BiblePlaces Blog - Page 339 of 555

Biblical Archaeology Conference in Fort Worth

BibleX has word of The Future of Biblical Archaeology Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

The Riley Center on the campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is hosting The Future of Biblical Archaeology Conference on Friday, October 14 and Saturday, October 15, 2011. Scheduled speakers include William G. Dever, Steven Ortiz, Tom Davis, James Hardin, Dale W. Manor, Karen Borstad, Laura Mazow, Abby Limmer, Jennie Ebeling, Alysia Fischer, Elizabeth Willett, and Heather Reichstadt.

Registration fees are reduced before September 30. The official website includes information about the speakers, the schedule, and registration.

Next year SWBTS will host an “exclusive exhibit” on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, running from July 2, 2012 to January 11, 2013.

Tagged Lectures

2011 Excavation Blogs

The following is an updated version of last year’s list of excavation blogs. If you know of any additional blogs, please send them along and we’ll add them to this list.

Ashkelon – this is a primarily an educational blog written by one of the supervisors. The season began June 5 and wraps up on July 15.

Bethsaida – the 25th season wraps up this weekend (May 22 to June 25), but no additional updates will be added to the site this year. New photos will be posted on the excavation’s Facebook page.

Tel Burna – the summer season is underway (June 12-30) and the directors are posting weekly roundups and photos. The archaeologists working here believe that their site is biblical Libnah.

Gath – this continues to be the best excavation blog I know of, thanks to the tireless work of the archaeologist, Aren Maeir. This year they are excavating July 3-29, but Maeir updates the blog year-round.

Gezer – the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary excavation deserves a blog. The anonymous assistant professor who blogs at The Biblical World is working in the excavation (June 13 to July 15) and he is posting regularly about everything but archaeology. Aren Maeir lectured to the crew on
Monday; perhaps they’ll learn from his excellent example.

Tall el-Hammam – the official website provides season summaries, but there appears to be no blog updating readers during the winter excavation seasons (upcoming: January 12 to February 23, 2012). Interested parties may wish to contact the leadership in order to receive periodic email updates.

Hazor – excavations began this week (June 19 – July 29), but I am unaware of any blogging about the excavations. The official Tel Hazor Facebook page is rather limited, but perhaps the volunteers will create a Facebook page as they did last year.

Hippos (Susita) – the website indicates that the 2011 season will run July 3-30. Mark Schuler has a blog for the Concordia University excavations of the Northeast Insula Project. Other members of the team have blogs listed at virtualdig.org.

Tell Huqoq – excavations began at this Galilean site under the leadership of Jodi Magness. Volunteer Brad Erickson is posting regular entries about his experience and weekend travels.

Tall Jalul – this year’s excavation concluded last week (June 17), but Owen Chesnut may add updates periodically throughout the year. Though not as well known, this site is one of the largest in Jordan.

Kabri – this is a new blog for the excavations running from June 19 to July 28. To this point five days of photos have been posted and a volunteer has described her experience without resorting to use of the shift key.

Magdala – this year-round excavation may be on a break right now, to judge from the lack of recent blog entries. Universidad Anáhuac México Sur has a new website for the project (in Spanish). You can also follow along by Twitter @magdalaisrael.

Khirbet el-Maqatir – the two-week season ended June 3. Dig summaries were posted at the blog of the sponsoring organization, the Associates for Biblical Research.

Omrit – Omrit 2009 and Omrit 2010 have not been succeeded by Omrit 2011, as far as I can tell.

Excavations have been conducted, as Volunteer JJ proves with his onsite fashion photos. A note at this blog suggests the season ended on Friday, with the desired finds found in the balk during clean-up.

Khirbet Qeiyafa – the Elah Fortress website, with all of its photos and summaries, has been deleted.

The Hebrew University website is infrequently updated. The excavation season this year is June 12 to July 22. Blogger Luke Chandler is volunteering in July and may have some reports in the weeks to come.

Khirbet Summeily – excavations began this week as part of the Tell el-Hesi Joint Archaeological Project, but no field updates are yet available. Volunteer Jared Wilson has a blog in place.

Temple Mount Sifting Project – this blog provides periodic updates on related issues, but daily finds are not reported.

In addition to the standard blogs and new sources (for major discoveries), a couple of radio
programs are available online to keep you up to date with interviews with the archaeologists. These include the The Book and the Spade (Gordon Govier) and LandMinds (Barnea Levi Selavan and Dovid Willner).

What should be added to this list? If you know of something that is regularly updated (blog, Facebook, or twitter), please post a comment or send me an email (tbolen92 at bibleplaces.com).

Excavations in the City of David

Tagged Excavations

The Nails: Jacobovici Responds

Simcha Jacobovici responds to his critics in this pdf file posted at James Tabor’s blog. That a moviemaker who makes millions would respond to bloggers with a 46-page document indicates just how much his reputation has been damaged by the criticism.

Expect Cargill and Zias to respond passionately.

HT: BibleInterp.com

Tagged Jerusalem, Pseudo-Archaeology

Sabri: Not a Single Jewish Stone in Jerusalem

The archaeologists all agree, according to a leading Muslim authority in Jerusalem. There is no evidence of ancient Jewish presence in the city. From ABNA.co:

Chairman of the Suprerme [sic] Islamic Council in Jerusalem Dr. Ekrima Sabri has declared that after twenty-five years of digging, archaeologists are unanimous that not a single stone has been found related to Jerusalem’s alleged Jewish history.
Sheikh Sabri said Israel’s opening of a Biblical park south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem was only a further attempt to erase the Arab-Islamic identity of the region, Sabri said.
Israeli authorities have been building the Biblical park atop the Umayyad palaces in Jerusalem. But Sabri said that archaeologists agree that the stones along the southern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque are remains of the Umayyad palaces, proving that the entire area is an Islamic endowment.

All archaeologists also agree that there were no native Americans when English colonists arrived.

Stories to the contrary are just lies by Indian propagandists.

Where are the Muslims who will tell the truth? Will any declare that Sabri is a bald-faced liar? If not, why not? The answer to that question is important.

The full story is here. HT: Paleojudaica.

The Siloam Inscription, found in Hezekiah’s Tunnel, written in Hebrew and dated to 700 BC.

Tagged Jerusalem, Pseudo-Archaeology

Wednesday Roundup

Concerning yesterday’s ceremony inaugurating the “Water Gate” in Jerusalem, Leen Ritmeyer responds to my question of whether any archaeologist believes Eilat Mazar with a careful, well-illustrated presentation of his conclusions. Ritmeyer was actually the one to suggest to Mazar in the 1980s that the structure may be a gate, but instead of investigating the possibility, she called a press conference to announce the discovery!

Arutz-7 has a two-minute video tour of the newly opened Ophel City Wall site. Ferrell Jenkins posts more photographs.

In his latest Asia Minor Report (posted online by Leen Ritmeyer), Mark Wilson provides a link of free online books of early explorers in Turkey. The archive has lists of similar works for Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Greece, and Italy.

Wilson also points to a website with panoramic photos of sites in north central Turkey.

FRIGKÜM’s website features three-dimensional panoramic photos of the various Phrygian sites (n.b. the labels are in Turkish). The pictures were taken in 160 locations throughout the three provinces as part of the Phrygian Valley 360 Degree Virtual Tour Photography Project. The photography is breathtaking so check it out. The apostle Paul probably saw some of these amazing monuments when he traveled through Phrygia on his second journey (Acts 16:6).

In regular features at the Jerusalem Post, Danny Herman takes viewers on a four-minute video tour of the Western Wall Tunnels, Yehoshua Halevi explains how he takes nature photographs in Israel, and Wayne Stiles considers whether archaeologists are really excavating New Testament Bethsaida.

Newly excavated parts of the underground Crusader city of Acco (Acre) are now being opened to the public.

Templars Tunnel in Acco

Tagged Discoveries, Jerusalem, Resources, Turkey, Weekend Roundup

Ophel City Wall Site Inaugurated

From a press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority:

In a festive ceremony to be held Today – Tuesday, June 21, 2011, the Ophel City Wall site, a complex of buildings uncovered along the route of the fortifications from the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE), and the display of the earliest written document ever uncovered in Jerusalem will be inaugurated. The opening of the site, located in the Walls Around Jerusalem National Park, and the exhibit in the Davidson Center are made possible through the generous donation by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman.
[…]
Upon completion of the excavation and conservation work at the Ophel City Wall site, visitors will now be able to touch the stones and walls whose construction tells the history of Jerusalem throughout the ages. It is now possible to walk comfortably through the built remains, in places that were previously closed to the public, to sense their splendor and learn about the history of the region by the signage and the different means of presentation and illustration.
[…]
The highlight of the excavations is the complete exposure of the gate house. The plan of this impressive building includes four rooms of identical size, arranged on both sides of a broad corridor paved with crushed limestone. The plan of the gate house is characteristic of the First Temple period (tenth-sixth centuries BCE) and is similar to contemporaneous gates that were revealed at Megiddo, Be‘er Sheva’ and Ashdod. The excavator, Eilat Mazar, suggests identifying the gate house here with the ‘water gate’ mentioned in the Bible: “…and the temple servants living on Ophel repaired to a point opposite the Water Gate on the east and the projecting tower” (Nehemiah 3:26). The ground floor of a large building that was destroyed in a fierce conflagration can be seen east of the gate. Mazar suggests that this structure was destroyed by the Babylonian conquest of the city in 586 BCE. Twelve very large, clay store jars (pithoi), which probably contained wine or oil, were discovered on the floor of the building. Engraved on the shoulder of one of these pithoi is the Hebrew inscription “לשר האו…”. The inscription indicates that this pithos belonged to one of the kingdom’s ministers, perhaps the overseer of the bakers.
During the course of the excavation the earliest written document to be exposed to date in Jerusalem was discovered. This unique find, which is of extraordinary importance to the history of the city, will now be on permanent display to the public in the Davidson Center. This is a very small fragment of a clay tablet engraved in Akkadian cuneiform script, which was the lingua franca of the time. Among the very skillfully written words that can be read are the words: “you were”, “later”, “to do” and “they”. The tablet and the writing are typical of the tablets that were used in antiquity throughout Mesopotamia for international correspondence.

The full press release, along with 19 photographs (including the one above), is available at the IAA site (temporary link). I’d be curious to know if there are any other archaeologists who agree with Mazar’s identification of the structure she excavated as a gate. Some years ago it seemed that even those most sympathetic to her views did not follow her on this, but perhaps that has changed. I note that the press release does not state that this is a gate but that “Mazar suggests” that it is a gate.

Temple Mount of Jerusalem from the southwest

UPDATE: Joseph Lauer sends along links to the story in the Jerusalem Post, Bloomberg, and Arutz-7.

UPDATE (6/22): Leen Ritmeyer provides his response to my question about the identification of the building.

Tagged Excavations, Jerusalem, Tourism