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From Arutz-7:

Excavations in Tel Dor have turned up a rare and unexpected work of Hellenistic art: a precious stone bearing the miniature carved likeness of Alexander the Great. Archaeologists are calling it an important find, indicating the great skill of the artist.
The Tel Dor dig, under the guidance and direction of Dr. Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University and Dr. Ilan Sharon of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, has just ended its summer excavation season. For more than 30 years, scientists have been excavating in Tel Dor, identified as the site of the Biblical town of Dor. The town’s location, on Israel’s Mediterranean Sea coast some 30 kilometers south of Haifa, made it an important international port in ancient times.
“Despite the tiny proportions – the length of the gemstone (gemma) is less than a centimeter and its width less than half a centimeter – the artist was able to carve the image of Alexander of Macedon with all of his features,” Dr. Gilboa said. “The king appears as young and energetic, with a sharp chin and straight nose, and with long, curly hair held in a crown.”

The full article is here and includes a small photo.

UPDATE: Joe Lauer sends along direct links to two beautiful photos:

  • Tel Dor, aerial view at the end of the 2009 excavation season
  • The gem of Alexander the Great, photographed using binocolor
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Another excellent atlas has been revised and is due out October 1 of this year.  The second edition of Barry Beitzel’s work is entitled The New Moody Atlas of the Bible and, according to the description, its “one hundred thousand words provide useful commentary for more than ninety detailed maps of Palestine, the Mediterranean, the Near East, the Sinai, and Turkey.”  I have long used the first edition of this atlas as required preparatory reading for seminary courses in Israel.  To give but one example, Beitzel’s discussion of climate in the Holy Land is excellent. 

Since I mentioned the cover photos on another atlas recently, I’ll say here that I like two of the three images selected.  The Capernaum synagogue and the Caesarea aqueduct are not only interesting visually, but they have a connection to the biblical record.  My preference would be to avoid shots, especially close-ups, of the Dome of the Rock on the cover of a book about the Bible.  But I understand why design artists are attracted to it.

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The Copper Scroll is certainly one of the most intriguing of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  The only text inscribed on two copper sheets, it lists the location of sixty treasures apparently in Judah in the period before the First Jewish Revolt in A.D. 70.  Many scholars believe that the list is authentic, but despite numerous efforts of the years no one has ever found any of the treasure.

The Jerusalem Post reports on an Oklahoma fire marshal named Jim Barfield who believes that he knows the location of not just one or two hiding places, but 56 of them.

After looking at the scroll for five minutes he deciphered the first location, and twenty minutes later he identified the next four locations. He and his wife took their first trip to Israel to confirm whether the sites and places that he had identified actually existed. “I wanted to make sure I wasn’t just imagining things,” Barfield said. It took six months for Barfield to crack the code for the rest of the locations.

This guy is pretty good.  He was able to figure out the locations without ever being to Israel, without knowing the language that the inscription is written in, and without having any background in archaeology or geography.

It’s nice to know what others think about his discovery:

He says that all of the archaeologists, rabbis, and historians presented with his research have been convinced. “It is so simple.” He says. “They just all thump their heads.”

Unfortunately, we only get it in Barfield’s words.

I don’t know enough to say that this guy is a fraud, only that he sounds like one.  If he actually has found something, he should go dig it out and then report on it.  But if he’s a publicity hound, I can write the script for the next few years: initial attempts will be stymied by various obstacles, during which time he’ll do many interviews and attempt to raise lots of money.  When he finally digs at one of his spots, he’ll find nothing – no treasure and no indication that any treasure was ever hidden there.  He’ll claim that it was stolen in antiquity (another round of interviews and appeals for cash) and start planning for a second excavation.  Efforts to dig will be hindered by various obstacles, during which time he’ll do many interviews and attempt to raise lots of money.  Etc.

The article itself is worth reading as it provides interesting and accurate information about the Copper Scroll.  You can find an introduction to and translation of the scroll in Florentino Garcia Martinez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated, 2nd ed., pages 459-63.  An excellent reference is the Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2 volumes).

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This is the first in what I plan to be an extended series of blog posts illustrating the value of historic photos using examples from The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection.  I’ve written much elsewhere about how the biblical lands have been altered in the last 100 years, but there’s no better way to illustrate this than with photographs.

A good example of how the land has changed in the last hundred years is Ein Harod, also known as Gideon’s spring.  Here the timid warrior gathered thousands of Israelites to fight the Midianites, but the Lord gave him a plan to sift the men by separating the lappers from the kneelers (Judges 7). 

Today the spring has been nicely “improved” so that it’s very difficult to understand how such a selecting procedure would have occurred.

Ein Harod spring cave, tb011400101srEin Harod spring cave, present day
(Source: Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)

One hundred years ago, there was no fence to keep tourists out and no paving stones to walk across.  Not only that, the flow of the spring has apparently been greatly diminished because of modern wells in the area.  It is likely that the way the spring looked like in A.D. 1900 is the way that it looked in 1100 B.C. when Gideon brought his men here.

Ein Harod, Gideon's Fountain, mat01077 Ein Harod, 1900-1920

George Adam Smith described it this way: “It bursts some fifteen feet broad and two deep from the very foot of Gilboa, and mainly out of it, but fed also by the other two springs, flows a stream considerable enough to work six or seven mills” (Historical Geography of the Holy Land [1909]: 397-98).

This is one of 600 high-resolution photographs in the new Northern Palestine CD, volume 1 of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. Photo: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-01077.

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I just stumbled across an Amazon listing for Carl Rasmussen’s revised edition of the (now titled) Zondervan Atlas of the Bible.  I’ve long used and recommended Rasmussen’s first edition (NIV Atlas of the Bible, 1989) and have no doubt that the second will be even better.  It does seem that the publishers could have chosen a more appropriate cover photo for a Bible atlas than an image of the Nabatean tombs at Petra.  Amazon has it for pre-order for $26, with a scheduled release of March 2010.

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The University of Haifa has announced some discoveries from its 2009 season of excavations at Hippos/Sussita, reported in a press release (Hebrew) and in an English article in Ha’aretz

Remains of an ancient cult to the goddess of love have come to light in the southern Golan Heights site of Susita.
At the site, on a 350 meter-high-plateau overlooking the eastern shore of Lake Kinneret, archaeologists found a cache of three figurines of Aphrodite (whom the Romans called Venus), dating back about 1,500 years. The figurines, made of clay, are about 30 centimeters tall. They depict the nude goddess standing, with her right hand covering her private parts – a type of statue scholars call “modest Venus.”

I’m personally more interested in another find, described at the conclusion of the article:

Another special find at Susita is an odeon – a small, roofed theater-like structure with seats for about 600 people, uncovered for the first time in Israel, according to the excavators. They said such structures were fairly common in the Roman period and were used for the reading of poetry and musical presentations to a select audience, in contrast to theaters, which could seat around 4,000 people.

The claim that this is the first odeon discovered in Israel is not true; another has been excavated at Aphek/Antipatris (NEAEH 1: 71, with photo).

The press release includes several photos.

HT: Joe Lauer

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