Talk:Kafr 'Ana

Guerin

• Guérin, Victor (1869). Description Géographique Historique et Archéologique de la Palestine (in French). Vol. 1: Judee, pt. 3. Paris: L'Imprimerie Nationale.

• User:Davidbena: Victor Guérin mentions a Kh. Kafr Ana on pp. 43-4, yes, but that is not *this* Kafr 'Ana! *That* is on SWP map 14, this is on SWP map 13. In short, the Kh. Kafr Ana he talks about, is well inside the West Bank, that day he went Ein Yabrud --> Kh. Kafr Ana (SWP II:336) --> Deir Jarir --> Taybeh, etc.
• See User:Huldra/Guerin (which isn´t complete, yet)
• You really cannot rely on "the same" name when it comes to Guérin; you have to "walk" in his footsteps. And don´t worry; you are not the first to make a mistake wrt Guerin! The SWP-people did it (see Talk:Al-Lubban ash-Sharqiya); Israel Finkelstein did it (see Talk:Khirbat Al-Lawz); ...and User:Bolter21 did it, just last week (see Talk:Ein as-Sahala). So you are in good company! Cheers, Huldra (talk) 15:27, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
• Oh, and please check that "Mishnah (Arakhin 9:6)"-reference; does that refer to Ono, Benjamin, too? If so, it needs to go, Huldra (talk) 15:29, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Dear User:Huldra, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but you misunderstood Victor Guerin. He was initially told that there was another Khirbet Kefr A'na, near the present site of Ein Yabrud, from which information he concludes that it cannot be referring to our Kefr A'na, which is indeed near Lydda (Lod), just as the Babylonian Talmud (Ketubbot 111b) says that from Lydda to Ono is a distance of only 3 biblical miles. Please look again at his (Guerin's) words which I am repasting here with its English translation:

En face d'A’in Yabroud, vers le nord, on me signale, sur une montagne voisine, des ruins appelées Khirbet Kefr A’na, خربة كفر عانا. Dans les Paralipomènes il est question, parmi les descendants de Benjamin, de Samad, fils d’Elphaal, qui bâtit Ono, Lod et ses filles, c’est-à-dire les villages qui en dépendaient:

Porro filli Ephaal: Heber et Misaam, et Samad; hic ædificavit Ono et Lod et filias ejus [Paralipomènes, I . c. viii, v. 12].

Ono, en hébreu אונו et אנו, offre une ressemblance de nom assez grande avec عانا. Toutefois, ce qui doit empécher de l’identifier avec notre Khirbet Kefr A’na, c’est que la ville d’Ono, ainsi que cela semble ressortir du verset précédent et d’autres passages de la Bible [Esdras, 1. I, c. ii, v. 33], était probablement située dans le voisinage de Lydda. Par conséquent le khirbet susdit n’a rien à voir avec cette Ono, qu’il faut plotôt reconnaître dans une autre Kefr A’na, dont j’ai parlé en son lieu et qui est effectivement très-rapproché de Lydda.

ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Opposite A'in Yabroud, north, I'm advised, on a nearby mountain, are the ruins called Khirbet Kefr A'na, خربة كفر عانا. In Chronicles (I Chronicles 8:12) there is discussed among the descendants of Benjamin a certain Samad, son of Elphaal, who built Ono, Lod, and his daughters, that is to say, the villages thereon dependent:

'And the sons of Elpaal; Eber, and Misham, and Shamed, who built Ono, and Lod, with the towns thereof.' [I Chronicles, VIII, 12].

Ono, in Hebrew אונו and אנו, offers a fairly large name resemblance to عانا. However, what shall prevent it from being identified with our Khirbet Kefr A'na as that the city of Ono, as will appear from the preceding verse and other Bible passages [Ezra 1. I c. ii, v. 33], was probably located in the neighborhood of Lydda. Therefore the above Khirbet has nothing to do with that Ono, it must rather be recognized as another Kefr A'na; I spoke of its place and is actually very near Lydda.Davidbena (talk) 19:17, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

One more thing, the Talmud (Megillah 4a) says that Ono was in the portion of Benjamin, whose portion ran all the way westward to Lydda and Ono. Modern Israeli scholars have identified most of the towns mentioned in the Book of Joshua and that belong to the lot of Benjamin. Only those towns and villages on the northern-most and southern-most territorial boundary lines, or purlieu, are named in the land allocation—though, in actuality, all unnamed towns and villages in between these boundaries would still belong to the tribe of Benjamin. The Babylonian Talmud (ibid.) names specifically three of these "sandwiched" cities, all of which were formerly enclosed by a wall, and belonged to the tribe of Benjamin: Lydda (Lod), Ono (Kfar 'Ana = كفر ئنا - wherein is now built Or Yehudah), and Gei Ha-ḥarashim. From here there is evidence that the westward boundary of the tribe of Benjamin would have stretched as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Davidbena (talk) 19:21, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

On the Lod–Ono region, you may also wish to see John Bright, The History of Israel, London 1959: p. 384.Davidbena (talk) 19:57, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Furthermore, if you have access to JSTOR academic journals, you may wish to see these sources which speak unequivocally of Ono as being Kefr Ana near Lod:

• The Jamnia period in Jewish History, p. 348
• On the Transcription of Geographical Names, p. 19

There is also much work on this subject by historical geographers, Zeev Safrai and others.Davidbena (talk) 20:58, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Ok, my French is google.translate-French, so thank you for your translation. However:

• 1: Why on earth use some notes Guerin made in connection with another place, (=Guerin, 1869) and not the notes he made *about* this section, (already in the article: Guerin, 1868, pp. 319-321?) I suggest that we cut out the Guerin, 1869, altogether.

On the contrary, Guerin spoke about both places, with the emphasis on our present site of Ono, which is Kefr 'Ana near Lydda (Lod).Davidbena (talk) 22:50, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

• 2: I accept your word for it, that modern scholarship identifies this as Ono. But it is a very bad idea to state that this "was built on the ancient site of Ono", and cite it to a 150 year old Guerin-book, (Guerin was wrong, many times.). I´m removing the Guerin, 1869 from the lead, please replace it with some newer academic source, Huldra (talk) 22:17, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Whenever archaeologists say that a modern-day place-name is the same place as the older Hebrew or Canaanite place-name, in almost all cases it means that the new site (described by the modern name) was built on the old site. There are plenty of examples of this; such as al-Saffuriyyah in Galilee being identified with the Sepphoris (Heb. צפורין) of Israel's Sages, or el-'Azariyya near the Mount of Olives being identified with Bethany (Heb. ביתיני) of Israel's Sages, each of which modern place was built over the former place.Davidbena (talk) 22:54, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

In HA-ESI 122 (2010) there are several excavation reports for this region. Some of them identify ancient Ono with a site right on top of Kafr Ana, and others identify it with a site called Kafr Juna about 700m north. Zero^talk 12:00, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

That is true, but this is only a recent fringe view.Davidbena (talk) 13:23, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Ancient identifications don't necessarily indicate exact location and there are very many examples where a site has moved over time. We should report what the source says and no more. As for the identification of ancient Ono, while there may still be argument about it (I couldn't find any from experts), the current consensus seems to follow Ram Gophna, Itamar Taxel and Amir Feldstein, A New Identification of ancient Ono, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, Volume 23 (2005) 167–176. They examined all of the excavations done at the traditional site and found that it was not occupied during the correct time period for the identification to be supported. They suggested instead a site 700m north that was definitely occupied at the right time. The full story is somewhat complex. I'll quote a summary from Itamar Taxel, Rural Settlement Processes in Central Palestine, ca. 640-800 c.E.: The Ramla-Yavneh Region as a Case Study, American Schools for Oriental Research. BASOR 369 (2013): 157-99:

Kafr `Ana: This site (located within the modern town of Or Yehuda), one of the largest in the Lod Valley, has been traditionally identified as ancient Ono, or Byzantine-period Onous, a town known from historical sources as having been inhabited by Jews (Gophna, Taxel, and Feldstein 2007: 109, with references). However, as we have recently suggested, based on the results of the numerous excavations and surveys carried out at the site and its vicinity, Kafr `Ana actually represents a Byzantine-period expansion of a nearby and much older site—Kafr Juna, which we identify as ancient Ono. In our opinion, those who founded Kafr `Ana in the Byzantine period were Christians, as indicated by the discovery of a column capital decorated with crosses, a fragmentary marble paten/altar table, and pig bones (Gophna, Taxel, and Feldstein 2007: 88, 104, 110-13). This interpretation also explains the apparent contradiction between two sources that address the religious identity of Ono's population during the Early Islamic period. The first is a legal document from the Cairo Geniza, which dates to the ninth to eleventh centuries, and mentions "Kiryat (the village of) Ono" as a Jewish settlement (Friedman 1983: 79-81, 85, n. 47). The second is the Greek Taktikon, a ninth-century list of the Christian archbishoprics in Palestine. According to the document, by this time the city of Lod was an autocephalous archbishopric that controlled or represented a reduced territory of several rural Christian communities. Ono, no longer part of Lod's territory, was held by Jaffa, another autocephalous archbishopric which, during this period, controlled a much larger domain. Most significantly, Ono (which in the Taktikon is called Zonos and is described as a village) is mentioned as a Christian settlement and even as a titular See (Timotheous 1939: 77, 79; Levy-Rubin 2003: 201-10). Thus, two adjacent villages, or parts of the same settlement, one inhabited by Jews and the other by Christians, existed under virtually the same name well into the Early Islamic period. Despite this, archaeologically speaking, "Christian" Kafr `Ana is much better known than nearby Kafr Juna, reaching its territorial peak (ca. 40 dunams) toward the end of the Byzantine period. It continued without any break throughout the Early Islamic period and even later, though a reduction of its inhabited area may have occurred sometime during the `Abbasid or Fatimid period (Gophna, Taxel, and Feldstein 2007: 10-15). Zero^talk 11:01, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

A much longer version of Gophna et al's work is here. Chapter 9 has a very detailed argument with more information. Zero^talk 13:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Zero. Very informative. I have also consulted two well-known archaeologists on this subject.Davidbena (talk) 20:43, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

For Your Information: Earlier this week, I wrote the leading expert of Historical Geography here in Israel, Prof. Ze'ev Safrai, asking him about the identification of Kefr 'Ana with the biblical Ono, and this is what he wrote to me. First, I'll paste my question to him, and then his repy:

Q:פרופ' זאב ספראי, שלום

אני פונה אליך בתקווה שתוכל להפנות לתשומת לבי חומר מתועד כלשהו הקובע בוודאות שהכפר הערבי בשם "כפר עאנה" שליד לוד הוא אכן אונו של המקרא ושל התלמוד ומשנה. תודה מראש

A:זו הדעה המקובלת במחקר, כתב על כך שמואל קליין בספרו ארץ יהודה. אין לדעתי סיבה לפקפק בזיהוי.

זאב ספראי

As you can see, he says that there is no reason to doubt what Shmuel Klein wrote about Kefr 'Ana being the biblical Ono, in his book, "Eretz Yehudah (the Land of Judah)". Davidbena (talk) 15:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. This is interesting, but since Klein died in 1940 long before the recent excavation work that led many (including famous archaeologists like Israel Finkelstein) to discard the standard belief, his book is no longer a proper source. Perhaps you can send the citations I have given to Prof Safrai and ask his opinion of them. Zero^talk 23:32, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Professor Ze'ev Safrai is familiar with all the latest opinions in what concerns historical geography of the land of Israel and he has voiced his scholarly opinion that there is no reason to doubt the generally accepted view that Kefr 'Ana is the biblical Ono.Davidbena (talk) 20:22, 12 June 2016 (UTC)