A Christian archaeologist’s discovery of ancient bones in a cave in Samaria unravelled a 2,000-year-old murder mystery, and led to the local Jews performing a rare and powerful Torah commandment they believe will help bring the Third Temple. The moving story brought Jews and Christians together, emphasizing how the roots of both religions are inextricably intertwined in the Holy Land.
Dr. Scott Stripling, an archaeologist and provost of The Bible Seminary in Texas, was exploring a cave complex at Khirbet el-Maqatir near the city of Ofra in Samaria in 2013 when he discovered a jumble of bones. Dr. Stripling has been the co-director of the dig for 20 years on behalf the Associates for Biblical Research.
“I have no doubt that these people were murdered in the first revolt in 69 CE at the hands of the Romans,” Dr. Stripling told Breaking Israel News. “It was a 2,000-year-old mass-murder mystery that was solved, and we now can tell their story.”
“Many of the bones were disarticulated and jumbled, perhaps by animals, but we were able to determine that one of the women was arthritic and elderly, and one was a six-year-old child. Most of the skeletons belonged to young women.”
Dr. Stripling explained that in a last-ditch attempt to avoid being slaughtered by the Romans, the people of the town repurposed the olive press cave, broke through to a cistern, and dug a hiding system.
“We found the skeletons of six people in the olive press area, and fragments of bones from two people in the smaller hiding area,” Dr. Stripling said. “The last moments of their lives must have been terrifying.
“The men must have made their last stand in a massive tower above, since it has Roman arrowheads and nails from the Roman soldiers’ shoes were embedded in the stones,” he explained. “Apparently they were trying to hide their families in the caves below.”
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