The origins of Tel Arad’s temple

In the ostracon found at Tel Arad, a significant number of names include the element “Yahu,” which may indicate the worship of Yahweh by the Judeans or possibly Kenite origins. Benjamin Mazar proposed that the foundation story of Arad in Judges 1:16 suggests that the temple dedicated to Yahu was built by the Kenites. This theory is linked to the narrative of Moses’ family (related to the Kenites) serving at another frontier temple in the city of Dan. Both Arad and Dan were frontier temples symbolizing the kingdom’s authority within its borders, located in major fortresses serving as security and administrative centers.

According to 2 Chronicles 12, Shishak, the king of Egypt, conquered the fortresses of Judah, including two named Arad—one called the great Arad and the other Arad of Yeroham. Yohanan Aharoni hypothesized that Arad of Yeroham was the ancient Canaanite city, while the great Arad was a new city established by King Solomon, likely around an existing Kenite temple. This could explain references in 1 Samuel to the “Negev of the Kenite” and the “Negev of Yerahmeel,” or “cities of the Kenites” and “cities of Yerahmeel.” The name Yerahmeel is the theophorical form of Yeroham.

The term “Negev” in Hebrew means “south,” but it also has a significant meaning derived from the Arabic root NQB, meaning a mountain pass. Fortresses were typically built in mountain passes to dominate the area and collect protection money or taxes. These fortresses reflected the territorial ambitions of the Kingdom of Judah. The southern slopes of Mount Hebron are divided into different directions: west (Philistines/Pelethites), southwest (Hezron/Cherethites), south (Yerahmeel), and southeast (Kenites). Both Yerahmeel and Caleb are considered descendants of Hezron (son of Perez). Scholars argue that Yerahmeelites, Calebites (Kenizzites), and Kenites were desert nomads who were either artificially or politically integrated into Judah. The name Kenaz also appears among the Edomites, and Yerahmeelite names are found among the Horites.

This context helps explain why non-Judaic names like Pashhur, Keros, and Meremoth (which contains the theophorical element of the god Moth) appear among the priests’ names found on Tel Arad’s ostraca. These names are also found among the priests who returned from the Babylonian exile and helped build the Second Temple, with a surprising descendant listed in 1 Chronicles 9: Yeroham, son of Pashhur, son of Malkiah. The names Pashhur and Malkiah also appear on Tel Arad’s ostraca. This suggests that the priests or families of the priests from Arad might have been relocated to Jerusalem when the temple in Arad was no longer in use.

The volcano cult of the ancient Israelites

Israel Knohl publishes a new book in which he compares two stories of receiving the Torah. The first is receiving the Torah from a source of water (a spring), which in the Torah is mentioned as water of “Massah and Meribah” (Exodus 17, also: Exodus 15 as “Marah”). The second is receiving the Torah near a smoke-filled mountain located in the “the field of Edom”. Some differences are evident between the two stories, except for the place where the covenant was given. According to the differences, it can be seen that the earlier tradition is the tradition of giving the Torah near the water fountain, and only at some point did the Torah begin to be presented as if it was given on a mountain (the name of the book is accordingly “From the fountain to the mountain“). What was that stage? Knohl points to the eighth century. Then literacy was expanded, then the kingdom of Israel was also destroyed and population migration to the south began, and with it also passed the stories that adapted themselves to the political and religious reality of that time.

This conclusion is no stranger to the conclusions of other books published in recent years such as “The Bible Unearthed” of Israel Finkelstein. The myth as we know it was presented to create a common identity between the two parts of the people after the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, and due to the fact that some of the religious commandments were new to their ears, the myth was presented as if it was given to an individual in Sinai, because the masses were not able to come into direct contact with God.

According to Knohl, the story about the sweetening the water immediately after the splitting of the Red Sea, which appears in Exodus 15, and is supposedly the founding myth of the nation of Israel, is reminiscent of the stories about Elijah and Elisha. After Elijah ascends to heaven, Elisha crosses the waters of the Jordan, and later “heals the waters” and they remain “healed until this day” (2 Kings 22:22). Which proves that this tradition is a northern tradition.

Although Knohl disconnects himself in each book from his hypotheses in the previous books, it is impossible not to mention Knohl’s previous book (“Hashem“) in which he claimed that the original location of Mount Sinai was Mount Hermon. If we see in the sources of the Jordan the geographical scenario of the receiving of the Torah, it is easy to place the spring and the volcano in question in the same area. According to Josephus in the Jewish wars, the source of the Jordan is in an underground passage that goes from a place now called “Lake Ram” directly to the Banias. The Ram Lake is at the foot of an dormant volcano which is actually the westernmost branch of what is called “Harrat al-Sham”, a mountain that is now called “Mount Ram”.

Harrat al-Sham is a huge volcanic field that stretches between Syria and northern Saudi Arabia along the Arabian desert and is called the “Black Desert” after the black basalt soil of volcanic origin in it. Although the volcanoes are all dormant, we see that volcanoes in Saudi Arabia, which are also related to the movement of tectonic plates on the Syrian-African rift, were active in the last millennium. In Hejaz there is a concentration of such semi-active volcanoes, and it is known about several eruptions in the area that occurred in the seventh century AD shortly after the time of Muhammad, and who knows if not due to the connotation of Moses with smoky volcanoes, Muhammad became a type of second Moses.

Another interesting thing that exists in these basalt deserts is the so-called “desert kites”, huge man-made traps that allowed ancient hunters to drive herds of deer into their necks, thus trapping them and killing them en masse. They are called kites due to the shape in which it was built “neck”. These kites required cooperation between large amounts of humans and since in the desert culture it was “every tribe for itself”, they were actually a rare opportunity for cooperation between tribes. It was easy to put this thing under a religious framework, and indeed in many of these desert kites rock paintings (petroglyphs) were discovered that hint that they also had a religious meaning, either because they symbolized peace and unification between the tribes, or because the ancients saw hunting itself as a gift from the gods , and in the buildings themselves a kind of a hunting magic. In any case, their use contributed to the near extinction of the hunted deer. And so, after the fauna changed, the need to use them became unnecessary, what’s more, the desertification that occurred caused the temperature to rise and make life in the area unbearable. (By the way, the flora of the place is rich in acacia trees…)

What does this have to do with Knohl? Not related except that Knohl claimed that the Israelites actually immigrated from the Hauran of south syria (and not from Haran of Turkey). “Hara” in Arabic is a volcanic field, حَرّة. Most volcanic fields contain “holes” (Hebrew: Hor), basalt pores. This is probably the name of the Hauran, the holes in it. In the volcanic fields in Saudi Arabia, such as in “Ḥarrat Khaybar”, there are many such “kites“, and researchers speculate that these are burial complexes of cults that worshiped deer. What brings us back to the basalt fields of the Golan Heights is a circular burial complex that is slightly reminiscent of the buildings in Khaybar, “Rujm el-Hiri”. Here it is already a wild hypothesis, but it may actually be a remnant of a “desert kite” that became a place of religious worship, and was built in advance at the foot of a volcano (in our case Tel Saki).

By the way, I would like to mention another dormant volcano in the area of the sea of Galilee – mount Arbel. According to Elchanan Reiner, this place is the same volcano where Joshua ben Nun is buried, and it is also the burial place of the sons of Jacob, Shimon and Levi. Nabi Shuʿayb, the holy place for the Druze (where according to them Jethro, Yochebed and Zephora, Moses’ wife, are buried), and according to the myth there is a footprint of Moses, so to speak, is found there. Reiner says that the story of this footprint is related to the myth of an earthquake that happened immediately after the death of Joshua, and that this earthquake has eschatological significance because it is supposed to be the same earthquake in the latter days that is associated with the second coming of another Joshua, Jesus. This area is also the area that is supposed to be Mount Megiddo, where there were various wars of Israel, such as the war in Sisera and the war of Joshua against Jabin, king of Hazor. There, it turns out, there was also another battle that at the time was considered Armageddon, the battle of Saladin and the Crusaders…