Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

The Dragnet on the Sea of Galilee

Sea of Galilee, drawing in dragnet, mat04570

Dragnet in use on the Sea of Galilee, early 1900s

Matthew 13:47-48 (NIV) “Once again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was let down into the lake and caught all kinds of fish. When it was full, the fishermen pulled it up on the shore. Then they sat down and collected the good fish in baskets, but threw the bad away.”

“The jarf or ‘drag net’ is as much as 400 metres long. In mesh it is as fine as the shabakeh. It is used at the Lake chiefly during daylight, but along the Bay of Acre many of these nets are employed after the sunset with lanterns and torches to illuminate the scene. The net is paid out of a boat in an immense semicircle, the two ends being near the shore. The upper side floats by means of corks, the lower is kept down by small lead weights. As soon as the net is in position the men on the shore commence the process of hauling it in. Four men, if possible, take charge of each extremity, they have long ropes fixed to the lower and upper corners so that they drag in the bottom at the same time as the top. In order that a steady and uninterrupted pull may be kept up they merely fix the ropes to their belts, and each man nearest the landward end of the ropes, as soon as there is room, leaves off his hold there and runs forward to seize the ropes at the net-end as they come in shore. The fishermen consider it a matter of importance that when once the net has commenced to come in, there should be no pause in its progress. As the centre parts begin to come into shallow water some of the fishermen assist its progress by jumping or diving into the water and lifting the weighted lower side over the large stones. This is particularly necessary at Tiberias, where there are many large stones all over the bottom. Finally the net reaches the shore, having ‘gathered of every kind’ (Matt. xiii, 48). Clearly the net here described was the draw net.” Source: E. W. G. Masterman, “The Fisheries of Galilee,” Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (1908): 45.

The photo and quotation are taken from the Traditional Life and Customs volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-04570).

Tagged American Colony Photos, Galilee

Archaeological Museum Tour by iPod

You can now tour the Lynn H. Wood Archaeological Museum in Collegedale, Tennessee, with audio narration provided by William Dever and Michael Hasel, according to this month’s issue of DigSight. The 52-minute tour takes the visitor through the museum’s 16 display cases. Hasel, the museum curator, says, “I’ve traveled to dozens of museums all over the world, and I haven’t encountered another museum that uses iPods for their tours . . . I think we’re using cutting-edge technology.” The iPod displays photos of the artifacts to assist the visitor in identifying what is being described.

The newsletter also announces that the personal library of William Dever has been placed at Southern Adventist University. The library catalog is available online at library.southern.edu.

Next on the schedule for the Museum Lecture Series at SAU is K. Lawson Younger, speaking on “Aramean Astral Religion in Light of Recent Discoveries.” The lecture will be given on March 17, 2010 at 7:30 in the Lynn Wood Hall Chapel.

Tagged Lectures, Museums, Technology

National Geographic: Top Ten Archaeology Finds of 2009

National Geographic has posted its list of the Top Ten Archaeology Finds of 2009. None of them are directly related to the Bible, but readers with a wider interest will enjoy the summary. If time permits next week, I’ll try to come up with a list of top finds related to the biblical world from 2009. If you see a similar list elsewhere, note it in the comments here or send me an email.

Tagged Discoveries

15th Annual Conference: New Studies on Jerusalem

Joe Lauer has sent along notice of this conference which will be held in Tel Aviv on December 24, with lectures in Hebrew.

The Ingeborg Rennert Center The Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology The Faculty of Jewish Studies Bar-Ilan University

Invite you to

The 15th Annual Conference of
The Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies
“NEW STUDIES ON JERUSALEM”

8:20 gathering

8:45 opening remarks:

Prof. Joshua Schwartz, Director of the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies

Prof. Avraham Faust & Dr. Eyal Baruch, conference organizers

Session 1 – 9:00-10:55

Chair: Eyal Baruch

09:00 Ronny Reich & Eli Shukron- Channel II in the City of David, Jerusalem: Technical Details, Date and Function

09:20 Avraham Faust- King David’s Palace, a Hellenistic Structure or a Jebusite Fort: A Reexamination of the Large Stone Structure Unearthed by Eilat Mazar in the City of David

09:40 Moshe Garsiel- The Book of Samuel: Compilation Stages and Historical Value for Describing David’s Kingdom and His Capital in Jerusalem

10:05 Ehud Netzer- An opus reticulatum Structure, West of the Old City, Jerusalem

10:25 Ram Bouchnick, Omri Larnow, Guy Bar-Oz & Ronny Reich- Jerusalem Fish Menu from
the Late Second Temple Period

10:45 Discussion

10:55 Break

Session 2 – 11:20-13:10

Chair: Joshua Schwartz

11:20 Michael Ben-Ari- Simchat Beit Sho’eva – The Origins of the Custom.

11:40 Varda Sussman- Shaving/paring of Herodian Oil Lamps

12:00 Ze’ev H. Erlich (Jabo) – What is the ‘Kotel ha-Katan?’

12:20 Amos Kloner- The Damascus Gate

12:40 Yoav Farhi & Oded Lifshitz– A Unique Bulla from the Ramat Rahel Excavations Bearing the Name of Hadrian

13:00 Discussion

13:10 Lunch Break

Session 3 – 14:20-16:30

Chair: Josef Drory

14:20 Yehoshua Peleg- Were the Temple Mount Gates Reconstructed in the Second Century CE?

14:40 Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig- A Roman Period Centaur Relief from the Temple Mount

15:00 Perez Reuven- A Decorated Beam from the Roman Period in the Temple Mount

15:20 Bat-Sheva Garsiel- The Status of Jerusalem in Early Islamic Theological Writings

15:40 Michael Ehrlich- The Southern Quarters of Jerusalem during the Medieval Period: A Multi-
Periodical Overview

16:00 Oded Shay- The Contribution Made by the Jerusalem-based Monk Father Antonin, to Jewish
Studies and to the Research of the Material Culture of Palestine in the Final Years of the Ottoman
period

16:20 Discussion

16:30 Break

Session 4 – 17:00-18:30

Chair: Boaz Zissu

17:00 Amos Frumkin & Boaz Lengford- The Research of a Karstic Cave Used for Refuge in the
Jerusalem Hills

17:20 Boaz Zissu & Roi Porat- A Hoard of Coins and Other Finds from the Bar-Kokhba Period,
Recently Discovered in a Refuge Cave in the Jerusalem Hills

17:40 Guy Stiebel– “On the Edge” – Military Equipment from a Refuge Cave in the Jerusalem Hills

18:00 Hanan Eshel- New Discoveries from a Refuge Cave in the Jerusalem Hills, and their
Contribution to the Study of the Bar-Kokhba War

18:20 Discussion

The conference proceedings (app. 300 pp. including 17 articles in Hebrew, with English abstracts)
will be on sale during the conference

For additional information, please contact the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies (see
email address at bottom of this page) or Avi Faust (email address here).

Previous conference proceedings are available for purchase here.

Tagged Jerusalem, Lectures

Leper Wrapped in Cloth Buried in Jerusalem

The headlines on the web this morning are a little more sensational:

Burial cloth found in Jerusalem cave casts doubt on authenticity of Turin Shroud (Daily Mail)
Jerusalem tomb discovery casts further doubt on Turin Shroud (Telegraph)
Jesus-era leper sheds light on Turin shroud mystery (Haaretz)
Remains in tomb near Old City show first known case of leprosy (JPost)
‘Jesus-era’ burial shroud found (BBC)

The tomb was found nearly a decade ago, and all of the sensational results have been known for years. Two of the excavators, Gibson and Tabor, have both written extensively on this discovery in books they have published.

What is new is the publication of an article in the US Public Library of Science Journal, with the finding that this was evidence of the first human known to have leprosy. That’s good, but it’s not news. Maybe the news is buried in the details, and the publication of this article provides an opportunity to review an important discovery. That’s fine, but it should be noted that news outlets lead you to believe that there are more discoveries than they actually are because they report the same items time after time, particularly during the Christmas and Easter seasons.

If you read only one article, I’d suggest the one in the Jerusalem Post. But the best photos are in the Daily Mail. Here are the important facts:

A man was buried in this tomb between AD 1 and 50.
The rock-hewn tomb was located on the south side of the Hinnom Valley, in a cemetery used by the wealthy.
The man was wrapped in a burial shroud with a different weave from that of the Shroud of Turin.
The deceased suffered from tuberculosis and leprosy. (Apparently even the rich got sick.)
A significant portion of the dead man’s hair was recovered and analyzed (it was clean, short, and lice-free).
The man did not receive a secondary burial in an ossuary, as was typical at the time.

Here’s an important statement in the JPost article:

Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.

That gives you the basis for the researchers’ conclusion that the Turin Shroud is fake. As long as there was only one shroud maker in town in the first century, we can be absolutely sure that the Turin Shroud is from the medieval period. (I have no interest in or knowledge about the Shroud, but I do care about assumptions necessary for conclusions. The conclusions are in the headlines; the assumptions are always buried if not omitted.)

You can read the rest in the articles linked to above. The books that I alluded to by the archaeologists are these:

Shimon Gibson, The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence
James Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity

UPDATE (12/17): James Davila at Paleojudaica responds to the Jerusalem Post statement quoted above:

That’s not quite what it says in the Daily Mail article quoted in my post yesterday. The claim there is that “[i]t was made with a simple two-way weave – not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud, which textile experts say was introduced more than 1,000 years after Christ lived.” That is a more general claim that ought to be verifiable or falsifiable based on the reasonably ample surviving textile evidence from antiquity. If it is true that this type of weave is only attested much later, that would severely weaken any case for the genuineness of the Shroud of Turin. Are there specialists in first-century textiles out there who would like to speak up?

Tagged Analysis, Jerusalem

Carrying Tins at Jaffa Gate

With last week’s release of the delightful volume Traditional Life and Customs, I am planning to feature a number of photographs from that collection here in the coming weeks. With yesterday’s post on Jaffa Gate, I thought I’d follow it up with a photo taken here from the early 1900s. This was during a time when traffic flowed freely in both directions.

The tins were used for petrol, and obviously, they are empty here. If you’re going through a tough patch at work today, you might think of this guy and be thankful that you don’t have his job.

The photo is taken from the Traditional Life and Customs volume of The American Colony and Eric Matson Collection (Library of Congress, LC-matpc-05929).

Tagged American Colony Photos