Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Weekend Roundup

Fifteen marble pillars have been discovered in Gaza’s port.

There’s some question about whether the British Museum has agreed to a three-month extension of the loan of the Cyrus Cylinder. More of the saga is explained here.

Excavations are in progress at Tell el-Hammam and director Steven Collins gives an update in a new video on location. The project was also recently featured in a special on Jordanian TV.

The Israel Ministry of Tourism is promoting the Dead Sea in the final selection of the New7Wonders of Nature. You can vote here, or you can visit the facebook group here. A win for the Dead Sea would be a win for Israel and Jordan both.

The Biblical Archaeology Society has just released its annual issue of excavations. Lots of details about 2011 digs throughout Israel and Jordan are available online.

Weekend rains raised the water level of the Sea of Galilee by one inch, but it’s still hovering at the red line.

Archaeologists are beginning preservation work on the ruins of Babylon.

Visitors to the acropolis of Pergamum in Turkey can no longer arrive there by bus, but now are
required to take a cable car.

Someday I’d like to visit the oasis of Siwa in western Egypt.

Google Labs has a Books Ngram Viewer that allows you to compare the use of words in books in the last couple of centuries. This comparison of “Israel” and “Palestine” was not quite what I expected.

A comparison of “Gezer” and “Megiddo” reveals the periods when the excavations have been active.

Disney is coming to Israel, with plans announced for a complex of shops and a 25-screen theater.

Apparently there will be an amusement park but it will not be a “Disney theme park.” I’m not sure what that means, unless we’re simply not to expect Mickey to take photos with our children.

HT: Explorator, Paleojudaica, Ferrell Jenkins

Tagged Dead Sea, Discoveries, Museums, Tourism, Turkey, Weather, Weekend Roundup

Noah’s Ark Confession

In April an organization based in Hong Kong called a major press conference in which they announced that they had found Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey. The announcement featured photos and videos showing well-preserved wooden beams that they claimed were from an ancient boat.

Everything about the announcement had a commercial feel and the sense I got was that they were looking to make a lot of money off of gullible believers. A leader of the organization explained in one interview that a previous discovery of the Ark gave him faith and that didn’t change even when the find was revealed to be bogus.

As soon as the claim was made, many observed inconsistencies and problems in the report, some of which were described here and here. Yesterday Randall Price posted a letter he received from two men who state that they were involved in constructing a movie set at the location of the discovery. Only later did they find out that the film would be used as documentation of Noah’s Ark.

You can read the letter and its translation here.

HT: Daniel Wright

UPDATE: See follow-up post: Noah’s Ark Confession Repudiated.

Tagged Pseudo-Archaeology

Israeli Baptism Site to Open near Dead Sea

The new tourist facility opposite Jericho and adjacent to the Jordanian baptismal site (aka “Bethany beyond the Jordan”) is scheduled to open in less than two weeks. From ICEJ News:

Kasr al-Yehud, the probable site where John the Baptist baptized his cousin Jesus of Nazareth, will be opened to the public with a special ceremony on January 18 after 42 years as a closed military zone which pilgrims could only visit after coordinating with the Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria. The site is located in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, but starting on the 18th it will be operated by the jurisdiction of the Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, after Israeli authorities invested millions of shekels to build facilities there to handle a large number of tourists. The 18th is significant because it is the traditional day when Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians make an annual pilgrimage to the site to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, who was instrumental in the project, said he hoped Kasr al-Yehud would become a symbol for cooperation among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, as it would be a major attraction for tourists who would also want to visit other Biblical sites in the area.

We’ve mentioned this site before exactly one year ago, but apparently it did not open as planned last spring. In May Ferrell Jenkins posted a photo of the area as seen from the Jordanian side.

Tagged Tourism

Humorous Signs

Over the years, I’ve collected photographs of interesting signs posted in Israel and other places. One day I’d like to create a collection, as some sets could be helpful for adding color in teaching. I’ve found on signs the names of most of ancient Israel’s judges, many of its kings, as well as various biblical events. In countries where English is used on the signs but is not the native language, you are more likely to find errors. Below are a few that may not be of any use for teaching, but are interesting for other reasons.

I have to wonder how the wording on this sign came to be.

This one gets my attention.

One day I am going to try to sneak in a picture of my wife and I celebrating our fifteenth anniversary.

At least it’s not the Academy of the English Language.

Tagged Tourism

The Samaritans Today

The BBC has a brief profile of the modern Samaritans and some of the challenges they face, including their uneasy position between Jews and Arabs, and their hesitance to bring outsiders into the community.

For hundreds of years, the Samaritans have been caught between warring groups.
Before, they would take sides, but now they are trying a new approach – neutrality.
They are building good relations with their Palestinian and Jewish neighbours and are unique in the region for having both Israeli and Palestinian identity papers.
This means they can travel between Israel and the West Bank with ease.
Some entrepreneurial Samaritans are now using their unique status to offer a delivery service to businessmen in the West Bank town of Nablus, just a few miles away from Mount Gerizim.
[…]
In the 1920s their numbers dropped to just over 100 and it was predicted that they would die out.
The community was struggling with birth defects because of their tradition of marrying other Samaritans, and they were not open to new converts.
But some now say that to survive, they must open up to outsiders.
[…]
More recently, an American woman has made history by becoming the first person to convert to the Samaritan faith without marrying in.
Originally from Michigan, Sharon Sullivan now lives with her four children within the Samaritan community.

The full story is here.

HT: Paleojudaica

Tagged Samaria

Hot and Dry: Israel Breaks Record in 2010

From the Jerusalem Post:

The year 2010 was the hottest by a large margin since records began being kept in Israel, with temperatures two to three degrees hotter than the average, according to the Israel Meteorological Service’s year-end summary. What’s more, temperatures were one to one-and-a-half degrees Celsius higher than the next hottest year, a striking statistic, according to the IMS. Most years, the average temperatures fall within 0.1- .0.3 degrees of other years. For example, the average temperature for Jerusalem between 1981 and 2000 was 17.5 [63.5 F] degrees. In 2010, the average temperature was 20.3 [68.5] and during the next hottest year, 1998, it was 18.7 [65.6 F]. […] The IMS also tracks rainfall, and while this past year was one of the driest, there have been drier years. However, 2010 was unique in that it had the least amount of days of rain at many of the monitoring stations. For example, in Jerusalem and Haifa, the fewest number of rain days were recorded in the past 80 years.

The article gives further interesting details, such as the unusually large number of rainy days in June and the absence of rain in November. If you need help converting temperatures to Farenheit, this site will help.

Tagged Weather