Tanach Thoughts

Last night I read a fairly new article by Lorenzo Nigro, whom I gathered directs the Rome La Sapienza University excavation project in Tel es-Sultan (biblical Jericho). I've been vaguely familiar of his work since I tore through Iron Age publications last year trying to find mentions of LMLK stamped handles for a uni project. He was also part of a project in Beit Lechem, as well as other projects in Judea and Samaria. One important thing to note is that all of these projects were undertaken together with the "Palestinian" Ministry of Heritage. The article I'm talking about summarized findings from the 2019-2023 season at Jericho. I was quite surprised to see identifications of many sub-strata, perhaps more than I'd ever seen in an excavation report (Early Bronze IVa and IVb? Who ever heard of splitting the Intermediate Bronze in two?). I skimmed the Bronze Age discussions, though. I'm usually more interested in the Iron Age findings. There I received quite a ...

 One of the names that has long puzzled me is Ivtzan. You know, short-time judge from the Book of Shoftim, comes from Beit Lechem. According to the gemara, Ivtzan was Boaz. But that's another story. Perhaps worthy of a post around Shavuot-time. I first began pondering Ivtzan's name around the summer of my fifth year in Yeshiva. For a while I thought it might come from the mineral name Avatz (אבץ) - zinc, but I couldn't find any evidence that Avatz is an old word. Also, why name a person after zinc? A few months ago, I noticed that there was a place in Israel called Tevetz (תבץ). That still doesn't explain the etymology, but it is  a plausible direction. It would work with multiple other names of people that are merely taken from place-names; evidence of early Zionism. However, a couple of weeks ago, while reading Ben-Tzion Luria's Shaul and Binyamin, I came across a paragraph where he pointed out that the meaning of Gilad comes from the treaty between Yaakov and Lav...