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Temple Mount Ramp Excavations to Resume

Excavations are set to resume on the ramp in the Western Wall plaza that leads to the Temple Mount.

Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) were told by the cabinet on Sunday to resume their excavations at the Rambam (Mughrabi) Gate leading to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, with all due haste.
They were also told to work with “full transparency” and in coordination with “relevant bodies” so as to complete construction of a new permanent foot bridge to the Western Wall as soon as possible. The bridge is to be used by visitors and also by police. Work being carried out to replace the current walkway, which partially collapsed in a storm in 2004, was halted in June in response to rioting by enraged Muslims who claimed the work was a plot to weaken the foundations of the Al Aqsa mosque.
The construction site is located 60 meters away from the mosque and was found by numerous Israeli and international engineers to be no threat to the structure. Nonetheless, a new plan was proposed by Jerusalem planning officials that called for a shorter bridge along the existing route, and which would require less excavating and fewer pillars. A budget of NIS 3.5 million has been allocated for the project.
In the wake of the Muslim riots, UNESCO investigators were sent by the United Nations to inspect the repair work being carried out on the broken footbridge.

The rest of the story reviews other developments related to the Temple Mount in the past year. We covered this story before here and here.

Tagged Jerusalem, Temple Mount

Books Published in Turkey Now Available

In yesterday’s Asia Minor Report, Mark Wilson has good news for those books you can buy only in Turkey:

Purchasing books published in Turkey has been difficult for scholars not living in Turkey. However, Ahmet Boratav of Ege Yayınları has just made ordering such books easier. His web site (www.zerobooksonline.com) is now available in English and features thousands of books, journals, and magazines. The home page features the Bookseller’s Choices as well as recent releases.

Registered surface shipping is included in the price for orders placed from anywhere outside of Turkey.

Tagged Resources

BiblePlaces Newsletter

I sent out the December 2007 issue of the newsletter today. If you thought you were subscribed but did not receive it, here are a few suggestions:

1. Check your spam box. Despite the fact that neither I, nor the newsletter distribution company, ever practice anything but the highest ethics in regard to email, some spam filters stop the newsletter.

2. Consider whether you are subscribed at your current email address. If you’ve moved in the last year and changed addresses, you can fix that easily by subscribing with your new address here.

3. Maybe you never subscribed at all. There’s an easy fix here.

Even if you do #2 or #3, you will not get today’s newsletter automatically sent to you. If you would like that, you can send me an email at tbolen81 at bibleplaces dot com [spelled out because I get and hate spam too], and I’ll send you one. But I won’t be able to send it until the end of the week, as I’m busy until then.

Tagged Resources

A Naturalist in the Judean Wilderness

This article is a bit different from the usual fare. A conservation biologist goes for a stroll in the Wadi Qilt (near Jericho) and details his morning’s observations. Here’s a taste:

As I hiked through this harsh but astonishing landscape, I tried to keep my eyes on the sky in anticipation of a potential sighting of an interesting gliding raptor, as it was the time for the fall migration. Loud trumpeting, far-reaching calls, and deep and trilling “kroo kroos” emerged out of nowhere. I tried to distinguish where the sound was coming from; however, in a magical sight, the air was suddenly filled with hundreds of cranes soaring and twirling in the sky as they were carried up by the warm air currents. Like fighter-pilot squadrons, the birds adopt arrow-like formations as they are lifted by the thermals, which will eventually guide them south towards Africa. A few minutes later, they disappeared into the horizon.

The article was originally published in This Week in Palestine and is available online at the Institute for Middle East Understanding. You can read it all here. You can see some of my photos of the Wadi Qilt here.

Palace of Queen Helena Found?

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the discovery of the palace of Queen Helena of Adiabene today. You can read about it in this Jerusalem Post article or in this AFP article. The JPost article also has a great photo of the excavation area. Here are some parts of the JPost article with my thoughts.

The site, which has been unearthed during a six-month ‘salvage’ excavation in the Givati parking lot just outside the Dung Gate ahead of the planned expansion of the Western Wall car park, also indicates that the ancient City of David was much larger than previously thought, said archeologist Doron Ben-Ami, who is directing the dig at the site.

If you’ve been in Jerusalem in the last five years, you’ve seen this gaping hole just south of the Dung Gate – this is the same place. I worked with our students as volunteers in digging here back in the fall of 2003, so it’s not exactly a new excavation as the article implies.

Jerusalem from southwest; excavation area circled

That the “City of David was much larger than previously thought” doesn’t make any sense to me.

The City of David has always been understood to be bordered by the Kidron Valley on the east and the Central Valley on the west and neither of those have moved in the last six months. Nobody has doubted that there was construction in this area in the 1st century A.D., especially given the Crowfoot expedition in the 1920s.

The “monumental” edifice, which was destroyed by the Romans when they demolished the Second Temple in 70 CE, was dated to the end of the Second Temple Period by pottery and stone vessels, as well as an assortment of coins from that time, Ben-Ami said.

When we were there, we were digging in the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, and I’ve never been part of a dig where we found more coins than this one.

According to the director of the dig, the elaborate edifice, which is an anomaly in the landscape of the Lower City at the end of the Second Temple period – which was marked with modest buildings – was probably a palace built by Queen Helena, a wealthy Iraqi aristocrat who converted to Judaism and moved to Jerusalem with her sons.

The problem with this statement is that very little digging has been done on the crest of the City of David (as opposed to the eastern slope), and there was much destruction in later periods. So there isn’t much to compare with. If all they have is a magnificent building, I’d say it could be Helena’s and it could be someone else’s.

Helena is an interesting individual. Her tomb in Jerusalem was the second most magnificent one in the ancient world (and it’s still impressive, although difficult to visit because of poor management by the French government; cf. Ant. 20.4.3). Josephus wrote that Helena built three palaces in the Lower City (one for herself, one for her son and one for her mother-in-law; Wars 4.9.11; 5.6.1), which is (I think) the only basis for the identification of this building as hers by the archaeologist.

Though contemporary with the book of Acts, Helena is not mentioned in the New Testament.

Josephus connects her with the famine mentioned in Acts 11:28, indicating that she bought large quantities of food from Egypt to feed the people of Jerusalem (Ant. 20.2.3ff.).

The archeologists carrying out the dig have not yet found any inscription to identify the building they uncovered, but the excavation director said that there was a “high probability” that the site was indeed the 2,000-year-old palace of Queen Helena. “We need more evidence to decide, but almost everything fits,” Ben-Ami said.

This identification could well be, but there’s no evidence for it given in this article. I would think the identification would be stronger if:

1) more of the City of David had been excavated, thus excluding other sites;

2) we had more knowledge of what else was in the City of David in the 1st century; all we really know is that these palaces were here, but it’s doubtful that these occupied the entire area;

3) finds from the building were of Mesopotamian origin (Adiabene was a province in northern Mesopotamia).

The well-preserved structure being uncovered in the ongoing excavation is an impressive architectural complex that includes massive foundations; walls, some of which are preserved to a height in excess of five meters and built of stones that weigh hundreds of kilograms; halls that are preserved to a height of at least two stories; a basement level that was covered with vaults; remains of polychrome frescoes, water installations and ritual baths.

This is great, but there were many impressive buildings in first century Jerusalem, so this alone is not sufficient to prove the identification.

Those interested in Jewish evangelism and conversion in the New Testament period would find Helena’s story worth studying. For a start, take a look at the articles in Anchor Bible Dictionary on Proselyte and Circumcision.

Update: The JPost has a one-minute video of the excavations with an archaeologist talking about the discovery. HT: Joe Lauer.

Update (12/7): InfoLive.tv has a 2-minute video, and this Arutz-7 article has numerous photos which show the well-preserved walls and some of the artifacts discovered. The story is also covered by Reuters, Haaretz, and the AP.

Tagged Analysis, Discoveries, Jerusalem

Hasmonean Hometown of Modiin

In advance of the coming Hanukkah celebration, the Jerusalem Post has an article on possible locations of Modiin and the area. An excerpt:

At Umm el-Umdan, an Arab village close to the southern entrance of Modi’in, excavations have unearthed the remains of a Hasmonean village including a row of houses, a marketplace, a ritual bath and a synagogue. The discovery of the synagogue, the only remnant still exposed and accessible for public viewing, has led some archeologists to propose that Umm el-Umdan is the site of ancient Modi’in, the hometown of revolt leaders and priestly Hasmonean family.
They claim the synagogue is evidence of the settlement at Umm el-Umdan’s importance. Yet others argue that the remains of ancient Modi’in can be found at Titura Hill, the site of a spectacular Crusader-era fortress at the edge of modern-day Modi’in. Excavations at the fortress have revealed remnants from various periods including those depicting a Hasmonean-era settlement. Proponents of the Titura Hill theory claim that the settlement’s vast dimensions are a point in the site’s favor as the Hasmoneans often constructed large structures to demonstrate their importance.
According to Amit Re’em, Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist for the Modi’in district, the above assertions should be viewed with caution. “As signs declaring the names of the unearthed settlements were not discovered, any evidence that either location is more likely to be that of ancient Modi’in than any another Hasmonean village is purely circumstantial… and thus such claims are no more than speculation.”

You can read the rest here.

HT: Joe Lauer