Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

The Sandbars of Syrtis

One of the most exciting action stories in Scripture is the narrative of Paul’s voyage to Rome, interrupted by the shipwreck on the island of Malta (Acts 27). The vivid detail of these events is best explained by Luke’s presence on the journey and his writing of Acts shortly thereafter.

One of the details that Luke includes is the sailors’ fear that they would wreck on the “sandbars of Syrtis.”

When the men had hoisted [the lifeboat] aboard, they passed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together. Fearing that they would run aground on the sandbars of Syrtis, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along (Acts 27:17).

What are the “sandbars of Syrtis”? Gordon Franz has delved into the ancient sources to learn that these were dangerous bodies of water off the coast of North Africa. He quotes Strabo:

The difficulty with both [the Greater] Syrtis and the Little Syrtis is that in many places their deep waters contain shallows, and the result is, at the ebb and the flow of the tides, that sailors sometimes fall into the shallows and stick there, and that the safe escape of a boat is rare. On this account sailors keep at a distance when voyaging along the coast, taking precautions not to be caught off their guard and driven by winds into these gulfs” (Geography 17:3:20; LCL 8: 197).

Franz concludes:

Why were the sailors afraid of the Syrtis Sands? The Syrtis is two bodies of water in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of North Africa. Even with “good luck” (Procopius’ words), the sailors on the Alexandrian grain ship carrying the Apostle Paul and Dr. Luke were terrified because they knew they were doomed if they hit the Syrtis Sands. The grain ships were the largest ships plying the Mediterranean Sea at that time, with a deep draft, and they would easily have gotten grounded on a sandbar in the middle of no-where and many miles from any shoreline! The old sailor’s axiom would hold true: “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!” They would have had plenty of grain to eat on the ship, but not a drop of water to go with it. They were afraid of a slow and painful death by dehydration.

Read the whole article for all the fascinating details.

Tagged Analysis

Weekend Roundup

Alexander Schick passes on word that the excavated tunnel is now open that allows you to walk on the 1st-century street from the Pool of Siloam up the City of David to the area of the visitor’s center.

(A previous report about these excavations is here.)

Leen Ritmeyer is in Jordan and has photos of the newly opened baptismal site at “Bethabara.”

Ferrell Jenkins reports that Egyptian authorities are now prohibiting cameras from entering the Valley of the Kings.

The Ohel Yitzchak Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem was looted and vandalized during the Jordanian occupation (1948-67), but its renovation has restored some of its former beauty, as you can see in Shmuel Brown’s recent photos.

With the verdict about to be announced in the forgery trial in Jerusalem, Hershel Shanks has written an e-book entitled, James, Brother of Jesus: Forged Antiquities and the Trial of Oded Golan and Robert Deutsch. Shanks believes the James Ossuary inscription was not forged and he plans to release the e-book when the judge issues the verdict. See the sign-up details here.

The eastern Mediterranean is overdue for a big earthquake, says the Jerusalem Post. The area has not had a seven or eight magnitude quake in nearly a millennium. The 1927 tremor was a mere 6.2 on the Richter scale.

The newly re-opened Israel Museum has served half of a million visitors in the last half year.

The LandMinds radio show has interviewed the recently retired Amihai Mazar, reflecting back on the excavations he directed at Tel Qasile, Giloh, Beth Shean, and Tel Rehov.

A Swiss architect is hard at work restoring and protecting the beautiful mosaics of Hisham’s Palace in Jericho. A new excavation began at the site last week and new Russian museum is now open.

The season’s excavations at Tall el-Hammam are wrapping up and the team has posted a couple of videos. The first shows what they have identified as a Middle Bronze temple (with a 10-foot thick wall!) and the second summarizes the finds in the Roman area. They suggest that this was the city of Livias in the Roman-Byzantine period.

HT: Ferrell Jenkins, Roi Brit

Tagged Egypt, Forgery, Jerusalem, Jordan, Weekend Roundup

Noah’s Ark Confession Repudiated

The Hong-Kong based organization Noah’s Ark Ministries International (NAMI) announced in April that they had discovered Noah’s Ark. Their press release included brief video clips showing wooden beams of the alleged ark. Yet many noted major problems with their purported discovery. These suspicions appeared to be confirmed with the release two weeks ago of a letter written by two Turkish brothers who confessed to constructing “the ark” for what they thought was a movie set.

The latest turn in the saga is that NAMI has announced that the confession sent to Randall Price was forged. They have a statement by the brothers claiming that they never wrote the letter.

A few observations:

1. An outside observer can hardly judge as to what the truth is with regard to the letter. It’s certainly possible that someone forged the letter. It should be noted that the letter is in Turkish, and since all “ark hunters” are outside Turkey, its creation would have required more than a casual effort. It did strike me originally that the signatures appear to have been signed by the same person, though that might not be significant if one or both was illiterate.

2. NAMI clearly believes their reputation is on the line, as is apparent from the effort they have taken to refute the letter. Their response is currently the front page on their website.

3. NAMI has spent a lot of money in their story and they expect to reap a fortune with the production of future “documentaries” and souvenirs. An outside investigator would certainly want to consider the possibility that they invested additional money into the Turkish brothers so that they would deny
writing the letter.

4. Randall Price has removed the letter from his website “pending further investigation of its source.” The Google-cached page still shows the letter and translation. (Also here and here.)

5. NAMI essentially claims that Price forged the letter. They write, “His actions have been completely against the basic principles of a true professing Christian and defying the law.” Did he defy the law by attacking their work or by posting the letter? Clearly they intend to suggest that he personally was involved in its forgery. I believe that their charge is absolutely baseless, but they are now on record for recognizing the difference between truth and error as well as the judgment men face for their actions.

6. The determination that the letter is a forgery does not constitute evidence for the validity of the discovery.

Tagged Pseudo-Archaeology

A Fishless Sea of Galilee?

Scientists fear that they may not be able to halt the precipitous drop of the fish population in the Sea of Galilee. In 1999, a total of 2,144 tons of fish was caught. Ten years later, the total was less than 10% of that (157 tons). Contributing to the crisis are many years of drought. From the Jerusalem Post:

The ministry wrote that “the data raised real concerns of an ecological disaster that will occur in the Kinneret following the loss of fish resources, turning Lake Kinneret into a fish-less lake.”
The announcement came only a few weeks after the Water Authority released dismal reports on the below-average rainfal that has plagued the lake for the last decade, with water levels reaching their lowest average since the 1920s.
The years 2001 to 2010 treated Lake Kinneret particularly poorly, the Water Authority said Monday. Moreover, according to its summary of 2010, Lake Kinneret has dropped back down to last year’s water level because of the severe lack of rain despite the state having reduced pumping this year.
Except for a few major showers at the beginning and the end of the year, Lake Kinneret’s water levels steadily dropped from May to December. Despite pumping less water out of the lake, the water level has dropped from what it was last year and is now significantly below the bottom red line. In fact, the water level rested below the bottom red line for most of the year, with the exception of the months of March to June.

The full story is here.

Fishermen in the Sea of Galilee, early 1900s (photo source)

Tagged American Colony Photos, Galilee

American Colony Photos for Accordance

I’m excited to announce that the American Colony photo collection is now available as a module for Accordance Bible Software. Long regarded as the best Bible software on the market, Accordance brings significant advantages to the American Colony collection by providing quick and easy searches as well as tight integration with the Accordance features and modules.

David Lang describes it this way:

The American Colony and Eric Matson collection is a massive (1.4GB) Accordance module containing more than 4,000 historic photographs of the Holy Land and its people. It is fully searchable, and its images will be included any time you use the Search All window to search by Caption. Once you find an image you like, you can drag its thumbnail onto a Keynote or Pages drop-zone to include it in your slide show or document.

You can read the rest of his helpful introduction here. In my opinion, this is the best collection of historic photographs of the Holy Land anywhere, ever. I give some very specific reasons for that bold statement here. In addition to the photographs, the collection is supplemented by thousands of historic quotes and explanatory notes that are a rich resource in themselves.

The creation of this Accordance module makes a good thing better, and I’m delighted that users can benefit from these significant improvements.

You can purchase the Accordance module here. Those who have already purchased the American Colony Collection from BiblePlaces.com qualify for a crossgrade, which gives a discount of more than $100.

Tagged American Colony Photos, Resources

How Netzer Discovered Herod’s Tomb

The current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review includes the fascinating firsthand account of how the late Ehud Netzer discovered the tomb of King Herod. The entire article is available for free online.

During the 38 years since I began working at Herodium, Herod’s luxurious desert retreat, this architectural masterpiece has yielded many treasures, but none more exciting than the 2007 discovery of Herod’s elusive tomb. Some still question this identification, but more recent discoveries confirm my initial conclusion. Today, I have no doubt of it. […] In the summer of 2006, we turned our attention to the slope of the hill, in the vicinity of the monumental stairway that ran up the hill from Lower Herodium to the palace/fortress of Upper Herodium. We first followed an ancient wall along the northeastern slope, hoping that it would lead us to the burial place (a cave?) at the bottom of the round eastern tower. When no clue was found here, in the spring of 2007 we returned to the vicinity of the monumental stairway and slowly we began to reveal some fragments of reddish stone along the northeastern slope that appeared to be from an elegant sarcophagus. Following these stones, we were finally led to the discovery of Herod’s mausoleum. […] Not long after we announced the discovery of Herod’s tomb in 2007, my good friend British architectural historian David Jacobson expressed his doubts, noting the lack of any inscriptional identification of the remains. Since then, we have finished digging the whole area around the monument, exposing more of its architectural elements. This has enabled our capable architect-archaeologist Rachel Chachy to draw a detailed reconstruction of the mausoleum. If the same remains had been found near Jerusalem, it might have been risky to identify the monument as belonging to Herod. But this is Herodium, Herod’s personal monument, named for himself—indeed, the only one. And Josephus has told us Herod was buried here. There can be little question who was buried here. The absence of any inscription should not detract from this conclusion. […] Duane Roller, professor emeritus at the Ohio State University, is another doubter. A distinguished Roman historian, Roller concedes that the tomb we have found belonged to someone of noble lineage, but he remains convinced that Herod lies at the solid base of the east tower on the summit.

The well-illustrated article is a must-read before your next visit. If you want to read more about Herod and his construction projects, I would highly recommend Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans, by Peter Richardson as well as The Architecture of Herod, the Great Builder, by Ehud Netzer.

Tagged Excavations, Herod's Tomb, Judah