Weekend Roundup

National Geographic has a beautiful seven-shot photo gallery of King Herod’s tomb, including good information about the recent discoveries.  The Book and the Spade discusses the tomb in its current radio broadcast (direct link from this page).

Leon Mauldin has posted a beautiful aerial photograph of Aphek/Antipatris. 

No, I didn’t watch the 60 Minutes piece on the excavations in the City of David.  After a while, dishonest reporting is no longer even entertaining.

The Jerusalem Post has a short article on the stones of Jerusalem, including mention of the British
Mandate law requiring that buildings in the city be faced with it.

Logos 4 was released a year ago, but I waited until recently before installing it on my computer.  I’ll add my voice to the chorus praising the program.  If you didn’t already know, each of the base packages includes a module entitled “BiblePlaces.com Image Library,” which features 350 selected photographs from our collection.

The new Holman Christian Standard Bible Study Bible arrived in the mail Saturday.  I am impressed by the attractiveness of the pages (full color) and the selection of writers for the notes.  I like the appropriately chosen photos of biblical sites and artifacts, and I was usually pleased with what was written about the controversial issues I checked.  Apparently the whole Bible is online at mystudybible.com, but it was a bit slow when I tried.

Last week my family welcomed another son into our home.  He missed the 10-10-10 date by one day, but otherwise he is perfect.

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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.

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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.

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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 imagepublished 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.

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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:

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.

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About the BiblePlaces Blog

The BiblePlaces Blog provides updates and analysis of the latest in biblical archaeology, history, and geography. Unless otherwise noted, the posts are written by Todd Bolen, PhD, Professor of Biblical Studies at The Master’s University.

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