BiblePlaces Blog

First Annual Bird-Watching Festival in Galilee

Starting December 16 the Galilee will be hosting its first annual international ornithological festival.
The result of a joint effort and a million-shekel investment by all of Israel’s nature protection organizations and Galilee promoting bodies, the new festival seeks to attract bird and nature lovers from across the country and the world in an aim to maintain the birds’ natural habitats.
“Israel in general is a great place for bird watchers and ornithologists, but the Galilee and the Galilee in the winter in particular, is a jackpot for bird enthusiasts,” said Dan Alon, director of the Israel Ornithological Center and the festival’s organizer. “Israel is located at geographical bridge between three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa, which makes it a ‘bottleneck’ into which hundreds of migrant species converge. Luckily for us, many of the varieties of birds choose to stay in the Galilee in the winter, the environmental conditions turning it into a perfect hotel for birds.
“As director of the Israel Ornithological Center, my main job is protecting the natural habitats of birds and ensuring that they return to Israel year after year. In order to do that we have to make sure that protecting the birds’ habitat remains economical for landowners in the Galilee. One way of doing that is using the bird’s presence to draw in tourists,” said Alon. “The festival, which will run until January 8, is aimed at the general public, not just professional or die-hard ornithologists. By offering a wide range of activities and tours, all focused on bird watching, we hope to attract a large number of people so that the landowners and decision makers in the Galilee realize that keeping the habitats available to birds pays dividends.”

The full story is here.

UPDATE: Arutz-7 has posted the winners from the SPNI Birdwatching Center’s photography
contest.

Bird near shore of Sea of Galilee

Tagged Tourism

Palestinian Tourism at Record High

Tourism to Palestinian sites is increasing, according to this article in eTurboNews (HT: Bible and Interpretation):

For the past three years, Dr. Deibes served as the Minister of Tourism and Antiquities. Coming from the background of being the head of a cultural heritage center in Bethlehem, her positioning in this filed has chosen to be the right choice. The proof is not her personality or her speeches but rather what the industry has accomplished during her era – a golden one under well-known circumstances. Even before, her traces are well found in the old city streets of Bethlehem and in many other corners. In the educational field, she introduced many opportunities and initiatives such as the EU Tempus Masters program with Bethlehem University, along with many others.
Today, to crown her term in 2010, the tourism contribution within the Palestinian GDP is the highest since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Its share is almost 15%, up from less than 10% last year. It is estimated at US$885 million. Once again, the hotels of Palestine reached their record number at 90 hotels, in addition to more than 40 guest houses and other hostels. Another Palestinian record this year is the giant number in local tourists – 2.7 million, which is almost double from last year. Together with incoming tourists, they are very close to the 5 million mark. With this number, the Palestinian tourism industry has passed a benchmark that has never been reached in the past, and the country is still under occupation.

The story continues here.

The last statement quoted above raises a question. When were Palestinians most recently not under occupation? You can cast your vote below. (Email readers may need to click through to vote.)

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UPDATE (12/8): As most participants in this poll know, the Palestinians of the West Bank have been under occupation since 1967 by Israel, under occupation 1948-67 by Jordan, 1917-1948 by the British, and 1517-1917 by the Turks.

Tagged Tourism

Images of the Mount Carmel Fire

Powerful images of the tragic fire on Mount Carmel have been collected at The Big Picture. A 14-year-old boy has apparently confessed to accidentally starting the fire.

Oil Exploration in the Valley of Elah

Matthew Kalman at AOLNews writes:

A baron from the prominent Rothschild family is teaming up with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in an attempt to break Israel’s foreign oil dependency by mining vast amounts of oil shale in the unspoiled Elah Valley, where the Bible says David fought Goliath.
But their business plan has morphed into a family battle all its own because of some unexpected opposition from Lord Jacob Rothschild’s second cousin, a celebrated eco-campaigner.
[…]
Oil shale mining involves heating the ground to transform buried, tar-like organic compounds into oil, and then extracting it. But the process is criticized for being an inefficient way of getting energy, because it takes so much energy to heat up the ground and create the oil, and then drill for it. Al Gore has described the practice as “utter insanity.”
Such technology is economical only when the price of oil is very high, as is the case right now. And Lord Rothschild has said he believes oil shale mining “could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”

The article continues here.

You can see photos and read more about the biblical significance of the Elah Valley here. Or you can enjoy a virtual flyover of the valley at LandoftheBible.com.

HT: Jay Baggett

Tagged Shephelah, Technology

Weekend Roundup

Tragic news comes out of Israel this week as a massive forest fire has killed more than 40 people and destroyed more than 10,000 acres on Mount Carmel. If you’ve traveled with me in the last 7-8 years, you probably spent a night at Kibbutz Beit Oren, which suffered great damage. For several photos of the mountain (in better days) and a map, see Ferrell Jenkins’ post. The fire may not be put out for another week.

Archaeologists are now studying ancient sites without ever visiting them, thanks to a NASA satellite.

Arizona State University archaeologist Stephen H. Savage has been studying Khirbet en-Nahas and with NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite been able to determine where “the ore is coming from; which parts of the site were used for smelting and which were not; and that different parts of the site were drawing ore from different regions.

Jennie R. Ebeling has an interesting and well-illustrated summary of discoveries made at Hazor in recent years.

Jweekly.com has a brief article summarizing the discoveries at Magdala.

Reading Acts has a brief summary of James Charlesworth’s presentation at NEAS in which he discussed whether the pool of Bethesda and the pool of Siloam were ritual baths (miqva’ot).

Shimon Gibson has the opportunity to publish important archaeological finds from excavations on Mount Zion in the 1970s and he is now raising funds. Making a donation is particularly quick if you have an Amazon account. Even a small contribution will help!

The winners have been selected for this week’s give-away of the Holy Land Revealed DVD set. It is perhaps notable that both winners live outside of the United States.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Weekend Roundup

My Favorite (Old) Travel Resources

Last month I pointed readers to a potentially great deal on a Logos Bible Software collection of works of early explorers. That offer is still available and accepting bids, but I commented at the time that an even better collection could be created. What are the best resources by 19th-century explorers of Palestine? Below is what I suggest would be a dream collection.

Burckhardt, John Lewis. 1822 Travels in Syria and the Holy Land. London: John Murray.

Clermont-Ganneau, Charles. 1896 Archaeological Researches in Palestine During the Years 1873-1874. 2 vols. London: Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Conder, Claude R. 1878 Tent Work in Palestine. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley & Son.

Conder, Claude R. 1889 Palestine. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company.

Dalman, Gustaf. 1935 Sacred Sites and Ways: Studies in the Topography of the Gospels, trans. Paul

P. Levertoff. New York: Macmillan. [This work is more recent than the others but uniquely valuable and out of copyright, I believe.]

Lynch, W. F. 1849 Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard.

MacGregor, John. 1870 The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea, & Gennesareth, Etc.: A Canoe Cruise in Palestine and Egypt, and the Waters of Damascus, 2nd ed. London: John Murray.

Porter, J. L. 1882 The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria’s Holy Places. London: T. Nelson and Sons.

Robinson, Edward and Eli Smith. 1841 Biblical Researches in Palestine, Mount Sinai and Arabia Petrea: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1838. 3 vols. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. [This is probably the most important work in this list.]

Robinson, Edward and Eli Smith. 1871 Later Biblical Researches in Palestine, and in the Adjacent Regions: A Journal of Travels in the Year 1852, 2nd ed. Boston: Crocker & Brewster.

Rogers, Mary Eliza. 1867 Domestic Life in Palestine. Cincinnati: Poe & Hitchcock. [Not as well known, but a fascinating read! It has recently been reprinted.]

Smith, George Adam. 1909 The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 26th ed. New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son. [This is a classic.]

Thomson, William M. 1880 The Land and the Book. Vol. 1: Southern Palestine and Jerusalem. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Thomson, William M. 1882 The Land and the Book. Vol. 2: Central Palestine and Phoenicia. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Thomson, William M. 1885 The Land and the Book. Vol. 3: Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond Jordan. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Tristram, Henry Baker. 1868 The Natural History of the Bible: Being a Review of the Physical Geography, Geology, and Meteorology of the Holy Land, with a Description of Every Animal and
Plant Mentioned in Holy Scripture, 2nd ed. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

1874 The Land of Moab. London: John Murray. [This is in the current Logos offering.]
Twain, Mark. 1869 The Innocents Abroad. Hartford: American Publishing.

Wilson, Charles, ed. 1881 Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt. 4 vols. London: J. S. Virtue & Co.

[This has been published in non-Logos format at LifeintheHolyLand.com.]

I have excluded works specifically on Jerusalem from this list, as those would make up their own collection. Also the size and challenge of digitizing another would surely necessitate a separate collection:

Conder, Claude R. and H. H. Kitchener. 1882 The Survey of Western Palestine, 11 volumes. London:

The Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. [For a list of volumes, see here. A reprint edition now sells for about $4,000. We have produced electronic editions of the maps and index.]

Two final comments: (1) All of the resources listed above were used extensively in the creation of the annotations in the American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. (2) A Logos representative read my previous post and contacted me for this list. I am hopeful that they will catch the vision and bring back these rare and valuable works for our and future generations.

Tagged Resources