ABSTRACT
The Bible provides information about several cult centres located in the territory of Transjordan and in the vicinity of the Jordan. Unfortunately, their location is uncertain. Nevertheless, the function of the aetiological myths associated with them is so important in the body of the Bible that some attention needs to be accorded them. The Bible treats Gilead, the name borne by territories east of the Jordan in the middle of its course, somewhat ambiguously. At times it acknowledges this region as belonging to the Israelites, at others it suggests it is distinct. Nevertheless a detailed analysis of the available data allows us to ascertain Gilead’s independence from the territories inhabited by the Israelites. The epigraphical evidence provided by the Mesha stele shows a struggle for inuence in the region of Gilead between Moab and Israel in the middle of the ninth century BCE.1 There is no doubt that in the times of Omri and his immediate successors Israel maintained certain inuences over the territories lying to the east of Jordan. It was probably in the time of the Assyrian expansion that this region fell under the sovereignty of the Aramaeans. Nadav Na’aman concluded that, on the basis of the inscription of Rezin, we can establish that the southern boundary of the Aramaean possessions went as far as Abel-Shittim, on a level with Jericho.2 If that is so, then the (hypothetical) end of the Hebrew inuence in Gilead would fall in the third quarter of the eighth century BCE. Analyzing biblical texts, Na’aman also reached the conclusion that the inuence of the Hebrews in the time of
1. KAI 181; see the discussion in Miller and Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, 267-87. 2. N. Na’aman, “Rezin of Damascus and the Land of Gilead,” ZDPV 111 (1995): 105-106, and also the bibliography given there.
