Pottery shards and other evidence points to prophet

Archeologists working on the Tel Rehov dig in the Jordan Valley recently announced the discovery of what they believe could be the house of Elisha the prophet. “The house was full of objects of unique types… two pottery altars that were used for burning incense,” archaeologist Ami Mazar told CBN News. “We found there figurines, clay figurines. We found large vessels — like big vessels that were probably used for serving food, not for just the nuclear family, but maybe for a larger community. Normally the houses had one entrance leading to a large space with rooms all around. This house was divided into two wings. The two wings were connected to one another through the backroom and each one of the wings had an opening to the street. We found an ink inscription written in red ink on pottery, but it is broken unfortunately. But we reconstructed the name as Elisha.”

The area in which the house was found also corresponds to the Biblical account of where Elisha lived.

“You know I cannot say for sure this particular Elisha that we found is the biblical Elisha,” Mazar said. “You know it’s very difficult to say, but it is very tempting because it is exactly the period when Elisha acted — the second half of the 9th century BC.”

“With only six other people by the name of Elisha known in that time for a couple of centuries on either side, we can somehow believe that either there was just the luck that this holy man was also by the name of Elisha, or this was Elisha the prophet himself,” Archaeologist Stephen Pfann  told CBN News. He added that two different inscriptions mentioning the family of Nimshi were also found in the dig.

“We remember that it was Elijah who was told to anoint Jehu, the son of Nimshi, to be the king,” Pfann explained. “And he passed that on to Elisha who sent out one of his disciples to finally do the anointing.”

Another inscription with the same name Nimshi was found nearby.

“So I came to this idea that perhaps the entire valley of Beit Shean, this beautiful fertile valley [with] food, springs, water, [and] good land was perhaps under rule, perhaps, or property of this family,” Ami said. “Archaeology is like a huge puzzle, you know, we add information from one excavation, a second excavation, a third excavation — Meggido, Tel Rehov, Beit Shean…and together we bring it into a large picture, the large puzzle trying to decipher the material culture of the Israelites.”

Photo credit: CBN News