Resources Archives - Page 132 of 145

PBS Special: Jerusalem: Center of the World

The 2-hour movie narrates the history of the city. Beginning at 9pm Eastern/Pacific, the documentary is narrated by Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Susan Wunderink of Christianity Today reviews the film:

The film starts with Abraham leaving Ur at a time when Jerusalem was already settled by Canaanite tribes. The documentary embellishes biblical history, adding in traditions that say, for example, that Jerusalem is also where God created Adam. Suarez goes into the details of the destruction and rebuildings of the Jewish Temple. Jesus’ short life is given about 15 minutes of the two-hour run time. For viewers who know what happens up to 70 A.D.—and then nothing—it will fill in some big gaps. The second half of the film explains how the city came to look as it does today, if you can keep up. Toward the end, the pace picks up as Suarez lists how “the world’s most contested piece of real estate” changes hands among multiple Christian and Muslim rulers. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and others fought, came, and went, sometimes leaving Jerusalem little more than a tourist trap. Mark Twain found it an unappealing, sleepy place when he visited. The Romans, after nearly wiping out the Jewish population, expelled the rest; Saladin’s Muslims let them re-settle.

The full review is here. The producer’s website includes a trailer.

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources, Temple Mount

Biography of Kathleen Kenyon Reviewed

Kathleen Kenyon was recently the subject of a biography written by Miriam C. Davis. Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging up the Holy Land was reviewed in Haaretz by Magen Broshi, an archaeologist and the former curator of the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem. His review begins:

She never married, and her friends described her as a person whose world consisted of three loves: archaeology, dogs and gin. Kathleen Kenyon was also the head of a women’s college at Oxford. She bombarded the press with anti-Zionist and anti-Israel articles and letters − she thought that the Muslims had preferential rights to the Land of Israel because they had been living there for 1,400 years, whereas the Jews had ruled the land only during the First Temple period (about 400 years) and for another 100 years, during the Hasmonean dynasty. She was, however, one of the most important archaeolo gists ever to dig in the Land of Israel.
That is not a negligible achievement, because more archaeological work has been done in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, in other words in the State of Israel and the territories, than anywhere else in the world. There is no other country that has been so thoroughly researched, and the number of digs and surveys carried out here is incomparably greater than what has been done in far larger countries. Kenyon is not only one of the most important archaeologists to have worked here (and they number over 1,000), she is also the leading female archaeologist to have worked anywhere (along with the prehistorian Dorothy Garrod).

Broshi looks primarily at the three sites in the Holy Land that she excavated, Samaria, Jericho, and Jerusalem. Concerning the last:

The final site excavated by Kenyon was Jerusalem, and here she was not so lucky. In effect, the digs there, as they are described in the book, were post-climactic. Despite the huge investment – seven digging seasons between 1961 and 1967 – with up to six sites operating simultaneously, employing hundreds of workers, the results were small in number and also unimportant. One reason for this is that while Jordan was still in charge of the old city, Kenyon was not permitted to work in the areas where other archaeologists – like Benjamin Mazar, who excavated south and southeast of the Temple Mount, and Nahman Avigad, who worked in the Jewish Quarter – later discovered many important finds. (Kenyon’s work was restricted because the Waqf Muslim religious trust was opposed to excavations in the Jewish Quarter, since there were Palestinian refugees living there).
The second reason is related to the limitations of her modus operandi, the Wheeler-Kenyon method, which relied on examinations in a limited zone and refrained from exposing a horizontal area. Careful examinations in pits, as meticulous as they may be, are likely to lead to a result similar to that of the Indian fable about the three blind men who fell on an elephant but were unable to identify it correctly: The person who fell on the tail shouted “ropes,” the one who encountered the legs declared “planks,” and the third, who climbed on the tusks, yelled “swords.” Only a dig that exposes a horizontal area is likely to take in the whole “elephant.”

The review concludes:

The figure of Kenyon as portrayed in the book is a model of diligence and dedication. The book is based on thorough research, including written and oral testimony. It is well-written and the story is appealing. In my opinion it deserves high praise.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources

ESV Study Bible Online Access Free This Month

A month ago I mentioned the value of the maps and illustrations of the ESV Study Bible, including its online version. Now, through the month of March, the publisher has announced that access to the online version is free for all, with registration. See the previous post (and here) for more info about the variety of images available. Go here to register and get started.

Tagged Resources

The Legacy of William F. Albright

How quickly one’s legacy can be re-defined. In his day, William Foxwell Albright was regarded with the highest esteem by scholars in biblical and archaeological studies. In recent decades, his approach is usually dismissed with an disparaging, how-could-anybody-be-so-naive elevation of the nostrils.

The “Albright School” is equated with everything wrong in biblical archaeology. Even the term “biblical archaeology” is rejected. Albright certainly made significant mistakes, but I surmise that fifty years hence, the hindsight of time will prove less gracious to Albright’s critics than to the man himself.

It’s thus refreshing to read a recent appreciation of Albright’s work by Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, published at Bible and Interpretation. Freedman was a student of Albright, and he co-wrote a biography of his teacher in 1975. The current piece looks like it was prepared for publication, and its copyright attribution to the National Academy of Sciences suggests that it may have been written in connection with Levy’s induction into the academy last year.
I recommend reading the biography, but this article is a good, brief summary of his life and scholarly achievements. The article includes a chronology of his life and a selected bibliography. I note some interesting facts from the article to stimulate your interest:

Albright’s left hand was crippled in a childhood farm accident.
When he was ten years old, he received as a present the History of Babylonia and Assyria, by Professor R. W. Rogers.
Albright spent 18 hours a day for three days writing terrifying exams for the Thayer Fellowship on Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and German; Hebrew Bible Literature and Criticism; geography; archaeology; history; and epigraphy.
He mastered more than 26 ancient and modern languages.
He translated and published a text from the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls ten years before the Qumran scrolls were discovered.

Albright’s excavations at Tell Beit Mirsim, 1926
Source: Library of Congress, LC-matpc-05732
From a forthcoming collection from www.LifeintheHolyLand.com

Tagged Resources

Bethel Excavations, $2.50, and more

Eisenbrauns, a favorite among many academics working in biblical and Ancient Near Eastern studies, has recently begun a “deal of the day.” Typically the price reductions are outstanding (60-90% off!), and often the book is of interest. Today’s offer is The Excavations at Bethel (1934-1960), regularly $35 (or used, $21), today $2.50, which is 93% off. (Plus $5 shipping.)

For such a deal, there are a few hurdles to overcome. First, to learn about these daily offers, you should subscribe to the RSS feed. Unfortunately, the link never seems to work in my (Google) reader. But when you see a title of interest, you can go to the Eisenbrauns home page and navigate from there. Second, the description of the volume as related to the excavations of Beth-Zur should be ignored. Third, the author is not Julie Kelso, but William F. Albright and James L. Kelso. And fourth, there’s a real question that the excavations are even of Bethel! Other that that, as they say, everything’s perfect.

I am not trying to provoke an argument about the location of Bethel. I am not advocating for another location. I simply suggest that if you read this excavation report you will not find any compelling archaeological evidence that indicates that this site is biblical Bethel. And in fact, there are serious deficiencies with what was found. But I am not going to argue against this identification on the basis of the absence of evidence. I am willing, however, to point out that if this was one of the greatest cities of the northern kingdom and the home of one of the major shrines, one would expect to uncover much more than they did.

A related note. This is related both to the Bethel/Ai debate and to the incorrect first name of the author of the title. A few days ago I came across a reference in Richard Hess, Israelite Religions, to two entries in the New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. He cited the author of the Ai article as Joseph A. Callaway, but the author of the article of nearby Khirbet Raddana as James A. Callaway. Unfortunately, his citation follows the original; NEAEH “misspelled” Callaway’s first name. As far as I can tell, the new Volume 5 does not include an errata.

Speaking of typos, here’s an embarrassing one, on the packaging of the esteemed Anchor Bible Dictionary, no less! (For non-Hebrew readers, the text on the CD design has the first two words from Genesis, but the letters read from left to right.)

Quibbles aside, every book mentioned in this post is worth buying if these are subjects of interest to you.

Tagged Resources

1967 Archaeology Movie with Pritchard

In 1967 the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania filmed a 27-minute movie about archaeological work in Jordan and the West Bank. “The Book and the Spade” gives a general introduction to the value and discipline of archaeology, which includes footage of important biblical sites that are not usually on the itinerary of visitors today, including Hebron, Shechem, and Samaria.

The film naturally focuses more on the excavations sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania, Gibeon and Tell es-Saidiyeh. The latter site is the subject of the second half, and the one who is patient is rewarded with shots of the on-going excavations and an interview with the archaeologist James B. Pritchard. Pritchard is probably best known today for his three editions of Ancient Near Eastern Texts, but he made significant contributions in his excavations of Gibeon (1956-62) and Tell es-Saidiyeh (1964-67). The film also documents the construction of a mudbrick house. Though the movie was slow-moving by today’s standards, I enjoyed seeing many sites the way they were 40 years ago. You can see the contrast of the excavations in the film with a recent photo below.

Excavation area of Tell es-Saidiyeh, 2003

Other University of Pennsylvania films that may be of interest to readers of this blog include:
Athens (1939)

Ancient Earth: Making History Everlasting (1940)

Iran (1963)

Windows on the Past (1967)

Turkey (1967)

Jordan (1969)

Cyprus (1969)

And more…

HT: Ferrell Jenkins and Gordon Govier

Tagged Excavations, Resources