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Home THE BIBLE UNEARTHED: THE MAKING OF A RELIGION -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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Like these small, engraved cylinders that were used as seals, or amulets,
and in which we can see the rites that were then popular in Mesopotamia and the Levant unfolding before our eyes.
[Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University] At Megiddo, we have evidence for the influence of the Northern powers, the Northern civilizations. I mean, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, throughout history, from the late 4th millennium to the 1st millennium B.C. This means they had an impact on the events in the Levant throughout and that it is impossible to reconstruct the history of this region without taking into consideration the Northern civilizations Mesopotamia and Assyrian.
[Thomas Romer, University of Lausanne] There are many links in the stories of the Patriarchs with the people of the North, that is the Arameans.
We have Jacob and his uncle Lavan who ended up there, and we can see that they have family ties there as well as more complicated conflictual links. Territories had to be mapped out, and it was not always an easy task. The North is also mentioned when Abraham is about to leave as he comes from Haram, which was a very important Aramaic town.
[Narrator] The Biblical text describes the migration of Abraham as a break with his own civilization.
But is the hypothesis that the Patriarchs originated in Mesopotamia a plausible one?
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