Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Weekend Roundup

The latest issue of DigSight from the Institute of Archaeology at Southern Adventist University reports on a recent survey of Socoh (Kh. Shuweikeh) near Khirbet Qeiyafa as well as summaries of recent related lectures.

The New York Times has a good article about the current drilling project in the center of the Dead Sea.

Reports from recent excavations at Jericho by the University of Rome are now available online.

A rabbi has recently forbidden visits to the Western Wall on Shabbat because the security cameras violate Jewish law.

Stephen Carlson has posted his NTS article, “The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem: Κατάλυμα in Luke 2.7” (pdf). He also links to Mark Goodacre’s podcast on the same subject, “Was Jesus Born in a Stable?” For my brief thoughts on the issue, see this post from several years ago. One correction to that post: the 2005 TNIV translates the word as “guest room.”

Studies of minerals at Timna Valley in southern Israel indicate that “slag left over from Iron Age copper smelting shows the Earth’s magnetic field was stronger and more variable than scientists ever imagined.”

The Second International Conference of the Jeselsohn Epigraphic Center of Jewish History is entitled “Epigraphy and Daily Life – From the Bible to the Talmud” and dedicated to the memory of Professor Hanan Eshel. Leen Ritmeyer has listed the schedule and Aren Maeir posts a link to the
program (pdf).

Zvi Ben-Dor Benite has some interesting thoughts on the “ten lost tribes” at The Bible and Interpretation.

The Explorations in Antiquity Center in Georgia (USA) is building a Roman theater and forum.

Their newsletter is available here (pdf).

The best photographs of the Roman statue found in the sea at Ashkelon are in this article at the Daily Mail.

HT: Jay Baggett and Steve Ulrich

Tagged Dead Sea, Lectures, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup

Give-Away: Pictorial Library of Bible Lands

Our last give-away before Christmas is the complete collection of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands. This set was originally released 10 years ago as a four-volume collection, but it has expanded over the years to its current ten volumes. The Pictorial Library was our first collection and its has remained the most popular.

To increase significantly your odds of winning this week, you need only guess which individual volume has been the most popular (in terms of sales) over the last year. We’ll give you a hint: it is one of the Israel volumes. (You can browse their contents at these links: Galilee, Samaria, Jerusalem, Judah, Negev.)

We’ll choose two winners on Sunday afternoon. One winner will be selected from those who correctly guess the best-selling volume. The other winner will be selected from all entries.

We’ve also chosen this give-away to be the occasion of our first-ever online discount of the Pictorial Library. Through Sunday only, there is a 20% discount. That’s a savings of nearly $38. As always, shipping is free in the US and every order will go by USPS Priority and will almost certainly arrive before Christmas. (If you order and then win, we’ll give you a full refund.)

Click here to get the discount. For the drawing, only one entry per person, please, but feel free to tell your friends, neighbors, pastors, and teachers. After the drawing, all names and email addresses will be deleted. The drawing will be held Sunday at 5 p.m. (PST).

UPDATE (12/19): Not one person correctly guessed that the best-selling volume is “Negev and the Wilderness.” Most guessed “Jerusalem,” which is the second most popular (with Galilee in third place). Perhaps “Negev and the Wilderness” sells more individual copies because purchasers interested in Jerusalem or Galilee may be more inclined to purchase the entire set. Two winners were selected from all entrants. Congratulations to Niek and Mitch.

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Tagged Give-Away

Storm Damage along Mediterranean Coast

The Media Line has a good summary of the destruction of archaeological sites by last weekend’s storm.

Winter’s belated arrival in Israel brought with it the biggest storm in two decades, wreaking havoc. Ships sank, billboards and power lines fell. Where there wasn’t rain, dust storms blanketed the cities and farmland. Coastal regions were pummeled by huge waves lifted by 100-kilometer-an-hour winds. The storms also caused severe damage to archeological and antiquities sites up and down the country’s Mediterranean coast, most seriously at the Herodian port city of Caesarea. Experts say the cost of restoring the sites will be in the millions of shekels, but in many cases the losses are irretrievable. “It was the most severe storm we have seen in the last 25 years, since we began measuring the waves along the coast of the Mediterranean,” Matti Weiss of the Israel Meteorological Service, told The Media Line. Waves reached a height of as much as 13 meters in some areas. Caesarea, where Herod the Great constructed one of the biggest ports in the ancient world between 22 and 10 BC, was hit particularly hard by the storm. A 1950s-era breakwater built off the coast of the site to protect it from the natural force of the sea broke up into three pieces during the storm, and the result was devastating.

The article notes that Caesarea is closed at this time and estimates for restoring the damage are about $17 million. For more details, continue reading the story here.

Tagged Weather

Bethlehem Booked for Christmas

It was not all that many years ago that Bethlehem was a ghost town, as far as tourists were concerned. On the day I took the photo below, my students were almost the only tourists in town.

The situation for the city was particularly difficult because a large investment was made in tourist infrastructure in preparation for the year 2000. But the Arab uprising began in the latter part of that year, and tourists avoided Bethlehem, Jericho, and other Arab areas.

In those years, shopkeepers and hotel proprietors were desperate for visitors to stay longer. This year, you don’t even that choice, as there is literally “no room in the inn.”

From the Jerusalem Post:

Bethlehem has seen a record number of tourists this year and its thousands of hotel rooms are fully booked for Christmas week, thanks to steadily declining violence in the West Bank over the past few years.
[…]
So far this year, 1.4 million tourists have visited the traditional birthplace of Jesus and 90,000 are expected during the Christmas season, a significant increase over last year, according to Israeli government figures. The numbers of visitors have been rising steadily in recent years.
[…]
The town’s 2,750 hotel rooms are booked solid for Christmas week and four more hotels are under construction. The expected turnout for Christmas week is up strongly from about 70,000 last year.

How long will the upswing last? If history is any indication, not long.

An empty Nativity Square, October 2003

Tagged Judah, Tourism

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

Search for Sodom under Dead Sea

From Arutz-7:

Russia and Jordan have signed an agreement to search the bottom of the Dead Sea for the remains of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Arabic news media reported over the weekend. According to the report, a Russian company has agreed to conduct the search in cooperation with Jordanian authorities, picking up all costs – in exchange for exclusive rights to film a documentary of the search. The report quoted one of the Jordanian heads of the project, Zia Madani, as saying that the search would begin in late December.
[…]
According to Madani, further evidence that the cities remains are located on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea came after recent NASA photographs of the area indicated that the bottom of the sea is littered with debris and objects not found in other bodies of water. According to the Jordanian, Israel recently sent a submarine down into the Dead Sea in an attempt to explore the bottom of the sea, but discovered that the objects in the NASA photos were on the Jordanian side of the sea. Jordan prevented the Israelis from searching over the border, and now Jordan is seeking to discover what it believes are the remains of the cities by itself.
Israel National News could not confirm that an Israeli submarine had in fact searched the depths of the Dead Sea on such a mission.

The full story is here. Some archaeologists and biblical scholars have suggested that Bab edh-Dhra on the eastern side of the Dead Sea may be Sodom. A new season is beginning this week at Tall el-Hammam northeast of the Dead Sea, a site the excavator believes is Sodom (but see my objections here).

One problem with the theory that Sodom is under the Dead Sea is Zephaniah 2:9, which suggests that the area of the city was known and visible late in Judah’s history, not hidden under the waters.

Therefore, as surely as I live,”
declares the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel,
“surely Moab will become like Sodom,
the Ammonites like Gomorrah—
a place of weeds and salt pits,
a wasteland forever.
The remnant of my people will plunder them;
the survivors of my nation will inherit their land.” (Zeph 2:9)

Tagged Dead Sea