BiblePlaces Blog - Page 532 of 547

More Talk on the Dead Sea Canal

You could be forgiven for thinking that a new problem has been discovered and a rapid response is underway from the Sunday Times article, “Race is on to save the Dead Sea.” In fact, a Red Sea-Dead Sea aqueduct has been considered by Israel and Jordan for at least a decade. Whether or not the current discussions are more serious is difficult to know. The article notes that the flow of the Jordan River into the Dead Sea is 7% of what it was before the countries began diverting its flow. The declining level (cited at 1 meter/3 feet per year) is certainly causing problems with sinkholes and unstable terrain.

The article suggests that Jordan is most interested in the project because the bulk of it would be done on their side, with outside financing. Despite the hopes that a joint Arab-Israeli project would increase peace prospects, the way that this project stands the best chance of succeeding is if it is largely constructed by one country or the other.

Dead Sea: the shoreline just keeps getting farther and farther away.

Tagged Dead Sea

Tiberias Theater to Be Excavated

The Israeli government is planning on investing $5 million in the development of an archaeological park in Tiberias. Excavations have been ongoing in the city under the direction of Yizhar Hirschfeld, and the new funding will go towards the excavation of the Roman theater, according to a note in Haaretz.

The theater was discovered in 1990 and was a surprise to archaeologists because no ancient sources mention the building. Tiberias was founded by Herod Antipas in 19 A.D., and scholars believe the theater was built in the 2nd or 3rd centuries and remained in use through the Byzantine period. The theater is located at the foot of Mount Berenice and has an estimated seating capacity of 5,000.

Last year Hirschfeld published a handbook about Tiberias, which pulls all of the sources about the city together into a single, easy-to-read work: Roman, Byzantine, and Early Muslim Tiberias: A Handbook of Primary Sources. The book is available for $20 from the excavator or from Amazon for double the cost. Proceeds from sales go to the archaeological excavation.

Visible remains of Tiberias theater

Katyusha Tours

Israelis are now signing up for the latest in domestic travel: tours of the battle spots of the recent war with Lebanon. From the Jerusalem Post:

Beginning at Moshav Avivim, the scene of bloody fights between IDF special forces and crack Hizbullah squads, the tour winds through the hills of the Upper Galilee, stopping to view UNIFIL posts, overlook key Lebanese villages such as Maoun a-Ras, and view the damage caused by Katyusha rockets to both forests and houses. At Kibbutz Kfar Giladi, tours visit the improvised memorial at the place where 15 reservists were killed when a rocket hit the parking lot in which they were standing….Since the end of the war, tourists have paid NIS 100 per vehicle to participate in the tours, and while Alon is certain that the excitement will drop off, more tourists keep coming. Alon said the desire to see the sites connected with the war is natural. “It is one thing to see things on television, or on radio, and another thing to see it,” he said.

View into Lebanon from Israel’s border, before the 2006 war

Tagged Travels

Next Time in Israel, Skip the Bus and Take a Bike

Some good news for the hundreds of thousands of cyclists in Israel:

A new bike trail will allow bicyclists to ride across the Jewish State. The first 30 km (18 miles) will be opened during the holiday of Sukkot, six weeks from now….

The preliminary trail will be a circular route from the Ben Shemen Forest, near Modiin, to Nachal Sorek – the area where the villainess Delila, of the Book of Judges, lived.

The second stage of construction will create a circular route between the Elyakim interchange, near Haifa, and the Beit Kama Junction, near Sderot and former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s HaShikmim Ranch.

Source: Arutz-7

Ramat Rahel excavations

Discoveries from the current season of excavations at Ramat Rahel are featured in this Jerusalem Post article. The most interesting paragraphs are these:

A highly sophisticated ancient water system dating back to the end of the Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE….

The water system, cut deep into the rock foundation, includes large underground water reservoirs, five open pools, small canals that transported water between the pools and three underground canals. The system continued to be functional, although with some alterations, during the Persian Era, the return to Zion after the destruction of the First Temple, the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE and through the Hellenistic Era in the Third Century BCE.

Along with 18 Jewish ritual baths from the Hellenistic Period, the archeologists uncovered a bathhouse and villa, and a large Byzantine village with a church, monastery, rooms and halls.

I suspect that the journalist got the date of the ritual baths mixed up; they are almost always from the late Hasmonean or Herodian period. About a dozen were known at the site before the present excavations, dated to the Herodian period. For more about previous excavations at the site, see the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review for an article by Gabriel Barkay.

Tagged Jerusalem

The Exodus “Decoded”

Yesterday the History Channel showed “The Exodus Decoded,” written by Simcha Jacobovici and directed by James Cameron. Given its high budget (for a documentary) of $3 million, there’s a good chance you’ll have the opportunity to see this either as a re-run or possibly at your church’s evening service. I have not seen it, but have a few comments based on the press coverage.

First, you can read about it in the New York Times (poor), or the Associated Press (a bit better), or the Miami Herald (best). Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, has posted a lengthy correspondence between him and Jacobovici. Wikipedia covers the main aspects of the theory. And there’s always the official website with a 5-minute trailer.

From the trailer and reviews it is apparent that this is one slick production. That immediately suggests to me their facts aren’t good and they’re trying to hide it with fancy graphics. That of course doesn’t necessarily follow, but it has been true often enough that I’m wary.

The essence of the theory is that the Israelites are the Hyksos and the exodus occurred during the time of the eruption of Thera (Santorini) about 1500 B.C. Is this possible? Well, I have never read one scholar who believes either of those suggestions. Some believe that the Hyksos may have been in power when the Israelites began their sojourn (assuming 430 years in Exodus 12:40 refers to time in Egypt and Canaan, a less preferred textual variant). But no one believes that the Hyksos were the Israelites and that the Hyksos expulsion is the same thing as the Israelite exodus.

There’s also a problem with the dating. The Biblical dates, if taken literally, add up to an exodus around 1450 B.C. (cf. 1 Kings 6:1). There’s no way to push that number back (to 1500 or earlier) without suggesting the biblical numbers are not literal. Now many scholars do reject the biblical numbers, but they always push the date of the exodus down (to about 1250 B.C.) The rest of the scholars believe that there was no large exodus of Israelites from Egypt. But no one dates the exodus to 1500 because there is no biblical or non-biblical evidence for it. (Those who favor the biblical evidence typically prefer an exodus date of 1450; those who favor the non-biblical evidence date it to 1250).

The movie locates Mt. Sinai at a site that has no major proponents, if any. That doesn’t make it wrong, but before you buy it, you might ask yourself how a moviemaker found it when no one else could. I think the miracle explanations are bound to fall apart as well.

There are a number of other pieces to the “Code,” but they hang on the above. Having skimmed the Shanks-Jacobovici correspondence, I would commend Jacobovici’s motivation but not his data.

Tagged Analysis