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Holyland 3-D CD: Free Update

Some of you may have the Holyland 3-D CD produced by Rohr Productions (Richard Cleave). This flyover program has been released in several versions over the last 5+ years, and is most commonly sold with the Holy Land Satellite Atlas. A major update is now available from SkylineGlobe. I haven’t had time to play with it myself, but a colleague is impressed with the improvements. If you have it and want to compare it with Google Earth or NASA Whirlwind and comment below, you’re welcome to do that. The steps to upgrade are these:

1. Install an earlier version (even as old as v. 2). If you don’t already have it, you can purchase the CD with an atlas here ($65).

2. Install the upgrade.

There are more details about the upgrade at Sunday Software.

Tagged Resources

Short, Informative Videos

Here’s a fun video about the new Herodian quarry. The maker is a cameraman of a more serious production crew, but he made a fun 7-minute video that gives you a good idea of the quarry’s size.

The archaeologist, Jon Seligman, is on-site to give a good explanation.

Some videos made by SourceFlix Productions are recommended, including:

The Beehives of Tel Rehov – includes an interview with archaeologist Amihai Mazar on location.

First Century Tomb – includes an interview with Shimon Gibson inside an ancient tomb.

Temple Mount Desecration – Gabriel Barkay explains and the video shows why this matters.

If you get tired of hearing archaeologists, you can watch the team’s two-minute “light-hearted” video.

Looks like they’re having a good time!

Recent Discoveries

A friend sends along some interesting news articles:

Archaeologists found evidence that bas reliefs and cunieform letters were painted in the Achaemenid royal tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam in Iran. Among these is the tomb of Darius the Great.

Renovations of a mosque at Luxor revealed architectural elements of an earlier temple of Ramesses II.

The Japanese have obtained permission to renew excavations of (the Turkish part of) Karkemish (aka Carchemish). They have to clear some mine fields, and work is expected to begin in a year-and-a-half.

Tagged Discoveries

Bad "Archaeology"

Eric Cline has a good op-ed on “biblical archaeologists” who are frauds. Entitled “Raiders of the faux ark,” the Boston Globe piece exposes some of the “discoveries” made by guys with no archaeological training whatsoever. It’s not only worthwhile to expose such “scholarship” for what it is (and Cline does this more thoroughly in his recent book, From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible), but he avoids making a mistake that many do – lumping all religious scholars in with the nut cases. The article in full is worth reading, but here is an important paragraph:

Religious archeologists and secular archeologists frequently work side by side in the Holy Land. Among the top ranks of researchers, there are evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews, and people of many denominations. It is not religious views that are the issue here; it is whether good science is being done. Biblical archeology is a field in which people of good will, and all religions, can join under the banner of the scientific process.

From reviews I’ve read, I think I would find more to disagree with in his book than in this article. A couple of evangelical writers are working on a book debunking some of the “amazing discoveries” made in the last few decades and I’ll mention it here when that gets closer to publication.

Tagged Analysis, Tomb of Jesus

O Jerusalem, the Movie

One of the most important events in the 20th century was the birth of the State of Israel in 1948. One of the most popular books about the battle between Jews and Arabs was O Jerusalem, a work of historical fiction by Collins and LaPierre. It is recommended reading for all. A movie based on the book and with the same title is coming out on October 17 and you can see the trailer here (and the official website is here). It’s hard to tell from a trailer whether the movie will be fair to the book or to the historical reality, and the movie is rated “R” for “some war scenes.” If nothing else, it makes me want to re-read the book.

Mark Twain on the Sea of Galilee

My earliest memory of a large lake is of Lake Tahoe in northern California, but the body of water I’ve been to the most is the Sea of Galilee. Mark Twain compared the two on his visit in the 1860s:

The celebrated Sea of Galilee is not so large a sea as Lake Tahoe by a good deal—it is just about two-thirds as large. And when we come to speak of beauty this sea is no more to be compared to Tahoe than a meridian of longitude is to a rainbow. The dim waters of this pool cannot suggest the limpid brilliancy of Tahoe; these low, shaven, yellow hillocks of rocks and sand, so devoid of perspective, cannot suggest the grand peaks that compass Tahoe like a wall, and whose ribbed and chasmed fronts are clad with stately pines that seem to grow small and smaller as they climb, till one might fancy them reduced to weeds and shrubs far upward, where they join the everlasting snows. Silence and solitude brood over Tahoe; and silence and solitude brood also over this lake of Gennesaret. But the solitude of the one is as cheerful and fascinating as the solitude of the other is dismal and repellent” (Mark Twain, Innocents Abroad, pp. 375-76).

From Picturesque Palestine, 1880s

A few months ago

Tagged Then and Now