In Genesis 12, the Lord commands Abraham to go into the land of Canaan "unto the place of Shochem, unto the oak of Moreh" (sacred oak). There, the Lord appears and promises the land to the descendents of Abraham, and Abraham then builds an altar unto the Lord.

Moses Commands People

Deuteronomy 37 relates the farewell of Moses to his people, who are preparing to leave for the land in Jordan promised them by the Lord. Moses commands the people, when they arrive there, to build an altar to the Lord on Mount Ebal, which flanks Shechem, and also to erect on the site plastered stones inscribed with the laws of the covenant.

In the last chapter of the book of Joshua, the leader of the people, now very old, calls all the tribes of Israel to Shochem to renew their covenant with the Lord. Joshua sets beneath the sacred oak a great stone (the sacred Pillar) to serve as a witness of the covenant, "a witness against you, lest you deny your God."

Revolution Reported

The sacred oak and pillar reappear in Judges 9, which reports the revolution touched off by Abimelech when he established himself as Israel's first king: "And all the men of Shochem assembled themselves together ... and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar that was in Shochem."

The Bible does not say when any of these events in the tradition occurred. But the excavations at Shochem provide a concrete background to the story with approximate dates. These are derived from such evidence as changes that occur in the styles of pottery as the digging goes deeper and deeper.

During the previous season at Shochem, in 1960, the archaeologists reconstructed a portion of the courtyard of the temple and restored the great sacred pillar to the spot where it stood as late as the 12th century B.C. in front of the temple. However there was no reason to believe that this place in the courtyard was the city's earlier sacred area.

Ruins House Shrine

This summer, while excavating below the temple's courtyard, the archaeologists for the first time saw that the ruins there were a building housing an open-air shrine and separated from the rest of the city by an enclosure wall. Along one side was a series of rooms, used perhaps by resident priests, erected in the 13th century B.C. The structure was rebuilt a number of times during the next two centuries, but the open-air shrine and sacred area remained on the same spot, though the floor level was raised with each building period.

At first, the sacred area was outside the city wall. When the enclosure was built, a fortification wall extended the area of the city to the west, but the sacred area remained undisturbed, though now it was inside the city proper.

In addition, when the area was filled about 1600 B.C. and a temple built there, its altar and sacred pillar were carefully placed directly over that same spot where the earlier shrine had stood. At this level the archaeologists also found traces of the great processional road leading from the lower city to the temple.

Altar, Sacred Oak

If the archaeologists' interpretation of the newly-discovered site proves to be correct, then the altar and sacred oak where the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob worshipped could have been there as early as the 19th century B.C.

In reconstructing the history of the sacred area, the archaeologists supplemented their findings with photographs and maps made by earlier expeditions to Shochem by German scientists in the 1920s. These records, presumed to be lost, were found in the files of the German Evangelical Institute. The files had been stored in the basement of the Lutheran Church in Jerusalem