Tanach Thoughts

As promised, a post on why I was unable to find time to make the second part of the Shiloh destruction posts for over a month. It was because, as previously mentioned here , I had gone on a month-long excavation in Tel Tibnah/Tibna/Tibneh (however you want to spell), an archeological tel in Southwest Shomron (Samaria). We were quite busy there and between the archeological work and my work as a volunteer translator of our social media posts, as well as occasional breaks, I couldn't find the time to make the post. I thought I would use the following post to discuss some of the Tanachic-era findings from the site. Not everything has been properly studied yet, though, so there's not that much to say right now. The site is identified by pretty much all scholars with the Roman-era regional capital city Timnah. Some scholars also identify it with Timnat Serach or Timnah Cheres, the city of Yehoshua bin Nun. During this first season of excavations, we mostly found Roman and Hellenisti...

I've been quite busy lately and still am. I've started a number of posts but haven't gotten around to finishing them. However, yesterday I realized something interesting while reading a book, and it's short, so I'm sharing it. So Purim has come and gone...several months ago. But when you think about it, maybe Purim should be year-round because the whole build up to the grand finale of Esther was years in the making. Anyway, Daryavesh, or Darius, the one under whom the Second Temple was completed, was, according to Jewish tradition, the son of Queen Esther and King Achashverosh (see for example Midrash Yalkut Shimoni on the Torah 536 ). However, this is never openly acknowledged in Tanach. There might be any number of reasons for this, including that we have misunderstood our sources and they are not referring to the same Daryavesh under whom the Temple was completed; that Daryavesh was so far gone from Judaism that there was no point; IT'S A THEOLOGICAL CONSPIRA...