Israeli Border Police arrested a 30-year-old on suspicion of antiquities looting in the ancient Christian pilgrim graveyard at Akeldama, located in Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley and associated with one of Jesus’s 12 apostles, Judas Iscariot.Akeldema is Aramaic for Field of Blood. There are a couple of different stories in the New Testament which associated the site with the suicide of Judas Iscariot. More on the site:
From the 4th through 7th century, Byzantine monks and hermits lived on the site, which is still occupied by a Christian monastery built on the spot where Judas is meant to have hanged himself, the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St Onuphrius, built in 1874. The monastery includes two ancient tombs, an altered burial cave called “Refuge [or Retreat] of the Apostles” and a subterranean Second Temple-period tomb whose roots may stretch even to the First Temple, according to scholars.
Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.
