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Restoration of Rolling Stone Tomb

A few years ago I posted a photo comparison of one of the best rolling stone tombs in Israel – before vandals destroyed it and after. For convenience, here are those pictures of the Khirbet Midras tomb again.

1990:

2004:

A friend visited recently and passed on a few photos. It looks like the tomb has been partially restored. You might want to stop by next time you’re in the area. Khirbet Midras is east of the road going from Azekah to Bet Guvrin.

Tomb exterior

View from inside tomb; rolling stone is on the right side

Burial niches (aka loculi, kokhim)

Thanks to A.D. Riddle for sharing these photos.

Tagged Then and Now

Digs, Blogs, and a Bomb

The excavations at Ramat Rahel have recently begun and they have their own blog. Today they found a bomb! Other excavations in Israel with blogs include Gath (regular and professional), Megiddo (regular), and Dan (they had good intentions). I don’t know of any blogs for the current excavations at Hazor (where is that archive?), Gezer (is this another Macalister dump?), or Ashkelon.

There’s a few more days if you want to join in excavations on a site that used to be called Khirbet Qeiyafa, but is now dubbed the much more appealing “Elah Fortress.” There’s some info here on what to bring. Here’s the season brochure (front, back). You can also watch a YouTube video on the site.

Next year Bryant Wood is headed back to Khirbet el-Maqatir after a hiatus since Palestinian terrorism restarted in 2000. Excavations of the candidate for biblical Ai are scheduled for May 20 – June 6, 2009.

The Jerusalem Report has a lengthy article (published online, but poorly formatted, by the JPost) about the state of Dead Sea Scroll and Qumran research, including various theories of who lived at Qumran and who were responsible for the scrolls. The article also discusses the newly publicized “Gabriel’s Vision” tablet, and includes a sidebar on the Palestinians’ demand that the scrolls be turned over to them.

If you didn’t hear it already, Codex Sinaiticus is beginning to be posted online this week. Here’s the story, and here’s the link to one of the oldest Bibles in existence. Come back in a year if you want to read the whole thing.

Six months and $200,000 later, Zion Gate is now back in view. The hundreds of bullet holes and shell marks are still visible, but the stones are now stabilized and less likely to collapse on a vehicle executing a beautiful 11-point turn as they exit the city.

Zion Gate, before renovation

And perhaps tourism to Iraq is not so far off.

Tagged Excavations, New Exhibits

Museum in Gaza to Open

The International Herald Tribune has the story:

It may sound like the escapist indulgence of a well-fed man fleeing the misery around him. But when Jawdat Khoudary opens the first ever museum of archaeology in Gaza this month, it will be an act of Palestinian patriotism, showing how this increasingly poor and isolated coastal strip ruled by the Islamists of Hamas was once a thriving multicultural crossroad.

Now only if there was a way for non-Palestinians to get there. If he’s depending on revenue from Palestinians interested in history, he is going to be a poor man.

The exhibit is housed in a stunning hall made up partly of the saved stones of old houses, discarded wood ties of a former railroad and bronze lamps and marble columns uncovered by Gazan fishermen and construction workers.
And while the display might be pretty standard stuff almost anywhere else – arrowheads, Roman anchors, Bronze Age vases and Byzantine columns – life is currently so gray in Gaza that the museum, with its glimpses of a rich outward-looking history, seems somehow dazzling.
“The idea is to show our deep roots from many cultures in Gaza,” Khoudary said as he sat in the lush, antiquities-filled garden of his Gaza City home a few miles from the museum. “It’s important that people realize we had a good civilization in the past. Israel has legitimacy from its history. We do too.”

Someone’s going to have to explain this one to me. I’m not sure how Roman or Byzantine antiquities have anything to do with the legitimacy of Palestinian Arabs.

It’s a good article with a nice photo. I recommend reading the whole thing, and I hope the venture is successful.

HT: Joe Lauer

Tagged Museums, New Exhibits

Interview with Leen Ritmeyer

Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds has posted a two-part interview with Leen Ritmeyer. Ritmeyer served as the archaeological and architectural reconstruction editor for the forthcoming ESV Study Bible, of which Taylor is the managing editor.

Part one of the interview focuses on what the place of Jesus’ crucifixion looked like. It includes a stunning, high-resolution reconstruction of the Temple Mount as it may have looked in the time of Jesus.

Part two of the interview concerns what the tomb of Jesus looked like. It features a high-resolution image of what the “new tomb” may have looked like.

I have had the privilege of having an preview of dozens of graphics and hundreds of full-color maps that will be included in the ESV Study Bible and I concur with Ritmeyer’s assessment:

It is vital for Bible students to have a correct knowledge of the background of the Bible, and I am sure that the Study Bible will be of tremendous help for those who love to study the Word of God. With its many exquisitely rendered reconstruction drawings and accurate maps, a new standard has been set for biblical illustration, raising the bar for many years to come.

Tagged Jerusalem, Resources

Weekend Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer has a posted (with a follow-up) on his identification of several stones in the eastern wall of the Temple Mount that are clearly pre-Herodian. Ritmeyer dates them to the time of King Hezekiah, suggesting that he was the one to build the 500-cubit square Temple Mount that Ritmeyer has previously identified. He includes some helpful illustrations and photos.

A review of current excavations in Turkey is given at Today’s Zaman. New Testament sites being excavated include Alexandria Troas, Miletus, Hierapolis, Sardis, Smyrna, and Laodicea. There are many other sites as well. Many of these cities have very impressive remains, unlike many sites in Israel. Today’s Zaman also has an article on recent discoveries at Sardis.

NASA has a photo of a street of Ephesus at night, with (the planet) Jupiter illuminating the way.
Across the way in Greece, the ancient hippodrome of Olympia has been discovered. This is a good story that counters the myth that everything to be found has already been found.

A couple fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have now been published by James H. Charlesworth.

One of the fragments may be from the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the other appears to be from Nehemiah, making it the first portion of that book to be found among the DSS. Paleojudaica gives more info and links.

If you’re a tourist in Israel and have a question, you can now call the 24-hour tourist hotline. It’s easy (dial *3888), but it’s not a toll-free number.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Just Another Byzantine Church

The “Earliest Church in Jordan” sounded like a bunch of nonsense to start with and now a couple of scholars have more data and believe the excavators have made some big mistakes.

Even stronger criticism has now emerged. Two University of Toronto scholars argue that the excavators have misread the inscription in the church; they claim, from both a rereading of the inscription and from the architecture, that the church is significantly younger than do the excavators. They also say that the cave below gives no indication of having been used in the first century.

Biblical Archaeology Review has the story, including a pdf file of the article: “The Oratory of St. George in Rihab: The Oldest Extant Christian Building or Just Another Byzantine Church?”

Tagged Analysis, Discoveries