RT Article
T1 Purity and Property at Gezer: The Commons in a Second Temple Town
JF Journal for the study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman period
VO 52
IS 2
SP 159
OP 196
A1 Kaye, Noah 1981-
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1757531092
AB Abstract Since the late nineteenth century, thirteen rock-cut inscriptions have been detected in the vicinity of Tel Gezer. Their date, function, and relationship to settlement history have all been debated. This article systematically relates the so-called “Boundary of Gezer” stones to the archaeology of the Hellenistic town on the tel. In doing so, it presents the first publication of an epitaph reused as the threshold of a house reportedly built in the 130s BCE . A boundary-making project of this nature was the result of the Hasmonean conquest of a stronghold of great strategic and ideological significance. The Gezer stones can be elucidated by means of comparison to boundary markers from Gerasa in Transjordan, Achaemenid Cilicia, and Greece. Code-switching between Greek and Hebrew/Aramaic, the bilingual boundaries distinguish between two forms of property, not two populations, providing important evidence for collective property rights in Second Temple Judaism.
K1 Bilingualism
K1 Epigraphy
K1 Gezer
K1 Public Sphere
K1 1 Maccabees
K1 Seleucids
K1 Hasmoneans
DO 10.1163/15700631-BJA10028