|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
by Gerry Boyle '78 Partway through a recent discussion of his archaeological work in the Near East, Tom Longstaff, professor of religious studies, dropped a bombshell. The Sea of Galilee, Longstaff says, is about the size of China Lake, east of Waterville--a water body eight miles long and five miles wide. Known also as Lake Kinnaret, the Sea of Galilee is a favorite recreation spot for many local residents, who water ski on its historic waters. "For these places," Longstaff said, "the images in our minds don't compare very well with reality." That people use Jet-Skis on the Sea of Galilee, that the mighty River Jordan of the Bible is no wider than Messalonskee Stream, which bounds the Colby campus--none of this has diminished Longstaff's sense of wonder as he has helped uncover antiquities. In fact, much of his archaeological work has shed new light--quite literally--on the Biblical world. Longstaff, the Crawford Family Professor of Religious Studies, first went to Israel in 1974, five years after arriving at Colby. He attended a post-doctoral seminar at Hebrew Union College, where he met some of the most influential figures working in archaeology in the Near East. Longstaff also worked on digs then ongoing in Meiron in northern Israel. For the then-39-year-old professor of religious studies it turned out to be a defining event. "That did it," he said. "That got the dirt under my fingers and I never got it out." Longstaff returned to Israel in 1977 and, with the exception of one or two years, has returned to the digs every summer since then, taking as many as three Colby students to work with him. Longstaff's sabbaticals have been spent studying archaeology at Harvard and Oxford and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Longstaff's years in the field have been spent troweling through ruins rich in history: his archaeological dig sites have included Jewish burial caves, a Byzantine-period synagogue, the remains of forts built by Crusaders. Since 1983, he has been associate director of a dig that has exposed much of the Roman provincial capital of Sepphoris, in Galilee, where 20,000 people lived in the time of Herod the Great--and of Jesus. The work has unearthed a 4,000-seat amphitheater, sidewalks inlaid with mosaics, an elegant villa. And they have revealed some surprising aspects of life at the time--and place--of Jesus's life. "We see how people lived together in the area," Longstaff said. "Jews, Christians and others living in close proximity to one another, interacting with each other and evidently getting along pretty well." Nazareth, which tradition has identified as the home of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, is just four miles away. Mary is said to have been from Sepphoris, the big city. "We're talking about Jesus growing up four miles, as the crow flies, from a major provincial Roman city," Longstaff said. "Jesus did not grow up in Aroostook County. He grew up near Times Square." In the city were Roman baths, a complex system of roads and a bustling marketplace two-thirds the size of a football field, much of which has been exposed. Longstaff, who arrived at the site when it was just grazing land, said he will return to Sepphoris this summer, though the work there is winding down. Twenty-five years after his first dig, Longstaff is not planning on winding down at all. "We are projecting to open a site within the walls of the old city of Jerusalem," he said, asking that the specific location not be disclosed. "These [opportunities] are rare. In some ways, it's an archaeologist's dream."
|
|
readers write | periscope | from the hill | student life | faculty file | books & authors mules on the move | gifts and grants | alumni at large | obituaries | final period
©1999 COLBY COLLEGE |
