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Bethlehem Booked for Christmas

It was not all that many years ago that Bethlehem was a ghost town, as far as tourists were concerned. On the day I took the photo below, my students were almost the only tourists in town.

The situation for the city was particularly difficult because a large investment was made in tourist infrastructure in preparation for the year 2000. But the Arab uprising began in the latter part of that year, and tourists avoided Bethlehem, Jericho, and other Arab areas.

In those years, shopkeepers and hotel proprietors were desperate for visitors to stay longer. This year, you don’t even that choice, as there is literally “no room in the inn.”

From the Jerusalem Post:

Bethlehem has seen a record number of tourists this year and its thousands of hotel rooms are fully booked for Christmas week, thanks to steadily declining violence in the West Bank over the past few years.
[…]
So far this year, 1.4 million tourists have visited the traditional birthplace of Jesus and 90,000 are expected during the Christmas season, a significant increase over last year, according to Israeli government figures. The numbers of visitors have been rising steadily in recent years.
[…]
The town’s 2,750 hotel rooms are booked solid for Christmas week and four more hotels are under construction. The expected turnout for Christmas week is up strongly from about 70,000 last year.

How long will the upswing last? If history is any indication, not long.

An empty Nativity Square, October 2003

Tagged Judah, Tourism

Wednesday Roundup

Land of the Bible has created a flight tour of the area destroyed in the Mount Carmel blaze. The imagery is from Google Earth and does not show the damage, but you get a good sense for the area affected. The map showing the burned region is the best I’ve seen.

Leen Ritmeyer has an excellent illustrated discussion on the identification of the “Beautiful Gate” at the Temple where Peter healed the lame man (Acts 3). He discusses the options and proposes that the Beautiful Gate should be identified with the Double Gate.

Jeff Chadwick will be lecturing on the 8th century at Philistine Gath (Tell es-Safi) at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem tomorrow (12/16).

Randall Price says that he has verified that the discovery of Noah’s Ark reported some months ago is a fabrication.

An intact, sealed jar discovered at Qumran in 2004 has been opened and analyzed.

Ferrell Jenkins has a link to a series of 162 historic photos posted online by the Palestine Exploration Fund.

The big storm in the Middle East revealed some archaeological treasures, including a Roman statue of a woman that fell into the Mediterranean at Ashkelon. Ferrell Jenkins has posted some photos of the cliffs of Ashkelon.

Joe Lauer sends along word of a note to journalists about the storm damage in Caesarea:

Tomorrow (Wednesday) the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Mr. Shuka Dorfman, the director-general of the Caesarea Development Company, Mr. Michael Carasenti and representatives of the Nature and Parks Authority will tour the national park and the surrounding area in order to assess the storm damage. The tour will begin at 10:30 in Caesarea harbor and will be open to media coverage. The Israel Antiquities Authority estimates it will cost millions of shekels to rehabilitate the antiquities that were damaged by the storm throughout the country, some of which have suffered enormous and irreversible damage.

Expect a story and photos in the media later today. Earlier reports about the damage are posted at Arutz-7, ShalomLife, and the Vancouver Sun.

Tagged Discoveries, Lectures, Weather, Weekend Roundup

Search for Sodom under Dead Sea

From Arutz-7:

Russia and Jordan have signed an agreement to search the bottom of the Dead Sea for the remains of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Arabic news media reported over the weekend. According to the report, a Russian company has agreed to conduct the search in cooperation with Jordanian authorities, picking up all costs – in exchange for exclusive rights to film a documentary of the search. The report quoted one of the Jordanian heads of the project, Zia Madani, as saying that the search would begin in late December.
[…]
According to Madani, further evidence that the cities remains are located on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea came after recent NASA photographs of the area indicated that the bottom of the sea is littered with debris and objects not found in other bodies of water. According to the Jordanian, Israel recently sent a submarine down into the Dead Sea in an attempt to explore the bottom of the sea, but discovered that the objects in the NASA photos were on the Jordanian side of the sea. Jordan prevented the Israelis from searching over the border, and now Jordan is seeking to discover what it believes are the remains of the cities by itself.
Israel National News could not confirm that an Israeli submarine had in fact searched the depths of the Dead Sea on such a mission.

The full story is here. Some archaeologists and biblical scholars have suggested that Bab edh-Dhra on the eastern side of the Dead Sea may be Sodom. A new season is beginning this week at Tall el-Hammam northeast of the Dead Sea, a site the excavator believes is Sodom (but see my objections here).

One problem with the theory that Sodom is under the Dead Sea is Zephaniah 2:9, which suggests that the area of the city was known and visible late in Judah’s history, not hidden under the waters.

Therefore, as surely as I live,”
declares the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel,
“surely Moab will become like Sodom,
the Ammonites like Gomorrah—
a place of weeds and salt pits,
a wasteland forever.
The remnant of my people will plunder them;
the survivors of my nation will inherit their land.” (Zeph 2:9)

Tagged Dead Sea

Bizarre Weekend Weather in Middle East

Sand, rain, snow, and high winds have created a very unusual weekend of weather in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. Several individual reports I’ve heard have stated that they’ve never seen anything like it. Snow has fallen in Jerusalem, Amman, and Damascus. Precipitation levels are as high as 8 inches (209 mm) in Upper Galilee and there’s nearly 8 feet (240 cm) of snow on the Mount Hermon ski slopes. Wind gusts were reported at up to 70 mph (120 kph). Israel’s ambulance services responded to 129 accidents on Sunday alone. Egypt and Syria each closed their largest ports and 28 buildings collapsed or partially collapsed in Alexandria, Egypt. Haaretz reports that an ancient port at Caesarea was destroyed. There were many injuries and at least 19 related deaths.

This AP story does the best job of covering the effects around the Middle East. The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz stories include photos.

Tagged Weather

Weekend Roundup

Leen Ritmeyer has posted the schedule for the 16th Annual Conference of the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies on “New Studies on Jerusalem.” There are a number of lecture titles that sound very interesting. Aren Maeir has a link to the official announcement. All lectures are in Hebrew.

The Israel National Library website has an extensive collection of maps of Palestine, dating from 1462 to 1927. Thanks to Yissachar Fried for the notice.

I certainly agree with this suggestion of two books ideal for Christmas gifts.

The Al-Jazeera movie entitled “Looting the Holy Land” is “a worthless film, ridden with manipulations, political propaganda, incorrect facts and even lies,” according to Israel Finkelstein.
Large parts of Mount Carmel are off limits to visitors following the forest fire. Rain expected this weekend may result in flooding. A new report says that one-third, and not one-half, of the forest was affected by the wildfire. One editorialist is calling it “Netanyahu’s Katrina.” The fire was the worst in Israel’s 62-year history.

Hydrologists are already predicting that Israel’s water supply will reach record lows next summer, with the Sea of Galilee reaching the black line. The Bible maintains that God sends rain in response to the nation’s faithfulness, but Israel is working now to get around that problematic relationship. As the JPost reports:

By 2013, the large desalination plants will be producing a total of 600 m.cu.m. of fresh water a year. With that man-made addition, Israel will no longer be at the mercy of however much rain falls from the sky.

The ancient cry, “Give us a king,” has become in modern days, “Build us a desalination plant.”

Somehow I suspect that no matter what they do, they’ll never be able to escape dependence on God.

Tagged Weekend Roundup

Give-Away: Archaeological Study Bible

This week’s free item is the Archaeological Study Bible, published by Zondervan in 2005. This resource has a website of its own, with lots of information and extra features. If you haven’t done so already, check out the maps page, with 14 free medium-resolution images for free download.

The Bible is available for purchase from Amazon for $31.49, but when I went to verify the price, I was surprised to see that it is available for the Kindle for only $4! You don’t need to have a Kindle to read it, as software is now available for the PC, Mac, BlackBerry, iPad, and iPhone. If you wonder how it works, you can download the “first chapter” free. (I’m assuming by that they don’t mean Genesis 1.) In the interest of serving you, I just bought the Kindle version myself, but I am not impressed. I’ve never used a Kindle book before, so my expectations may be flawed, but you may want to test the free chapter before spending your money. Among other things, navigating seems quite difficult. Maybe a Kindle reader can weigh in below if I’m missing something.

For the give-away, shipping is limited this week to US addresses. All names and email addresses will be deleted after the drawing on Sunday, at 5 pm. Those reading this by email will need to click through to the post to enter. Two winners will be chosen.

UPDATE (12/12): Congratulations to winners Jess and Ronald.

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Tagged Give-Away, Resources