Resources Archives - Page 77 of 145

Free Course on the Lands of the Bible

If you ever wanted to learn more about the Lands of the Bible but you’re not a traditional student or
you can’t afford to travel to the Middle East, you will want to check out the free online “Survey of the Lands of the Bible” class that Mark Vitalis Hoffman is offering through Gettysburg Seminary.

The course runs from September to December and gives you the opportunity to do as much or as little as your schedule permits. You can watch videos, read the textbook, and join in discussions.

You can learn more here.

This also would be a great opportunity for those who have traveled to the Lands of the Bible but the tour left them longing for more!

Tagged Historical Geography, Resources

Interactive Map – Joshua 12 Slain King Town List

(by Chris McKinny)

The book of Joshua has the most geographical details of any book in the Bible. This is particularly the case for Joshua 13-21, which provides a series of different lists or non-graphic “maps” describing different aspects of Israel’s tribal settlement. Joshua 12, which precedes this section, is different (and unique) than the subsequent lists in that it provides a detailed list of 34 “slain kings” of Moses and Joshua. In a sense, this list provides a summary of Numbers 21 (the Transjordan Conquest under Moses) and Joshua 5-11 (the campaigns in Cis-Jordan under Joshua) as it lists all of the towns mentioned in these campaigns and provides some additional towns (e.g. Tirzah) that were apparently involved in the conquest.

Interactive Map of Joshua 12

Site Identifications

In this interactive map, I have compiled all of the towns in the list and provided the known archaeological details about the site (see also bibliography below) in a compact form. Wherever possible I have linked a low-resolution photo of the site. Of the 34 towns in the list, 30 can be identified with relative certainty. These four sites include the following: Goiim, which has not been identified; Ai which is probably to be identified in the area of et-Tell, but the conquest site could be located at a nearby site (e.g. Kh. el-Maqatir?); Hormah has not been securely identified, but I suggest Tell Beit Mirsim (McKinny 2015); and Maron/Madon/Meron is possibly Tell el-Khureibeh (e.g. Rainey and Notley 2006:129) just on the Lebanese side of the Israeli-Lebanese border. There are various identification problems with other sites in the list, however, most of these site identifications are generally agreed upon.

Archaeological Analysis

Assuming the traditional connection between Ai and et-Tell and my suggested connection of Hormah with Tell Beit Mirsim, this leaves us with 32 sites that have been identified and surveyed or excavated. Significantly, 28 of these 32 sites have clear Late Bronze Age remains. And what are the sites that are missing Late Bronze? Heshbon (Tell Heshban), Ai (et-Tell?), Arad (Tell Arad), and Makkedah (Khirbet el-Qom). Makkedah was only briefly excavated and Middle Bronze remains were found at the site, which might hint at the presence of later remains. Heshbon revealed phases of the earliest Iron I phases, but not Middle or Late Bronze Age. Ai and Arad are two of the three “etiological” towns along with Jericho (which, in fact, has Late Bronze) whose inclusion in the conquest narratives is usually associated with their large Early or Middle Bronze ruins (i.e. later Israelites attributed the observed ruins to traditional Joshua and Moses figures). This brief post is not the place to argue for or against this rationale, however, in light of the evidence of 88% of the towns in the Joshua 12 list having Late Bronze/Canaanite occupation it seems worth noting that these arguments are based on exceptions to what appears to be a coherent depiction of Late Bronze Canaan. This at least points to the likelihood that the writer of the Joshua 12 list (which, again, reflects the conquest narratives of Josh. 5-11) had a detailed understanding of the geopolitical landscape of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age.

Download Bibliography here.

Tagged Exodus-Conquest, Historical Geography, Resources

The Virtual Bible

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

With apologies for getting this out late, today is the last day of an introductory sale on The Virtual Bible, by Accordance Bible Software.

The Virtual Bible [is] a new visual resource which offers three-dimensional reconstructions of the land of Israel, first-century Jerusalem, the Herodian Temple, and more. The visuals, which include still images and video fly-throughs, were developed by Dr. Daniel Warner of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Dr. James Strange of the University of South Florida, in consultation with Leen Ritmeyer, an archaeological architect who is an expert on the Jerusalem Temple.

For sample videos, see this Accordance blog post.

For product details, click here.

This video shows how The Virtual Bible is produced.

As I was reading about this product, I learned that The Virtual Bible has been around for a little while (here and here; the project was begun in 1999). The Virtual Bible is new to Accordance, and they describe the product as “Enhanced” though I am not sure what that means.

For details of the sale, you can view the Accordance announcement here. The sale includes several other graphics packages in their summer sale, including four from BiblePlaces.com:

Tagged Resources

Olive Wood Art Models of Jerusalem

Issam Salsaa of Bethlehem has created a number of detailed models of Jerusalem and Bethlehem that are quite impressive. You can check out his YouTube videos to see several of them:

The Old City

The Citadel of David (and a second)

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher

The Church of the Nativity (and with lights)

Olive wood model of the Citadel of David, created by Issam Salsaa

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources

Weekend Roundup

Archaeologists working at Kibbutz Magen near the Gaza Strip have discovered a Roman-period marble dolphin statuette.

This week, ISIL is apparently planning to turn the site of Jonah’s tomb into a park. The Iraqi authorities consider that a crime.

Israel is considering the restoration of Khirbet al-Minya, an Umayyad palace near the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Continued research has been approved for the Antikythera shipwreck.

Sites in Izmir are bringing in the tourist bucks.

The latest video from SourceFlix is an explanation of the topography of Jerusalem.

Archaeologists recently discovered a Byzantine-era mosaic floor at the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.

You can sign up for a chance to win a trip to the Grand Opening of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Logos users might want to grab the Ancient Context Ancient Faith set while it’s on pre-pub.

Ferrell Jenkins describes his return to the ruins of Samaria.

Luke Chandler offers some “tidbits from the tell” on his first week in digging at Lachish this year.

There will be no roundup next weekend.

HT: Joseph Lauer, Charles Savelle, Agade

Tagged Excavations, Galilee, Greece, Israel's Coast, Jerusalem, Mesopotamia, Museums, Resources, Samaria, Shephelah, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Bible Mapper 5

(Post by A.D. Riddle)

Have you ever needed a map for teaching or for a class paper, but cannot find just the right map that you want on the web? Bible Mapper may be the answer to your problem.

Last month, David Barrett released Bible Mapper 5. “Bible Mapper is a fully interactive, highly accurate Bible mapping system that helps you quickly and easily create customized maps of the Holy Lands or study a particular period and aspect of Bible history.”

Having used previous versions of Bible Mapper, the things that impress me most about Bible Mapper are:

The accuracy of the data.
The degree of customization possible.
The wide area of coverage: from India and Uzbekistan in the east, to Portugal and Morocco in the west; from Great Britain in the north, to Ethiopia and Somalia in the south.
The maps you create with Bible Mapper are copyright free and may be used in papers, lectures, websites, and publications.

The key features new to version 5 are:

Create high resolution maps of Jerusalem (the Jerusalem Ordnance map of 1876 is also able to be overlaid on the terrain).
Upload your custom objects or styles to a repository to share with other registered users, or restrict access to yourself for easy import into other maps.
Import basic KMZ/KML data (points, lines, areas, etc.) created by other software (e.g., Google Earth) and customize it on your map.

I find that last feature to be especially convenient. For more information, visit the Bible Mapper website, read Mark Hoffman’s review, or read Todd’s review of version 4 on this blog.

Bible Mapper may be downloaded for free. Most features of the program are available to unregistered users, so you can give it a try. A registration key ($37) is required to use the program’s advanced features and to save maps that you create.

When you open the program, Bible Mapper looks like this.

Bible Mapper allows you to choose between colorized terrain (above), or a monochrome appearance (below).

The “Tools” menu allows you to calculate distances between places, find a site, or obtain coordinates for a site.

In my opinion, the real gold is the “View” menu. Here you can select what information is displayed: sites, roads, geographic features, or historical periods. Here are some of the options available.

You can import your own sites, adjust the widths and colors of lines, and adjust the appearance of dots. There are even options for repositioning labels.

A number of sample maps can be viewed at the Bible Mapper website gallery.

Bible Mapper is a Windows program. As a Mac user, I am able to use it by running Windows on a virtual machine (such as Parallels). One small issue I experienced was that Mac for some unknown reason appended .exe to the downloaded file. The file should be .msi, so Mac users may have to change the file extension manually before installing.

David Barrett also has created a Bible geography quiz just for fun.

Bible Mapper 2.0

Making My Own Map

Bible Mapper: New Wiki

Bible Mapper Version 4

Tagged Resources