BiblePlaces Blog - Page 414 of 555

Cities of Paul Collection

Here’s something that could easily be overlooked. In 2004 Fortress published a photo CD by Helmut Koester entitled “Cities of Paul, Images and Interpretations: from the Harvard New Testament and Archaeology Project.” It was and is very pricey ($250), and because of my teaching interests and my own collection, I purchased but never really used the collection. But if this is of interest to you, you can now purchase it for less. Kind of.

Logos has a pre-publication special on 20 Fortress volumes on Paul. One of those “volumes” is this photo collection. If you use Logos and find any of the other books in the set worthwhile, you can save a few dollars by purchasing now for $230 (retail $776).

If I don’t say, someone is bound to ask me my opinion. I thought I had written something brief about it previously, but I can’t find it now. In short, the photos are of high resolution, but most look like old slides that have been scanned. Diagrams are included, which may be quite useful in teaching. Note that there are only nine sites included: Athens, Olympia, Corinth, Isthmia, Pergamon, Delphi, Philippi, Ephesus, and Thessalonike. The notes are extensive and valuable. I think the $250 price tag is too high. If you’re a Logos user, you’ll likely find many advantages in this new edition.

There are no reviews of the CD at Amazon. The work is reviewed positively in the Review of Biblical Literature (pdf).

Tagged Resources

Weekend Roundup

The “Northern Philistines” are the featured subject of the current issue of Near Eastern Archaeology.

The issue is not online, but Aren Maeir, expert on “Southern Philistines,” offers some reflections on the new discoveries.

The Bible and Interpretation has posted Gordon J. Hamilton’s essay, “From the Seal of a Seer to an Inscribed Game Board: A Catalog of Eleven Early Alphabetic Inscriptions Recently Discovered in Egypt and Palestine.” Among the inscriptions he surveys are the Tel Zayit Stone, Beth-Shemesh Game Board, and Qeiyafa Ostracon.

Aren Maeir explains why he believes Hamilton’s reading of the Safi inscription is not correct.

A new blog that will be of interest to many readers here is Christian World Traveler.

The Book & the Spade 2011 Archaeological Study Tour is now taking sign-ups. If you’ve been looking for a trip that “does more” and costs less, take a look at the itinerary posted here.

Tagged Weekend Roundup

Beth Yerah: It's an Arabic Palace, not Synagogue

Earlier this week, there was a story about the discovery of an Umayyad palace that was previously identified as a synagogue. Early reports contained very few details, but a new story yesterday makes things a bit clearer (HT: Gordon Govier).

The site is still not named, but a little checking around has revealed that it is Khirbet Beth Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak) on the southwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee (see map below). A synagogue was discovered here in the 1950s by P. L. O. Guy and Pesach Bar-Adon. Current excavations led by Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University now identify the building as an Arabic palace dating to the 7th-8th centuries A.D. How did they get it so wrong?

The palace was also dismantled down to its foundations after the fall of the dynasty, leaving nothing behind but a foundation and few clues to help date the structure.
Archaeologists at the time also believed, erroneously, that the early Arab caliphates did not carry out many large-scale building projects.
Researchers first began to raise doubts about the origins of the structure in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2002 that archaeologist Donald Whitcomb from the University of Chicago first suggested that the site might in fact be the missing Umayyad palace. That identification was confirmed by archaeologists this week.
The identification of the structure as a synagogue was based on the image of a menorah that the early excavators found carved into the top of a pillar base. But the scholars behind the new review of the site realized that the carving was a red herring — that surface would have been covered by a pillar in the original structure, so the carving must have been added later.

The article on Beth Yerah in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (1993) provides more information on the “synagogue”:

Within the area of the Roman fort, Guy and Bar-Adon uncovered the remains of the foundations of a synagogue (22 by 37 m). The building was divided by two rows of columns into a nave and two aisles. There was an apse in the middle of the southern wall, oriented to Jerusalem. The nave was paved with a colored mosaic, partially preserved, depicting plants, birds, lions, and other motifs. Carved on the base of a column were a menorah, lulab, ethrog, and incense shovel (1: 258).

A couple of brief comments. The apse oriented toward Jerusalem also faces Mecca. The mosaic’s depictions might surprise some unfamiliar with Arabic tastes in this period, but it closely resembles the Umayyad palace in Jericho (Kh. el-Mafjar). Apparently the decorated column base threw the original excavators off. (And you thought archaeologists used pottery for dating.)

You can read more about the Tel Bet Yerah Research and Excavation Project at the official site.

From Sheet 6 of the Survey of Western Palestine Maps. Kh. el-Kerak = Beth Yerah.

Tagged Discoveries, Excavations, Galilee

Cook on the Qeiyafa Ostracon

Edward Cook has a good summary and analysis of the Qeiyafa Ostracon on his blog. He concludes that the inscription is:

(1) A text written from left-to-right. (2) A text written in the Old Canaanite form of the alphabet, the form that the letters took before (but more about this later) the evolution of national scripts. (3) A text whose language, although North-West Semitic, is still undetermined. (4) The most significant fact about the ostracon, in my view, is the date. If the dating of the level it was found in is correct – late 11th/early 10th century BCE – then the use of this Old Canaanite script is surprising. Within a century or less of the ostracon’s writing, another inscription would be made in ancient Israel of a very different sort.

Read the whole thing for his explanations.

Tagged Shephelah

Hurva Synagogue Dedicated

The Hurva Synagogue was dedicated this evening. Located in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, prayers have not been held in the synagogue since it was destroyed in the 1948 war. From the Jerusalem Post:

After a nearly 62-year hiatus, the renowned Hurva synagogue inside the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City has been rebuilt and is again an operational house of prayer. Hundreds of people, braving the wind and an unexpected Jerusalem chill, crowded into a courtyard opposite the outer walls of the synagogue on Monday night to take part in an official rededication ceremony for the newly-rebuilt shul – which stands in the exact spot it did before its destruction at the hands of the Jordanian Arab Legion during the War of Independence in 1948. […] Rivlin went on to speak of the Hurva’s history, beginning with its first incarnation in 1701, when it was constructed by disciples of Judah Hahasid. Its first destruction came some 20 years later, when those same disciples lacked the funds to repay local creditors, who in return burned the Hurva to the ground. It was nearly 150 years before the Hurva stood again, but in 1864, after a massive construction project was approved by the Ottoman Turks and funds were procured from Jewish communities the world over, a neo-Byzantine Hurva was soon towering over the rest of the Jewish Quarter. However, that Hurva, which hosted the likes of Theodor Herzl and Ze’ev Jabotinsky before the creation of the state, also met with ruin. The Jordanian army took Jerusalem’s Old City in May of 1948, loaded the building with explosives and set off a blast whose smoke cloud could be seen miles away.

Arutz-7 has posted a 10-minute video of the service (unedited, almost exclusively singing and music). For previous posts on the reconstruction, see here and here and here.

Tagged Jerusalem

Dead Sea Scrolls in Minnesota

A special Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition opened on Friday at the Science Museum of Minnesota. From the Minnesota Daily:

As a precaution against weathering, each set of scrolls can be displayed for just 10 weeks. By the end of October, three sets of five scrolls will have been on display. This is the first time three sets of scrolls have been part of an exhibit in the United States, SMM Vice President Mike Day said. Imholte said the largest task has been to replicate the cave environment that kept the scrolls so well preserved. The case for each scroll has its own climate control system that keeps the temperature about 68 degrees and the humidity at 50 percent. Ensuring that the scrolls are lit sufficiently is another battle. Imholte said light is one of the most damaging elements to them. And although the scrolls are the focal point of the exhibit, they are surrounded by a wide array of archaeological material from the region, which Imholte said will set it apart from all other Dead Sea Scroll exhibits. “There will never be another one like it, and there has never been one like it before,” he said. “This exhibit is really one-of-a-kind from the point of view of new material and new way of presenting it,” said Dr. Hava Katz, IAA chief curator of national treasures. Katz has spent the last 16 years overseeing all Dead Sea Scroll exhibits in her home country of Israel and around the world. As chief curator, she is responsible for more than a million artifacts, the most important of which are the scrolls.

If you’re in the area, you should make plans to visit.

Tagged Dead Sea, New Exhibits