Biblical Gilgal: A Common Place Name or a Cult Site near Jericho?

Abstract

An analysis of the biblical references mentioning the place name Gilgal indicates that they all denote a single site—namely, the cult site located east of Jericho. References to Gilgal that seemingly allude to other sites resulted either from scribal errors or from scholarly misinterpretation of the biblical text. Moreover, gilgal as a noun for a kind of settlement never appears in the Bible. Hence, the plural form gilgals sometimes used by archaeologists to designate elliptical or round sites enclosed by a massive or narrow stone wall are misleading and should best be abandoned. On the contrary, Gilgal was the exclusive name of a major Israelite cult centre located near the main road that passed from Jericho to Transjordan. The cult site operated in the pre-monarchical and monarchical periods, but ceased to function in the late monarchical period, possibly during the reign of King Josiah.

Keywords:

• Gilgal
• Geliloth
• Bethel
• Tribal borders
• Jordan Valley
• Ascent of Adummim

Disclosure statement

The author reports that there are no conflicting interests to declare.

Notes

1 For discussions of the biblical narratives of Gilgal, see von Gall 1898: 78–83; Sellin 1917: 3–21; Galling 1943; 1945; Kraus 1951; Gevaryahu 1965; Langlamet 1969; de Vaux 1978: 598–608; Otto 1984, with earlier literature; Kotter 1992; Dozeman 2015: 281–283, 295–301.

2 For a different interpretation of the site of Khirbet ed-Dawwara, see Naʾaman 2012.

3 For descriptions of the sites, see Zertal 2008: 111–112; 2023: 46–50, 88–96, 179–183; Zertal and Ben-Yosef 2009; Zertal and Bar 2017: 234–239, 301–303, 328–331; Bar, Farhi and Shamir 2023; Bar, Jacobi and Shamir 2023, with earlier literature. For an aerial view of some sites, see Zertal 2023: photographs between pp. 96 and 97. For a detailed discussion, see ibid.: 52–183.

4 In a recently published article, Bar, Jacobi and Shamir (2023) demonstrated that one of the sites included by Zertal among his five Iron Age foot-shaped enclosures—the site of Bedhat esh-Shaʿab, a site 1.2 hectares in area, located near the modern village of Argaman—was in fact constructed in the Early Roman period.

5 For the text of Eusebius, see Freeman-Grenville, Chapman and Taylor 2003: 41.

6 For the archaeological search of the site of ancient Gilgal, see, e.g., Muilenburg 1955; Bächli 1967; Weippert 1971: 22 n. 49; Bennett 1972; Landes 1975; Schwartz and Amar 2000.

7 Upon the rise of Christianity, a church was constructed at Gilgal/Galgala, within which the twelve stones were erected, as indicated by the Madaba Map (Donner 1992: 46, no. 26 and the attached map). Thus, the church may have been built on top of the site of ancient Gilgal, thereby obliterating its remains.

8 For the list of references, see Koehler, Baumgartner and Stamm 1994 with earlier literature. Kinnier Wilson (1962: 173–174) observed that a similar expression of going down in reference to going up is known from Akkadian.

9 Zertal (2000: 251–255; 2008: 111–112; 2023: 93–95) identified the ‘Gilgal’ mentioned in Deut 11:30 with the early Iron Age site of el-ʿUnuq, located near Wadi Farʿah. The latter is an elliptical site, 1.5 hectares in size, enclosed by a low stone wall that faces Jabal al-Kabir, on top of which Zertal tentatively identified the oak of Moreh. However, the early Iron Age site of el-ʿUnuq is irrelevant for establishing the location of Gilgal mentioned in Deut 11:30, a text composed in the context of the Judahite-Samarian controversy on the location of the blessing and cursing sites in the exilic or early Persian period.

10 In the course of his survey of the mountainous regions, Zertal (2023: 172–183; see Bar 2023: 271) studied the site of Shaʿab Romani, located in Wadi el-Makkuk, ca. 10 km northwest of Jericho. As the contour of this site appears shaped like a foot, he hypothesised that like all the other foot-shaped enclosures he had discovered, this site too was cultic and was erected in imitation of the foot of God. Even though no evidence of cult was discovered at site and, moreover, its location is far from the line of Judah’s southern border (which ran south of Wadi Qelt), he nevertheless identified it as the Gilgal mentioned in Josh 15:7, thereby dismissing the identification of Gilgal mentioned in this verse with the cult site located east of Jericho.

11 Notably, in all biblical accounts, Gilgal belongs to the territory of Benjamin, rather than Judah.

12 For this reason, Noth (1971: 108) suggested to correct the text and read it as a noun (תוֹלילגּה).

13 Joachim Krause (2014: 248–250) suggested that v. 9 belongs to a later literary stratum than that of vv. 8 and 20.

14 ריעֵש (Seir) is probably a descriptive designation for the wooded mountainous areas—the forested region to which Ehud escaped after the assassination (Naʾaman 1986: 284 n. 45).

15 For a catalogue of scholars’ definitions, see Elitzur 2019: 330–332.

16 Gustaf Dalman (1919) collected all the available textual and archaeological evidence in an effort to reconstruct the role of the twelve stones at Gilgal, but finally admitted that ‘[s]o bleibt die zwölf Steine von Gilgal in bezug auf Herkunft und Stellung ohne sichere Deutung’.

17 As observed above, the text of Josh 12:23 is garbled and should be rendered ‘king of Goiim at Galilee’.

18 The gilgal referred to in Isa 28:28 is a by-form of galgal (‘wheel’).

19 For references to Gilgal in the rabbinical literature, see Reeg 1989: 182–183, with earlier literature.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadav Naʾaman

Nadav Naʾaman: Professor Emeritus, Department of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University