West Bank historian slain in Lebanon might have been attempting to visit tomb associated with Simeon, son of Jacob – archaeologist

Researcher Zeev Erlich, 71, who was killed yesterday after joining, in uniform, an IDF unit in Lebanon, was attempting to visit an archaeological site and tomb near the Lebanese village of Chama, southeast of Tyre and about 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) from the Israeli border, according to Prof. Aren Maeir of the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology Department at Bar-Ilan University.

Erlich has just been laid to rest at the cemetery at the settlement of Ofra, where he lived.

Maeir said he has seen social media posts asserting that the tomb “is identified by some as the tomb of Simeon, the son of Jacob,” but said that there is no historical or traditional connection between the site and the biblical Simeon.

In the Bible, Simeon is one of the sons of the patriarch Jacob and the founder of the Tribe of Simeon, one of The Twelve Tribes of Israel. A site long thought to be Simeon’s resting place is located next to Route 6, east of Kfar Saba and across the Green Line from the West Bank village of Qalqilya.

At the site in Chama, “there are Roman, Byzantine and Muslim remains, and a Crusader fortress called Scandalion was built on top of them. There is a Muslim maqam (tomb marker) at the site, identified with Saint Peter,” Maeir said.

The tomb “is considered important to Shiites, since there is a tradition that Peter is one of the ancestors of the Mahdi [the Shiite messiah]. Therefore, Shiites make a pilgrimage to this place,” he added.

St. Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, is also called Simeon in Hebrew, Maeir noted.

However, associating the Chama site with a biblical Jewish figure “is something modern that is perhaps related to current ideologies,” Maeir said.