Shechem: Difference between revisions
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[[Image:Shechem Baal Berith temple from south tb n011300 wr.jpg|thumb|right|175px| Ancient Shechem]] |
[[Image:Shechem Baal Berith temple from south tb n011300 wr.jpg|thumb|right|175px| Ancient Shechem]] |
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[[Image:Shechem Middle Bronze wall.wr.jpg|thumb|left|175px| Bronze Age wall]] |
[[Image:Shechem Middle Bronze wall.wr.jpg|thumb|left|175px| Bronze Age wall]] |
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At Shechem, Abram "built an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him . . . and had given that land to his descendants" (Gen 12:6-7). This was the first recorded place where Abram stopped when he and Sarah and Lot and their entourage entered the land. On this occasion, God confirmed to Abram the promise He had first made to him in Ur of the Chaldees, that He would give him this land. |
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The Bible states that Abraham traveled through Shechem on his way to [[Canaan]] and offered his first sacrifice to God. After the conquest of Canaan, [[Joshua]] assembled the [[Israelites]] here and encouraged them to follow the Mosaic Laws. During the period of the [[Judges]], [[Abimelech]] was crowned king. An influential commercial center, the city prospered from trade in locally produced grapes, olives, wheat, and livestock from the Middle [[Bronze Age]] into the Late [[Hellenic]] Period (ca. 1900–100 B.C.E.). Archaeological excavations have revealed that the city was destroyed and rebuilt 22 times, until its final destruction in the second century C.E. Among the city’s visible remains are a series of defensive walls and gates, a palace or governor’s house, a residential quarter, and a portion of a temple to Zeus commissioned by the Roman Emperor [[Hadrian]] in the second century C.E. |
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==History == |
==History == |
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Revision as of 03:48, 25 September 2005
Shechem, Sichem or Shkhem (שְׁכֶם / שְׁכָם "Shoulder", Standard Hebrew Šəḫem / Šəḫam, Tiberian Hebrew Šəḵem / Šəḵām (situated at Tell Balatah 32°12′11″N 35°18′40″E / 32.20306°N 35.31111°E, 2 km east of present-day Nablus) was the first capital of the Kingdom of Israel.
The old city of Shechem dates back an estimated four thousand years.
History
In the Amarna Letters, ( of about 1350BC), Shachmu (Shechem) was the center of a kingdom carved out by Labaya (or Labayu), a Canaanite warlord who recruited mercenaries from among the Habiru. Labaya was the author of 3 Amarna letters, and his name appears in 11 of the other 382 letters, referred to 28 times, with the basic topic of the letter, being Labaya himself, and his relationship with the rebelling, countryside Habiru.
The city fell to the Israelites sometime before 1000 BC. In the Book of Judges, it was the center for the ephemeral Israelite kingdom of Abimelech ben Gideon. Later, it was an administrative center under Solomon and the northern Kingdom of Israel.
In Classical times, Shechem was the main settlement of the Samaritans, whose cultic center was on Mount Gerizim, just outside of the town. In Acts 7:16 the place is called Sychem, and in the Gospel of John 5:5 it is called Sychar.
Shechem, which lay in a narrow shoulder of land in the narrow valley between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, approximately 65 km north of Jerusalem, is also the location of Jacob's Well, where John 4:5–6 sets Jesus' meeting with the woman of Samaria, The Ancient Roman and Arab city of Nablus lies 2 km to the west of the site. Josephus, writing in about AD 90 (Jewish Antiquities 4.8.44), placed the city between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and other ancient writers knew that it was on the outskirts of "Neapolis" (Nablus), but its archaeological site was only stumbled upon in 1903 by a German party of archaeologists led by Dr. Hermann Thiersch at a site known as Tell Balatah, beside the traditional site associated with the tomb of Joseph (Joshua 24:32).
Shechem had been a Canaanite settlement, mentioned on an Egyptian stele of a noble at the court of Senusret III (c. 1880–1840 BC). Shechem first appears in the Tanakh in Genesis 12:6–8, which records how Abraham reached the "great tree of Moreh" at Shechem and offered sacrifice nearby. Later Joseph's bones were brought out of Egypt and reburied at Shechem.