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Palestine Park, Chautauqua, New York

A friend tipped me off that my summer travels this year would have me near Chautauqua Institution in western New York, the location of Palestine Park. Originally built in 1874, the model of the land of Palestine (as it was then known) has been reconstructed and enlarged over the years to its present size of 350 feet long (110 m) at a scale of 1.75 feet to the mile (0.34 meters to the km).

The model blends into its surroundings and you don’t realize you’ve arrived until you’re standing in it. This is a view of the area from the “north” with the edge of “Mount Hermon” visible on the right.

The best view of the model is from the top of Mount Hermon. Lake Chautauqua stands in for the Mediterranean Sea, but since the park is on the lake’s western shore, the sun rises on the wrong side of this “world.”

The model includes major landmarks such as Mount Tabor, the Hill of Moreh, and the Jezreel Valley, but I found it difficult to easily identify the physical features because of the uniform shade of the green grass.

In the photo below, you can see the Sea of Galilee distinctly, and in the foreground the labeled sites are Nain (left) and Mt. Moreh (center).

The two major lakes are the most easily identifiable features and both are shaped appropriately. The Sea of Galilee (below) is surrounded by biblical cities (not exactly in the right places), including Tiberias, Magdala, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Gergesa. Perceptive visitors may wonder why the “Mount of Beatitudes” is placed on a high mountain on the lake’s west side. This reflects a 19th-century view that Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount at the place today known as Mt. Arbel.

Every Sunday and Monday evenings a local pastor, allegedly in costume, gives presentations of the model using biblical stories. Mounts Gerizim and Ebal, located under the boys, would provide an ideal place for many wonderful and important history lessons.

Jerusalem is uniquely marked on the model with a depiction of the (modern) Old City walls. The model labels a mixture of sites from the Old Testament, New Testament, and later periods.

Approximately sixty sites are identified, including the Mount of Olives and Bethany (behind Jerusalem in the photo below).

The model also includes the rugged hill country of Transjordan and labels sites including Macherus, Mt. Nebo, Ramoth-gilead, and Gerasa. The large lake shown below is the Dead Sea. For a better photo that includes the lisan peninsula, see yesterday’s post.

For more information about the premises where the model is located, you can visit the website of the Chautauqua Institution (but Palestine Park is ignored on the site). The entrance fee for the morning was $16, which I felt was a bit unfair, especially since I only spent about 15 minutes at the model (but more than that walking in from the parking lot). Wikipedia has a brief article about the place, and you can quickly locate the site on Google Maps here. If you visit in the summer on a Sunday or Monday evening, you can join the free tour (weather permitting). At other times , you can enjoy a self-guided tour with the assistance of either a cassette tape or a booklet.

A connection I only learned when writing this post is that the man who directed the creation of the park, John H. Vincent, co-wrote Earthly Footsteps of the Man of Galilee, one of the first works that I selected for the Historic Views of the Holy Land series. He is listed on the title page as the “Chancellor of Chautauqua.” There is a whole history of American interest in the Holy Land in the 1800s of which I have been ignorant.

If you have visited Palestine Park and have any observations or suggestions for potential visitors, feel free to comment below.

Tagged Museums, Tourism

Name This Place

What is it and where is it?

I’ll write about my recent visit in the next few days.

Tagged Challenge

Wednesday Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer has just released a digital version of “Jerusalem in the time of Christ,” a CD with 85 images (cost with shipping is £18).

Some Muslims are upset that Israel would dare build an elevator in the Jewish Quarter to allow handicapped access to the Western Wall.

Start making plans now for excavating next year at Tel Burna in the Shephelah. If you prefer to avoid the heat, you might opt for the spring session.

G. M. Grena is recommending an old film that shows the step-by-step process of traditional pottery-making.

Jesus.org is a new website that provides all kinds of information about the Savior of the world. I was particularly impressed to see an entire section of the site featuring articles from the best teacher I’ve ever known. Doug Bookman has 40 articles in the “Harmony of the Gospels – Life of Jesus” section.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Resources, Shephelah

Does the Merneptah Stele Contradict Archaeology?

Many times I have told a classroom full of undergraduates, “I thank God every day for the Merneptah Stele.” They no doubt thought I was a strange duck, but this crazy claim didn’t help my reputation.

It’s not that I don’t like the other famous inscriptions that relate to biblical history. I remember one of my professors saying that there was no extrabiblical evidence for the “house of David” and then a few months later (in the summer of 1993), the Tel Dan Inscription was discovered. I appreciate the Black Obelisk which has a depiction of King Jehu bowing down and paying tribute to the Assyrian monarch. And I love to point out the Ketef Hinnom silver amulets in the Israel Museum as the earliest portions of Scripture ever found. But I don’t thank God every day for any of these.

The Merneptah Stele is a 10 feet- (3 m-) tall monumental inscription that records the victory hymn of Pharaoh Merneptah (1213-1203 BC). Most of the lengthy poem is about his campaign against Libyan tribes, but at the end he describes some victories in Canaan. One of the enemies he claims to have thoroughly obliterated is the people of Israel.

Merneptah’s boast has had the opposite effect: instead of destroying Israel, he has actually preserved the fact of their existence at that time. Everyone agrees that Israel existed sometime later, but without the Merneptah Stele, very few scholars would acknowledge that they existed at this time. In fact, it’s my opinion that even today, 114 years after the discovery of the Merneptah Stele, most scholars don’t properly account for this inscription in their reconstruction of the origin of the people of Israel.

That’s the point of my brief essay posted today at The Bible and Interpretation. I’d be gratified if you’d give it a read. Maybe I’m not as crazy to give thanks as my students thought.

Tagged Analysis, Egypt

Franz’s Reflections on Hazor 2010

Gordon Franz has posted a review of his experience excavating at Hazor this summer. He considers it “the most pleasant, productive, and interesting season” of his eight years on the team. Some excerpts:

One important discovery this season made the international press: two fragments of a Middle Bronze legal tablet written in Akkadian and contemporary with, and similar to, the famous Hammurabi’s law code.
Robert Cargill asked the question on his blog: “Where was this in 2006 when I was digging there? lol.” The answer is quite simple: “Right under your feet where you were sitting during tea break at 7 AM every morning!” This discovery by the eagle-eyed conservator at Hazor, Orna Cohen, was made on the surface and not in the actual stratified excavation.
[…]
Another important discovery that will probably not make the international press is an Iron Age basalt workshop that was found in Area M. It was the first time in the archaeology of the Middle East that such a discovery was made….In the weeks that followed, I sifted much of the material from the floor of this workshop, saving the basalt chips, pottery, and organic matter. I also found an iron chisel. The excavation’s basalt expert, Jenny, will have plenty of material to study and analyze in order to understand the process of making basalt objects. Basalt is one of the hardest stones, which makes it difficult to work. It will be interesting to see whether the lab results show that the iron chisel had been tempered and made into steel. If so, that would go a long way in explaining how basalt was worked. Moreover, geological tests can be done to determine the basalt’s source.
[…]
One of the projects carried out by Orna Cohen and the Druze workers this summer was the reconstruction of part of the casemate wall near the Solomonic Gate. The Druze see themselves as the descendents of the Phoenicians and Hiram’s, king of Tyre, stone masons. They reconstructed the walls using the same techniques as Solomon’s workers: stone upon stone, and without the use of cement.
[…]
By the end of the 2009 season, we had removed most of the eighth-century walls and strata. At the beginning of this season, we spent the first week finishing that job. The next level of occupation was the ninth-century. I thought it would take a season to excavate the remains from that period. We blew through it in a couple of weeks. Area M is outside the Solomonic city so there were no tenth-century domestic dwellings outside the city. Thus we began to penetrate down to the Late Bronze Age palace. By the end of the season, we were on top of the palace and some monumental stones were beginning to appear.
It is in Area M that Dr. Sharon Zuckerman has suggested that the administrative palace of Hazor was and the Canaanite archive of the Late Bronze level would be located (2006: 28-37). When the archive(s) are found at Hazor, it/they will be a major contribution to Biblical studies and go a long way to resolve some of the thorny issues in Biblical Archaeology.

Several blogs have inaccurately reported that the MB tablet was found in the excavations above the palace in Area M, but Franz states that it was found on the surface of the tell west of Area M.
Franz’s full report is here.

Hazor upper city from east

Tagged Excavations, Galilee

Fake Tombstones in the Mamilla Cemetery

Israelis contend that Muslims have attempted to expand the cemetery west of the Old City of Jerusalem by adding tombstones over empty plots. From the New York Times:

The latest skirmish in the war for every inch of this coveted city focused this week on the dead. Did Israeli government bulldozers, working in the middle of the night, destroy hundreds of historic Muslim graves? Or were the removed tombstones outrageous fakes placed on parkland in a ruse?
Each side in the dispute — a fiery branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and the right-wing Jerusalem municipality — is accusing the other of shamelessness and indecency. The area in question is in West Jerusalem, a predominantly Jewish area next to a contested site where the Simon Wiesenthal Center is planning a branch devoted to tolerance and human dignity.
“This is a despicable and, frankly, sad publicity stunt,” Stephan Miller, a spokesman for the Jerusalem municipality, said of the tombstones, which he called fictitious. “It is a slap in the face of freedom of religion and the preservation of religious sites that we work day and night to ensure.”
For its part, an Islamic foundation that had been fixing up and installing the headstones said its work was entirely legal and it believed the late-night destruction of the tombs was part of a city effort to take over the cemetery for more mundane needs.

The full story is here.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Jerusalem