Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Weekend Roundup

Jezreel is one of my favorite biblical sites and I’m happy to see that excavations will begin again under the direction of Norma Franklin of Tel Aviv University and Jennie Ebeling of the University of Evansville. A new website has the details.

The Sea of Galilee dropped nearly a foot last month and is now 17 inches below the red line.

Shmuel Browns went on a Photo Walk in Jerusalem and would like our feedback in deciding which image he should submit to the competition.

Browns is also offering a free guided tour of Khirbet Qeyiafa on October 14 at 9 am.

A volunteer at the Gezer excavation this summer writes of her experience on the ASOR blog, noting that they ended the season on what they believe is a 10th-century floor.

The Virtual Amarna Project is now online. “This archive resulted from the 3D digitisation of objects from the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna using a Konica Minolta Vivid 9i system. Data includes images, 3D PDF files, meshes (obj) and point clouds (ascii).”

Another resource is the Amarna Tablet Photograph Database Online where you can view the inscriptions held by the Vorderasiatisches Museum of Berlin.

Aaron Burke is interviewed about the excavations in Jaffa (Joppa) on the LandMinds radio show (part 1, part 2).

Jimmie Hardin will be lecturing on the archaeology of David and Solomon at the University of Mississippi on October 26.

One million visitors viewed the Dead Sea Scrolls in their first week online.

HT: ANE-2, Jack Sasson

Tagged 10th Century, Egypt, Jerusalem, Jezreel Valley, Lectures, Museums, Shephelah

Sale: Aerial Atlas of the Holy Land

As one of their “Fabulous Friday” specials, CBD is offering slightly imperfect copies of the Aerial Atlas of the Holy Land for $15 (retail: $50; perfect copies are $38). I have not seen this 2008 work, but with photographs by Sonia Halliday I would expect the best. The text is written by John Bowker.

The publisher’s description lists some of the sites featured:

Now, thanks to aerial photography from a single, exceptionally high-quality and up-to-date source, the Aerial Atlas of the Holy Land reveals the ancient crossroads of Galilee, Samaria and Judea as never before seen in book form. Included are 36 sites of great Jewish, Christian or Muslim significance dating to Roman, Persian and Crusader times. The informative text adds historical, religious and cultural context to this superb photographic survey of the Holy Land. Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth are featured, as are such other key locations as Caesarea, Philippi, Cana, Qumran, Jericho, Mount Hermon, the Carmel Caves, Tiberias, Dor and the Sea of Galilee.

Amazon has the same work (but without the imperfections?) for $20 and that qualifies for their free shipping with Prime or orders of $25. They also list used (but like new) copies starting at $8.74. Back to the CBD special, regular shipping in the US costs $6.

Amazon lists the same book but with a different publisher and cover here.

HT: Charles Savelle

Tagged Resources

Social Archaeology and Qumran

A new study using “social archaeology” concludes that the traditional view that the inhabitants of Qumran were Essenes is “extremely plausible.” From the Biblical Archaeology Society:

By physically dividing up and demarcating spaces—walls, doorways and entrances that are used on an everyday basis—the architecture thereby classifies and controls the movement of people and the spaces they inhabit. Studying these spaces can help archaeologists answer the question, “Who were the Essenes?”
In a detailed analysis of the physical spaces of the Qumran community, [Eyal] Regev finds the occupied area is divided into different space segments, “each connected to a controlling central passage with minimal connections between segments.” The spaces within segments are also “minimally connected.” Access to most spaces is therefore “limited, and several boundaries must be crossed to reach most spaces from any starting point on the site.”
The large rooms (such as the dining room and the so-called scriptorium) used by the Essenes of Qumran “were not easily accessible and were out of view of casual entrants.” This, says Regev, means that “social encounters between the inhabitants were quite uncommon.”

The full report is here.

HT: Daniel Wright

Dining room at Qumran

Tagged Dead Sea

Bronze Age Cemetery in Jerusalem

Back in 2006 we reported on the excavation of an ancient cemetery underneath the location of the Holyland Hotel’s model of Jerusalem. At the time we knew only what we could see, but now publication of the excavations provides more details. Haaretz gives a popular account of the article published in Kadmoniot.

No less than 80 graves were found in the area, in which, according to the archaeologists’ estimates, some 210 bodies were buried. Luckily, unlike most burial caves throughout the country, the Holyland caves were not broken into or raided prior to the scholars’ arrival, allowing them to find many whole items that shed light on life and death in Jerusalem during the Bronze Age.
Thus, for example, one of the caves revealed the grave of a warrior of the period. His skeleton was laid out in a supine position, with his personal belongings and gifts for the afterlife positioned near his head. Among other things, his “battle kit” was discovered, as one of the article’s authors put it – including an axe, a wide copper belt and a dagger. Also unearthed nearby were a number of delicate yet whole clay utensils.
For Greenhut, the axe was a particularly exciting find. Some 19 years earlier, in 1987, he had worked on an excavation site just beneath the hill, at the current spot of the popular Malha shopping mall, where he discovered the exact same axe. “Apparently it was made at the same workshop, by the same blacksmith; it is the other axe’s twin,” Greenhut says.
[…]
An excavation carried out at the site recently, in preparation for the project’s next stage, also revealed artifacts from a much earlier time – the Chalcolithic Period, dating from 6,500 years ago.

The full story is here. For photos, see our 2006 post.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem

The Identification of Eshtaol: A Brief Case-Study in Recent Research

Several years ago I began a study on the location of Eshtaol that was interrupted by a leg injury. Last week I had the occasion to conclude the research and summarize it for another project I’m working on. While this is a bit more technical than most of the blog fare here, there are some insights that may be of interest, even if you are not so concerned with the location connected with the birth and burial of Samson (Judg 13:25; 16:31)

The reason for this study is to reveal a confusion about the site location of Eshtaol that has developed in recent literature. As you will see below, the site of Eshtaol has been “moved” without the guilty parties apparently being aware of what they were doing. This brief review may serve to identify failures in the process and encourage careful work in future study of this and other sites.

1. Michael Avi-Yonah was not the first involved in the identification of this site, but he is a convenient starting point for the purposes of this study. He believed that Eshtaol was located at Tell Abu el-Qabus (Kh. Deir Abu Qabus) on the hill above the Arab village of Ishwa, and he noted that Iron Age remains were found at the site (Encyclopedia Judaica, 1st ed., 6: 280).

2. In 1983, Anson Rainey agreed with Avi-Yonah’s identification, noting that Ishwa preserves the name of Eshtaol, just as many modern names in the Shephelah preserve the ancient ones (“The Biblical Shephelah of Judah,” BASOR 251: 7).

3. In 1986, Zechariah Kallai rejected Deir Abu el-Qabus on grounds that “the finds are incompatible,” preferring instead Kh. Deir Shubeib (Historical Geography of the Bible, 368). Kh. Deir Shubeib is located 1.6 miles (2.7 km) northwest of Tell Abu el-Qabus.

4. In a brief article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992), Raphael Greenberg likewise identified Eshtaol with Khirbet Deir Shubeib, but he was imprecise in claiming that it is “near the village of Ishwa, which retains elements of the ancient name” (2:617).

5. Aaron M. Gale, writing in the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000), confused the two sites, identifying Eshtaol with Khirbet Deir Shubeib, but locating it at the site of Tell Abu el-Qabus, 1.5 miles east of Zorah, near Ishwa (425).

6. Rainey in The Sacred Bridge (2006) apparently followed Greenberg/Gale in this mistake, as he writes, “Eshtaol is evidently to be located at Khirbet Deir Shubeib beside the village of Ishwa‘” (141). Kh. Deir Shubeib is 1.8 miles (3 km) west of Ishwa; Tell Abu el-Qabus is next to Ishwa.

On the basis of the observations above, some conclusions may be suggested:

1. Greenberg’s brief article made it unclear that there were two candidates and his imprecision led to later confusion.

2. Gale combined data from the ISBE and ABD articles and in doing so he incorrectly gave the name of Khirbet Deir Shubeib to the site of Tell Abu el-Qabus.

3. Rainey perpetuated Gale’s mistake in his 2005 work. Because The Sacred Bridge will be the standard reference work for historical geographers for the next generation, this mistake may live a long life.

4. The site of Eshtaol has “shifted” not because of convincing evidence but because of careless research and writing.

5. The identification of Eshtaol at either of the sites must be determined on the basis of archaeological study of the two proposed sites. It is doubtful, contrary to initial impressions, that Rainey was intending to follow Kallai’s identification over Avi-Yonah’s. Without further archaeological data, we prefer the conclusion of Avi-Yonah and the initial conclusion of Rainey that Eshtaol is located in the immediate vicinity of the Arab village that preserves its name.

The map below was made by British Mandate authorities, with Israeli additions in purple. The two sites in question are clearly identified. Google Earth users can find Kh. Deir Shubeib at 31.798000°, 34.985200° and Kh. Deir Abu Qabus at 31.785790°, 35.009930°.

My thanks to A.D. Riddle for his assistance with this study.

The vicinity of biblical Eshtaol in the eastern end of the Sorek Valley

Tagged Analysis, Shephelah

Bible and Archaeology Fest #14

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned the 14th Annual Bible and Archaeology Fest that is coming up next month. I attended the conference several years ago and found it to be very instructive and enjoyable.

You can go to the website for a complete list of speakers and their topics, but I’ll just note a few I would not miss.

James Charlesworth, Does the Gospel of John Accurately Describe Jerusalem Before 70 CE?

Aren Maeir, The Horned Altar of Gath: Recent Discoveries from Tell es-Safi

Jodi Magness, Roman Jerusalem: Hadrian’s Aelia Capitolina

Alan Millard, Folk Tales and Biblical History

Rami Arav, Twenty-Five Years of Excavations at Bethsaida: How Bethsaida Has Helped Shape Biblical Research

Many other well-known scholars will be speaking, including Mark Wilson, Steven Ortiz, Eric Cline, and Ben Witherington III. All the details are here. I know of no better forum for non-scholars to learn the latest in archaeological and biblical research than this one.

Tagged Lectures