Jerusalem (Kidron Valley) - Tomb of Zachariah

The monument is dated to the 1 c. CE, and its identification as the Tomb of Absalom may go back to the Copper Scroll (DJD III 295, col. 10, ll.12-14) and to Josephus (Ant. 7,243); it was preserved in Jewish tradition through the centuries (cf. Zias - Puech, 2005, 162ff.), and passing Jews used to throw stones to the pillar in memory of Absalom’s revolt against David (2 Sm 15-18). A Christian tradition attested by the Pilgrim of Bordeaux (333 CE) preferred to identify the two monolithic monuments of Absalom and of Zechariah nearby, with the tomb of the prophet Isaiah or of the Jewish king Hezekiya (It. Burd. 595, CCSL 175, 17f.; and cf. J. Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 1981, 159f., 274). A later Christian tradition, reported by Adamnan from the testimony of the 7 c. pilgrim, Bishop Arculfus, ascribed the tombs to Symeon the Elder and to Joseph, Mary’s husband (Adamnan, LS I,14, CCSL 175, 196). Indeed, a common tomb of James, brother of the Lord, Symeon the Elder and Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, was purportedly discovered in the mid-4 c. in a cave near the Tomb of Absalom, and the relics were translated to a chapel built in front of it, probably the Byzantine chapel with a crypt whose remains were discovered in 1959-60 (H. Stutchbury, PEQ 93, 1961, 101-3, and see L. Di Segni, ARAM 18-19, 2006/07, 382f.). This communal tomb was seen by pilgrims in the 6 c. (Theodosius, TS 9, CCSL 175, 119; Gregory of Tours, In gloria martyrum I, 26, ed. B. Krusch [1885] 53) and was the focus of the annual commemoration of James, Symeon and Zechariah (Garitte, Calendrier 227f.). Only in the late 7 c. did Arculfus identify the tomb of Symeon the Elder – without his two companions – with the Tomb of Absalom or that of Zechariah; but in the Crusader period William of Tyre again reports that the three lay in a common tomb. These traditions therefore do not support the claim of the editors of the inscriptions below, that they attest an identification of the Tomb of Absalom with the burial place of Symeon the Elder and Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, already in the mid-4 c.

(a) The reading is extremely doubtful, as noted also by Feissel. A silicone mould and then an epoxy cast were made of the stone surface, and the letters were traced by Puech with red chalk, and later deciphered with the help of a squeeze made on the cast. After autopsy of the cast, the reading can hardly be justified. If the sequence of letters in Puech’s copy is accepted, other difficulties arise. Even if one ascribes a genitive παππέα or παππέας from a nominative πάππας (gen. πάππου) to the faulty Greek of Late Antiquity (but not of the 4 c.!), the choice of the term – a child’s word for “father”, or a late-antique term for “priest” – is unacceptable in this context. Feissel suggested that, with a different reading of the rest, it might refer to a clergyman. The order of words is clumsy, for the epithet of πρεσβύτερος, θεοσεβέστατος should precede, not follow the noun. Contrary to the claim of Puech and Zias in ed. pr., the spelling of Ζαχαρίας with kappa is not well attested; not one example can be found. They dated the inscription to the mid-4 c., based on the palaeography, but the abbreviations and particularly the use of stigma as abbreviation mark are not typical of this period and point to a much later date, as does the faulty spelling. If the reading, or part of it, can be accepted at all, the inscription is more likely to be the epitaph of a late Byzantine priest. On the confusion, attested in early Christian tradition, between Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, and Zechariah the prophet and martyr, see Zias - Puech, 2005, 155, 160f.

(b) The word ψυχή “soul”, would be used as a Greek translation of the Hebrew nefesh, with the same literal meaning but also used in Hebrew and in other Semitic languages to indicate a memorial monument. On this use, see B. Lifshitz, ZDPV 76, 1960, 159f., with several examples from Palestine, and the observation of L. Robert, BE 1962, 71-72. This inscription cannot be made out with the naked eye and should be treated with caution.

(c) The same caution as for (a) must be applied here, or even more, for the inscription is more effaced than the former: see doubts expressed by Feissel. Other difficulties: the spelling θάφος for τάφος, “not surprising” according to the ed. pr., but unparalleled in Palestinian inscriptions, and the consistent substitution of nominative for genitive seems embarrassingly improbable in a 4-c. inscription, as is the stigma used as abbreviation mark. The inscription would witness the presence of Symeon the Elder’s tomb in the monument, and it would be a quotation of Lk 2,25, in which Symeon the Elder is described as an ἄνθρωπος δίκαιος καὶ εὐλαβής (εὐσεβής in a variant attested in the early Codex Sinaiticus: Zias - Puech, 2005, 160) προσδεχόμενος παράκλησιν τοῦ Ἰσραήλ. Considering the uncertainty of the reading, one might wonder if the decipherment of the inscriptions was not influenced by the existence of a tradition pertaining to Symeon and Zechariah in the vicinity, and dictated by the evangelical text about Symeon.