(Dr. Yonatan Adler) It begins in 2001
when family from the neighboring village, Reina,
who owns this land,
were flattening out the area
in order to build a gas station.
♪ (music) ♪
And they brought in a tractor.
They removed this part of the mountain.
They removed that part of the hill over there.
And when they were removing this part of the hill,
they happened upon a cave, an underground cavity.
Now, the Israel Antiquities Authority inspector for the area
was driving by and he noticed antiquities.
♪ (music) ♪
The Israel Antiquities Authority
conducted a three-day probe
under the direction of Dr. David Amit in 2001,
and he found here about 600 cores
from stone vessels.
And he was able to determine that this was a quarry and a workshop
for the production of stone vessels.
(Sergio) In the 1st century BCE,
during the time of Herod,
the Jews invent a new family of vessels.
This new family of drinking cups,
food bowls, and storage jars
were made out of stone
instead of the traditional clay.
Archaeologists found these vessels
all across the country,
but only in the Jewish sites.
(Dr. Adler) Okay. So, for example, in Samaria,
where there were Samaritans, we don't have any stone vessels.
We don't have these stone vessels in the cities of the Decapolis.
Beit She'an... none.
Not a single fragment of a stone vessel.
But in the area of the pariah, where there were Jews,
we do have stone vessels.
It couldn't be clearer.
The distribution is only where we have Jews.
(Sergio) So the question arose:
Why?
Why these stone vessels were only used by the Jews?
The answer has to do with the practice of the Jewish law.
(Dr. Adler) From a textual perspective,
the first reference we have
to Jewish use of stone vessels is in--
(Nathaniel) John, chapter 2.
--the Gospel of John, 2:6.
(Sergio) In the Gospel of John, chapter 2,
Jesus performs the miracle of turning water into wine.
This water was held in six jars,
but not any type of jars.
It says that these jars were made of stone.
And it says that the reason for it
was the purity law of the Jews.
But why stone and not clay?
Why was this important for the Jews?
And why did they use clay for 1,500 years since Moses
and started making stone vessels only during the time of Herod?
(Dr. Adler) Later, we find in the rabbinic sources,
the rabbi's assume that stone is a material
which does not become impure.
So, any vessel made of stone
cannot become impure.
Where did that come from?
It doesn't say anything about this in the Torah.
But I think, actually, that's exactly the point.
(Sergio) According to Leviticus chapter 11 verses 32 to 34:
If something unclean touches an item
made of wood, cloth, skin, or sack,
then this item becomes unclean.
However, it can be purified again by putting it in water.
But items made of clay cannot become pure again
once unclean.
Instead, they must be broken.
And here is the interesting part.
Stone is not mentioned in this list of materials.
So, at the time of Herod,
the Jewish entrepreneurs conceived a brilliant idea.
(Dr. Adler) What appears to be going on is that,
at this point in time,
people are interpreting that if stone isn't in the list,
it doesn't become impure at all.
And so, some entrepreneurs said:
Hey, wait a second. If stone doesn't become impure,
let's start making it.
So, how do these stone vessels work?
My understanding is that
you would have stone vessels in your home,
and you don't have to worry when they become impure.
Pottery would have become impure.
Probably, it was the impure people in the house
that would use the stone vessels,
because they are the ones that would make
the pottery impure.
And then, the pure people would use the pottery.
That's my assumption.
So, what are we looking at here?
This is where stone vessels were produced.
It would function both as a quarry,
to remove the raw material,
and as a workshop,
where the vessels were actually produced.
And all along, on the walls, on the floor,
what we have left of the ceiling,
there are pick marks
from the ancient quarriers.
(Sergio) So, this is the cup.
So, this is, actually...
- ...this is the mug. - It's like a beer mug, almost.
- Almost like a beer mug. - From stone.
- Exactly. -
So, this is the mug itself.
(Sergio) And this is the real thing?
This is the real thing,
but it broke at some point during production,
possibly over here.
And you can see the marks from the chisel,
from the blade that was used to produce it.
It broke, so they discarded it.
Okay. This is production waste.
This is what would have become the handle.
We have production waste like this
from all stages of production.
So, we have things like this that are worked a little bit more,
worked a little bit more and then it broke,
and then it just discarded it.
So, actually, I just had the idea a few days ago
of taking pictures of the various stages of production
and turning it into, like, a movie.
Another kind is... this is a different shape.
This is a bowl.
This would eventually become a bowl.
So, I have here, just so you get an idea,
this is worked almost to the end.
It still has the marks.
This was turned on a lathe.
This wasn't made by hand.
This was turned on a lathe. You can see the lines.
So, this is stone. This is not clay.
This is stone. This is the stone that...
It's driven on a lathe.
Have a look here.
The diameter is exactly the same as this,
so this would have been put on a lathe,
turned, and become this.
It's the same kind of tools, the same kind of--
(Nathaniel) So, it's a pottery turning wheel?
Not pottery turning. I think this is--
(Nathaniel) No. Something like it?
Amer knows how excited I got when we met Joseph...
- Yeah.
...the carpenter at the Nazareth village
because of the tools that he was using.
I mean, these are the kinds of tools that were used.
- (Nathaniel) The chisel? - (Dr. Adler) The chisel,
and then put on a lathe.
So, I think it was the same kind of a skill
that was used for working the stone
and it was used for working wood.
It's a similar kind of idea that's very, very--
So, it's a tektōn's job and not a...
- Mm-mmm. - It's not a potter's job?
- Tektōn. - Okay.
So, if you had a tektōn from the area...
I mean, the tektōns that were working here
came from the area.
(Amer) Maybe it has a metal...
You guys didn't catch that.
I understood what you were implying.
The tektōns that were working here
came from the area.
(Sergio) Until recently,
I thought that Joseph and Jesus were carpenters.
But this knowledge comes from an incorrect translation.
In the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament,
Joseph and Jesus are described as tektōns,
which means a builder,
and it applies both to carpenters and stonemasons.
And since this site is located
just a few miles from downtown Nazareth,
Joseph and Jesus could have used this quarry.
One of the craziest things
is that this site is located just half a mile
from the home where I grew up.
The home where my parents still live today.
And when I was a boy,
I used to explore these hills
not knowing what lies beneath.
And now, it is incredible to find out
that Jesus might have possibly been here,
worked with these stones and took them to Nazareth.
(Dr. Adler) What interests me the most is the question of:
Until when were Jews producing and using these stone vessels?
Today, no Jew uses stone vessels for purity purposes.
It's not done today,
nor for many, many hundreds of years.
And the reason is that Jews no longer keep the purity laws.
So there are still, here and there, leftovers from that.
So, for example, hand washing.
That still existed. It's a leftover.
It's not really the purity laws.
In terms of the purity of vessels...
beds, chairs, cooking pots,
anything like that...
nobody keeps the laws anymore.
I mean, you go to a Jewish home and ask:
Where do you break all your pottery that's impure?
They'll look at you and say:
What are you talking about? It's just not done.
The most observant home doesn't keep the laws.
These are laws that are in Leviticus.
They stopped keeping them.
I think people should know about this.
This is something which people tend to not really know about,
and I think it's super, super important
for understanding life and times in the 1st century.
Purity was a big deal.
This is something that people were thinking about
all the time.
You wake up in the morning,
and you think about your purity status, okay?
You go out to work, if you're working in the fields,
if you're working in the vineyard and you're crushing grapes,
you need to think about if you're pure or not,
because if you're impure,
you're gonna be making the grapes and the wine impure.
If you work in a olive press,
you need to know what your purity status is
because if you are impure,
you're gonna be making the olive oil impure.
This is something which affects daily life.
If you go to the marketplace
and you come back from the marketplace:
Did I come into contact,
did I brush up against somebody who is impure?
At the marketplace, you have no idea who's there.
Maybe it's someone from a different sect.
Maybe it's someone who doesn't have
the same kind of understanding of the purity laws as I do.
Maybe I can't trust them.
So, the assumption is: I come back from the marketplace,
I'm going to immerse myself before I sit down to eat.
Where do we find that? Does that sound familiar?
In Mark. Returning from the marketplace...
all of the Jews would immerse before eating.
(Sergio) The message that Apostle Paul preached
would have been revolutionary to the pious Jews.
Just imagine having invested your entire life
in observing the purity laws to gain favor with God
and then have someone tell you
that you no longer need to keep them.
It was revolutionary to some
who accepted this message with joy.
But to others, it could have been an insult.
But this freedom that Apostle Paul preached,
the freedom that God provides to all who believe in Jesus,
changed the course of history forever.
We are so thankful for Dr. Yonatan Adler
for painting a better picture of what life looked like
in the 1st century,
how difficult the purity law was.
And on top of that all,
he also gave us a very special gift.
So, this is...
You can see very clearly here the chip marks.
There's only chisel marks on one side,
so I'm not convinced that this was the beginning.
Something like this could have been part of the wall
or something from the cave,
but it's definitely worked as stone.
So, these are the real chisel marks--
These are the original chisel marks from 2,000 years ago.
2,000 years ago?
Here is the stone that Dr. Adler gave us as a gift.
This is 2,000 years old.
It's pretty incredible to even hold this.
You can see the chisel marks here,
so somebody started making this into a drinking cup.
What somebody started 2,000 years ago,
we are going to finish it today.
♪ (music) ♪
And while we're doing this,
check out Dr. Adler's website.
It is incredible. There is so much information there.
He's done so much work
on the subject of purification laws
and much, much more.
You'll really enjoy it.
(Rhoda) And also check out the Ariel University website
where Dr. Adler teaches.
It is beautiful, located on the Judean Hills.
A great place to study archaeology, indeed.
And you can find the links
in the description of this video below.
Yeah.
It looks pretty good. What do you think?