Background
Magness, Jodi was born on September 19, 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Daughter of Herbert and Marlene Magness.
(The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most interesting and i...)
The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most interesting and important archaeological discoveries ever made, and the excavation of the Qumran community itself has provided invaluable information about Judaism and the Jewish world in the last centuries B.C.E. Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, the Qumran site continues to be the object of intense scholarly debate. In a book meant to introduce general readers to this fascinating area of study, veteran archaeologist Jodi Magness here provides an overview of the archaeology of Qumran and presents an exciting new interpretation of this ancient community based on information found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other contemporary documents. Magness's work offers a number of fresh conclusions concerning life at Qumran. She agrees that Qumran was a sectarian settlement but rejects other unconventional views, including the view that Qumran was a villa rustica or manor house. By carefully analyzing the published information on Qumran, she refines the site's chronology, reinterprets the purpose of some of its rooms, and reexamines the archaeological evidence for the presence of women and children in the settlement. Numerous photos and diagrams give readers a firsthand look at the site. Written with an expert's insight yet with a journalist's spunk, this engaging book is sure to reinvigorate discussion of this monumental archaeological find.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802826873/?tag=2022091-20
Magness, Jodi was born on September 19, 1956 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Daughter of Herbert and Marlene Magness.
She received her Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology and History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1977), and her Doctor of Philosophy in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1989).
She previously taught at Tufts University. From 1990-1992, Professor Magness was Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Syro-Palestinian Archaeology at the Center for Old World Archaeology and Art at Brown University. Magness has participated in 20 different excavations in Israel and Greece.
She co-directed the 1995 excavations of the Roman siege works at Masada.
From 1997-1999 she co-directed excavations at Khirbet Yattir in Israel. Since 2003 Professor Magness has been the co-director of the excavations in the late Roman fort at Yotvata, Israel.
In 2011 she began to dig at Huqoq. Magness is an extremely popular professor whose "unique teaching style of using vivid anecdotes students on the edge of their seats."
At the time of The Lost Tomb of Jesus controversy, Magness was widely quoted noting "that at the time of Jesus, wealthy families buried their dead in tombs cut by hand from solid rock, putting the bones in niches in the walls and then, later, transferring them to ossuaries." Whereas "Jesus came from a poor family that, like most Jews of the time, probably buried their dead in ordinary graves.
"If Jesus" family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem," she said.
Magness also said "the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries "indicate that the tomb belonged to a family from Judea, the area around Jerusalem, where people were known by their first name and father"s name. As Galileans, Jesus and his family members would have used their first name and hometown.".
(The Dead Sea Scrolls are among the most interesting and i...)
(This volume gathers together eight previously papers by J...)
Quotations: "If Jesus" family had been wealthy enough to afford a rock-cut tomb, it would have been in Nazareth, not Jerusalem,". "the names on the Talpiyot ossuaries ".
Member of Archaeol. Institute American (academic trustee since 1997, member governing board).
Married James Dennis Haberman, June 2, 2002.