not entirely cut off from outside influence, as glass and some imported
ware in the fishermen’s village on et-Tell show.Burial Practices
Burial practices offer a good example of how Jewish culture was suscepti-
ble to symbiosis with surrounding cultures. Mourning and burial were
family affairs in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. Among the com-
mon elements were preparing the body of the deceased for burial, wailing,
playing music, marching in procession, and observing purity taboos. Early
Hellenistic burial culture followed late Persian traditions for the most part.
Sometimes single shaft tombs were used (e.g., in Dor and Atlit) along with
chamber tombs (e.g., at Bat-Yam, Tell en-Nasbe, el-Azariye, and Lachish).
Sometimes a cemetery was made up of one type alone. Architectural deco-
ration is largely unknown, and grave goods are both poor and scarce.
The general situation changed in the first half of the second century.
Traditional chamber tombs (e.g., at Maresha in about 200b.c.e.) came
under Hellenistic influence: funeral benches inside the burial chamber
were replaced by longitudinal receptacles for the corpse hewn into the rock
calledloculiorkokhim,and the interior layout became more regularized
(see fig. 6). Tombs were sometimes painted, and architectural decoration
such as columns, capitals, and pilasters were used on façades. About two
generations later the new style was adopted in Jerusalem’s upper-class
tombs, and from there it was taken over by more and more families. Espe-
cially famous is Jason’s Tomb, one of the oldest and most elaborate upper-
class tombs in Jerusalem, built around 100b.c.e.
Funeral culture demonstrates that traditional clan structures under-
went a process of differentiation during the first centuryb.c.e.andc.e.in
which individuals and smaller family units acquired a greater role. Instead
of continuing the old Iron Age tradition of indiscriminate secondary
burial in bone chambers, small limestone receptacles known as ossuaries
became fashionable in the last decades of the first centuryb.c.e.and al-
lowed for families to be buried in separate niches within the same tomb.
About a third of these ossuaries bear names of the individuals buried in
them, sometimes revealing information about the origin or the occupa-
tion of the deceased. Archaeologists debate whether ossuaries reflect par-
ticular beliefs about the afterlife such as resurrection of the body.331
Archaeology, Papyri, and InscriptionsEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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