The Vitae Prophetarum and the Archaeology of Jewish Burials: Exploring Class Distinctions in Early Roman Palestine

Abstract

Modern commentators on the Vitae Prophetarum have tended to assume that every prophet’s bur-ial in this text was considered monumental in scale. A close examination of the language used to describe each burial yields a different, more nuanced picture. Vitae Prophetarum features prophets being buried in one of three ways: in a more-or-less monumental rock-cut tomb just outside Jerusalem, in a rock-cut tomb on the prophet’s own property, or in an indistinct field grave. This typology agrees with the emerging archaeological record of socioeconomic distinctions in burial practices. Whereas Jewish elites were buried in rock-cut tombs around Jerusalem or, more modestly, on their own estates, non-elites were interred in simple trench graves. This study demonstrates that the Vitae Prophetarum corroborates this relationship between burial types and socioeconomic distinctions, placing priestly elites and landowners in rock-cut tombs but the humbler prophets in trench graves.