fbpx

From the Jerusalem Post:

Archeologists say they have found remains of the ancient Jewish village of Shikhin, located in the central Galilee, which could be instrumental in the study of Jewish life in the region and the origins of Christianity.
Dr. Mordechai Aviam of Kinneret College’s Institute for Galilean Archeology and co-director of the Shikhin expedition, said on Sunday the findings so far include evidence of an ancient synagogue and remnants of pottery production.
The expedition is a joint project led by Aviam, Samford University Religion Professor James Riley Strange and Kentucky Christian University Biblical Studies Professor David Fiensy.
Aviam said the project, which has included two years of excavations thus far, would help to answer crucial historical questions surrounding the identity of the Galileans.
“Who were the Galileans?” he asked. “Where they remnants from the First Temple period? Were they people who came from Judea? Were they people who converted [to Judaism]?” Aviam noted that the village is mentioned along with neighboring city Sepphoris (modern Tzipori) by first-century historian Flavius Josephus, and in the Talmud as a village home to many potters.

The story continues to describe the record number of oil lamp molds that have been discovered at the site.

HT: Joseph Lauer

Share:

Hershel Shanks has weighed in on the Israeli government’s astonishing about-face on the Jehoash Inscription.

Gordon Govier and I discuss the “palace of David” discovery in this week’s broadcast of The Book and the Spade (direct link here).

Luke Chandler has an exclusive scoop on recent finds from Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Ferrell Jenkins has posted a beautiful aerial photo of Gezer.

Wayne Stiles writes about 5 Christian Sites in Jerusalem You Should Know About.

My memory of whitewater rafting on the Jordan River is more thrilling than what this Haaretz writer
describes, but maybe it’s just grown with the telling.

This article about antiquities thieves in Jordan reveals that some ancient sites are guarded by
powerful genies.

The Garden of Eden is to become a national park in Iraq. (If you don’t see a guard armed with
flaming sword, it may be a swindle.)

Accordance is ending the summer with some deals sure to interest those who love Bible geography,
history, and archaeology.

HT: Joseph Lauer, Jack Sasson

DSC_3121_cc-sanchez-bibleplaces
Walls of alleged “palace of David” at Khirbet Qeiyafa.
Photo by Steven H. Sanchez
Share:

Matthew Kalman has a very interesting article on the latest in the Jehoash Ossuary trial, reporting that the Israeli government is now demanding to keep the artifact on the basis that it is authentic! Kalman reports:

In a stunning about-turn, after losing a 10-year legal effort to prove that an Israeli antiquities collector faked an inscription from Solomon’s Temple, Israel’s deputy state attorney begged the high court in Jerusalem on Wednesday to allow the Israeli government to keep the artifact on the grounds that it is “an antiquity.”
Oded Golan, the Israeli antiquities collector who was acquitted of forging the Jehoash Tablet after a seven-year criminal trial, said he had offered to loan it to a museum for study and public display, but he would fight the attempts by the state to confiscate it.
[…]
Following Golan’s arrest, a panel of experts appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the Jehoash Tablet and the James ossuary fakes. Golan and four others were indicted in December 2004 on multiple counts of forgery and accused of being members of an international antiquities forgery ring. None of the charges held up in court.
A year after Golan’s acquittal, Judge Farkash ordered the prosecution to return the Jehoash Tablet, the James ossuary and the other items to Golan.
But after arguing for a decade that the Jehoash Tablet was a fake, the prosecution has suddenly decided it is an antiquity, and therefore the property of the state under the 1978 Israel Antiquities Law.

Read the full report for quotations from the prosecutor and defendant. Kalman concludes with the hint that a compromise may be in the offing. See here for expert analysis that the inscription is genuine.

J Tablet 2013-2

Jehoash Inscription.
Photo by Matthew Kalman
Share:

(Post by Seth M. Rodriquez)

You can have Athens . . . I’ll take Corinth.

As I prepared to write another post on a site in Greece, I was drawn once again to Corinth. It is such a fascinating site in so many different ways: archaeologically, geographically, and biblically. After searching around for another site to write about (for the sake of variety) I’m throwing in the towel . . . Our picture of the week comes from Volume 11 of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands and focuses once again on Corinth.

The picture below is entitled “Corinth bema and Acrocorinth.” The Acrocorinth is the tall mountain that rises in the distance. The bema (also called the “tribunal” or “judicial bench”) is the structure in the left half of the picture. It was a platform on which a judge would sit as the people brought their cases before him while standing in the plaza below. This is one of those rare places where we can say that a certain biblical event took place. This place of judgment is mentioned in Acts 18, when Paul was brought before Gallio.

But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” And he drove them from the tribunal. And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this. (Acts 18:12-17, ESV)

The PowerPoint® notes in the PLBL provides the following background information:

The Roman tribunal where Paul was dragged before Gallio has been uncovered in the center of the agora. This was the bema, where Roman officials would appear before the public…. Had Paul’s trial been more formal, it likely would have been held at the North Basilica instead of the Bema. In Christian times, a church was built atop the bema.

So we know where this trial (or would-be trial) took place, but the story doesn’t stop there. F. F. Bruce in his book, New Testament History, points out that this trial had particular significance in Paul’s ministry:

Sir William Ramsay regarded Gallio’s ruling as ‘the crowning fact in determining Paul’s line of conduct’, because it provided a precedent for other magistrates, and thus guaranteed Paul’s freedom to prosecute his apostolic mission with the assurance of the benevolent neutrality of the imperial authorities for several years to come. One thing at least is certain: if Gallio had given an adverse verdict against Paul, it would have been pleaded as a precedent by Paul’s opponents for the rest of his life; and a precedent established by so exalted and influential a magistrate as Gallio—a much more important personage than the politarchs of Thessalonica—would have carried great weight.  The mere fact that Gallio refused to take up the case against Paul may reasonably be held to have facilitated the spread of Christianity during the last years of Claudius and the earlier years of his successor.

Thus, this site can not only be tied to a biblical event, but it can be tied to a biblical event that is more significant than can be observed at first glance. The event that happened in this humble location helped determine how the rest of New Testament history played out.

This photo and over 800 others are available in Volume 11 of the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands and is available here for $34 (with free shipping). Other photos of Corinth and its surrounding territory can be found on the BiblePlaces website here and here. The excerpt was taken from F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, 1969), p. 317, and is available for purchase here.

Share:
(Guest post by A.D. Riddle)

Unlike its neighbor to the south, Lebanon has only a handful of excavations currently in progress and there is no systematic archaeological survey of the entire country presently available. Sadly, archaeological work is only being carried out at a total of five (or so) sites: Sidon, Tell Arqa, Tell el-Burak (link 2, link 3), Baalbek, and Kamid el-Loz.

Tell Arqa in northern Lebanon.

Naturally, one would think that the paucity of archaeological work (and tourism, for that matter) is due to present security conditions. But that is only part of the story. Hélène Sader, a historian and archaeologist at the American University in Beirut, has written a piece for the ASOR blog entitled, “Archaeology in Lebanon Today: Its Politics and Its Problems,” in which she paints a fairly bleak portrait of the current situation.

The outdated antiquities law which established the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities (DGA) “as the sole authority” limits the DGA’s staff “to five archaeologists, five trainee archaeologists, and five architects in charge of regular and salvage excavations, restoration and conservation of historical and archaeological monuments, and the curatorship of the national and regional museums collections!” Following the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the Lebanese government set out to rebuild Beirut’s Central District. The DGA was then faced with the task of not only rebuilding the National Museum, but also “supervising the largest urban excavation site in the world with practically no qualified personnel, no funds, and no political support.” Since 2000, “the DGA has become extremely restrictive regarding long term excavation projects” and is “reluctant to issue permits to foreign institutions.” Numerous salvage excavations go unpublished and the excavated remains are “regularly bulldozed or disfigured by irresponsible urban planning without any objections.”
Sader concludes:

The DGA has been without leadership for the last four years. The last Director General resigned three years ago and the appointment of a new one is still blocked by political rivalries. The failure to build a new generation of professional and well-trained archaeologists is so dramatic that it is very hard today to find even a small pool of competent candidates for the position of Director General from within or outside the department of antiquities. Several DGA archaeologists and architects have lately resigned out of frustration and it seems that the institution is back to square one: no director general, insufficient numbers of qualified professionals, no reforms of the laws regulating archaeological work, no funds, and first and foremost, no vision and no direction for the future of archaeology in Lebanon.

We keep our fingers crossed that the future leadership of the DGA will have the political and financial support of the Lebanese government to build a modern institution and to promote archaeological research. Maybe then, like a phoenix, Lebanese Archaeology will rise from its ashes.

Share:

The site identified as the most eroded site in Israel is Tell Jemmeh, located on the bank of the Nahal Besor about 7 miles (12 km) due south of the city of Gaza. The site was identified as biblical Gerar by W. J. Phythian-Adams and Sir Flinders Petrie. Benjamin Mazar’s suggestion that Tell Jemmeh is Yurza is now commonly accepted. Yurza is mentioned in Egyptian and Assyrian texts but not in the Bible. The source of the quotation is the “Jemmeh, Tell” article by the late Gus W. Van Beek in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, volume 3, page 677.

We had a number of good responses in the comments yesterday, all of which show that there are many severely eroded tells in Israel. The correct answer was given by Dr. Carl Rasmussen, but if you’re feeling bad that you lost out, you can take comfort in the fact that you lost to someone who has written one of the best Bible atlases!

Tell Jemmeh side washed out by Nahal Besor, tb050701352
Tell Jemmeh, showing erosion caused by the Nahal Besor.
Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands,
volume 5
Share: