ACT Preliminary Archaeological Report 2014 Mesopotamian Expedition in Eastern Turkey

Goal: The purpose of this research field expedition was to conduct archaeological surveys of 1. Northern Mesopotamia: Gobekli Tepe & biblical Abram/Abraham 2. Antioch: Alexander, NT archaeology & the Syriac Orthodox Church 3. Mount Ararat: Urartu, Mount Ararat & the Armenian Kingdoms The academic goal is to begin a theological and biblical reconstruction of what actually happened in the locations mentioned in the Bible, which subsequently became a part of Christian history, from 10,000 BC to the 13th century AD. Newly discovered Paleolithic, Hittite and Urartian archaeological sites will soon rewrite the history of Christianity. Conclusions: Five moments in history: 1. At least 12,000 years ago, humans were already building temples to worship. 2. Around 2000-1800 BC: Sanli Urfa (biblical Ur of Mesopotamia) and Haran were the cities that Abram, his father Terah, his Uncle, Haran and his cousin Lot lived before their journey to Egyptian Canaan. The traditions of Job, Nimrod and Jonah are also found in Sanliurfa.

3. In the 4th century BC, Alexander the Great defeat Darius of the Persian Empire, changing the culture, language and theology of Judaism from Persian to Hellenistic Greek. This led to the NT being written in Greek. 4. In the 1st century AD, Antioch was the 3rd largest city of the Roman Empire and where Paul and Barnabas began their gentile mission. The oldest identifiable Church, St. Pierre, is a grotto that has been preserved to this day.

5. Around the 13th century AD, the Armenian kingdom identified Mount Ararat as the location of Noah’s Ark led to a literalistic reading f the Bible. Jews and Muslims identified a different mountain range rather than this stand alone volcanic cone.

1. Northern Mesopotamia: Gobekli Tepe and Abram1

1a. Gobekli Tepe: Paleolithic archaeology - 10,000 BC.

Just six miles from Urfa, home of biblical Abram, Gobekli Tepe or “Pot-Bellied Hill” is the oldest temple ever discovered, constructed 12,000 years ago, some 9,000 years before Solomon’s temple and 6,000 years before Stonehenge. This is probably the most important archaeological discovery of religion in the past century. As a Christian apologist, I make every effort to investigate Christian beliefs and where possible, verify claims. Archaeological sites at the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia are central to my research. This part of Turkey was known as northern Mesopotamia, meaning “the land between the two rivers” - the Euphrates and the Tigris. Today, it is an area of conflict, with Kurdish freedom fighters battling the Turkish government, Syrian refugees seeking sanctuary from the civil war, Armenia’s political tensions with Turkey, as well as Iraqi and Iranian militaries monitoring their borders.

In October 1994, Klaus Schmidt of the Berlin Archaeological Institute re-discovered and has been excavating Gobekli Tepe for the past twenty years. This breath-taking discovery overturned the theory that when people started to live in cities, they invented religion to keep everyone honest by serving as a threat of sanction against rule-breakers. Instead, Gobekli Tepe shows that 12,000 years ago, the human mind was already ‘made in the image of God’ and was thinking about their creator.

An artist’s rendering of Gobekli Tepe in its heyday, at the Urfa Museum. May 2014.

Large numbers of butchered bones were found on site and so far less than 10% of the area has been excavated. This astounding find suggests that the site was used for ritual sacrifice and feasting. Interestingly, no evidence of homes or buildings for human habitation has been found. Schmidt’s team found no telltale signs of a settlement: no cooking hearths, houses or trash pits. No clay fertility

                                                                                                                         1 With local traditions of Noah, Job, Nimrod, Haran & Jonah thrown in.

figurines that litter nearby sites of about the same age. But there was evidence of tool use, resembling others from nearby sites carbon-dated to 9000 BC. Subsequent carbon dating confirms that the dates are similar. The abundance of wild game bones indicate that the people had not yet domesticated animals or farmed – this was prior to the agricultural revolution. The world’s oldest domesticated strains of wheat were discovered at a prehistoric village 20 miles away. Agriculture developed there around 8500 BC. These findings suggest a novel theory of civilization. Scholars have long believed that people learned to farm and live in settled communities before they had the time, organization and resources to construct temples and support complicated social structures. Schmidt argues that the extensive, coordinated effort to build the monoliths laid the groundwork for the development of complex societies. To carve, erect and bury rings of 10-ton stone pillars would have required hundreds of workers, all needing to be fed and housed. Hence the eventual emergence of settled communities in the area around 10,000 years ago. I had an epiphany - Religion led to civilization! Some 2000 years later, around 8000 BC, the site was filled up and apparently abandoned. This tantalizing discovery would be of great interest to any biblical scholar, theologian, pastor, missionary or evangelist. I had to make sure to meet the man himself.

With Dr Klaus Schmidt who in 1995, discovered and identified Gobekli Tepe. May 2014 May 24th: I was introduced to Dr Schmidt for a private tour of the site. We walked up the “Pot-Bellied Hill” to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof. This is the main excavation site. He has mapped the summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. In the pits, stone pillars are arranged in circles. Four other rings of partially excavated pillars are visible. Each ring is centered by two T-shaped stone pillars encircled by smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars measure 16 feet and weigh up to 10 tons. Some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions, crocodiles, lizards, kangaroo-like animals and vultures.

Camel-Kangaroos of Gobekli Tepe? May 2014

Crocodiles of Gobekli Tepe? May 2014

Giant Rats of Gobekli Tepe? May 2014 No one knows what the symbols and animals mean – Schimidt reminds me that this was created over 6000 years before the invention of writing. “This is the first human-built holy place, humanity's first “church on a hill” Perhaps, Schmidt says, the site was a burial ground or the center of a death cult, the dead laid out on the hillside among the stylized gods and spirits of the afterlife. Schmidt was not a religious man but he said that these finds made him rethink the significance of worship so far back in human history and it challenged his personal assumption. As we walked round the site, he politely asked about my own faith convictions and was surprised that I was willing to allow my own assumptions to be tested by the scrutiny of real life scientific excavation. Then I informed him that I started my first field excavation in 1997 with Bar-Ilan University and sponsored by Princeton Seminary. I had long gotten my hands dirty and my troublesome knees and ankles remind me of those days. He began to open up about what he really felt regarding paleolithic religious worship. It would be our first and last meeting. I had planned a second visit in 2015, but in June, I received news that Klaus died of a heart attack. His sudden death at 61 stunned us all. This is a reminder to carpe diem.

1b. Old Testament Archaeology of Northern Mesopotamia: Ur and Haran

Where was Abram born? The two candidates are Anatolian Ur (Turkey) and Sumerian Ur (Iraq). Prior to the 1970s, most biblical scholars believed that Abram was born in Anatolian Ur, otherwise known as Edessa and more recently, Sanli Urfa. Then in 1927, Leonard Woolley discovered the royal cemeteries at Sumerian Ur and declared that his finds were “worthy of Araham.” This announcement was more public relations than science. By associating his finds with biblical Abraham, it would all but guarantee for his excavations. Although the majority of scholars today adopt Woolley’s claim, lingering doubts remain. Indeed, Cyrus Gordon2 writes that the Biblical evidence is by itself conclusive in placing Ur of the Chaldees in the Urfa-Haran region of south central Turkey, near the Syrian border, rather than in southern Mesopotamia where it is located on so many “Biblical” maps. Genesis 11:31 relates that “Terah took Abram … and they went out … from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there.” Then Terah died (Genesis 11:32) and Abram went on to Canaan (Genesis 12:15). This means that Haran was en route from Ur of the Chaldees to Canaan. By no stretch of the imagination would anyone go from Sumerian Ur (in southern Mesopotamia) to Canaan via Haran. A glance at the map shows that Haran is much too far out of the way.3

Map of the Anatolian Ur (Urfa)in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian Ur in Babylonia4

                                                                                                                         2 The late Cyrus H. Gordon was Professor of Hebrew Studies at New York University. 3 See Cyrus Gordon’s “Where was Abraham’s Ur?” at http://members.bib-arch.org/search.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=3&Issue=2&ArticleID=5, Paul Y. Hoskisson at https://www.lds.org/ensign/1991/07/research-and-perspectives-where-was-the-ur-of-abraham?lang=eng and Alan R. Millard’s “Where was Abraham’s Ur?” at http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/Ur.htm 4 https://www.lds.org/ensign/1991/07/research-and-perspectives-where-was-the-ur-of-abraham?lang=eng

The ruins of Haran. May 2014

In 1976, a tablet found at Ebla, Syria refers to “Ur in Haran” and Sumerian Ur is never called “Ur of the Chaldeans” in any cuneiform discovered so far. First, Chaldea only appears as a nation in the 9th century BC, over a thousand years after Abram was supposed to have lived. Next, the southern Ur lies west of the Euphrates, so it could not be described as “across” the river (Genesis 31:21). Finally, in the OT, when Abraham sought a wife for his son Isaac, and when Isaac sought a wife for his son Jacob, both their servants were sent to their ancestral home (Gen. 24:4, 10 and Gen. 28:2). In both cases, the servants brought the young men to their homes near Haran, just 24 miles southeast of Edessa (Anatolian Ur) rather than over a thousand miles south to Sumerian Ur.5

Haran means “journey” or “caravan” in Akkadian. This ruins of ancient Haran had been occupied from 3000 BC until medieval times. According to Gen. 11 and 12, Abraham’s father, Terah, lived here and Abraham himself was resident until he was 75. It was a famous cult center of Sin, the Mesopotamian Moon god. Haran served as the last Assyrian capital, the home of Babylonia’s last king, Nabonidus, and came under Persian control in the 6th century. Under the Greeks, its name was Hellenized to become Carrhae. Here, the Parthians destroyed the Roman army and murdered Emperor Caracalla. By the 5th century AD, the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius tore down the Temple of Sin., which dated back at least 2300 years. By AD 649, Haran fell to the Arabs and served as the last capital of the Ummayad Dynasty, Caliph Mervan II, builder of Ulu Camii (Turkey’s oldest surviving mosque). In the 9th century Harun al Rashid founded its university but in 1260, the Mongols destroyed the university, the citadel and the city walls. The ruined city never recovered.

Today, more and more scholars are convinced that we have misidentified Abram’s Ur for almost 90 years. I myself stand among those who also thought Abram was an ancient “Iraqi.” Islamic tradition

                                                                                                                         5 Mark Wilson, Biblical Turkey, Yayinlari: Istanbul, 2010.

also identifies Anatolian Ur as the birthplace of Abraham (Ibrahim).6 Today, Urfa is a major pilgrimage site, especially to the cave reputed to be where Abram was born.

Prior to my arrival in Istanbul, I was duly informed that due to terrorist activities by Kurdish militants in the border area between Syria and Turkey, my planned visit to Abram’s birthplace has been denied. This was a serious blow for I had prepped a head of time and consulted Mark Wilson, a New Testament scholar and director of the Asia Minor Research Center in Antalya, Turkey as well as Dennis Olson, professor of Old Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, my alma mater. However, on May 24th, 2014, my guide, archaeologist Serra Somersan announced that we have received last minute permission from the Turkish government to visit both Haran and Urfa,

My field guide, archaeologist Serra Somersan of Ege University at the Haran site, May 2014

I delighted in my heart but kept this to myself. I did not want to jinx the opportunity. I managed to visit both modern towns of Urfa and Haran, as well as the magnificent Urfa Museum. Many shops, restaurants and hotels were named after Abraham and the tradition is strong to this day. You can see the pride with which its citizens identified themselves with the biblical patriarchs. For a lifelong Christian like me, and one fascinated by the complex history of the Hebrew Bible as well as its reception history, I was intrigued by how local modern Muslims understood the role of Abraham in their lives today. There are many legendary stories and imaginative tales taken very seriously by the townfolks. Not only did Abraham live here, he battled his archenemy, the biblical Nimrod. Job (Ayyub) lived in Uz, east of Jerusalem. Some Muslims identified the location of his suffering inside a cave here in Urfa (Edessa), in the region of Haran. The Shrine of Job is busy building with a large compound, filled with people hoping to be healed of their ailments by appealing to this great saint.

                                                                                                                         6 The modern town of Urfa, called Orhai in Syriac sources and Edessa in Greek, maintains a traditional association with Abraham

Map of Haran archaeological site. May 2014

2. Antioch: Alexander, NT archaeology & the Syriac Orthodox Church 2a. Alexander of Macedonia defeated Darius III of Persia:

The Battle of Issus near Iskanderun and Antioch was a decisive Hellenic victory. Nov 333 BC marked the beginning of the end of Persia and the first time the Persian army had been defeated with the King present.

Issus today – May 2014

The Hellenization of the Babylonian Jews in Persia affected the theological vocabulary and media used to convey sacred texts. The New Testament came to be written in Greek by Jews during the Roman occupation of Palestine.

2b. NT archaeology at Antioch:

The oldest known church (other claims date back to AD 70,7 except the church as a religion distinct did not yet exist) is St Peter’s, a cave complex about 2 km from downtown modern Antakya.

St. Peter’s Grotto at Antioch, 2009

2c. The Syriac Orthodox (Syriac) Church of Antioch:

This is an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox Church based in the Eastern Mediterranean. It employs the oldest surviving liturgy in Christianity, the Liturgy of St. James the Apostle, and uses Syriac as its official and liturgical language. Syriac is the Aramaic dialect of Edessa, now called Sanli Urfa (probably where Abram was born) in Northern Mesopotamia (Eastern Turkey). The Church is led by the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch (SOC). The SOC traces its history to one of the first Christian communities in Antioch, described in the Acts of the Apostles (New Testament, Acts 11:26) and established by the Apostle St. Peter in AD 37.

The Oriental Orthodox tradition has been a distinct church body since the schism following the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451 but its roots date back to the first founded church outside Jerusalem in Antioch in AD 37 when and where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. A long history

                                                                                                                         7 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/jordan/2106752/Worlds-oldest-Christian-church-discovered-in-Jordan.html.

of persecution led the seat of the Patriarch to move. In 518, it relocated to various locations in the Near East. In the 13th century, to Mardin, Turkey, then Homs, Syria in 1933, and Damascus, Syria in 1959.

A Syriac Orthodox Church in Antioch (Antakya), Turkey. 2014

The SOC of Antioch claims to be the most ancient Christian church in the world. According to the Gospel of Luke. “The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch” (Acts 11:26). St. Peter and St. Paul are regarded as the cofounders of the Patriarchate of Antioch in AD 37, with the former serving as its first bishop and he is considered as the first patriarch of the SOC.

According to ecclesiastical tradition, the Church of Antioch is the second established church in Christendom after Jerusalem Just as Jewish Christianity originated at Jerusalem with James, so Gentile Christianity started at Antioch with Peter. From Antioch it spread to the various cities and provinces of Syria, among the Hellenistic population as well as among the Hellenistic Jews in Syria.

According to the historian Eusebius, when St. Peter left Antioch, Evodios and Ignatius presided over the Patriarchate. Because of the prominence of St. Ignatius in the church's history, almost all of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchs since 1293 were named Ignatius.8 The Syriac Orthodox Church led by His Holiness Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II is not to be confused by the Syriac Catholic Church, led by His Beatitude Patriarch Mor Ignatius Youssef III.9

                                                                                                                         8 Chaillot, Christine, The Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East, Geneva: Inter-Orthodox Dialogue, 1988. 9 http://sor.cua.edu/Intro/.

3. Ararat: Urartu, Mount Ararat & Armenia

3a. The Khaldinis of Urartu “Urartu” is an Assyrian name for the people of Bianili. That is what we have now come to know these Khaldinis, who worship the deity Khaldi, as – the Urartians. They ruled their kingdom from Tushpa (Turushpa), near Lake Van. Some 800 by 500 miles, it included three major bodies of water: Van (Turkey), Sevan (Armenia) and Urmia (Iran). Mentioned in Assyrian sources from the early 13th century BC, Urartu enjoyed considerable political power in the Middle East in the 9th and 8th centuries BC. The Urartians were succeeded in the 6th century BC by the Armenians., Most remains of Urartian settlements are found between the four lakes Çildir and Van in Turkey, Urmia in Iran, and Sevan in Armenia.

Copying Urartian Inscriptions at Cavustepe “Castle”. May 2014

The heyday of the Urartian kingdom from 840 to 612 saw the Urartians, which had earlier absorbed or imitated the amenities of Assyria’s higher civilization, produced its own distinctive counterparts to many Assyrian achievements. During the reigns of Ishpuini (c. 830–810) and his son Meinua (c. 810–781), Urartian conquests are attested from widespread inscriptions. Ardini, or Muṣaṣir, once conquered by Tiglath-pileser I of Assyria about 1100, now became part of the Urartian sphere of influence. A number of Urartian inscriptions dealing with religious subjects date to Ishpuini’s reign. The state religion received its established form at that time, with the hierarchy of the many gods in the Urartian pantheon. The Urartians were finally overcome by a Median invasion late in the 7th century BC.10 Its modern re-discovery took place in 1827 when Father E. Schulz copied 42 cuneiform inscriptions at Van Fortress, published it in 1840, but was only deciphered in 1880. Their war god was Haldi, unknown elsewhere in the ANE.                                                                                                                          10 http://www.britannica.com/place/Urartu.

Documenting Uratian inscription at Hoşap “Castle”. May 2014

Taking a break at Tepe Ayanis “Castle”. May 2014

Tepe Ayanis Castle with archaeologists, Serra Somersan of Ege University, Professor Mehmet Isikli of

Ataturk University and Professor Jennifer Tobin of Illinois University. May 2014

An Urartian alphabet key. May 2014

3b. Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark On the cold morning on May 20th 2014, I sipped hot coffee, looked out the window and saw Mount Ararat with my own eyes. Visions of Noah’s Ark flooded my mind as I stared in wondered absent-mindedly. I took out my iPhone and started taking shots of this majestic view. Since the 1970s, I have read many writers who claim to have discovered physical evidence of the Ark, but somehow, they all lost them on the way down. No, my purpose was not to initiate an exploration of the mountain – I knew better. Let me explain. Mount Ararat in Judeo-Christian tradition is associated with the "Mountains of Ararat" where, according to the Book of Genesis, Noah's Ark came to rest. It also plays a significant role in Armenian culture and nationalism. The mountain can be seen on the coat of arms of Armenia.

Mount Ararat. May 2014

The Genesis text does not identify the modern-day Mount Ararat but rather, simply the mountains of ‘rrt’, which refers to the ancient kingdom of Urartu or Ararat. Mount Ararat has nothing to do with the biblical Noah’s Ark, itself a re-telling of an ancient story called the Epic of Gilgamesh. The biblical writers were less interested in describing an international ecological rescue of non-marine animals or the origin of spectral optics (the rainbow) than they were with conveying God’s love for the world that he created and announcing that as a warrior-god, Yahweh would never again draw his war-bow (symbolized by a post-deluge rainbow) against

humanity. By adopting an ancient flood story, Noah’s name would forever be identified with a global post-apocalyptic renewal. Claims that Noah’s Ark has been discovered continue to make headlines.11 In Armenian mythology Mt. Ararat is the home of the Gods. After the formation of the Armenian kingdom, the Armenian Church claimed a beautiful volcanic cone on their territory as the location of Noah’s Ark, establishing yet another sacred place to buttress their claim to God’s favor. We have since inherited this tradition. In contrast, Jews and Muslims believe that the Ark landed on Judi Dagh, part of a mountain range that is much closer to Ur and Haran of Northern Mesopotamia (Anatolian Turkey).

3c. The Armenian Church at the Ruins of Ani, near Kars

Armenia was influenced by the older Anatolian civilizations of the Urartians (Ararat), the Hurrians and the Hittites, in Anatolia. The Hittite civilization dissolved around 1200 BC, with many Hittites becoming a part of Israel. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom King David murdered. She became the mother of Solomon, who was neither ethnically nor genetically Jewish in his maternal lineage. To be an Israelite in biblical times was a faith identity rather than a genetic pedigree. David himself was not genetically Jewish as he had non-Hebrew female ancestors – can you name the four non-Jewish women of Jesus’ own maternal lineage?

By the time of Jesus and the early medieval period, Armenia was the most important kingdom that rivaled the Roman and Byzantine Empires in terms of the story of Christianity. However, its recent history has made visiting the nation very challenging. With the fall of the USSR and the emergence of modern Armenia, the time has come for me to pay a visit, at least to the Turkish side of ancient Armenia, a buffer state between the warring kingdoms of Rome and Parthia. So I flew from Istanbul to former Soviet town of Kars. It sits almost 6000 feet above sea-level near Turkey’s borders with Georgia and modern Armenia. My goal was also to visit the nearby ruins of Ani, a former capital of Armenia, built atop an even more ancient Urartian settlement dating back to 800 BC, around the time of the prophet Isaiah. Both cities served as capitals of Medieval Armenia. Ancient Armenia succeeded the Uratian Kingdom of Bialini as the Kingdom of Van around the 9th century BC, contemporaneous with the time of the prophets Amos and Isaiah. So the current excavations of Uratian culture will give us a deeper understanding of pre-Christian, pre-Islamic Armenia. The kingdom was Christianized when Gregory the Illuminator persuaded the king to convert to Christianity, very likely a strategic political as well as a religious move. From the 4th to the 7th centuries, the region came under the influence of Byzantium and Persia. But by 640, Armenia was conquered by the Muslim Army to become the Emirate of Armenia and subsequently dominated by two families, Artsruni and Bagratuni. In 806, the Caliph of Baghdad named Ashot Bagratuni “Prince of Armenia.” In 961, Ani became the capital of Ashot III Bagratuni of Armenia and was called the “City of 1001 Churches.” The Turco-Mongols, Turkmen and Cilicians ruled during the 11th to the 16th centuries, followed by the Perso-Ottomans until the Russian period in the 19th century. The First Republic of Armenia emerged in 1918 and for two years,engaged in warfare with Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey – all countries on my list to explore. By 1920, it fell to the Soviets and became the Armenian SSR. Today’s Republic of Armenia achieved independence in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR. I expect to visit Armenia in 2016, hopefully nder the guidance of archaeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Stay tuned.                                                                                                                          11 http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100428-noahs-ark-found-in-turkey-science-religion-culture/

The ruins of the ancient Armenian capital Ani, near Kars, Turkey, May 2014

A Zoroastrian Fire Temple at the Ruins of Ani, May 2014.

This ancient bridge along the Old Silk Road sits at the border of Armenia and Turkey where Christianity, Islam and Buddhism encountered and influenced each other. May 2014

This concludes my preliminary layman’s report. I expect to spend the next 6 months of so going through my detailed notes and drawings to compile a fuller theological report of this amazing opportunity. I would like to acknowledge my thanks to the faithful donors who funded this expedition.

My field notes during long bus journeys between archaeological sites

Ron Choong, Academy for Christian Thought, www.actministry.org