Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Kh. Qeiyafa and the Southern Adventist University

Southern Adventist University’s Institute of Archaeology joined the excavation team at Khirbet Qeiyafa this summer. Their recent DigSight newsletter includes photographs and a description of their experiences and future plans. You can read the newsletter online here. I’ll just make a few observations, primarily because there has been almost no other news from the Qeiyafa excavations this year. That may be related to an inability to decipher the ostracon, could suggest there is some great discovery yet to be reported, or more likely is the result of a rather regular season, without any dramatic news like last year. Archaeology is, after all, 99% physical labor, data collection, and laboratory analysis. The best “finds” come out of the synthesis of the data, when a site’s history and culture is accurately understood. In brief, some things I noted in the newsletter:

Dr. Michael G. Hasel, director of SAU’s Institute of Archaeology is associate director of the KQ excavation.
The team is planning to work at KQ until 2012 when they will begin their own excavations under the umbrella of the Elah Valley Regional Project.
The gate that Yosef Garfinkel visually identified last fall was excavated and it is apparently still identified as a gate. (This is significant because it is a second gate at the site.)
The Hellenistic settlement is immediately preceded by Iron IIa floors upon which were “almost complete restorable vessels, including a lamp, chalice, and large storage jars with thumbprint impressions.”
The casemate wall rests on bedrock, “indicating without a doubt that the massive wall system associated with the western gate does in fact date to the early tenth century B.C., despite recent opposing suggestions by some scholars.”
Garfinkel’s lecture at the Institute on November 17 is entitled, “Excavating the Biblical City of Sha’arayim.” He apparently has not changed his identification of the site since last year.
Garfinkel’s ASOR lecture (11/19) is a double session, entitled “Khirbet Qeiyafa: A Fortified City in Judah from the Time of King David.” See a full list of related lectures at Luke Chandler’s blog.

The newsletter has more, including opportunities for the general public and a way to subscribe to the newsletter.

Tagged Excavations, Shephelah

Pool of Siloam, Then and Now

Understanding the ancient Pool(s) of Siloam is a bit difficult. First, there is the pool where Hezekiah’s Tunnel emerges. This pool is small, shallow, and unimpressive. In 2004, a monumental reservoir was discovered to the south, dating to the 1st century A.D. (for more on that, see here and here).

Scholars today do not yet know how the two pools are related. The Lower Pool was quite likely the place of the miracle of the healing of the blind man (John 9). The area above was the site of a pool in the Late Roman period, and continued in use in the Byzantine period when a 5th century church was constructed over it. What existed here before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 is not known.

Pool of Siloam, view to the north, present day

Today if you visit the pool at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, there are a few column drums from the Byzantine pool, but little else to suggest the beautiful complex that pilgrims visited. That hasn’t always been the case, however, for the excavations of Bliss and Dickie in the 1890s revealed some of the ancient walls. In the photo below, behind the donkey is a wall of large, well-dressed stones with a classical molding. The excavators identified this as the northern side of the square Roman pool.

Pool of Siloam, view to the north, early 1900s

After the excavations, Muslims erected a mosque over the northwestern corner of the area, covering all traces of the earlier pool and the Byzantine church built to commemorate it.

This photograph is one of 45 in the “City of David” set included in the Jerusalem volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. Photo: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-08471.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Jerusalem, Then and Now

Weekend Roundup

I updated last week’s post about the mikveh discovery near the Western Wall with a link to Leen Ritmeyer’s explanation of the location of the mikveh in relation to the Xystos and Chamber of Hewn Stone.

Bob Cargill reports that Raphael Golb’s path to prison is still clear.

If you use Logos’ Libronix, but don’t subscribe to the Tyndale Tech newsletter, you’ll find David Instone-Brewer’s “Guides, Tips, and Treasures” helpful.

Ferrell Jenkins is currently traveling through Malta and Italy, visiting such biblical sites as Rhegium, Syracuse, and Rome. You can read his observations and view his photos on his blog. I’m presently working on a new CD for the Pictorial Library that will include these places and more.

Gordon Franz gives his reflections on six weeks of excavation at Hazor this summer.

The Wall Street Journal considers the claims of Palestinians who assert that

Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars.

The WSJ mentions “A Brief Guide to al-Haram al-Sharif” as evidence in the discussion, and, as far as I know, this discovery was first mentioned and made available by a reader on this blog.

Tagged Galilee, Italy, Jerusalem

Joseph’s “Coins”

Every time a story surfaces on the internet that is obviously (in my mind) bogus, I prefer to ignore it here. But after receiving several emails from sharp individuals, I think this one must be worthy of comment. Instead of just stating that the story about Egyptian coins from Joseph’s time should be ignored, I’ll suggest a few clues that should make you suspicious.

1) The report claims to prove the biblical account. I believe the Bible is an accurate historical account, but experience has taught me that most news reports claiming such are untrustworthy.

2) The discovery was reported by an Egyptian newspaper. This is not the place where credible scholars break stories.

3) Coins were not invented until approximately 600 BC. By anyone’s reckoning, Joseph lived or did not live many hundreds of years earlier.

4) A statement like this: “Some of the coins are from the time when Joseph lived in Egypt.” There is no time (singular) when scholars believed Joseph lived.

There are various theories about when he lived. No credible source would make this statement without a discussion of when the “coins” date to and how we now know when Joseph lived.

5) Statements from the Quran about Joseph were used by the archaeologist as credible historical testimony.

6) If it sounds too good to be true…: “Among these, there was one coin that had an inscription on it, and an image of a cow symbolizing Pharaoh’s dream about the seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and the seven green stalks of grain and seven dry stalks of grain.” 7) Never in the report is a date or the name of a pharaoh given!

The story was re-reported as fact by the Jerusalem Post and Arutz-7 (shame on them; their editors must be off for the Yom Kippur weekend). The only one I’ve seen refuting this so far is Paleojudaica and Joe Lauer, who rightly questions whether this was released on the Egyptian version of April Fool’s Day.

UPDATE: Michael S. Heiser has several helpful comments on PaleoBabble. I don’t think I was aware of this blog before, but some readers here will certainly want to follow what is dubbed as “your antidote to cyber-twaddle and misguided research about the ancient world.”

Tagged Analysis, Egypt

Sea of Galilee from above

NASA’s “Earth Image of the Day” last week was a beautiful photo of the Sea of Galilee. I believe that copyright restrictions on NASA images are little to nil for U.S citizens, so you can use it to your heart’s content.

You might take a little more care, however, in the photo’s description. I don’t think anyone who has seen the area between January and June would call the region an “arid landscape.” Nor would anyone consider a 4th-5th century synagogue one of the oldest in the world.

Sea of Galilee southern end from west, tb041003225

Sea of Galilee from the west (source)

The description mentions Edward Robinson, and so interested in what he said about the place he identified as Capernaum, I opened the “Sea of Galilee, Capernaum” PowerPoint file on the new Northern Palestine CD, and read this:

Here are the remains of a place of considerable extent; covering a tract of at least half a mile in length along the shore, and about half that breadth inland. They consist chiefly of the foundations and fallen walls of dwellings and other buildings, all of unhewn stones, except two ruins. One of these is a small structure near the shore, the only one now standing; on a nearer approach, it is seen to have been laid up in later times, with the hewn stones, columns, and pilasters of former buildings. Not far off are the prostrate ruins of an edifice, which, for expense of labour and ornament, surpasses any thing we had yet seen in Palestine (1841: 3: 298; emphasis added).

If you’ve visited Capernaum and seen the beautiful ornamentation, you know what Robinson was talking about.

HT: David Coppedge

Tagged Galilee

Petition Against City of David Excavations Rejected

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition submitted against the Israel Antiquities Authority by residents of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, concerning excavations being conducted at the City of David archeological park in the neighborhood’s Wadi Hilweh section.
The petition, which was the second of its kind submitted by residents – and dismissed by the court – within the last week, alleged that the excavations were being done without the proper permits and were encroaching on the residents’ private property. Residents also complained that the archeological projects had damaged their homes.
The IAA, however, claimed that the residents were being “incited by other figures whose considerations are political and improbable,” and maintained that the excavations were of the utmost importance.
One of the excavations is being conducted next to the Givati parking lot, which is located south of the Old City’s southern wall, at the entrance to Silwan. According to the IAA, numerous layers of antiquities have been revealed during the excavation, including a “very impressive” structure that was likely a public building dating back to the late Roman period.
Remains from the early Islamic period have also been uncovered, as well as remains from the Second Temple period. According to the IAA, “all of the remains were scientifically excavated, through meticulous work, while photographing and documenting everything.”
The second excavation, which was the subject of the residents’ most recent petition, exposed a drainage channel structure from the Second Temple period that extends over a distance of many dozens of meters. According to the IAA, “the structure is surprisingly well preserved, and one can walk through it upright, for most of its length. The excavators were aware of the structure’s existence; nevertheless, the segment that was excavated was only recently exposed.”

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem