(Re)Theorizing Jewish Ossuary Burial Beyond Disciplinary Bounds

• In Event: The Body and Its Material Environment in Ancient Judaism

Abstract

In his work A History Of Death In The Hebrew Bible, Matthew Suriano uses insights from Bell and Hertz to argue that, in Jewish antiquity, the ritualized treatment of dead bodies, especially in the form of secondary burials, shaped postmortem traditions reflected in the Hebrew Bible. In his epilogue, Suriano mentions Jewish ossuary burial (a phenomenon from the Second Temple period), briefly addressing the reason for the practice within his previously-developed schema. Interestingly, Suriano is one of the few scholars addressing ossuary burial but not relying largely on theorizing native to disciplines like art history, the study of religion, or archeology; it is unfortunate, then, that he did have the ability to fully develop the application of his lens to this practice.
This paper seeks to fill this gap, extending Suriano’s briefly-mentioned supposition that Jewish ossuary burial fits into a broader burial trend at the end of the Second Temple period that retained previous burial practices but encoded new meanings relative to shifting religious ideas into them. In my analysis, I find that Suriano’s argument holds strong, especially in light of his extensive citation of Rahmani. That being said, the assumptions, methodology, and date of that scholarship has some important limitations that change this assessment. From one perspective, based on ossuary inscriptions and recent archaeological analysis, Suriano’s understanding of ideas behind the practice is only subtly shifted, implicating a smaller group than he does. On the other hand, the osteological analysis of ossuaries likely demonstrates Suriano’s extension of his framework, which works well for earlier periods, does not apply to Jewish ossuary burial.
In either case, I argue that Suriano’s contribution, bringing different theoretical lenses into the discourse over Jewish ossuaries, is valuable, providing a model for further scholarship. Additionally, the specific scholars with which he engages (as well as others) potentially have much to say about some of the more enduring questions about the practice. As such, I conclude with some examples, presenting some preliminary re-theorizations of Jewish ossuary burial that move beyond the domains in which the practice is usually discussed.

Author

• Brady Schuh