Event

The Elijah cave is a well-known holy site occupied by Jews in Israel today. But was it always so? A recent study of the cave by scholars and students of the Institut für Judaistik in  the Freie Universität Berlin has brought to light over 50 hitherto unknown inscriptions, most of them in Greek but also a few in Hebrew and Aramaic, one in Latin and one even in Arabic. This lecture - co-sponsored by Penn's departments of Religious Studies and Classical Studies and the Program in Jewish Studies - presents these recent finds and explain the various parameters that come into play when the religious character of the ancient site has to be decided.