James Strange
James R. Strange is the Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Professor in New Testament at Samford University, where he teaches courses in New Testament, ancient Greco-Roman religions, and archaeology. He is the director of the Shikhin Excavation Project in Israel and has published extensively on the history and archaeology of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, including his most recent book, Excavating the Land of Jesus: How Archaeologists Study the People of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2023).
Presenter at
BAS Symposium: The Life of Jesus, May 17, 2025
Jerusalem Pilgrimage in Jesus’s Time
The Canonical Gospels, Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and rabbinic texts all reference regular and widespread Jewish pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the time of the Second Temple. Surely such a practice that reputedly involved so many people left an imprint in the archaeological record. This presentation examines two kinds of material remains from which we can infer the practice of pilgrimage, one an installation and the other an object. First, the presence of large, stepped water pools near the Temple Mount suggests that not only priests but also Jerusalem pilgrims immersed themselves in order to enter the Temple courts in a ritually pure state. Second, the “preferential distribution” at Galilean sites of Herodian/knife-pared lamps made from Jerusalem clays implies that pilgrims brought these lamps home with them. If this is the case, then a lamp from Jerusalem carried meaning beyond mere illumination. The act of pilgrimage had ongoing and repeated consequences in Galilean Jewish households.
Spring Bible & Archaeology Fest 2023
Actual and Experimental Archaeology: Lamp Manufacturing in the Galilee?
Since excavations began at the site of Shikhin in 2012, evidence of lamp manufacturing has been turning up in every dig season. Evidence indicates that Shikhin’s industry produced and regionally distributed three well-known lamp forms: the Herodian knife-pared lamp, the northern undecorated lamp, and the northern Darom lamp. The fluorite of the industry happened between the ends to two wars with Rome: 70 and 135 CE. During the 2022 season, Yeshu Dray of Restoration of Ancient Technology built a reproduction of a small kiln excavated at Shikhin and successfully fired reproduction northern Darom lamps. The presentation will cover the discovery and technology of lamp production and their economic implications in the region.
