Ancient Israelite Religion

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The image that is thought of when thinking of ancient Israel and Judah correlates mostly with modern scholars understanding of biblical literature, meaning that they assume that the religion or, religions of ancient Israel are similar if not exact to what is encountered in the Bible. Unfortunately, for those who hold to the Bible as being an accurate model of ancient life, this is not true. The archeological remains of ancient Judah and Israel paint a much different picture.
Before looking into archeological evidence it should be understood that religion is deeply held by those who belong to it, that going with the idea of belief which is an abstract idea. Religion has the senses involved in it, followers feel their faith wholeheartedly through all the …show more content…

From tombs dated to Iron II Judah, there has been found ceramic vessels that seem to indicate that they were used to hold food and drink, this indicating that a part of the ancient Israelite burial practices. However, this raises far more questions than answers bringing up the question of why it was placed there, and challenging traditional thought based on Bible because of the suggestions for why it could have been placed here are not addressed in the biblical literature. Some ideas on the reasons for this foodstuff is was it because the tomb is like a house for the dead, that the dead had similar needs to the living another very plausible suggestion is that the food was actually for the loved ones of the deceased as they feasted near the tomb. Either of these proposals doesn't correlate well with biblical literature that mentions food more in association of impurity if it is around the deceased thus showing a disconnect between the biblical literature and the actual Israelite practices ( sauriano

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