About 1,800 years ago, a convert to Judaism named Yaakov died and was interred in a cave at Beit She’arim, with a hex designed to deter grave robbers that looks like it was scrawled on the limestone slab in blood.Other red-painted epitaphs from a century or two later are known from Zoar, in southern Jordan near the Dead Sea. An unprovenanced one, reportedly also from Zoar, turned up some years ago in California. It is now, I believe, at Yeshiva University. These other painted gravestones are written in Aramaic.It wasn’t. It was scribbled in uneven Greek writing in scarlet paint. We know he was a convert to Judaism because the full reference to the deceased is “Yaakov HaGer” – Jacob the Proselyte. We may also surmise that he died at age 60.
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