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For many years I have enjoyed taking students deep into the world of ancient Israel, exploring its land, its people, and its stories. One place that is always most rewarding is the era of Israel’s kings, for this terrain is little known and yet abounding with riches.

The chronology, however, can get people tied up real fast. That’s why I’m excited about a new
resource that maps everything out with clarity. The Regnal Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel: An Illustrated Guide puts every detail in its place, so with one glance you can figure out in any given year who is ruling, the king’s age and regnal year, and every extrabiblical synchronism. It truly puts everything at your fingertips.

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Chris McKinny has been developing this resource for many years while living, studying, and teaching in the Jerusalem area. Both the digital book and the e-poster reflect his passion for the subject, and they’re now available at an introductory price of $9.99 for the e-poster, $19.99 for the digital book (pdf), or $24.99 for both.

I encourage you to take a look. You can order it quickly and easily here. And we would appreciate it if you would tell friends, pastors, students, and teachers about it. This sort of resource is unique, and we believe there are many who will absolutely love it, if they know about it.

mckinny-poster500
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This week’s sandstorm in Israel is the worst it has experienced since the nation was founded in 1948.

Air pollution in Jerusalem was 173 times higher than average. Carl Rasmussen shares a video showing how bad it was on the Mount of Olives.

What exactly is a 100-foot-deep shaft doing next to the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem?

Andrew Bernhard posts on the End of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife Forgery Debate.

Thieves in Galilee were caught removing a sixth century mosaic church floor in Gush Tefen.

The cisterns at Arad are now open to visitors.

Muslim “sentinels” protecting the Temple Mount from “sacrilege” have now been outlawed by Israeli police.

If your interest is in exotic shofars and what Jewish halakah has to say about it, Zoo Torah has a free pdf on the subject.

The BBC reports on six “lesser-known wonders of the ancient world,” including the site of Baalbek in Lebanon.

The Jerusalem Post Magazine reports on sinkholes around the Dead Sea. (At the moment of posting this, the link is not working. Perhaps it will return.)

ISIS is destroying ancient buildings in order to conceal evidence that they are looting for profit.

The Institute for Digital Archaeology plans to distribute 10,000 3-D cameras in the coming year in
order to document archaeological sites and objects in West Asia before they are destroyed.

A luncheon will honor James F. Strange at this ASOR meeting in Atlanta.

Ferrell Jenkins illustrates what David meant when he wrote about “a dry and weary land where there is no water.”

Did you know that the Upper Room is located directly above David’s Tomb?

The Dead Sea Scrolls scam at the California Science Center closed this week.

“The Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive (based at the University of Oxford) aims to provide high resolution, searchable images, freely-downloadable for teaching, research, heritage projects, and publication. It covers buildings and art in the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule (e.g. Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, and North Africa), from ca. 300 BC to the present, but especially Roman, late antique, and early Islamic art, architecture, and sacred sites.”

HT: Charles Savelle, Ted Weis, Agade, Joseph Lauer, Jared Clark

Our Facebook photo with the most clicks in the past week was the final one in our “holy rocks” series.

Gezer standing stones, bowing down, tb091405098
Standing stones at Gezer
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(Post by A.D. Riddle)

On Thursday, October 1, at 7:15 pm, the Biblical and Theological Studies Department at Wheaton College will host a screening of the film Patterns of Evidence. After the film Daniel Block will moderate a panel discussion including Daniel Master and James Hoffmeier. The event will take place in Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center 105, Barrows Auditorium. It is free and open to the public. Information about the event can be found here.

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(Post by A.D. Riddle)


About five months ago, we wrote about (1) the series Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) and (2) the importance of the Neo-Assyrian period for biblical history.

At that time we mentioned a few advantages to having the physical volumes over the digital versions at ORACC (The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus), namely, the introductions to the texts and bibliography.

Since then, ORACC has been expanding the RINAP Online to include more resources. Now, you can find the following:

RINAP 1 = Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V

The same resources are made available for:

The following resources are provided for all three RINAP volumes:

The following volumes are in the pipeline:
RINAP 2 = The Royal Inscriptions of Sargon II
RINAP 5 = The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal, Aššur-etel-ilāni, and Sîn-šarra-iškun

In our piece, we listed all the RIM and RINAP volumes. They are also listed on this page.

HT: Grant Frame via Agade List

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The excavation season at Magdala has concluded, and the wrap-up describes the major findings, including a fourth mikveh that was fed by spring water.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project has just released a video about their work, its importance, and the need to keep it going.

Leen Ritmeyer offers his thoughts and diagrams on the recent discovery of the stepped podium in the City of David.

The cross-border environmental organization EcoPeace has opened two hiking tours, a bike route, and a walking path in Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. The two hiking tours each take eight days.

Arutz-7 reports briefly on the Studies of Ancient Jerusalem’s 16th Annual Conference in the City of David.

A study of 15 Roman-era Egyptian mummy portraits and panel paintings reveals that the artists used Egyptian blue, contrary to what has been long believed.

British conservation specialists have restored some Hellenistic-era paintings from Petra.
‘Atiqot 82 is now online.

Attempts by ISIS to blow up the Temple of Bel at Palmyra have apparently failed.

The Codex Sinaiticus will leave the walls of the British Library for only the second time since 1933, this time headed down the street for display in an Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum.

The Philistines introduced new plants to the coastal plain when they migrated from the Aegean.

HT: Ted Weis, Joseph Lauer, Agade

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Andrew Curry at National Geographic has posted a review of sites in Syria and Iraq that have been attacked with bulldozers, explosives, sledgehammers, or is being extensively looted. The list includes:


Syria: Palmyra, Mar Elian Monastery, Apamea, Dura-Europos, and Mari


Iraq: Hatra, Nineveh, Mosul Museum and Libraries, Nimrud, Khorsabad, Mar Benham Monastery, Mosque of the Prophet Yunus, and Imam Dur Mausoleum

The article includes details about the significance of each site and its destruction along with several photos and a map.

HT: Agade

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