Why is Israel's Archeology So Different from Other Parts of Asia, and Africa?

 

Sometimes, those of us with roots from some places in Africa, have wondered why Israel's architecture and ancient artifacts have seemed more European than artifacts from Egypt, Cush, or other ancient regions the Bible highlights.

With prayer, I settled on thinking Roman occupation must have influenced Israel very much, and Jews who survived the Holocaust and who migrated back to the land of their forefathers after World War II, must have brought European customs with them.

Now, I know that's true.

Years after my unspoken prayer, I decided to add some effort to actually looking for information about the origins of the blue stripes that some Israeli men wear on the prayer shawl. The blue stripe also appears on Israel's flag, yet none of that seems like the Savior we have in Jesus.

When God walked among people through the only of His children who was begotten to live and die and rise again for our good, He didn't wear blue stripes, and His robes probably weren't bleachy white. So why on God's earth are blue stripes (and bleachy white shawls) dominant hallmarks in Israel's modern identity? And why does the architecture look the way it does?

I'm someone who has believed for years now, that there was something ethnically different about the Israelites that made them subject to persecution many times, whether persecution by Egypt, Babylon, Rome, or ultimately, Germany. And I personally feel that Egypt (a cultural crossroads with a pharaoh, at one point, who was clearly more African than Asian) -- that the Egypt who enslaved Africans from across the continent, counted Israel the same as other nations, and that at least a few African slaves from beyond Egypt, and from beyond Israel, became part of Israel while enslaved in Egypt.

With that feeling as a backdrop, I can imagine a people, Israel, escaping Egypt on a one-way ticket to their Promised Land. God counseled them not to want to turn back to Egypt or to Egypt's ways. Whatever practices may have been with the Israelites from Africa or Egypt, were practices left behind them in light of 40 years in a harsh desert wilderness where many perished or died without faith in God's promises.

Each time Israel was getting established in their new land, they suffered some sort of attack. The Israelites fought for the life God promised them. But after Egypt, there were many more years in bondage, including living under Rome from before the time of Jesus until the 1400s. During that time, Rome destroyed the temple Solomon had re-created. And there is no telling how much more was in ruins. Even faith began to fall apart.

Says one article online: "Jewish messianic beliefs became more abstract ... while rabbinical political thought shifted to a more cautious and conservative approach. Judaism and early Christianity continued to diverge more sharply."

A decade after Jesus' crucifixion, Rome occupied virtually all lands surrounding what we know today as the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, the Romans populated a colony at the site of Solomon's fallen temple, causing a tragic revolt by some of the Jewish population. Rome weighed heavily on rebuilding Israel; and that's why my personal suspicion of Greco-Roman and Mediterranean styling in the region's architecture today. 

One thing I know definitively, is that those blue stripes of Israeli identity are from Israel's experiences under Rome, as highlighted in an article by Rabbi Dr. Zvi Ron.

"There is a certain irony that Jews have preserved an element of fashion prevalent among Romans, the destroyers of the Second Temple and the Jewish state of that time, and have now incorporated it into the flag of the contemporary rebirth of the State of Israel," Rabbi Ron writes. "Although it is popular to say that blue and white, the colors associated with the State of Israel and its flag, actually originated as the 'Jewish colors' because of [rabbinic instruction], it is more accurate to go further back in history and say that they are Jewish colors because the Jews kept" a Roman tradition of putting blue lines near the edge of white tunics, "long after the Romans vanished."

Indeed, another writer, Yitzchak Schwartz, during an internship in New York, said that a book by Steven Fine reveals "Jewish art in late Roman and Byzantine Palestine was an 'ethnic art,' which participated in Roman material culture," instead of observing rabbinic instructions.

... My, but that's not what God means by saying those living in Him -- those living in Jesus -- are a people set apart, whose light can't be hidden.

A BBC News digital report from 2014, documents an "Israeli man ... blowing a shofar, made from the horn of a Namibian antelope, at a shofar factory in Jerusalem ... ." (European Press Association photo on left)

On a dot-com website unrelated to the BBC/EPA photo, a Jewish blogger explains, "We do not have in Israel rams or antelopes with horns adequate for Shofar making. The horns are brought from various places around the world, mostly from Morocco, Algeria and countries in southern Africa."

Photos from other websites are helpful for understanding the Jewish shofar, made of certain animal horns -- not of cow or ox horns -- has never been carved on its exterior. For centuries, rabbinic law likely has prohibited carving the horns for appeal, despite Jewish purchases from some countries where some musical horns traditionally have been carved as appeals to lust.

Different lengths of animal horn always have been used to make musical horns in Israel. Shorter horns were sounded in short, high-pitched blasts by ancient Israelites, and longer horns were sounded to make longer, lower-register musical notes. In ancient times, the shofar was sounded as a call to battle or to periods of special worship. These horns continue to signal special days in synagogues today.

Horns made of animal horns are not hallmarks of every nation's musical history. (Not every nation has suffered the same!) In Sudan, a wooden horn, called "the Wazza," has survived the centuries, with uses for its own special times.

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In the End: The Bible says we aren't prepared for Heaven through

turning back to look at a lot of the dark past, but are Heaven-

bound through keeping Jesus and His cross in mind.