Todd Bolen, Author at BiblePlaces.com

Barkay and others lecture in Los Angeles

I’ve known about this series for sometime because I originally had scheduled Gabriel Barkay for a trip for my class, but that had to be changed because of his LA engagement. In any case, full details of Excavating in Jerusalem and the Mountains Around Her: What the New Excavations Teach Us About the City, the Bible, the People and the Temple are now available from the University of Judaism. There are 7 lectures, with an entrance cost of $25 each. A few years ago I attended some of these lectures and I believe there was a student price at that time. The top three that I would attend if I could:

Gabriel Barkay: What Does Recent Excavation Reveal About the Temple Mount Past and Present?

Beth Alpert Nakhai: An Archaeological View of Biblical Women and Their Families

Thomas Levy: King Solomon’s Mines Revisited: Archaeological Explorations in Edom and What They Mean for Understanding Biblical History

$25 is not cheap, esp. for students, but these are the scholars who have made (or are making) the discoveries. And LA is a shorter drive than Israel.

Tagged Lectures

Siloam Channel: Before and After

Here’s a lesser known aspect of the Pool of Siloam excavations. Most people know that the pool is fed by Hezekiah’s Tunnel, but they may not be aware of a second channel (known as Channel #2, or the Siloam Channel/Tunnel) which connects the Gihon Spring and the Pool of Siloam but on the east side of the City of David. This channel runs on the western slope above the Kidron Valley and it was once believed that it watered the King’s Gardens in the valley via a series of square openings.

One of those openings is on the southern end of the City of David. Here’s a photo taken in September 2002.

You can see that the opening looks square and the channel looks full of trash. Also note the street pavement and the crack in the bedrock in the upper left.

Eli Shukron’s recent excavations of the Pool of Siloam has included work on this channel, and our students have had some involvement in that (no glory here: more like cleaning out a sewer). But you can see the difference once the pavement has been removed and the channel cleared. Stephen’s head (on the left) is at about pavement level.

Tagged Jerusalem

Poofy White Clouds

Today was a glorious day. Fortunately I was in town early for a lecture and had some free time before the church service, and I took advantage of it. I confess that of late I have become something of a poofy white cloud fanatic. So often the sky in Israel is flat blue and when you get poofy white clouds, the effect is dramatic. Here’s Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives:

I could dig up a picture without the clouds, but it’s late and I’m tired, so just imagine :-).

And here’s Bethlehem this morning (from the north). This could be my favorite Bethlehem picture. I had to wait a while for the clouds to move so the city was in the sunlight. What I probably like most about the picture is that Bethlehem is hard to see :-). The countryside grabs more of your attention, which is how it all used to be. Now the modern city is so un-photogenic that you really can’t get anything interesting inside it.

My only regret on the day is that I wasn’t on the Mount of Olives for the beautiful sunset. Instead I watched it in my rearview mirror as I drove back into town for an evening lecture.

Tagged Jerusalem, Travels

City of David, Then and Now

I decided that blog format with its narrow width didn’t quite suit tonight’s post, so I’ve put it on a separate page. Today after dropping our three oldest off at VBS, I headed to the City of David with a handful of old photographs that I had printed off. My goal was to get the “now” version. For the most part, it was not successful. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it greatly, but it means that things have changed so much that many times I couldn’t even get to the same location where the photograph was taken (or figure out exactly where it was). But I had success in a couple of places, and one of them I have posted, with downloadable high-res versions so you can flip back and forth between them. Take a look.

Tagged Jerusalem, Travels

Did Worship of Yahweh Leave Archaeological Evidence?

I have two books on my desk right now, and both make the same annoying point. One is Finkelstein’s The Bible Unearthed, and the other is Dever’s Did God Have a Wife. A major premise of the latter and a point made in the former is that according to archaeology, worship of Yahweh only developed in the late period – time of Hezekiah or Josiah. Here’s Finkelstein:

“Yet archaeology suggests quite a different situation—one in which the golden age of tribal and Davidic fidelity to YHWH was a late religious ideal, not a historical reality. Instead of a restoration, the evidence suggests that a centralized monarchy and national religion focused in Jerusalem took centuries to develop and was new in Hezekiah’s day. The idolatry of the people of Judah was not a departure from their earlier monotheism. It was, instead, the way the people of Judah had worshiped for hundreds of years” (Finkelstein and Silberman 2001: 234).

One can hold to this view, but please don’t pretend that it is based on archaeological grounds. These authors seem to miss the most obvious point: worship of Yahweh as commanded in the Bible didn’t leave archaeological evidence. The exception would be the temple, and nothing of that exists thanks to the Babylonians, Zerubbabel, Herod, the Romans, and the Muslims. These authors argue that because they have found Asherah figurines, bull statuettes, high places, and inscriptions related to non-Yahwistic worship, and because they haven’t found the same for “Biblical religion,” then therefore the latter didn’t exist. They date it to the late kings because that’s when they date the text.

Still no archaeological evidence, mind you.

Another common error in these works is reflected in Finkelstein’s comment immediately before:

“The biblical picture of Judah’s history is therefore unambiguous in its belief that the kingdom had once been exceptionally holy but had sometimes abandoned the faith” (ibid.).

Why do some liberals insist on this mischaracterization? It is patently false. The biblical record is that the Israelites consistently failed to follow the Lord. The exceptions were those who did. That doesn’t make biblical faith less true, real, or required. It does tell us that archaeology should expect to find significant remains of non-biblical religion. When it does, archaeologists act surprised and say, “Aha, I told you the Bible wasn’t telling you the truth.” In fact it is, but like the ancients, moderns refuse to listen.

I’ve only skimmed Dever’s work at this point, but Finkelstein’s is full of similar errors, inconsistencies, and gaps of logic. It’s also one of the best-selling books on “biblical archaeology” in the last decade.

Tagged Analysis

Follow-up on the Pool of Siloam

It’s been an interesting week for me to see the Pool of Siloam story play out. Because I made a page about it last month, it was listed in the search engines when the LA Times published their story. But it was the DrudgeReport that posted a teaser about it, without a link to the LA Times article, that got the most attention (I’m guessing). So many went looking for more information and googled “Pool of Siloam” and found BiblePlaces.com. I think there were about 5000 hits on that page in the first 24 hours. One of the visitors was a CNN producer who emailed about using some of the photos. They aired an interview with the excavator yesterday, using some of the BiblePlaces photos during the interview and crediting the photographer on the air. Thus, my two seconds of “fame.”

I don’t know that many picked up on this, but the press conference was called by Biblical Archaeology Society, in part to highlight their upcoming article on the pool. The managing editor of BAR emailed me that the article is now posted on their website in pdf format. That’s a great thing for them to do – to give the article away for free. I recommend you both read the article and subscribe to the magazine, if you don’t already.

The BAR article is not long, but it is written by Hershel Shanks and it is good. (That’s no surprise, since he wrote the best popular book on Jerusalem.) A good bit of the info was covered in the LA Times article, but Shanks’ treatment is devoid of the mistakes and goofy quotes that the newspaper had. I’ll make a few comments nonetheless.

One question that Shanks raises, but doesn’t answer, is the connection of Hezekiah’s Tunnel to the Second Temple period pool. I don’t think the archaeologists have an answer for this, but it’s an important point, because there is a distance of 50 meters (?) between the end of the tunnel and the northern end of the pool. Possibilities that I can think of: there was a channel that carried the water, or there was another pool where the Byzantine pool sits today. My money goes with the latter.

The diagram on page 18 is misleading in showing the size of the new pool. In fact it is about four times longer than the Byzantine pool, which would also make the two closer together. One thing that is not mentioned on the article but drawn on the diagram and certainly worthy of further study (and future articles) is the “Siloam Channel.” The last word has not been said on that watersystem.

Perhaps this is just a matter of poor wording and not necessarily the intended point, but the article makes it sound like the pool of Hezekiah’s time is different than the pool of Nehemiah’s time (p. 18), but I think the point in Neh 3:15 is that this is the repair of a previously existing pool.

I don’t think if you live in Israel during June, you think of the winter rains as “fast approaching.” In fact, you think the summer will never end :-). This August has been quite pleasant, and it even sprinkled a few days ago.

This is an interesting sentence: “The landings served as a kind of esplanade for people to stand on when the steps were submerged in water.” There are actually two landings revealed (so far), which suggests, if Shanks is right, that the various landings would have been in use at different times depending on the present water level. OR the water level of the pool did not come up all the way to the top. I wouldn’t rule the latter possibility out. You only need steps for about 6 feet under water.

“How far into the valley the pool extended, the archaeologists are not sure. Ronny’s best guess is that it is about the same as the width of the pool on the side they have uncovered.” This is less of a guess than you might think. The orchard really is a good guide for where the pool was. The modern roads/paths around it are simply successors to roads/paths that have been there for millennia. Those define the area of the pool. The orchard is a very fertile one because of the runoff deposited in the pool over the years.

If you’re interested in a clearer explanation and more detail for how the pool was dated, Shanks has it. He confirms some points I made concerning beginning and end dates that were not accurate in the LA Times article.

“The archaeologists found it under nearly 10 feet of mud in places.” My guess is that there is even more fill, and this doesn’t take into account the fact that bottom (probably) has not been reached.

When Byzantine Christians returned to the area in the fourth century, they assumed the Pool of Siloam referred to in the New Testament was at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, so they built their pool and a commemorative church where the tunnel comes out of the rock.

I’m not yet convinced this is the full story.

Shanks makes a good point about one problem with the pool being a mikveh – it has to be done in the nude. This reminds me of a crazy theory that Kenyon had when trying to rationalize her (now thoroughly discredited) minimalist view of Iron Age Jerusalem. She said that Hezekiah’s Tunnel emptied into a cave, such that it was protected from Assyrian attack. This she had to invent because of the problem with diverting the water from outside the city on the east to outside the city on the west. Since there were no walls beyond the Eastern Hill, she invented the cave. I suppose the cave idea would keep the boys modest! Shanks adds,

Perhaps there was some means of providing privacy.

Could be, but for those of you who haven’t been there, the pool is surrounded by hills on all sides, so it seems to me that there would have to be a covering over (part of) the pool. No evidence of that yet, that I know of.

This struck me as strange:

However, Ronny and Eli do not want to dig into the verdant orchard that now fills the unexcavated portion of the New Testament-era Pool of Siloam.

I’ve never heard of archaeologists not wanting to expose more of what they’re excavating, especially when the excavation is relatively young and major questions remain. This sounds to me like a “be nice” approach. And that’s confirmed (to me) by the next two sentences:

Besides, it belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church, which, like Ronny and Eli, would not want the orchard destroyed. But they would like to make a very small cut through the trees to see how deep the pool is and to learn whether there are Iron Age remains beneath.

Of all the places to remove an orchard, I’d say this is a good one. Usually the problem archaeologists have is that there is some building in the way, like a house. Those are harder to dig through.

The Book and the Spade has just posted an interview with Ronny Reich about the pool. I haven’t had time yet to listen to it, but may make some comments when I do.

Time to head home. Our daughter Bethany is 3 today, and I’m planning to assemble the new IBEX grill. Shabbat shalom.

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem