Jerusalem Archives - Page 141 of 195

Weekend Roundup

If you would like to try your hand at identifying objects found in an archaeological excavation, the team at the Temple Mount Sifting Project is now soliciting input from those who may have information related to their finds. You can head over to the photo gallery to begin.

Zahi Hawass is back as Egyptian Minister of Antiquities because he learned that “antiquities cannot live away from me.” The nation’s trials have not ended and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is again closed.

The spring season at Tel Burna has wrapped up, and the website now has links to photos and an easier way to donate.

Ferrell Jenkins recently explained the connections of Libya to the New Testament.

G. M. Grena debunks the claims that the earliest depiction of Jesus was found in the lead codices from Jordan.

Gerald Mattingly lectured yesterday afternoon at Lee University on the topic: “Is Anybody Finding
Anything Important Over in Jordan: The Top 10 Discoveries from Transjordan that Relate to the Bible.” Perhaps he will turn the presentation into an article one day.

Iran has cut ties with the Louvre. It’s too bad it’s not the other way around.

Glo users now can access the program on all of their PCs, Macs, iPads and soon iPhones.

Logos has released an updated version of Shibboleth and Mark Hoffman explains why it’s good and when an alternative may be better for you.

Only rarely does one see an original copy of the Survey of Western Palestine maps (26 sheets) for sale. A bookseller in the UK has one listed now, if you act quickly and are ready to part with $3,826 plus shipping. Alternately, you can get an electronic copy for $35 (including shipping) from us. In either case, you’ll benefit from the 160-page index (which we have painstakingly digitized).

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt, Jerusalem, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup

The Myth of the Burning Garbage Dump of Gehenna

I have long wanted to do a little work to debunk the endlessly repeated myth that the Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) was a perpetually burning trash dump. There simply is no evidence to support the idea, but because it seems a reasonable explanation for the origin of the Hinnom Valley as “hell,” writers and preachers accept and propagate the story.

Yesterday Louis McBride raised the issue (HT: BibleX). He writes:

I consulted over a dozen study Bibles on Matthew 5:22 and no less than eight of them made a reference to the rubbish heap. Almost every major commentary on Matthew that mentions Gehenna also spoke of the garbage dump. I’ve always thought that this was an established fact.

Then he quotes Peter Head, G. R. Beasley-Murray, and Lloyd Bailey in tracing the origin of this notion to Rabbi David Kimchi in AD 1200. Specifically, Bailey states:

[Kimchi] maintained that in this loathsome valley fires were kept burning perpetually to consume the filth and cadavers thrown into it. However, Strack and Billerbeck state that there is neither archeological nor literary evidence in support of this claim, in either the earlier intertestamental or the later rabbinic sources.

As with the legend about the rope around the high priest’s ankle, this popular myth seems to have originated in Jewish circles in the Middle Ages. McBride has more details and the sources in his post.

The explanation for the “fire of Gehenna” lies not in a burning trash dump, but in the burning of sacrificed children. Jeremiah is explicit that such occurred here:

Jeremiah 7:31–32 (ESV) — And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter; for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere.

Isaiah had already envisioned Topheth as the fiery destiny of an enemy of God.

Isaiah 30:33 (HCSB) — Indeed! Topheth has been ready for the king for a long time now. His funeral pyre is deep and wide, with plenty of fire and wood. The breath of the Lord, like a torrent of brimstone, kindles it.

Thus already in Old Testament times, the Valley of Hinnom was associated with the destiny of the wicked. That the valley was just outside the city of Jerusalem made it an appropriate symbol for those excluded from divine blessing. Isaiah closes his book with these words:

Isaiah 66:24 (ESV) — “And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

It is not difficult to see, from these and other texts (e.g., 2 Kgs 23:10; 2 Chr 28:3, 33:6; Jer 32:35), why Jesus and his contemporaries used the word Gehenna (“valley of Hinnom”) as synonymous with the place of everlasting fiery torment. Indeed, there is no reason to search further for ancient burning piles of discarded newspapers, product packaging, and junk mail.

UPDATE (4/29): The views of various scholars on the matter is presented in a new post.

Hinnom Valley from south, 1966. Photo by David Bivin.

Tagged Analysis, Jerusalem

Western Wall Clean-Up

If you don’t check your mail for a while, at some point the mailbox will begin to overflow. The problem is increasing at the Western Wall with more and more visitors placing notes in the cracks between the stones. Authorities are now considering adding a third annual clean-up. From the Jerusalem Post:

Armed with wooden poles, Western Wall employees on Wednesday removed millions of handwritten notes, faxes and email printouts from between the ancient stones. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which gives the Kotel such a face-lift twice a year – before the upcoming Passover and ahead of the Jewish New Year – are considering a third annual clean-up, due to the growing influx of requests and notes.
The notes will be placed in a repository in accordance with Jewish law, with the laborers – working under the supervision of Western Wall and Holy Sites Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz – taking care to not read their content.

The full story is here.

Removing prayer notes from the Western Wall

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount, Tourism

Recent Articles at Bible and Interpretation

Various articles posted at the Bible and Interpretation in the last month have drawn my eye. Some I hoped to interact with here, but as time passes, I realize it may just be best to point you directly to them.

Why the fishing town Bethsaida is not found along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Fred Strickert explains that the reason why et-Tell (aka “Bethsaida”) is today distant from the Sea of Galilee is silting by the Jordan River. He also wonders if the site may have been elevated by seismic activity since biblical times. El-Araj is not a viable candidate for Bethsaida, he says, because the site was not settled in the first century.

From the Seal of a Seer to an Inscribed Game Board: A Catalog of Eleven Early Alphabetic Inscriptions Recently Discovered in Egypt and Palestine. This article by Gordon J. Hamilton considers three new inscriptions from the Middle Bronze, one from the Late Bronze, and seven from the Early Iron Age (including inscriptions from Gath, Tel Zayit, Tel Rehov, Beth Shemesh, and Kh. Qeiyafa). The bibliographic data alone is very useful. With regard to the Gath ostracon, note Maeir’s response.

On Archaeology, Forgeries and Public Awareness: The “James Brother of Jesus” Ossuary in Retrospect. Gideon Avni believes that the obviously forged inscriptions of the James Ossuary and Jehoash Tablet will be regarded as little more than a footnote in history books. Since a number of scholars consider the case to still be open, this article unfairly denigrates other conclusions by acting as if they don’t exist.

Zedekiah Cave or the Quarries of King Solomon in Jerusalem: A Subsurface Stone Quarry for Building the Second Temple by King Herod. Zeev Lewy of the Geological Survey of Israel has written a fascinating report suggesting reasons why Herod’s engineers selected a certain type of stone for use in the Temple Mount. This also explains why the massive quarry was accessed through a single small entrance.

The Bible and Interpretation has many other recent articles, and they now also have a mechanism for supporting their work.

Tagged Forgery, Galilee, Jerusalem, Weekend Roundup

Archaeological Remains from the Temple Mount

The April issue of the Smithsonian magazine features a well-researched article by Joshua Hammer on the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The article weaves the history of the Temple Mount with an account of the archaeological project headed by Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig. The report has much of interest, and I recommend reading the whole. Even those very familiar with the issues will likely learn something new. A few brief quotes may stir your interest:

“That earth was saturated with the history of Jerusalem,” says Eyal Meiron, a historian at the Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Eretz Israel. “A toothbrush would be too large for brushing that soil, and they did it with bulldozers.” Yusuf Natsheh, the Waqf’s chief archaeologist, was not present during the operation. But he told the Jerusalem Post that archaeological colleagues had examined the excavated material and had found nothing of significance. The Israelis, he told me, were “exaggerating” the value of the found artifacts. And he bristled at the suggestion the Waqf sought to destroy Jewish history. “Every stone is a Muslim development,” he says. “If anything was destroyed, it was Muslim heritage.” […] Barkay says some discoveries provide tangible evidence of biblical accounts. Fragments of terra-cotta figurines, from between the eighth and sixth centuries B.C., may support the passage in which King Josiah, who ruled during the seventh century, initiated reforms that included a campaign against idolatry. Other finds challenge long-held beliefs. For example, it is widely accepted that early Christians used the Mount as a garbage dump on the ruins of the Jewish temples. But the abundance of coins, ornamental crucifixes and fragments of columns found from Jerusalem’s Byzantine era (A.D. 380–638) suggest that some public buildings were constructed there. Barkay and his colleagues have published their main findings in two academic journals in Hebrew, and they plan to eventually publish a book-length account in English. But Natsheh, the Waqf’s chief archaeologist, dismisses Barkay’s finds because they were not found in situ in their original archaeological layers in the ground. “It is worth nothing,” he says of the sifting project, adding that Barkay has leapt to unwarranted conclusions in order to strengthen the Israeli argument that Jewish ties to the Temple Mount are older and stronger than those of the Palestinians. “This is all to serve his politics and his agenda,” Natsheh says. […] Barkay and I get into my car and drive toward Mount Scopus. I ask him about Natsheh’s charge that the sifting project is infused with a political agenda. He shrugs. “Sneezing in Jerusalem is an intensely political activity. You can do it to the right, to the left, on the face of an Arab or a Jew. Whatever you do, or don’t do, is political.”

You have to love Natsheh’s logic. He allowed the removal of the evidence and now claims that Barkay’s work is worthless because the material wasn’t found in situ! The full article begins here.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Temple Mount

The First Jerusalem Marathon

If you’ve ever been lost in the streets of Jerusalem, you may not be surprised to learn that the race leaders of the first Jerusalem marathon took a wrong turn and finished the race at the “wrong finish line.” From the Jerusalem Post:

The first runner to arrive at the actual finish line was Kenyan Robert Cheruiyot with a time of 2:27:48, but later on Raymond Kipkoechh, 34, of Kenya was announced as the official winner with a time of 2:26:44 after apparently going off the course and arriving at the finish line of the half-marathon in a different location. […] 1,500 people began the 26.2 mile (42 kilometer) race at 7am, followed by over 8,000 half-marathoners and 10k-competitors an hour later. Two jazz bands played while runners were completing their final preparations at the start.

Maps of the courses are available online (full marathon, half marathon, and 10k). The official website gives more details and starts the countdown to next year’s marathon on March 16.

Tagged Jerusalem, Tourism