Weekend Roundup Archives - Page 165 of 171

Wednesday Roundup

Land of the Bible has created a flight tour of the area destroyed in the Mount Carmel blaze. The imagery is from Google Earth and does not show the damage, but you get a good sense for the area affected. The map showing the burned region is the best I’ve seen.

Leen Ritmeyer has an excellent illustrated discussion on the identification of the “Beautiful Gate” at the Temple where Peter healed the lame man (Acts 3). He discusses the options and proposes that the Beautiful Gate should be identified with the Double Gate.

Jeff Chadwick will be lecturing on the 8th century at Philistine Gath (Tell es-Safi) at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem tomorrow (12/16).

Randall Price says that he has verified that the discovery of Noah’s Ark reported some months ago is a fabrication.

An intact, sealed jar discovered at Qumran in 2004 has been opened and analyzed.

Ferrell Jenkins has a link to a series of 162 historic photos posted online by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

The big storm in the Middle East revealed some archaeological treasures, including a Roman statue of a woman that fell into the Mediterranean at Ashkelon. Ferrell Jenkins has posted some photos of the cliffs of Ashkelon.

Joe Lauer sends along word of a note to journalists about the storm damage in Caesarea:

Tomorrow (Wednesday) the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Mr. Shuka Dorfman, the director-general of the Caesarea Development Company, Mr. Michael Carasenti and representatives of the Nature and Parks Authority will tour the national park and the surrounding area in order to assess the storm damage. The tour will begin at 10:30 in Caesarea harbor and will be open to media coverage. The Israel Antiquities Authority estimates it will cost millions of shekels to rehabilitate the antiquities that were damaged by the storm throughout the country, some of which have suffered enormous and irreversible damage.

Expect a story and photos in the media later today. Earlier reports about the damage are posted at Arutz-7, ShalomLife, and the Vancouver Sun.

Tagged Discoveries, Lectures, Weather, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer has posted the schedule for the 16th Annual Conference of the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies on “New Studies on Jerusalem.” There are a number of lecture titles that sound very interesting. Aren Maeir has a link to the official announcement. All lectures are in Hebrew.

The Israel National Library website has an extensive collection of maps of Palestine, dating from 1462 to 1927. Thanks to Yissachar Fried for the notice.

I certainly agree with this suggestion of two books ideal for Christmas gifts.

The Al-Jazeera movie entitled “Looting the Holy Land” is “a worthless film, ridden with manipulations, political propaganda, incorrect facts and even lies,” according to Israel Finkelstein.
Large parts of Mount Carmel are off limits to visitors following the forest fire. Rain expected this weekend may result in flooding. A new report says that one-third, and not one-half, of the forest was affected by the wildfire. One editorialist is calling it “Netanyahu’s Katrina.” The fire was the worst in Israel’s 62-year history.

Hydrologists are already predicting that Israel’s water supply will reach record lows next summer, with the Sea of Galilee reaching the black line. The Bible maintains that God sends rain in response to the nation’s faithfulness, but Israel is working now to get around that problematic relationship. As the JPost reports:

By 2013, the large desalination plants will be producing a total of 600 m.cu.m. of fresh water a year. With that man-made addition, Israel will no longer be at the mercy of however much rain falls from the sky.

The ancient cry, “Give us a king,” has become in modern days, “Build us a desalination plant.”

Somehow I suspect that no matter what they do, they’ll never be able to escape dependence on God.

Tagged Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

Tragic news comes out of Israel this week as a massive forest fire has killed more than 40 people and destroyed more than 10,000 acres on Mount Carmel. If you’ve traveled with me in the last 7-8 years, you probably spent a night at Kibbutz Beit Oren, which suffered great damage. For several photos of the mountain (in better days) and a map, see Ferrell Jenkins’ post. The fire may not be put out for another week.

Archaeologists are now studying ancient sites without ever visiting them, thanks to a NASA satellite.

Arizona State University archaeologist Stephen H. Savage has been studying Khirbet en-Nahas and with NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite been able to determine where “the ore is coming from; which parts of the site were used for smelting and which were not; and that different parts of the site were drawing ore from different regions.

Jennie R. Ebeling has an interesting and well-illustrated summary of discoveries made at Hazor in recent years.

Jweekly.com has a brief article summarizing the discoveries at Magdala.

Reading Acts has a brief summary of James Charlesworth’s presentation at NEAS in which he discussed whether the pool of Bethesda and the pool of Siloam were ritual baths (miqva’ot).

Shimon Gibson has the opportunity to publish important archaeological finds from excavations on Mount Zion in the 1970s and he is now raising funds. Making a donation is particularly quick if you have an Amazon account. Even a small contribution will help!

The winners have been selected for this week’s give-away of the Holy Land Revealed DVD set. It is perhaps notable that both winners live outside of the United States.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

Israel has surpassed the 3-million-tourist mark for 2010, breaking the annual record for tourists set in 2008. More than 60% of tourists are Christians and the nation’s goal is to reach 5 million tourists a year by 2015.

Last week’s annual meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society was attended by Ferrell Jenkins, who provides summaries of many of the lectures. Aren Maeir has posted his observations of one day of the ASOR meetings.

The Magdala excavations are continuing around the calendar and photos are now posted from November.

Israel is calling on the Palestinian leadership to reject the “study” that the Jewish people have no right to the Western Wall.

The PBS Special “Quest for Solomon’s Mines” is now available online, though viewing in some
countries is not permitted. UCSD’s role in the feature is discussed in a campus news story.

I have not yet seen it, but a trusted reader tells me that Anson Rainey’s Teaching History and Historical Geography of Bible Lands: A Syllabus that I mentioned here before “consists almost entirely of the text of biblical passages, without any commentary or other notes.” You might browse it before you buy.

This week I read A Promise Kept, a new book produced by Insight for Living. Subtitled “A Pictorial Journey of the Coming of Christ,” the beautifully illustrated and superbly written book was just what I needed to start the Christmas season. It’s available this month for a donation and will be on sale in the IFL store in December.

Tagged Excavations, Resources, Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

Chris Harrison has several interesting graphics at “Visualizing the Bible,” including one entitled “Biblical Social Network (People and Places).”

I love the work of Biblical Backgrounds, Inc., and was excited to see their new website on a recent visit.

Raphael Golb was sentenced to six months in prison for his internet crimes related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Robert Cargill has posted his response to the sentencing.

In a paper to be presented at SBL, James Davila has posted his SBL paper online: What Just Happened: The Rise of “Biblioblogging” in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century.”

Ferrell Jenkins has posted an interesting quote about “Rachel’s Tomb” from the father of historical geography, Edward Robinson.

A documentary shot in 1969-70 linked at Leen Ritmeyer’s site has stunning aerial footage of Iran, including Persepolis and Susa.

PBS will be premiering “Quest for Solomon’s Mines” on November 23. You can watch a preview online. Luke Chandler wonders how the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavation will be treated.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Weekend Roundup

Weekend Roundup

An inscription with the name of Ramses III has been found in Saudi Arabia, suggesting Egyptian interest in the trade routes to what is today Yemen. A related article is “Solomon & Sheba, Inc.,” by André Lemaire, published earlier this year in Biblical Archaeology Review.

A Logos collection that may interest readers here is the William Mitchell Ramsay Collection. The 16 volumes may sell for $30 if enough people bid on it.

Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa will be visiting Yeshiva University, giving a talk on
Tuesday evening, November 16. His topic is “A Word is Better than a Million Potsherds: David and Solomon Between Text & Material Culture.” The talk will take place in Furst Hall (500 West 185th St, at the corner of Amsterdam Avenue), on the 5th floor, in room 535, at 8:30 p.m.

Yoav Farhi will be lecturing on Tuesday, November 16, at 7:00 p.m. at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. His topic is “Ancient Coins of Khirbet Qeiyafa: A Stronghold on the Road to Jerusalem.”

Aren Maeir will be speaking at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri on November 17, at 5:30 p.m. The college’s participation in the excavations at Gath this season are the subject of an article in the local press.

I wonder if anyone knows whatever happened to this anticipated biblical archaeology book by Stager and Cross.

HT: Eric Welch and Joe Lauer

Tagged Lectures, Resources, Weekend Roundup