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Ruins of the monumental street arch at Palmyra, author unknown, c. 1900 CE. Image courtesy of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. TMS Object Number: 101PH020.171

Ruins of Beth-Shean on the mound in the background with ruins of Scythopolis  in the foreground. Photo by Daniel Pioske.

But if the meanings we assign to ruins take on distinct expressions across the ages, then how did people in antiquity experience the remains they, too, encountered? One of the richest historical sources we possess on this question is the Hebrew Bible, a corpus in which ruins are referred to frequently and among nearly every scroll that would come to be contained within its canon. The Hebrew Bible is in many ways a book of ruins, written in a world where wreckage and loss, or the threat thereof, were common. From the famous accounts of the fall of Jericho or ‘Ai (Josh 6, 8) to the anguished descriptions of Jerusalem’s ruins after its Babylonian conquest (e.g., Ps 79; Lam 2; Jer 44), we are offered insights into how those behind the formation of these texts valued the material remains that we know, archaeologically, were embedded in the landscapes they held in view.

Remains of the Cyclopean Wall of Jericho. American Colony (Jerusalem) c. 1900–1920 CE. G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-06481. Public Domain.

When we turn to these ancient accounts, what is striking is that we do not come across a single passage that expresses an interest in unearthing the ruins referred to. Instead, material remains provoked different responses. Above all, ruins conveyed something about time to the biblical writers who refer to them. At moments, ruins were connected to a world of forerunners and of events that had come to pass long before these texts were written down. In the Book of Jeremiah, for example, the prophet directs his contemporaries to visit the ruins of Shiloh and remember what had once transpired there (Jer 7:12; 26:9), though the destruction of the location, we are told elsewhere in the biblical writings (Ps 78:60-64), would have occurred well over four hundred years before. In other texts, anonymous storytellers direct our attention to ruins that could be encountered “to this day,” such as in the story of Rachel’s Tomb in the Book of Genesis (Gen 35:20). There we read that after Rachel’s postpartum death, “Jacob set up a pillar over her tomb; it is the pillar of Rachel’s tomb to this day” (הוא מצבת קברת רחל עד היום). What comes to the fore in passages such as these is a present haunted by the remains of former times, harrowed by figures bound to the ruins that remained. Most frequently, however, ruins in the Hebrew Bible are affiliated with a time yet to come. This prospective sense of ruination is typically associated with the city of Jerusalem and a destruction that a collection of biblical texts, especially among the prophetic writings (eg., Micah 3:12; Jer 22:1-10; Ezek 5), foresee and forewarn. Much like Volney’s meditation on Palmyra, when these texts refer to ruins they perceive material remains as harbingers of possible futures to come.

Excavations on Ophel, Wall of the Jebusites, Jerusalem. American Colony (Jerusalem), c. 1900-1920 CE. G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Library of Congress, Prints & Photography Division, LC-DIG-matpc-05478. Public Domain.

In stepping back from these ancient texts, what is apparent is how different their sense of ruination is from our own. That ruins could disclose something about the time ahead, for example, stands in clear opposition to how ruins are understood historically today. Rather, we historians and archaeologists are predisposed to think of material remains in terms of what they convey about the lived experiences of ancient populations who once inhabited them. The moment we label an artifact as “Late Bronze Age II” or locate it within an assemblage dated to the “4th century BCE,” we have entered a universe of assumptions about time and ruins that the biblical writers did not share. To put it differently: the prospect of digging down through space to journey back in time is an idea so common to us that we rarely reflect on how we came to hold it or how it departs from those who experienced ruins in the centuries before.

“Procession of the bull beneath the mound of Nimroud.” Frontispiece from Volume II of Nineveh and Its Remains by A.H. Layard (1849); Lithograph by W.L. Watson. Image: The New York Public Library Digital Collections (OCLC 700101). Public Domain.