Sarah Lepisto wanted a deeper, more personal understanding of her Bible. She wanted to see, smell, hear and feel the biblical sites she knew only from reading about them.
She recently got the chance to do just that -- and ended up finding a piece of biblical history thousands of years old.
Lepisto, 20, a junior at Dubuque's Emmaus Bible College, was one of 14 college students on a two-week study tour of Israel in May.
"I wanted to have more than a mental picture of what I'm studying -- to know what the Sea of Galilee smells like, how the Negev feels beneath my feet, to know how difficult it is to reach one of the ancient hideout caves along the Jordan River," Lepisto said from her summer job as an intern with Voice of the Martyrs in Bartlesville, Okla.
The trip was planned at the end of a Bible geography course taught by Steve Sanchez, Bible faculty member at Emmaus.
"It helped the students understand the Bible more clearly -- to know the exact context of the events they read about in it," said Sanchez, 36.
The group toured the entire
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"The chances were pretty slim that I had found anything significant on a site that had already been excavated and now was open to the public," Lepisto said.
But her find was important. Sanchez and the tour guide recognized the inscription as coming from the time of Israel's kings. It was one of thousands of LMLK seals, which were stamped on the handles of large storage jars around Jerusalem during the reign of Hezekiah, king of Judah.
Sanchez said the large storage jars, about 2 feet tall, were commissioned by the king to store food in preparation for an Assyrian invasion. The event occurred in 701 B.C. and is recorded in 2 Kings 18:33-19:37 and Isaiah 36-37, Sanchez said. The jars were stored around the kingdom and marked with the seals in ancient Hebrew that identified them as "belonging to the king."
"I had never seen anything like this except in museums," Sanchez said.
The group contacted an Israeli archaeologist, Gabriel Barkay, who confirmed the jar handle bore an LMLK seal, which identified its origin as the Judean town of Socoh.
Lepisto said her professor's "zeal for the Lord and his revelation is contagious," and that excitement energized the study group.
Since it is illegal to remove artifacts from Israel, Lepisto left the handle with the head of the archaeological site to be displayed in the museum there with credit given to Lepisto for finding it.
"It was another confirmation that what the Bible says happened is true," Sanchez said.
Lepisto is grateful for the "unique chance to study God's word in the very land where his revelation took place." From her experience, she and her fellow students gained a "deeper appreciation and understanding of the events in the Bible as historical," she said.
