Gibeah
Gibea (Vulgate: Gabaa; Hebrew "hill") is a place name that appears several times in the Hebrew Bible. It is controversial in research whether the different names denote the same place and where it can be found.
Mentions in the Bible
Places with the name or part of the name Gibeah are primarily mentioned in the 1st book of Samuel, and these are these:
Gibea-Saul is said to have been the royal seat of King Saul (around 1000 BC).
Since "Gibeah" is the Hebrew name for "hill" and the Israeli highlands are hilly for long stretches, it is plausible that these are different places and that not all mentions refer to the same city.
Disgrace of Gibeah
Ri 19.15–30 EU tells of a Levite who, after visiting his father-in-law for several days,moveswith his concubine, a servant and pack animals from Bethlehem past Jerusalem to Gibeah in the tribal area of the Benjaminites and is welcomed by an old man as a guest. During dinner, townspeople surround the host's house and demand, “Bring out the man who came into your house; we want to do our mischief with him. "He refuses, referring to the right of hospitality:" No, my brothers, you must not do such a bad thing. This man came to my house as a guest; therefore you must not commit such an outrage. ”Instead, he offers his virgin daughter and the concubine of the Levite. After he takes his concubine out, the men rape her all night long. In the morning her husband finds her lying dead on the doorstep and transports her to his hometown. There he cuts it into twelve pieces and sends the pieces "to the whole area of Israel" to encourage reflection on the deed. Thereupon the then twelve-tribe union of the Israelites decides to takerevenge against the Benjaminites.
Locations and excavations
Charles Warren carried out excavations in 1868 at Tell el-Fūl on the northern city limits of modern Jerusalem. Excavations followed in 1922–33 and 1964. The corner of a fortress was found which, according to ceramics, dates back to 1000 BC. Dated. Kenneth A. Kitchen describes the find as "Fort from the Iron Age I, which was later renovated (" II ") and was later no longer in use". According to him, the oldest layer could represent the Gibeah from Judges 19-20 [7] , the fort was built by Saul.
The identification of Tell el-Ful with Saul's Gibea by William F. Albright is doubted by parts of the research, since the finds from the Iron Age I are "negligible". Miller and Arnold propose equating Gibeah and the biblical Geba and locating it accordingly in Jaba 'northeast of Jerusalem. This shows significantly more finds from Iron Age I. The possibility that King Saul's center of power was in Gibeon (modern el-Jib) is also considered.
literature
- Immanuel Benzinger : Gaba 5 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VII, 1, Stuttgart 1910, Col. 409.
Web links
- Klaus Koenen: Gibea. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Finkelstein, Israel: The forgotten kingdom: the archeology and history of Northern Israel . Atlanta, Georgia, ISBN 978-1-58983-911-3 , pp. 52 .
- ↑ Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), p. 97.
Coordinates: 31 ° 49 ′ 24 ″ N , 35 ° 13 ′ 52 ″ E