and even though I speak fluently only two languages I believe I am bringing up a great rendition of the - now in the public domain - The King James Bible, which I have named "The Digital Beta Version". I am not quite ready, but I will be very soon, so I would like to send it to "The Jerusalem Lights" and to any of you on this board that might be interested to look at it and hopefully you eventually will send me some comments on it. Ultimately it will be sent to The Cambridge and Oxford Universities which still hold the Copyright , but only in Britain, and hopefully they will at least look at it. I cannot post it, but I can easily send it by E-Mail as a file attachment. It is not too large, some of my friends already look at it on their phones. My E-M-add is (sorry-you have to decode): nairelavataoldotcom. The file is about 6 Megs large - hardly any problem for today's computers, tablets and even phones. So please send me a message with the subject title: "The Digital Beta Version" and a copy will be on its way.

Watching this series was a true joy, thank you so much for producing it! Have you ever thought about making one of these series about the northern kingdom, based on Prof. Finkelsteins book "The Forgotten Kingdom"? I would love to hear him talk about that. Thanks again!

Coalesced, entangled, mixed cultures and religions and ethnicities is what History produces the most, even if brutal replacements took place time to time and locally. Dominant traits and their durability help us define a civilization compared to another, but this is our modern view.

Love the series! Matt and Israel make a great duo. The ending is a bit abrupt! I hope you can keep producing new content!

Thanks for making these. Sorry I haven't watched them all yet. I have a lot of books to read and I still want to watch all of History with Cy too. It's going to take a long time.

This guy is a huge waste of time

Megiddo where global kingship pharaohship will be defeated without armies by the family of Jacob thru marriage with the Mother Earth peoples of the Americas. Two Holocaust peoples gathered at the global Sinai whose waters flow from her snow peaks into the ocean across to the Mediterranean to Mount Carmel whose ridge overlooks Megiddo. Where is revealed the true nature of God the 50th Gate of Understanding the Tree of Life Hasheem and the Shekinah and Her Womb sitting on the two chairs of Daniel not as kings but as Father and Mother. Three branches in one true democracy with 50 matriarchal families uniting humanity Homo sapiens. America the Midian where the people of Moses will find their Bride their Zipporah as Abraham found his Keturah and Joseph found his Asenath. In marriage as Hahseem and the Shekinah and her Womb - the Sanhedrin in their marriage. Where the twin peaked global Sinai embraces the single peak Sinai. Like two triangles of the Star of David no the Star of Joseph replacing the kingship of David the scepter of Judah with true democracy the Staff of Abraham Joseph and Moses. The Neanderthals at Carmel passed the torch of humanity to us Homo sapiens to spread migrate around the globe to later gather as family and meet in peace at Megiddo.

That last question from the people I think can best be answered with another question, "Are objective truths important, or just personal truths?". To those who say it is then this type of research is important. To those that say it isn't then they can't see the value behind it.

Just found this series and looking forward to settling down with coffee to absorb it all!

Thanks for a fascinating series. I think I will have to binge-watch them again at some point.

Tnx 🎉

Yep.👍

I hope Dr. Finkelstein lives forever! But who are his "successors"? I'd like to start reading them from now.

I would think an SPQR hat would not be the best thing to be wearing around Judea.

Follow golden arks of covenants right of birth golden scepters you get Egypts Megiddos Israels Judeas Davids Solomons as well as Moseses and Zipporahs waiting to enter the Promised Land. What will the global Egypt and those gathered choose at the global Sinai ?

Another lucid explanation of the facts on the ground. Many thanks. Gotta love Professor Finkelstein

​​Great as always. Thanks!

Thank you once again, friends 👋

Contra 18:58 : Gospel of Matthew chapter twenty-two verse twenty.

42 minutes of my life is gone. Some things are so stupid that only academics can believe in it.