Kedesh

Tel Kedesh

Tel Kedesh
Shown within Israel
Alternative name	Cydessa
Location	Northern District, Israel
Region	Upper Galilee
Coordinates	33°06′42″N 35°31′46″E / 33.111638°N 35.529517°E / 33.111638; 35.529517Coordinates: 33°06′42″N 35°31′46″E / 33.111638°N 35.529517°E / 33.111638; 35.529517
Type	Settlement
Site notes
Condition	In ruins
Public access	yes

The ruins of the ancient Canaanite city of Kedesh (alternate spellings: Cadesh, Cydessa) are located 3 km northeast of the modern Kibbutz Malkiya in Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border.^[1]

History[]

Kedesh was first documented in the Book of Joshua as a Canaanite citadel conquered by the Israelites under the leadership of Joshua. Ownership of Kedesh was turned over by lot to the tribe of Naphtali and subsequently, at the command of God, Kedesh was set apart by Joshua as a Levitical city and one of the Cities of Refuge along with Shechem and Kiriath Arba (Hebron) (Joshua 20:7).

In the 8th century BCE, during the reign of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria took Kedesh and deported its inhabitants to Assyria. (2 Kings 15:29)

Later, during the 5th century BCE, Kedesh may have become the capital for the Persian-controlled and Tyrian-administrated province of the Upper Galilee.^[2]

In 259 BCE Kedesh was mentioned by Zenon, a traveling merchant from Egypt.^[3]

Between 145 BCE and 143 BCE, Kedesh (Cades) was overthrown by Jonathan Maccabeus in his fight against Seleucid king Demetrius II Nicator.^[4][5] It remains abandoned. From 1997 to 2012, Tel Kedesh was excavated by a team from the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology in conjunction with the University of Minnesota,^[6] focusing in 2010 and 2012 on the Persian and Hellenistic Administrative Building.

According to Jewish tradition, Deborah the prophetess, Barak the son of Abinoam and Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, as also Heber, were buried near the spring beneath the town of Kedesh.^[7]

Eusebius, writing about the place in his Onomasticon, says: "Kedesh. A priestly city in the inheritance of Naphtali. Previously it was a city of refuge 'in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali.' The 'king of the Assyrians' destroyed it (2 Kings 15:29). This is (now) Kydissos (Κυδισσός), twenty miles from Tyre near Paneas."^[8]

Kedesh of Naphtali[]

Identification of the biblical "Kedesh of Naphtali" (Judges 4:6, 10) has been the subject of archaeological and historical debate. While many hold the ancient site to be in Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border, Israeli archaeologist, Yohanan Aharoni, held the view that it lay in Lower Galilee, near the Valley of Jezreel, at a site which bears the same name (now Khirbet Qadish).^[9] Some prominent archaeological publications have, therefore, listed the site as being east of the "Jabneel valley" in "Lower Galilee."^[10]

From 1997–2010, archaeological excavations were conducted at the Kedesh-Naphtali (Qadesh) site by Herbert Sharon and Andrea Berlin on behalf of the University of Michigan.^[11][12]

Middle Ages[]

Ishtori Haparchi, visiting the holy sites in the early fourteenth-century wrote of Kedesh: "About half a day's distance southward of Paneas, known in Arabic as Banias, is Kedesh, in the mountain of Naphtali, and it is [now] called Qades."^[13]

Other[]

In the Book of Judges, the great oak tree in Zaanaim is stated to be near Kedesh, though this verse could be a reference to a second Tel Kedesh, located 3 km to the south of Megiddo, within the territory of the Israelite tribe of Issachar. (Judges 4:11)

See also[]

• Qadas
• Al-Malkiyya

References[]

Bibliography[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tel Kedesh.

• Negev, Avraham; Gibson, Shimon, eds. (2001). Kedesh (b) (Tel; Qades), and Kedesh-Naphtali. Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (snippet view). New York and London: Continuum. p. 278. ISBN 0-8264-1316-1. Retrieved 26 July 2021.