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Christian Inscription from AD 125

Larry Hurtado brings attention to what may be the earliest Christian graffito, suggesting that the find is extraordinary but that because the author “doesn’t have a TV production company behind him, we haven’t seen this item in the daily news.”

The inscription was found in Smyrna, home of a first-century church (Rev 2:8-11), and dates to AD 125/26. The writing includes the words “Lord” and “faith,” but you’ll need to get the forthcoming book by Roger Bagnall or read Hurtado’s summary for the details.

HT: Arne Halbakken

View of Smyrna (modern Izmir) from acropolis

Tagged Discoveries, Turkey

The Greatest Mosaic Artist

Haaretz describes one of the most spectacular mosaics ever discovered in Israel. The masterpiece was composed of 2 million stones.

The Lod mosaic has earned its place of honor outside the conservation laboratory of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The laboratory, in the courtyard of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, contains hundreds of mosaics collected over about a century of archaeological exploration in Israel. But the 180-square-meter Lod mosaic, with its dozens of meticulously executed animal images enclosed in spectacular geometric patterns, is the jewel in the crown.
The artist who made it some 1,800 years ago was apparently the greatest mosaic artist ever to work in this land.
[…]
The Lod mosaic was found 16 years ago when a tractor hit it by accident. An Israel Antiquities Authority inspector saw the very tip of a panther’s tail, and stopped the work. Archaeologist Miriam Avissar started excavating, and slowly but surely the treasure emerged: an elephant trapped in a hunter’s net, a giraffe (mistakenly sporting antlers), lions, ducks, fish, deer, a peacock, wolves and snakes. Ships also appeared. Some of the animals are hunting – a panther holds a bleeding deer, a snake swallows a fish, even a little vegetarian rabbit is seen snacking on a cluster of grapes it seems to be sharing with a wolf.
The mosaic was covered until three years ago, when the antiquities authority and the Lod municipality brought it to light, invited the public to see it – and then removed it. Parts have been sent abroad to raise funds for a future museum to house it. It has been displayed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum, and the Field Museum in Chicago.

The full article, along with a series of photos, is here. We noted this discovery back in June 2009 and October 2009.

HT: Joseph Lauer

UPDATE (4/3): Tom Powers observes that the photo below is not the Lod mosaic but another found near Lachish. See Tom’s post for images of the Lod mosaic.

Mosaic found near Lachish. Photo: Michal Fattal, Haaretz.

Tagged Museums

Weekend Roundup

Haaretz has a lengthy profile of Ronny Reich and his 15-year excavation of the City of David. The article is partly based on Reich’s book and deals with the archaeological highlights and the political controversies.

Walk the Land: A Journey on Foot through Israel is available as a free Kindle ebook for a limited time.

A FoxNews story about the Chinese Christian version of the Noah’s Ark discovery interviews Randall Price and John Morris.

The Oklahoma exhibit with the seals of Jeremiah’s captors is previewed in a four-minute video.

Joe Yudin takes his readers on a tour of the City of David. He writes that one may walk underground to the Western Wall, suggesting that the tunnel collapse from late December has been cleared and the passage re-opened.

An Asclepium has been discovered in central Greece.

Christianbook.com’s Fabulous Friday sale includes a couple of great deals: Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, by Carl Rasmussen, and the audio NKJV Word of Promise New Testament, each for $14.99 for the weekend.

HT: Craig Dunning, BibleX, Jack Sasson

City of David aerial from the east

Tagged Greece, Jerusalem, Museums, Pseudo-Archaeology, Resources

Haaretz: Golan and Reich on the Forgery Case

The Haaretz Weekend Magazine has two interesting articles related to the forgery trial of Oded Golan. I think they express well some of the arguments of the defense. I agree with Golan (and archaeologists who are not usually mentioned in the news) that the Jehoash Inscription is too sophisticated to be a forgery. The photograph from the 1970s showing the James Ossuary with the full inscription is significant testimony that the prosecution could not counter.

I don’t think there’s any question that the motivation of many of those claiming forgery here is a desire to eliminate the antiquities trade. As noble as that may be, it does not overturn the weight of the evidence that the primary artifacts in question (including also the ivory pomegranate) are authentic.

According to Golan, contrary to the argument of the IAA, the world of antiquities forgeries in Israel is very small and makes no economic sense: “In order to make the Jehoash tablet, you would have to work on it for at least a year and keep a team of experts on writing and on biology and geochemistry and archaeology, among others, and in the end you wouldn’t be able to sell it. You have to do everything in secret and you’ll always get someone who will say it is a fake.
“If you can do all that,” he continues, “you might as well go and print yourself dollars.”
According to Golan, the community of antiquities collectors constitutes a very limited group of knowledgeable individuals, all of whom are experts, to whom it is not easy to sell fakes. He also mentions the absence of any logic in the forgery of which he was accused in the case of the Jehoash tablet.
“I said during the investigation that even if I had intended to make forgeries, I definitely wouldn’t have written 200 letters [of the alphabet], in which you can make mistakes in syntax and shape, and all this on stone that’s going to break,” he asserts. “If I were to forge, I’d make do with writing: ‘The Temple, entrance here.’ And if I’ve already written ‘brother of Jesus,’ wouldn’t it have been logical to add ‘of Nazareth’? Without that, it all remains in the realm of fantasy.”

The prosecution claims that Golan is a “genius” who is able to convince scholars of all different fields that his creations are authentic. Golan doesn’t give himself so much credit.

The full article is worth reading, as is the sidebar about Ronny Reich who says, “It’s hard for me to believe that a forger ‏(or group of forgers‏) could be so knowledgeable in all aspects of the inscription − that is, the physical, paleographic, linguistic and biblical ones − that they could produce such an object.”

It would be nice if the Jehoash Inscription went on public display in a museum. For previous posts about the Jehoash Inscription, see the following:

Jehoash Inscription: Five Scholars Claim Authentic

Jehoash Inscription: Geologists Think Authentic

Forgery Conference Report

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Forgery

New Book: The Horsemen of Israel

If you don’t end up making it to the end of the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, you’ll miss a great review of what appears to be a terrific book. Ziony Zevit raves about The Horsemen of Israel: Horses and Chariots in Monarchic Israel (Ninth-Eighth Centuries B.C.E.), calling this doctoral dissertation by a horse lover a “page-turner” that may have a significant impact on our understanding of the subject. From the review:

Although recent scholarship tends to assume that there were few horses in ancient Israel and that chariotry was relatively insignificant, Cantrell concludes otherwise based on sophisticated inferences from Biblical as well as ancient Near Eastern texts and from an abundance of archaeological evidence. In Iron Age Israel, she argues, there were large numbers of horses.

Concerning those “storehouses” at Megiddo:

Cantrell convincingly argues that archaeological excavations at Megiddo uncovered a major equine complex with stables, an exercise area, watering troughs, hitching stalls, and an adjacent granary for feed.

The author’s background is relevant:

Cantrell has been a rider, trainer, breeder and importer of horses and has engaged in competitive barrel racing, jumping and dressage. Consequently, she approached her research with understanding and a large body of practical knowledge.

The entire review is online. Zevit has convinced me that this is a work I will enjoy reading. The book is published by Eisenbrauns and also available from Amazon.

Eisenbrauns also has recently published a work on Donkeys in the Biblical World. I’m looking forward to a book on those non-kosher mules that keep showing up with a king’s saddle.

Reconstructed stable at Megiddo

Tagged Resources

Wednesday Roundup

Shmuel Browns shares some photos from his recent hike of Nahal Darga, which he calls “Israel’s most extreme and challenging” hike.

BAS: “Named by The Sunday Times as one of the world’s top ten walks, the Lycian Way hiking trail weaves along 300 miles of Turkey’s southern coastline through hundreds of archaeological sites.”

Leen Ritmeyer has word of an expansion to the Davidson Center in the excavations south of the Temple Mount.

The audio files are now online for Bryant Wood’s recent lecture series on “Archaeology and the Conquest: New Evidence on an Old Problem.”

Wayne Stiles: “Passover and Easter bring to mind pictures of the Messiah—both for Jews and for Christians. The Mount of Olives echoes these hopes from its slopes.”

The Washington Post reports on a battle in Israel to save the ancient Canaan dog.

Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a left-wing petition against the City of David Archaeological Park.

The article notes that “the City of David site receives around 450,000 visitors a year, up from 2,000 in 2001.”

Craig Evans writes about the Archaeological Evidence for Jesus. The accompanying photos are disappointing.

The Elvis Presley® Holy Land Tour is now taking sign-ups. In addition to stops at the Sea of Galilee and Western Wall, the tour will stop at the “infamous Elvis Inn Restaurant in Abu Ghosh – an Elvis-
themed diner and souvenir shop popular with tourists from around the world.”

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Tourism, Turkey