Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Caesarea Storm Damage Assessment

Ran Shapira writes about the storm damage to Caesarea in the weekend edition of Haaretz. Here are a few snippets:

The original breakwater, Margalit explains, was built in the 1950s. On top of the foundations of an ancient ship that had sunk into the seabed not far from the Herodian port, a thick concrete, L-shaped wall was constructed. The whole vertical part, in relation to the coast line, of this wall collapsed entirely in the storm. Indeed, the waves were so powerful that boulders, each weighing a ton, which had been laid on top of the breakwater to prevent people from walking on it, was swept away as though made of cardboard.
[…]
About 10 days after that meeting, Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov came to Caesarea, where he heard from local authorities about the dangers to the most popular tourist site in Israel after Masada; Caesarea has about 1 million visitors annually. The minister promised to act – but the storm got there before him. The waves, with the help of winds of 100 kilometers per hour and more, fulfilled the darkest of predictions. At present, say Margalit and his colleagues, the ancient port is totally vulnerable to the waves, and there is no way to assess how much damage has been caused below the surface of the water. Other areas of Caesarea archaeological park, north and south of the port, did not benefit even from the protection of the breakwater, meager as it was.
[…]
“We have to merge our efforts to rescue the site,” says Margalit. “However, the means at our disposal are meager. The state must join the efforts. If we don’t provide an immediate solution, in the next storm the site at Caesarea is liable to collapse totally, including more of the ancient port, the aqueduct, the city wall from the Byzantine period and so on. Even the Roman theater has been left defenseless. If it is hurt, [singer] Shlomo Artzi will have to find another venue for his performances.”

The full article is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Weather

Dating the Destructions of Iron Age Megiddo

For the last fifteen years, scholars have disagreed sharply over the archaeological chronology of the early Iron II period. Israel Finkelstein began advocating a “Low Chronology” in the mid-1990s, with the result that the time of Kings David and Solomon was said to be poor and insignificant.

Now Finkelstein plans to put his theory to four tests, using scientific analysis of the destruction material from his excavations of Megiddo. The implications may be far-reaching, though I’m dubious about the claim that they’ll settle matters “once and for all.” From Matthew Kalman at AOL News:

Now Finkelstein, together with Tel Aviv University physicist Eli Piazetsky, is spearheading an international effort to settle the chronology once and for all. A scientific conference at Megiddo, “Synchronizing Clocks at Armageddon,” launched a project to analyze 10 separate Iron Age destruction layers using four state-of-the-art scientific techniques: radiocarbon dating, optical luminescence, archaeo-magnetism and rehydroxilation — a new method pioneered in Britain within the last two years.
Megiddo is the only place in the world with so many destruction layers — archaeological strata resulting from a calamity such as a fire, earthquake or conquest — that resulted from a specific event in history.
Finkelstein told AOL News that the site provides “a very dense, accurate and reliable ladder for the dating of the different monuments and the layers.”
“These destruction layers can serve as anchors for the entire system of dating,” Finkelstein said. “Megiddo is the only site which has 10 layers with radiocarbon results for the period 1300 to 800 B.C.E.”

The full article explains the techniques and how the archaeology of Israel impacts the dating of sites in Greece.

Tagged Jezreel Valley, Technology

Mount of Olives and Bahurim Surveyed

Results of an archaeological survey of the northeastern slope of the Mount of Olives have identified numerous ancient burial caves, some cisterns, and the biblical site of Bahurim.

The report is published in Hadashot Arkheologiyot 122 with a number of photos and illustrations.

The three areas surveyed are located around the eastern exit of the car tunnel passing through the Mount of Olives (map here, photo below).

The burial caves are from the Second Temple period and later, but in some places remains were preserved from the Iron Age. Ras Tammim in the survey’s Area III has been identified with biblical Bahurim. This site is best known as the place where Shimei cursed David when he fled from Jerusalem during Absalom’s revolt.

As King David approached Bahurim, a man from the same clan as Saul’s family came out from there. His name was Shimei son of Gera, and he cursed as he came out. He pelted David and all the king’s officials with stones, though all the troops and the special guard were on David’s right and left. As he cursed, Shimei said, “Get out, get out, you man of blood, you scoundrel! (2 Sam 16:5-7).

Bahurim also is mentioned in connection with the return of David’s wife Michal. You cannot help but feel sorry for Michal’s second husband who followed, “weeping behind her all the way to Bahurim” (2 Sam 3:16).

About the site (Horvat Ras Tammim), the report states:

The site is situated on a hilltop (Spot Height 704), east of the Mount of Olives. The area at the top of the hill is cultivated farmland, whereas the slopes are covered with vegetation. Potsherds, mostly dating to the Iron Age and the Early Roman and Byzantine periods, were found within the precincts of the ruin. Twenty-one sites were identified.

More details of the survey, including 11 diagrams and illustrations, are published here.

HT: Bible and Interpretation

Mount of Olives, aerial view to southeast

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem

Mount Carmel Visit

Shmuel Browns has toured Mount Carmel in the aftermath of the fire and posts a report and a number of photographs. He writes:

On December 2, 2010 a fire erupted on Mount Carmel burning for 4 days until fire fighters could get the blaze under control and destroyed over 50,000 dunam of forest. The JNF estimates that 1.5 million trees were burnt in the fire, some estimates raise the total figure to 5.5 million trees and the Carmel Hai-Bar nature reserve was damaged. We learned that pine trees, soft woods with a lot of resin, are usually killed by the intense heat; their surival mechanism is that the pine cones open in the heat and hundreds of seeds are scattered. The oak trees, being a hardwood, often are able to live, the branches are burned and die but the roots survive and send up new shoots. According to officials, nearly half of the 150,000 dunams of the Carmel Forest reserve have been destroyed in the fire and it will take at least 20 years to for the forests to grow back.

See his blog for more details and pictures.

Tagged Tourism

Israel Selects 16 New National Heritage Sites

Arutz-7 identifies three of the newly designated sites as Umm el-Qanatir, Gamla, and the Herodium.

A Cabinet-level committee has added 16 new national heritage sites, including two in the Golan Heights and Herod’s tomb in Gush Etzion. Foreign media immediately tried to turn the decision into a political act.
[…]
Also on the list were two archeological sites in the Golan Heights and one in the Judean Hills, south of Jerusalem. All three are familiar to millions of tourists, but at least one foreign news agency implied that their inclusion on the list was a political decision because they are located in areas that are ”occupied.”
The Golan Heights have been a legal part of Israel for 30 years, but most international media still refer to it as “the occupied Golan.” One of the sites is Umm el-Kanitar, where archaeological excavations have revealed a Roman-era Jewish city and synagogue.
The other is on Gamla, a camel hump-shaped hill in the Golan that includes the remains of an ancient Jewish city and which was the site of the 1st century CE Jewish revolt against Roman conquerors. Gamla is a symbol of heroism for the modern State of Israel.
A third site is Herodian, the site of Herod’s palace in eastern Gush Etzion and a popular site for foreign tourists as well as Israelis.

The full article is here.

UPDATE: The Jerusalem Post story includes additional details.

Tagged Golan, Herod's Tomb, Tourism

Anderson on “Jesus: The Man”

Was Jesus a carpenter?
Did Jesus have short hair?
Did Jesus grow up with siblings?
Did Jesus work in Tiberias and Sepphoris?

These and other issues are discussed in a review article by Paul N. Anderson on the National Geographic special, “Jesus: The Man.” Anderson recommends the program but his summary and analysis may be read without seeing this episode in the “Mysteries of the Bible” series.

Anderson explains the value of the presentation:

The value of this larger series, and this episode in particular, is that they cast valuable archaeological and historical light on the story of Jesus presented in the gospels. The correctives to some supposed knowledge are helpful in that they create new understandings of Jesus—the realism of his engaging Greco-Roman society, the ethical-political thrust of John’s ministry, economic and social backdrops of Jesus’ teachings on the Kingdom of God. The peasant-class status of Jesus and his family helps contextualize Jesus’ ministry, and imagining a worker with stone helps some of his teachings in the gospels come alive, including (I might add) later references to Jesus’ being referred to as the stone the builders rejected, which ironically became the cornerstone of the new household of God (Ac. 4:11; 1 Pet. 2:1-10).

The article is worth reading. One quibble: his comment about the scribal conjecture of Bethany gets the evidence backwards. The earliest manuscripts read Bethany, but Origen couldn’t find a Bethany on the east side of the Jordan River and changed it to Bethabara. For more, see J. Carl Laney’s article (pdf) or my comment to this post.

Tagged Galilee