The Tomb of the Maccabees and Its Afterlife

Feb. 2 nd , 2016,

Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, Boston University
Speaker: Amit Re’em (Israel Antiquities Authority)

IAA archaeologist Amit Re’em presents the results of his excavation of a Byzantine-era (4th-6th c. CE) tomb in Mode’in, Israel, which in late antiquity was believed to belong to the Maccabees.

A Response from David Gurevich, Post Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Zvi Institute

I enjoyed very much the presentation. It was a great opportunity to hear from the excavator himself about the site. Amit Re’em presented the questions about the site very well.  As he mentioned in his talk, the biggest challenge is the identification of the site.

At this stage of research, in my opinion, it would be too early to regard the site as the “The Tomb of the Maccabees”. In fact, if we disconnect the site from the “brand” of “Modiin” and look on the archaeological record, our conclusions would be very limited: