Resources Archives - Page 127 of 151

Weekend Roundup

Construction of a new parking lot underneath the Jewish Quarter was reported to require the first breach of the Old City walls of Jerusalem in more than a hundred years. Well, not quite. First, the architect clarified that he was only going under the walls and not through them. Then Leen Ritmeyer explained that the walls were not breached a hundred years ago for Kaiser Wilhelm II’s visit. The walls are safe, for now.

A program on the “New Finds in Jaffa Gate” will be held on Oct 12, 2010, 6-8 pm at Jerusalem’s Yad Ben Zvi Institute. Ofer Sion and Shahar Poni will lecture on the discoveries, including the channel leading to Hezekiah’s Pool. The lecture notice (in Hebrew) can be found here and here (pdf).

HT: Joe Lauer

A statue of Hathor disappeared from a temple at Serabit el-Khadim and was discovered in the Sinai desert five days later. Authorities are questioning the site’s security guards.

Following Friday’s report that the Syrian army has a Scud missile base near Damascus, Jay Baggett (Land of the Bible) created a flyover tour to the “hidden” base where the missiles can be easily seen on Google Earth.

Steven Lancaster and James Monson have completed the Geobasics Study Guide, an outstanding and unique work that deserves a post of its own. In the meantime, you can get a copy for yourself. The guide is in pdf format and is free. The accompanying map book is (only) $15.

Tagged Jerusalem, Lectures, Resources, Syria, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

To everyone who has written me asking how to visit the new excavations at Magdala, Tom Powers answers your question. He also provides a map showing the excavation and construction areas.
For the first time in 2,000 years, Babylonian texts have been read aloud. The readings by Cambridge University scholars are available online.

The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library for Logos Bible Software will no longer be on pre-publication discount after this week. Readers here may be particularly interested in the standard archaeological reference works by Mazar and Stern, but there are many valuable resources in this collection.

Raphael Golb was convicted of 30 counts of identity theft, forgery, and harassment.

Perhaps the weekend is a good opportunity for you to read my article on the location of David’s palace, if you haven’t already.

Tagged Dead Sea, Galilee, Resources

Picturesque Palestine: Some Answers

Some have had questions or difficulties in taking advantage of the special offer for Picturesque Palestine. To that end, we have just posted some answers.

Tagged Resources

Picturesque Palestine Special Offer

Yesterday I sent out the latest edition of the BiblePlaces Newsletter, complete with a “scoop” on how to get the digital maps from the New Moody Atlas of the Bible as well as a set of photos of the Israelite capital of Samaria. You can read the newsletter here and you can subscribe here.

In the newsletter I also noted that in conjunction with a complete overhaul of the BiblePlaces webstore, we were offering a big discount for a brief time. Today and tomorrow only you can purchase the complete four-volume electronic edition of Picturesque Palestine for $20, including free shipping in the US.

Picturesque Palestine was published in four large volumes in 1881 and it was an immediate success.

But there were many travel type books published in the 19th century that are no longer of much interest. What makes Picturesque Palestine still valuable is that it was written by the best scholars of the day. If you’ve done much research about the Holy Land, you’ll be familiar with names like Charles Wilson, Henry B. Tristram, Claude Conder, Mary Eliza Rogers, Charles Warren, Edward Palmer, and others.

The work is also outstanding because of the hundreds of beautiful illustrations. Color photographs have their value, but I love to study old engravings like this one. Altogether the collection has 600 engravings, all identified in the filename. When this set was published about five years ago, we didn’t have programs like Picasa that allowed quick and easy access to photos by searching. Today you can copy all of these images to your computer and find what you are looking for instantaneously.

I love this collection. I love to read the stories and to enjoy the illustrations. It took a lot of work to digitize the whole, but my hope is that it not only made the work available to a much wider audience (than the limited print editions that cost around $500), but also that it is much more useful than the originals are.

To get the discounted price, use this link. The collection will be in your cart with the discount applied when you are ready to checkout. The offer ends on Thursday, 9/16 at 11:59 pm.

Tagged Resources

New Store for Bible Geography Publications

One of my favorite book catalogues to browse is that published each year by Carta. As the premiere publishing company devoted to the historical study of the land of Israel, Carta can quickly fill up my wishlist. Among Carta’s best known publications is The Sacred Bridge, by Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley.

If you live in the States (or anywhere outside of Israel), accessing Carta’s products is not easy. They have apparently chosen not to work through the regular publishing channels in the US, thus making it difficult to order their works through bookstores or Amazon. Eisenbrauns has served as their exclusive US outlet for some years, carrying a certain portion of Carta’s publications.

Carta is now going directly to the public through the creation of their own website and webstore.

Now all of their materials are available for easy purchase, though since the company is based in Jerusalem, shipping costs and time reflect international travel. Yet if you plan ahead, order several items at once, and don’t need to return anything, you can now purchase what before required a trip to the bookstores of Israel.

Here are some books and other publications that I would recommend from various categories:

Bible Atlases: The Sacred Bridge or its cheaper abridged version, Carta’s New Century Handbook and Atlas of the Bible. Not recommended: Carta’s Comprehensive Bible Atlas on CD-ROM.
Jerusalem: The Quest and Jerusalem Street Atlas. Not recommended: The Illustrated Atlas of Jerusalem.
Biblical Wall Maps: Carta’s Map of Israel
Israel Road Maps and Travel Guides: Israel Road Atlas, Israel National Parks and Nature Reserves, Ein Gedi, Qumran, and Masada.
Biblical Archaeology: The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Jerusalem in the Year 30 A.D.

Some of these may be available through Amazon-type stores, and even more may be purchased from Eisenbrauns. For the full catalogue, the place to go is http://www.bible-books-maps.com/.

I haven’t even made it to what I expected to be the main point of this post, but given limitations of time (mine and yours), I’ll save that for another day.

Tagged Resources, Tourism

Weekend Roundup

Two articles that I contributed made it to the “Most Viewed” list over at The Bible and Interpretation. Both articles are brief and challenge current thinking:

Probably the most important work of historical geography ever written is The Sacred Bridge, by Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley. At $100, you may need convincing that it’s worth the sacrifice. I look at it this way: take the number of years left in your life and divide $100 by that. It is worth a few bucks a year to have such an extensive reference tool at arm’s length. Leen Ritmeyer has posted a brief review of the book on his blog. If you don’t need the original languages, you can cut the price in half by purchasing Carta’s New Century Handbook and Atlas of the Bible.

If you’d like a free classic to offset the expensive purchase, you can download the entire work of George Adam Smith’s Historical Geography of the Holy Land (pdf). This is the 4th edition (of 26!), but as far as I know, the content is largely the same. I am not sure if residents outside the US have access.

Tagged Resources, Weekend Roundup