March 3, 2009 - BiblePlaces.com

Bethel Excavations, $2.50, and more

Eisenbrauns, a favorite among many academics working in biblical and Ancient Near Eastern studies, has recently begun a “deal of the day.” Typically the price reductions are outstanding (60-90% off!), and often the book is of interest. Today’s offer is The Excavations at Bethel (1934-1960), regularly $35 (or used, $21), today $2.50, which is 93% off. (Plus $5 shipping.)

For such a deal, there are a few hurdles to overcome. First, to learn about these daily offers, you should subscribe to the RSS feed. Unfortunately, the link never seems to work in my (Google) reader. But when you see a title of interest, you can go to the Eisenbrauns home page and navigate from there. Second, the description of the volume as related to the excavations of Beth-Zur should be ignored. Third, the author is not Julie Kelso, but William F. Albright and James L. Kelso. And fourth, there’s a real question that the excavations are even of Bethel! Other that that, as they say, everything’s perfect.

I am not trying to provoke an argument about the location of Bethel. I am not advocating for another location. I simply suggest that if you read this excavation report you will not find any compelling archaeological evidence that indicates that this site is biblical Bethel. And in fact, there are serious deficiencies with what was found. But I am not going to argue against this identification on the basis of the absence of evidence. I am willing, however, to point out that if this was one of the greatest cities of the northern kingdom and the home of one of the major shrines, one would expect to uncover much more than they did.

A related note. This is related both to the Bethel/Ai debate and to the incorrect first name of the author of the title. A few days ago I came across a reference in Richard Hess, Israelite Religions, to two entries in the New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. He cited the author of the Ai article as Joseph A. Callaway, but the author of the article of nearby Khirbet Raddana as James A. Callaway. Unfortunately, his citation follows the original; NEAEH “misspelled” Callaway’s first name. As far as I can tell, the new Volume 5 does not include an errata.

Speaking of typos, here’s an embarrassing one, on the packaging of the esteemed Anchor Bible Dictionary, no less! (For non-Hebrew readers, the text on the CD design has the first two words from Genesis, but the letters read from left to right.)

Quibbles aside, every book mentioned in this post is worth buying if these are subjects of interest to you.

Tagged Resources

Desert Kites: Ancient Technology of Hunters

This JPost article claims that a new study has “unlocked a key piece,” but as far as I can tell, the research merely confirms what was previously believed. Mazar, in his Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (1990), says something similar (pages 54-56). It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I note it here for those who have not studied some of the earlier periods of land of Israel.

University of Haifa researchers have just unlocked a key piece of the mystery of ancient desert survival, as part of their research on “desert kites” in the Negev and Arava regions.
The kites – so called because of their kite-like appearance to British pilots flying over the area in the early 1900s – resemble walls stretching over hundreds of meters of desert, meeting at angles with rounded trenches at the intersections.
The study, headed by zooarcheologist Dr. Guy Bar-Oz, archeologist Dr. Daniel Nadel and landscape ecologist Dr. Dan Malkinson, found that these structures were made by ancient desert people over 5,000 years ago as mass hunting apparatuses.
A number of such kites have been identified in Jordan, Syria, Israel and the Sinai. The archeological community has surmised that they were used for hunting purposes or as cattle pens.
Now, after surveying 11 kites and conducting digs at four different kite locations – from Givat Barnea in the North to Eilat in the South – and utilizing cutting edge measuring devices, two radiometric methods of dating, and aerial and ground photography, the team has concluded that the kites were constructed specifically to direct wild animals along the walls and convey them toward the trenches, where they could be hunted with ease….
“We were not taken by surprise by the technological ability; humans in that period were very similar to us in their capabilities. But nevertheless these were immense efforts,” he said. “Some of the kites are spread across hundreds of meters, and the construction blocks of some of the traps are very large and heavy. We are definitely talking about wide-scope construction in a region that is challenging for survival.”

The full story is here. Arutz-7’s version includes four photos.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Discoveries