Uncategorized Archives - Page 358 of 556

Israel to Remove Minefields

Israel has finally decided to remove its minefields. From Arutz-7:

A law that will require the removal of all known mines in Israel passed its second and third Knesset reading Monday. The law, originally sponsored by former MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima) and later by MK Roni Bar-On (Kadima), was approved by a 43-0 vote. It authorizes the Defense Ministry to set up a new department that will be responsible for clearing minefields in the Negev, Golan, and other parts of the country that the IDF had set up in the early days of the state.
[…]
Among those present in the Knesset plenum as the law was passed was Daniel Yuval, who was badly hurt several years ago when he entered a minefield in the Golan. Yuval, now 13, lost a leg to the mine that exploded when he inadvertently stepped on it in a snow-covered field where signs indicating that the field was mined were difficult or impossible to see. Yuval became an Israeli ambassador for the cause of land-mine removal, speaking around Israel and at international forums on the problem of land mines.

The full story is here.

Minefield near the southern end of the Sea of Galilee

Tagged Golan, Tourism

Professor Nadav Na’aman of Tel Aviv University will be lecturing this week at Pennsylvania State University on the subject of “Text and Archaeology: Two Sets of Competing Data of Urban Culture Decline.” The lecture will be held on Thursday, March 17, 2011 at 4:00 p.m. in 102 Weaver Building.

It’s probably just a coincidence that this week Penn State professor Donald Redford is lecturing on a variety of subjects in Jerusalem.

HT: Eric Welch

Tagged Lectures

Archaeologists Battle in Elah Valley

A feud between archaeologists in Israel today resembles the ancient struggle between David and Goliath. As with the battle of old, one combatant is from Jerusalem (Yosef Garfinkel of Hebrew University) and the other from the Philistine plain (Oded Lipschitz of Tel Aviv University). The skirmish is only the latest in an on-going conflict that goes back to the establishment of the entity on the coast (the Institute of Archaeology founded by Yohanan Aharoni). The subject of dispute is the very same as that between the ancient Israelites and Philistines—control of the lowlands (Shephelah). In fact, it is the site of Socoh, identified in connection with the Philistine encampment that is at the heart of the dispute between the two archaeologists.

Aren Maeir, excavator of the Philistine city of Gath, is an outside observer who drew our attention to a report of the clash in Haaretz (Hebrew). The article observes that archaeologists at Tel Aviv University typically deny or minimize the existence of David and the Israelite kingdom. Hebrew University researchers, however, tend to defend the greatness of the ancient state centered in Jerusalem. Archaeology has been used to support both sides of the debate, and most recently Hebrew University has claimed a major advance with the excavations of the 10th century site of Khirbet Qeiyafa and its ancient inscription.

With Hebrew U excavating Khirbet Qeiyafa on the north side of the Elah Valley and Tel Aviv U surveying Tel Azekah on the west side, Tel Socoh on the south side is up for grabs. The Israel Antiquities Authority gave permission to survey the site to both parties. But when Tel Aviv U discovered that more than surveying work was going on, Lipschitz fired off a testy letter to the authorities, claiming that Hebrew U had opened excavation squares and was blatantly violating the terms of the license.

Garfinkel has defended himself against the attack, arguing that the “excavation” is clearly the work of antiquities thieves and that Lipschitz cannot tell the difference between an excavation and a robbery.

Lipschitz, however, found incriminating evidence in one of the excavation trenches—a water bottle with the name of one of Garfinkel’s team! Garfinkel has observed that the site is not far from the
West Bank and the area where the partition fence ends giving Arab thieves easy access.

The Israel Antiquities Authority has responded to Lipschitz’s letter by rejecting his claims and declaring the “excavations” to be the work of antiquities thieves. Only time will tell who will secure rights to excavate Socoh and what evidence it will supply concerning the ancient conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines.

Tagged Excavations, Shephelah

The Ides of March

Today is the “Ides of March,” the day that commemorates the death of Julius Caesar. In March, the “Ides” always falls on the 15th, but that’s not true of other months. William Browning explains:

The Roman calendar had weird ways to determine times of the month. The Ides of March doesn’t necessarily refer to a holiday or festival on the Roman calendar but instead talks about how the Romans told time in the year….
The calendar organized months around three days — Kalends, Nones and Ides. Kalends noted the first of the month, so in modern terms the Kalends of June would be June 1. Nones served as the seventh day in March, May, July and October; it was the fifth in every other month. Ides were the middle of the month — they were the 15th of March, May, July and October but the 13th in others.
Days were noted by counting backwards from the upcoming monthly marker. For instance, Oct. 10 would be designated the “V Ides” or five days before the Ides of October. This method of dating lasted well into Medieval times before it was replaced with the Gregorian calendar used today.

The plot against Caesar was a reaction to his efforts to increase his power and become “dictator for life.” According to National Geographic:

The Romans had no love for kings. According to legend, they expelled their last one in 509 B.C. While Caesar had made pointed and public displays of turning down offers of kingship, he showed no reluctance to accept the office of “dictator for life” in February 44 B.C. According to Osgood, this action may have sealed his fate in the minds of his enemies. “We can see [now] that that was enough to get him killed,” Osgood said.
Caesar had pushed the envelope for some time before his death. “Caesar was the first living Roman ever to appear on the coinage,” Osgood said. Normally, the honor was reserved for deities. He notes that some historians suspect that Caesar might have been attempting to establish a cult in his honor in a move towards deification.

Caesar’s assassination did little more than delay the process, for his heir Augustus became Rome’s first emperor fifteen years later.

HT: Explorator

Tagged Italy

New CD: Seven Churches of Revelation

Leen Ritmeyer has just released a new CD with 105 pictures and captions of the sites where the seven churches of Revelation were located in the first century.

It begins on the beautiful Greek island of Patmos, where the Apostle John was told to write the visions which he saw in a scroll and send them to the Seven Churches (Greek singular:”ekklesia”) which were in Asia. We visit these sites: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea in order, with additional slides devoted to Laodicea’s sister churches in the Lycus Valley: Colossae and Hierapolis, (without reference to these neighbouring churches, in particular their water supply, the letter to Laodicea would be unintelligible). The circular postal route of the messenger is mapped, with a separate map given to highlight his journey from one city to the next. Each section includes a slide containing the full message to each church (quoted from the NKJV) with a useful summary given in its caption. The church and its city is then placed in its geographical and historical setting, with links made to the local background in each letter. Images providing Scriptural insight, accompanied by detailed captions, are given of each city. In Ephesus, you can disembark at the ancient harbour and walk with the messenger up the Harbour Way to the Theatre where the great riot had taken place about thirty years earlier in the time of Paul. With reference to Smyrna, see a possible modern remnant of the “crown of life.” In Philadelphia, ponder the poignancy of the promise to the “overcomers” of that city, never more to have to “go out.” This was to a group of people who were used to always having to flee the city, in an area notoriously prone to earthquakes.

More information is given here, and the CD may be purchased for £15 (~$24) here.

Tagged Resources

The Disappearance of Artifacts from Sinai

Some important artifacts excavated by Israeli archaeologists in the Sinai Peninsula but since returned to the Egyptian government have disappeared, according to the former director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass. Hershel Shanks writes of this revelation from a recent interview in which Hawass criticized Israel for not publishing the results of the Kuntillet Ajrud excavations.

In an editorial in the Jerusalem Post, Shanks declares that both problems have been or shortly will be resolved.

On March 3, the Egyptian press reported that 30 truckloads of antiquities had been moved for safekeeping from the Qantara storage facilities to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Included were “Sinai artifacts that were retrieved from Israel following the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.”

Concerning the publication of the excavations, Shanks reports:

I subsequently inquired about this of Joseph Aviram, president of the Israel Exploration Society. He told me that the publication of the inscriptions had recently been reassigned to two leading epigraphers, Shmuel Ahituv and Esther Eshel. They have completed their work and await only the contribution of excavator Ze’ev Meshel.
Aviram hopes to have the publication out this year. But, still, that’s 35 years after the excavation.

The artifacts involved include the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions that mention “Yahweh … and his Asherah.”

Tagged Egypt

Israel to Remove Minefields

Na'aman Lecture at Penn State

Archaeologists Battle in Elah Valley

The Ides of March

New CD: Seven Churches of Revelation

The Disappearance of Artifacts from Sinai