Digging for Truth Beneath Faiths: Feat. Katja Soennecken

In this episode, Avraham Burg sits down with Dr. Katja Soennecken, Assistant Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the Luxembourg School of Religion & Society and Deputy Director of the German Protestant Institute for Ancient Studies of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, who has been part of numerous excavations across the Holy Land. Together, they explore the question of “what is biblical archaeology” and how much is it affected by modern political and religious motivations. Dr. Soennecken highlights the academic independence of the field of archaeology, even with an ideologically charged climate which often seeks to utilize archaeology for its own ends. Soennecken also addresses the complicated question of the history of Jerusalem and what that does and does not mean for modern identity politics.

Transcript

In this episode, Avraham Burg sits down with Dr. Katja Soennecken, Assistant Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the Luxembourg School of Religion & Society and Deputy Director of the German Protestant Institute for Ancient Studies of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, who has been part of numerous excavations across the Holy Land. Together, they explore the question of “what is biblical archaeology” and how much is it affected by modern political and religious motivations. Dr. Soennecken highlights the academic independence of the field of archaeology, even with an ideologically charged climate which often seeks to utilize archaeology for its own ends. Soennecken also addresses the complicated question of the history of Jerusalem and what that does and does not mean for modern identity politics.

Avraham Burg: Peace on you, Assistant Professor Dr. Katja Soennecken. 

Katja Soennecken: Hello, nice to be here. 

Avraham Burg: Talk to me about your journey. What makes a good, well-educated, rational German girl digging in the Middle East? What went wrong?

Katja Soennecken: It's a really long journey, and it started when I remember correctly during my school days when I... I don't know why he decided to take Hebrew as a class in the last three years. 

Avraham Burg: At high school?

Katja Soennecken: At high school. And then my Hebrew teacher knew this crazy archaeologist in the Holy Land. So he managed to sneak three of us into the excavation in Tel es-Safi. So, I excavated during my last semester as a summer break in school in Tel es-Safi of the Philistines. And this is, I think, where it all begins. 

Avraham Burg: Philistines, let's explain to our audience. We do not talk about the contemporary Palestinians, but the Philistines that were kind of one of the Greek tribes that roaming the Middle East and eventually settled between the river and the Jordan. 

Katja Soennecken: Their story is a little bit more complicated as I write my habilitation on, but let's say they are part of the so-called Sea People, some kind of immigrant newcomers that arrived in this country in the southern coastal plain around the 12th century. 

Avraham Burg: Where is the school in Germany? Where are you from? Oh, it's a very important town called Herkenrath. If you don't know it, you missed nothing. It's in the middle of nothing. More or less east of Cologne. 

Avraham Burg: You don't want to compete because I live in an even smaller and less known village, okay? So, there at high school, you had Hebrew studies, and wow, this is impressive. 

Katja Soennecken: And our teacher managed to get us into one of the excavations. And this is where my love for the country is. 

Avraham Burg: And Tel es-Safi is an important place.

Katja Soennecken: It was wonderful. 

Avraham Burg: Yeah, talk to us a minute about Tel es-Safi, because it is a cornerstone of the Holy Land archaeology. Where is it? Where is it? 

Katja Soennecken: It's in the coastal plain, in the southern coastal plain. It's one of the, like the Philistine cities we know from the Bible, the Pentapolis, these five cities that were in a correlation together. 

Avraham Burg: Goliath. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, Goliath. Now they were made to the arch enemy of the new Israel.

Avraham Burg: So what was the first ever discovery of the 17-year-old Katya?

Katja Soennecken: I was 18, just 18. 

Avraham Burg: Wow, the mature Katya. What was the first discovery, excavation? 

Katja Soennecken: Honestly, I can't tell you because I was so overwhelmed by all the new impressions. But the best of the first week was that the director told us, "You're making such nice profiles because you're German. They are so straight." And this was like... 

Avraham Burg: What a compliment. 

Katja Soennecken: Now I'm one of the big things. 

Avraham Burg: Maybe we'll have time to go to Aren Maier later because in Israeli archaeology, there are schools, the Jerusalemite school and the Tel Aviv school, and Aren is playing a pivotal role, but maybe we'll get there, maybe not. But so you first dig here, and then you go back home, you finish your school, you do your matriculation.

Katja Soennecken: And then I decided to study classical archaeology, not biblical at all, because there's no way to do biblical archaeology in Germany. So, you have to decide for one of the other archaeologies. And because Hebrew was so cool, I decided to take Jewish studies as the minor subject and art history. But this was so boring. So I changed it to theology. – 

Avraham Burg: We speak about Humboldt University? 

Katja Soennecken: No, Heidelberg. 

Avraham Burg: Heidelberg. There is a good school there. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah. So I started in Heidelberg. And then when I moved to Berlin, they told me, "Ah, no, your Hebrew is not good enough. You have to do this again for eight hours a week." And I said, "No." So I skipped the Jewish studies and did full-time theology by then, and had classical archaeology and theology as both subjects. 

Avraham Burg: Before we go into the field of today, which is archaeology, for a German girl of the 80s, 90s to go for Jewish studies, has to do with curiosity or has to do with the deeper meaning of Jews in Germany? 

Katja Soennecken: When I started, it was curiosity about coming from the language to the culture, to the religion, and then I just wanted to know everything about this sister religion of my own, and then I realized it's not only the sister, it's the mother, and it's far more important, actually, for my own belief. And then, of course, all the history came as a second step, but this was not my motivation to study. If you grew up in Germany in the '80s, '90s, the Holocaust and everything was all over the place in school, so you had the feeling, I know already enough, I don't need to study this. And then only later on, it became important again. 

Avraham Burg: You made it, you're an archaeologist now, okay? Now, your archaeologist here. First, explained me the term of biblical archaeology. There is a different archaeology. I mean, what's the difference between archaeology and biblical archaeology? 

Katja Soennecken: That's a really good question. I think it's because we have a different history, how the subject emerged, because if you have Egyptology or classical archaeology, you're bound to one subject, one culture, whatsoever. And we, as Biblical archaeology, are honestly part of the Near Eastern archaeology, but with a very specific proprium, because we explore the place and the time when the Biblical texts were written. So, in the beginning, it was religious science. They wanted to verify the Biblical texts or falsified 150 years ago. 

Avraham Burg: The beginning is its 19th century. We'll talk about it a bit later. 

Katja Soennecken: When everything started. But nowadays I would say it's a part of the Near Eastern archaeology with the same methods as every other archaeological subject, and just as the biblical text as one of the important sources, textual sources. 

Avraham Burg: No, I won't let you off the hook so easily, okay? There is a field called biblical archaeology. So you come to a place, you say, "I dig here." Now, how do you dig? Do you dig in order to confirm the biblical history, message story? Or do you have the courage or need the courage to say, "Listen, the Bible is very inaccurate"? What is the digging? The digging is to support or to unsupport? 

Katja Soennecken: That's a question 50 years ago. This would be a good one. 

Avraham Burg: And today it's obsolete because... 

Katja Soennecken: No real archaeologist is asking this. There might be one or two black sheep in the herd saying, I want to verify this or that, but it's the wrong question. We cannot, we can illuminate the world of the biblical texts, but we cannot prove or falsify the stories that are written there. 

Avraham Burg: Is that, and I know it's a parenthesis within parenthesis, is that an obsolete question among Christian archaeologist or is it also among Israeli Jewish ones? Not at all sure that the Israeli discussion is over. 

Katja Soennecken: I think it is, but if you want money for your excavation, a good biblical story gives you more money than just the question, how was the city wall built? Nobody will give money for this, but let me get one step back, when we wanted to get money for our excavation in Tiberias, if you want to explore the first mosque in the country, nobody is interested if you ask German foundations. But if you tell them, "Tiberias, one of the centers of the rabbinic Judaism, we have no synagogues, we want to find them," then it's possible. We had this question. 

Avraham Burg: Do you really tell me that in the state of Israel, the Jewish and democratic state of Israel, archeological financing is political? 

Katja Soennecken: No comment. I think that there is a difference between private donors who give a lot of money, like in the Ir David, and the difference between scientific missions, having questions, or rescue excavations, salvage excavations. Everybody has a different agenda, and there are some people who use archaeology for political dimensions.

Avraham Burg: Still. Okay, this is really my feeling. My instinct is that, since the political battle over whom this place belongs to, so under the ground, you can find supportive arguments for your actuality. That's my feeling that he's still there. 

Katja Soennecken: Luckily only a few percent of the scholars argue like this, but it's there. It shouldn't, but it's there. 

Avraham Burg: So let's open it a little bit wider. The state of Israel today is more or less defined by its borders, but the biblical presence is wider than the official borders of Israel. How do you build the bridge between the contemporary reality and the ancient one? 

Katja Soennecken: Two things are important. First, what was the dimension of the biblical Israel? If you look at the text, you find various variants. 

Avraham Burg: I find, I think, seven different political entities at least. Seven, I know. 

Katja Soennecken: But how big were they? And what time? And how big was this? And so we have to interpret the text. We cannot take them as one-to-one historical reality. That's the first thing. And the second, even if the big David was as big as the Bible tells us, and there was from Dan to Beer Sheva, or back to the Euphrates, this big empire, 

Avraham Burg: Empire. Regional Empire

Katja Soennecken: What does I mean, for today, like maybe because I'm German, if you take the German Empire, we don't want it back. The history does not give the permission to conquer what you have now. 

Avraham Burg: That's right about Germany of today, or that's right about many Western world nation-states of today. I'm not at all sure that in other regions of the world in which the struggle between the original inhabitants and the new invaders is still on that this argument is over. I'm not at all sure. I mean, look at the Abudgins, I mean in the original nations in North America. Whom does North America belong to? 

Katja Soennecken: That's a question the archaeology cannot change. We should give all back to Egypt because at one point history, and it was a long century, Egypt was the main player in this. So to argue, for nowadays borders with archaeology that's completely... 

Avraham Burg: No, actually no, no, no, that's a stupid thing. But there are two other questions coming out of it. When the Greek government asks the British Museum, give us back the findings and the discoveries because there are ours, and the days in which you could not trust us to preserve the treasures of history, these days are over. So there is a political contemporary argument about what was discovered from the past. So this is on one hand. 

Katja Soennecken: But this is completely different because this is how the artifacts are treated, and if people are allowed to, I would say, scientifically loot another country or not. And if you if you share the finds or if the finds belong to the state and if the state can protect them, this is completely different. 

Avraham Burg: No. But Katia, don't be naive. Let's say that you start next week to dig in Jerusalem. And you dig and you discover the Holy Ark. 

Katja Soennecken: So what? 

Avraham Burg: Do you give it to the Israeli government? Do you give it to those who want to build the third temple? What do you do with it? Do you hide it? Do you leave it in the ground because you understand how volatile it is? 

Katja Soennecken: I tell you a secret, we already have it. It's in our storage room in the institute. Okay, only a replica, but a really nice one. No, but honestly, these kind of things are not to be found. But if, of course, they belong to the state of Israel, like all the finds, as a German mission, we are only allowed to work in what is proper Israel and not the territories. 

Avraham Burg: And when you dig in Jordan, it belongs to Jordan. You dig a lot in Jordan.

Katja Soennecken: That's it. yeah. 

Avraham Burg: What do you do in Jordan? 

Katja Soennecken: We're working on Tell Zerah in the northern part. It's close to the Kinneret.

Avraham Burg: The other side of the Jordan. 

Katja Soennecken: The other side of the Jordan. That's really interesting because it's also biblical archaeology, but nobody really cares about our interpretation. Like, if you do the same thing in Megiddo or Hazor, everybody would just argue with the biblical text. When you do this in Tell Zerah in Northern Jordan, we can just do the archaeology and interpret later and put it into the historical setting without pre-interpretation from our colleagues. 

Avraham Burg: Because it's less loaded?

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, it's less loaded, yeah. But of course, all the finds we do they belong to the Jordanian government. We are allowed to export them, to restore them, to make copies to work with them, but then we give them back. And some of them are in the National Museum in Amman, and it's pretty cool to see something you've excavated and hold in your hands, then in the National Museum. 

Avraham Burg: First, I can imagine, I remember I saw the movie, the film of the Egyptian National Museum moving from the old building to the new one, and the parade of mummies in the street. It's powerful, I mean, archaeology is very presented in the real-time region because most of the nations here are new or renewed, and therefore we have to find routes deeper than the surface. 

Katja Soennecken: But if you're looking for your own identity to look back in archaeology, it's really difficult because we have more questions than answers.

Avraham Burg: Questions like and answers like? 

Katja Soennecken: If you look like, I'm doing in my work at the transition from the late bronze age to the Iron Age, like one of the formative periods where the whole civilization collapsed and everybody had to invent themselves new. Who was here and who came? What groups did we have in the country? How were they interacting? How were they defining themselves as our questions? We really cannot really answer because we do not have enough written texts and if you just have the walls or the cooking pots, then you can interpret a lot, but you can never be so sure if you really get it right. 

Avraham Burg: In some of the controversial diggings, at least in Jerusalem “Al-Quds”, the Israelis find a very interesting way what to do. They say, let's say we have 24 layers, 22 layers, 30 some days which are each is a period each is a history, each is a nation, each is a rich story but we focus on those that support our narrative and we ignore all the other histories and all the other narratives so this is a way to go out of the catch. 

Katja Soennecken: It is but luckily it's not the main thing, so yes, if we're talking about Ir David or Silwan, that's what's happening. Because with the help of archaeology, some people want to claim the land, they claim they were there before, but this really has nothing to do with archaeology as a science. This is interpretation, and there's some archaeological colleagues follow them because it's so convenient, because it gives you a position, it gives you money for a campaign whatsoever, or even because they share the same ideology, but most of them or most of us say, we can just say, don't do this. Don't do this. You're really giving a bad taste to the whole science. 

Avraham Burg: And since you are coming from the scientific field, let's stay there. Okay. It's very difficult to ignore both my Arnold Schwarzenegger accent and your German one. Okay, so you're coming from Germany. I was born to a German father. And here is a question. Why Germans for the last 150 years are so curious about archaeology in this region? 

Katja Soennecken: It's not only the Germans. It's also the English, and the Italian, and the French. 

Avraham Burg: And the Swedish and and and and, yeah. 

Katja Soennecken: But I think it has to do with religion, it has to do with the biblical texts, and that our subject started with the question, "Is it true or is it not true? Is it a myth or is it something we can believe in?" And the wish to prove what's written and to lay your hand on something that's real, and then it's reality. 

Avraham Burg: Go a bit deeper here. Is it a protestant need to translate the scripture into concrete language like Martin Luther translated the Bible into comprehended language? Is there a difference between Catholic and Protestants vis-à-vis archaeology in the Holy Land?

Avraham Burg: I apologize 

Katja Soennecken: That's a difficult question. In the beginning, I think yes, because the Protestants, but it was not like the wish to make it a better language, but it was the wish to have the historical facts and the biblical texts in 

Avraham Burg: in sync.

Katja Soennecken: In sync, yeah, so that we can believe this because it's not some myth of our forefathers, but it's something we can prove and something we can with our ratio say this is what happened. So this was more the Protestant thing in the beginning. And nowadays I would say most of the scholars they know they come from a Protestant background, from a Catholic background, from a Jewish background, and they can differentiate between what I believe and what I find in archaeology. And of course, sometimes it is matching, and sometimes it gives you a headache, and sometimes it's just not possible to match these things. Because what we have in the biblical text and belief it's like the written-down experience people had with their God. And it's not history as it was. And like, it's the same with the classical archaeological texts. If you read your Tukidydis or Flavius, Josephus, you cannot take this one by one as reality. You have to interpret and to say what is the story they want to transport and what is the reality behind it. And in this, I think the Protestants were a little more thorough and wanted to really... 

Avraham Burg: Real concrete evidence. But tell me, let's be personal for a second. You teach in two kind of institutions. You teach at the German Evangelical Institution for Classical Studies of the Holy Land, which is Protestant. And you teach at the Luxembourg School of Religion and Society, which at least initially was supported by the Catholic Foundation, Church, or whatever. 

Katja Soennecken: It is a Roman Catholic school. 

Avraham Burg: Is there a difference of teaching the same material, the same discovery, the same science of archaeology to teach it in a Protestant institution and in a Catholic institution? 

Katja Soennecken: The problem is I do research on both. In Luxembourg, I do more education with older people like with school teachers and who wants to learn more and From both institutions, I taught in Potsdam at the Jewish school, and there we had Jewish and Christian and Catholic and Protestant all together. So, it's a mixture of all kind of religion. And I would say nowadays it's maybe the question the students ask are different. Because most of the students are so non-religious by now, it makes a difference  

Avraham Burg: In both institutions?

Katja Soennecken: In all institutions. And Luxembourg, of course, if you are a teacher of religion, then not. But yeah, I've had students in Potsdam who study Jewish studies and had no real connection to biblical texts at all. So, they had no questions for archaeology, just a general knowledge, or I had one excursion with my students from Germany. We went to the City of David, and then after 20 minutes of me talking about the archaeology, someone asked, "Who was this David, by the way?" So this is like sometimes you really have to start at the beginning and to explain the phenomenon of religion and why this should be important for the society anymore. Because they come from a more religious studies perspective and not from a believing position. 

Avraham Burg: They're not necessarily believed, but I want to understand the role of religion in the sociology of life

Katja Soennecken: Yes. Yes. Or they're searching for something and think maybe religion can be the answer. 

Avraham Burg: But is there something, I'll tell you in a second why I asked this question, is there something you say to yourself, self-censored, that you know what, leave this evidence, leave this dig, leave this discovery, because it might create some problems with the institution, with the students, with the clergy with whatever. Or you say, "All is open." 

Katja Soennecken: All is open. And if it causes you trouble, then if your belief is tested by some evidence, so be it. You will get stronger after this, or your belief was not strong enough in the beginning. But it has nothing to do with censorship anymore, or that I'm afraid to say something. If I have a logical explanation of what I find, and I do this with all the scientific methods I can get. So it is. 

Avraham Burg: Because my feeling is, I'm not at all sure, I mean I cannot support it with facts, but it's an instinct that giving the same classes that you give either in Luxembourg or in the German institution, you might find it difficult to deliver the same teaching in a Jewish religious high school in Jerusalem and few other religious institutions in Israel. That's my feeling. 

Katja Soennecken: This could very well be. 

Avraham Burg: Because? What's the reason why it is so free between Protestants and Catholics to say it is what it is? And with the Jews it's... 

Katja Soennecken: You said with a Jewish high school in Jerusalem, like the Jewish school in Germany, it was the same like the University of Münster or whatever. Let me give another example. We do here some teaching with students from an Arab school, from the Schmitz Girls School. That's a German school, but with Muslim and Christian students in Jerusalem. 

Avraham Burg: In the Eastern part of Jerusalem. 

Katja Soennecken: In the Eastern part of Jerusalem. And since 15 years we do a class with them: “My City, My History.” So we do all the archaeology starting from the Jebusites, going to the British, more or less. So because we say this is history, otherwise, then modern politics start. And this is something we can talk about, but we are not teaching. So and with this, I realize that for them, it's not only history, but it's their personal life. 

Avraham Burg: It's identity. 

Katja Soennecken: It's their city, it's their identity, it's the politics, they live in it sometimes. But their Imam is telling them, or what their pastor is telling them, and then we have more heated discussions. I'm not censoring myself with these kids, but for them it's more challenging to have this three-week class with us and to learn about the Jewish history and the Christian history and how this all went together. And you have all these discussions and you feel it's personal. It's not some kind of history in a faraway place, but it's their history. 

Avraham Burg: And they get mad at you sometimes? 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, of course. For example, If you talk about the Haram al-Sharif and the Temple Mount.

Avraham Burg: The Haram al-Sharif is the Temple Mount, which is the glorious courtyard around the mosques. 

Katja Soennecken: You say it like this, but the question for some of them is, is the Haram al-Sharif, the Temple Mount, that's the question. 

Avraham Burg: Which is the Jewish argument versus the Muslim argument? 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, and then you have to navigate in between and telling them, yes, of course, we have this and this and this sources who tell us about the Jewish Temple, and even if no excavation is allowed, and it will not be at least not maybe in the next 50 years, there is no question that the Jewish Temple was somewhere in this place. But there's also no question that it's now one of the most important Muslim sanctuaries. And we try to entangle or disentangle all this mixture of propaganda, religion, ideology, history, archaeology, belief, or this, and try to tell them what is past does not need to be the future, and we can…the future can change. And just because it belonged to someone in the past doesn't give everybody the right to have it in the future or something. But with them, it's really challenging also to teach because they have real questions, and these questions change what they think and how they see the world. 

Avraham Burg: For example, what is a real question that your answer might change the worldview of a student? 

Katja Soennecken: Apart from “was there a Jewish presence, where now is our sanctuary,” there is a question of what was the beginning of the city, was there... 

Avraham Burg: So, for example, if many years ago, I think it was Yasir Arafat who said there was never a Jewish temple over this mountain. And I take it that many non-Jews might believe that if there was a temple, it was not there. And you come and say, yes, evidently, it was here, so there is a collision between the narrative and the archaeological finding. So it gets hot because of the evidence or because of the narrative. Which side? How does this work in the class? 

Katja Soennecken: Because the evidence and the narrative, the students believe are not in sync. This is, if the evidence supports what you're believing, it's perfect. Then you have no problem. Only when the evidence challenges your worldview, then it's getting interesting. And this is far more the case with these students, and I think it would be the same if I had Jewish students in the city, because they all live in this world. And in this world here, archaeology and politics are intertwined more than in Europe nowadays. 

Avraham Burg: It goes to a different place. It's not fair, it's not nice from my side to ask you, the German Christian-European, to walk in between the Israeli and Palestinian narrative, okay? But I can ask you, when the Jewish narrative of this place collides with discoveries that support the validity of the New Testament, what happens then? 

Katja Soennecken: Give me an example. 

Avraham Burg: Jesus existed or not? 

Katja Soennecken: Thats not even… No Jewish person, I think this is the question. The question is, was he the Messiah or not?  

Avraham Burg: First, I can take you to some few dozens of my cousins who will argue the very existence. Another one, okay? You were digging around the Sea of Galilee, the Kinneret, the Tiberius, okay? So many miracles of the New Testament happened over there. I mean, all over, I mean, Tabga is there, and Capernaum is there, because so many important things happen there. The more you find, I mean, the boat and everything, it supports the very stories of the New Testament, that there are still people, not still, there are many people in the Jewish circles who do not accept the validity and the truth behind the New Testament. 

Katja Soennecken: Luckily, no biblical story plays in Tiberias. So then we don't have this problem. 

Avraham Burg: The mayor of Haifa once told me that Haifa is such a beautiful city because neither Moses nor Jesus nor Muhammad ever set a foot there. 

Katja Soennecken: But I think we really have to differentiate between the narrative and the religion and the archeology because, like, we cannot prove that there was this miracle and two fish became four thousand or five thousand. This is nothing we can prove, and we do not want to prove. This is something you can believe or not, or like if you go to Jerusalem and the church of the Holy Sepulchre, we can prove to you that this is Golgotha and that this was the place. 

Avraham Burg: Golgotha is the place in which Jesus was crucified. 

Katja Soennecken: But we cannot prove you if this is the right tomb or not. This is tradition and belief. And that's the difference. And this is something that's very difficult because it makes it easier if these two things fall together. 

Avraham Burg: Just maybe. Maybe it's easier for you, coming from Europe, unbiased on both sides to be objective when archaeology is a very political science in both sides of the conflict. So it's easier for you to be even-handed. 

Katja Soennecken: At least we try to. Yeah,

Avraham Burg: I think you do. I mean, knowing the work you do and the kind of approach you have, I think you do. But I find it sometimes difficult from both sides when it comes to archaeology. Just look at the fight over sides. Take Sebastia. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, that's horrible. 

Avraham Burg: Yeah, tell us what happens in Sebastia, for example. Sebastia was the capital of Samaria for a while, and there are some beautiful, beautiful remaining over there and?

Katja Soennecken: This is politics happening. 

Avraham Burg: Each side pushes.

Katja Soennecken: The minute Israel decides to have a division of Judea and Samaria and to work and act in the West Bank as if it's proper Israel, it's getting difficult because then the people excavating their interpret the finds and they take it away from Palestinian archaeologists. So this is something we can just step aside and just say, this is not how it should work and this is not archaeology as we support it because we want that everybody is working in their fields and with all the scientific methods that we have and without ideology, but it's getting more and more complicated to get this separated, and it's even getting more and more complicated to stand between the sides. I think we are the only institutes still working on both sides of the Jordan under the same name. Like when we went to the Department of Antiquities in Jordan two weeks ago, of course, we told them we are on our way to Jerusalem. Yeah, sure, but this is difficult. Because usually when you work in one place, the other place will not give you permission to work. And so we have permits for Jerusalem and Tiberias and Tel Zerah in Jordan and our colleagues work in Amman and we have the same name and the same people. And this is something special and it's getting more and more difficult. 

Avraham Burg: I understand, and since you and me avoid politics in this conversation, let's continue to avoid it for a couple more seconds, okay? You dig in the Galilee. Galilee was the cradle of the first Christian thoughts of Jesus Christ. This is where he was born in Nazareth, walked down from Nazareth down to the Sea of Galilee. I mean, performed all of these beautiful miracles, developed the followers and the disciples. It's a very important springboard or cradle of Christianity. The more you dig there and the more you find about many, many, many layers. But in today's reality, whatever you discover there helps to enhance the local Christian identity in the Galilee.

Katja Soennecken: No, I don't think so. When we, like my colleague from the Hebrew University, and I work in Tiberias, we start in the beginning, and this is the Islamic time, and then we go down through the Christian layers until the Roman, and then we stop because there's nothing else, because Tiberias was founded in the Roman times. But I don't think that we change – 

Avraham Burg: The name Tiberias is after Tiberius Gracchus. 

Katja Soennecken: No, the Kaiser. One of the Tiberias is

Avraham Burg: Yeah, the Kaiser Tiberias. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah. Yeah, of course, I can tell the story saying that the governor of this territory in the time of Jesus founded the city, but this does not make the city more important for any Christian nowadays. I don't think so. 

Avraham Burg: You see the raw material, you take your shovel, you dig, you find. Then it goes through the process of restoration and cleaning, and with an archive, and then it is presented. 

Katja Soennecken: In the best case, yes. 

Avraham Burg: If and where.

Katja Soennecken: If you find something really interesting, yes, otherwise it goes to the storage. 

Avraham Burg: Sure, but I was just two weeks ago, I took my grandchildren to the Israeli Museum, and we went through the places, and since I knew that I'm going to talk with you soon, I looked at the exhibitions differently. I ask myself, what's the philosophy of the exhibition? What do I present? And much more important, what of Katya's discoveries I do not present? So talk to me a little bit about who presents what in the region, who presents what in Jordan, who presents what in Palestine, who presents what in Israell? 

Katja Soennecken: I think you want the answer that everybody's bias and presents the time period they like most because it's not the case anymore because not only the archaeologists but also the museum people and the conservators are most of them are beyond this. So you will find in the National Museum in Amman not only Islamic but other various regions. Like when we publish our stuff from Tell Zerah, of course, we can publish a volume about chalkstone vessels and they are Jewish and important for purity. Yes, you can do this, and it's not hidden away somewhere, but it depends where you go; then the focus will be different. Like if you go to the Israel Museum, I would say it's pretty neutral as neutral can be with history. If you go across the street to another museum, it's a little more difficult, it's a little more ideology in the display. 

Avraham Burg: You mean the biblical museum in Jerusalem? 

Katja Soennecken: The Bible land, yeah. Yeah. 

Avraham Burg: Okay. Let's go to a completely different place. You walk into a field.

Katja Soennecken: It happens.

Avraham Burg: Yeah, it happens to you more than me, okay? I run through the field, but you walk there. Where do you know where to put your shovel? How do you, where do you know where to dig? I mean, it all looks the same. 

Katja Soennecken: No, no, no.

Avraham Burg: Come on, stones, thorns, dry bones, and some trees. How do you know?

Katja Soennecken: Il tell you, In this kind of the region, you have a good chance that you will find something wherever you go.  

Avraham Burg:  Wherever, wherever.

Katja Soennecken: But of course, you do not start with your shovel. You start with a survey, with some, you walk the field, and then you find sherds, and you know what kind of time period somebody was here, and then you find some stones or not. 

Avraham Burg: But before, we are now 150 years of thorough mapping of everything. Still, you go out here to the courtyard. Do you see differently than I do? Do you see upside-down stone? This is a cornerstone of I don’t know what, the third temple? 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, I think when you're running through a field, you have no time to look down. 

Avraham Burg: Hardly breathing. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, it depends on your education, what you used to see, what you know. I think I see more sherds and more antique things than you would see. Yes, it's a kind of training. And sometimes I work through the forest in Germany and I think, "Oh, some sherds !" And of course not, because there are no, but you're so trained to look for some coloring, for some forms on the ground.

Avraham Burg: So the question is not only how does the past presents itself at the present, but you know at least four or five realities around here, okay, around the region. In 2000 years' time, A Katja from the future will come and dig. What will she find about our period?

Katja Soennecken: I'm afraid there will not be much left. 

Avraham Burg: Everything is disposable. 

Katja Soennecken: But some will be crumbled, the paper will not be there anymore. And I hope in 1000 years, we do not have to excavate, we just do some scanning, and then we know it. But it will be more and more difficult. No, it will be more and more complicated because our world is more globalized. If you look in this room, where do all the furniture come from? 

Avraham Burg: Ikea.

Katja Soennecken: Where is the microphone come from? But what is the Ikea? Is it a religion? Is it just a supplier? It's very difficult to tell in the future. 

Avraham Burg: It’s a ritual. You go once a week to spend money you don't have on materials you don't need. 

Katja Soennecken: Last week I was sitting with my husband eating dinner, and then I said, "Okay, we have this nice plates for ikea, that you find all over the place. It's like this multicultural blah, blah, blah." And then we have this mustard from France, and then we have this juice from Israel and then we have this avocado from the territory. So what will some archaeologists think of this? Nobody will expect us to be German. 

Avraham Burg: Yeah, but in a way, you're telling me that archaeology is an extinct science. I mean, there is an expiration day for archaeology. 

Katja Soennecken: If you read Yuval Harari, then archaeology is the only science that will survive AI or the artificial intelligence. But I think our times will be very boring to excavate and very difficult to interpret, because we have no written text that will survive the next 2,000 years. If you have all the internet and the cloud whatsoever, I don't think this will be there in 2,000 years, and then it will be so complicated to make sense of this room. 

Avraham Burg: I have to think about it, so I'll leave it aside. Next week you start an old new digging in Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Take us to there. What you already did there. What are you going to do now? Why again? 

Katja Soennecken: This is really also a long journey starting here more than 10 years ago 2015 the Institute started by basically cleaning some old excavation by Bliss, Dickey, and Bargil Pixner around the Essenes gate, the famous one. So we just cleaned this and tried to

Avraham Burg: The Essenes Gate? 

Katja Soennecken: Essenes Gate, the gate of the Essenes. It's one of the city gates described by Flavius Josephus, and at the southeastern corner of Mount Zion, in the area of the Anglican Prussian cemetery. So there you can see that. 

Avraham Burg:  Oh, it's not one of the seven gates of the city today. 

Katja Soennecken: No, it's not the old city wall. It's on Mount Zion, on the far corner next to, if you know the Catholic cemetery with Schindler's grave on the other side of the street, there it is. So we started there, cleaning and trying to make some sense out of these old excavations that did not document as best as they could. 

Avraham Burg: Because it's 19th century...

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, 19th-century tunnels and then getting out. 

Avraham Burg: In which the technology was such that people were digging but not really documenting and not really being careful about whatever they are interested in, et cetera, et cetera.

Katja Soennecken: The first is the state of the art of archeology was different in the 18th, 19th century, but also the excavation of the 19th century and 20th century was not published correctly. It was just, they had this Essenes Gate and blah blah blah blah blah

Avraham Burg: So 15 years ago, you walked in. 

Katja Soennecken: So we walked in and we cleaned and we tried to get the, not the gates, but the city next to it, so that we can date the threshold of the gate and everything. This was the start. And then Bargil Pixner, the former excavator, claimed he had found the Iron Age, his Hezekiah’s time, city wall of the eighth century. And we tried to verify this, and he had never published pottery, so we just tried to find this back and clean it, and then say, "Yes, nice, we can add something to his publication." It turned out, after five years of searching and excavating and everything. We have proof that there was no Iron Age city wall, but instead a Hellenistic, Hasmonean, everything, Byzantine. 

Avraham Burg: Much later. 

Katja Soennecken: Much nicer, really nice city walls, but no Iron Age. 

Avraham Burg: No, it's 900 years later. 

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, the Hellenistic is from the third century.

Avraham Burg: Ah, okay, that early. 

Katja Soennecken: That early. But still not the Old Testament time. But, As we were on this mount already, we tried to find different places to excavate. We know this is a really tiny territory in the Anglican Russian cemetery, and behind between the graves, it's difficult to work. So we tried to find others.

Avraham Burg: Just for our audience to understand, as small as this country is, this is even a smaller place. On one hand, you have a road. On the other hand, you have the Old City. On the other hand, you have the cemetery. On the other hand, you have some abbeys. So, I mean, you have some five centimeters to dig. Okay, 

Katja Soennecken: So we had small areas, but we were, it was so kind because all that didn't matter, what denomination, what religion. We went to the Benedictines and excavated the garden of the Dormitian Abbey, and they gave us permission. We went to the Greek garden and the Greek  Orthodox gave us permission. We even went to the cemetery of the Greek Orthodox and got permission, and now we have permission from the Melchites to excavate there. So this is really a wonderful place to dig some, to find some mosaic pieces, and try to get the mosaic or the puzzle components. 

Avraham Burg: To assemble them?

Katja Soennecken: Yes. So now you are going to open next week, and you dig, and what do you have in mind to find? This is our last chance to find the course of the Iron Age city wall. This is like our white whale. 

Avraham Burg: Why last one? 

Katja Soennecken: There are not so many places you can excavate and there's a lot of fill on Mount Zion and if you have three and a half meters modern fill from the 20s or 19th century with nice finds but all out of context and you have to get down this then it's getting really difficult and you have to have a really big area to go down step by step otherwise the hole is too deep and it's too dangerous for your workers and there are no big places on Mount Zion where you can do this. 

Avraham Burg: How long will the excavation take? 

Katja Soennecken: Two weeks, we hope, and then one week to refill everything except for the gate of the Essenes. Everything else was refilled, and we hope that at one point in the future, there might be an archaeological park on Mount Zion, but until then, it's better preserved if we cover it again. 

Avraham Burg: So with the decision you took at the age when you were 17 years old, you're quite happy about it, right? 

Katja Soennecken: Oh, I cannot complain enough. 

Avraham Burg: No, oh. 

Katja Soennecken: Sometimes I'm really surprised how well these two things, like the archaeology and theology and between the two countries and all cultures, how well my journey in between works. 

Avraham Burg: And how is your Hebrew now? At high school, it was better? 

Katja Soennecken: Honestly, our Hebrew-speaking colleagues speak English so well that it's much easier to switch to English. 

Avraham Burg: That's a lingua franca

Katja Soennecken: Yeah, and right now I have to learn better French for Luxembourg, so. 

Avraham Burg: I see. 

Katja Soennecken: I changed my Hebrew studies to French studies, I know.

Avraham Burg: It's not the same syntax. Katya, it was a fascinating journey. I mean, I hope the second phone you do after you discover the gate is to me. So I come to see it. I won’t to ask who is the first one, but call me, I love to come and see it. It might be fascinating. Thank you very, very much for your generosity of information and time and good attitude.

Katja Soennecken: Thank you for the invitation, and you're always welcome to visit our excavation.

Avraham Burg: Augusta Victoria. 

Katja Soennecken: Anytime.

Avraham Burg: Thank you very much, my dear.

Katja Soennecken: Thank you.

Gabriel Mitchell: Jerusalem Talks is brought to you by the University of Notre Dame's Academic Center in Jerusalem, and it was made possible by the efforts of Avraham Burg, Daniel Schwake, Gabriel Mitchell, David Turjman, Ben Wallach, and Nathan Steinmeyer. Learn more about us at jerusalem.nd.edu