Recent Archaeological Finds

[Soldier4Christ]

Even though these finds in the last post seem minuscule I find it interesting because it does validate the Bible in that the Bible does mention the Phoenicians even in the Old Testament. The Old Testament does not mention them with the Greek word of Phoenicians, though. Instead they were referred to by the city they had come from such as Sidonians. Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician by modern terms. Hiram of Tyre is the person that provided wood for a house for David and wood for the temple that Solomon had built. It was this group of people that introduced Phoenician gods like Baal to the Jews during the time of the Prophet Elijah.


It was previously thought that this was not true as there was no proof of them being there.

[nChrist]

AMEN!

Brother, I don't see any of these discoveries to be small. They are adding to the growing mountain of evidence that is PROOF the Holy Bible is completely TRUE!

I'm even more positive that there is a big reason for every Scripture in the Bible. As an example, some might not pay very much attention to genealogy, historical data, and many other types of information in the Bible that they view to be insignificant. It's fascinating when we discover the reasons. As an example, genealogy information was used by the Jews to establish blood lines, birthrights, and who was to be the recipient of Promises - some made by GOD HIMSELF. I was just thinking that I find it fascinating that places mentioned over 2,000 years ago still exist and are in the news today.

The Holy Bible isn't just the greatest history book and MASTERPIECE of all time - it's the WORD OF GOD. The specific locations of palaces, temples, cities, and other construction will be important again. One can put a few discoveries together and have massive piece of PROOF. We also see in the Bible meticulous descriptions of various construction - some including precise dimensions. There was and is a BIG reason for everything in the Bible, and many of those reasons are being revealed right now.

Thanks Brother! This is absolutely fascinating!

Love In Christ,
Tom

1 Thessalonians 5:8-10 NASB  But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.

[Soldier4Christ]

You're most welcome, brother and a big Amen!

The Bible is the only ancient book of religious significance that is able to stand up to the test of reliability in all aspects of it's writings; historically, archaeologically, genealogically, scientifically and most important of all spiritually. With so many different writers and yet it's accuracy in these things is being proven time and again.

[Shammu]

You're most welcome, brother and a big Amen!

The Bible is the only ancient book of religious significance that is able to stand up to the test of reliability in all aspects of it's writings; historically, archaeologically, genealogically, scientifically and most important of all spiritually. With so many different writers and yet it's accuracy in these things is being proven time and again.

AMEN

Truly the Bible is written by God's prophets.

[Soldier4Christ]

Rare Old Testament manuscript unveiled

A rare Old Testament manuscript about 1 300 years old is finally on display for the first time, after making its way from a secret room in a Cairo synagogue to the hands of an American collector.

The manuscript, containing the "Song of the Sea" section of the Old Testament's Book of Exodus and dating to around the 7th century AD, comes from what scholars call the "silent era" - a span of 600 years between the third and eighth centuries from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts survive.

It is now on public display for the first time, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

"It comes from a period of almost darkness in terms of Hebrew manuscripts," said Stephen Pfann, a textual scholar at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. Scholars have long noted the lack of original biblical manuscripts written between the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the latest of which come from the third century, to texts written in the ninth and 10th centuries, Pfann said.

Scholars can only piece together scraps of information on the period using translations into Greek and other languages, he said, "so to have a piece of the original text from this period is quite remarkable."

The parchment is believed to have been left in the Cairo Genizah, a vast depository of medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in the late 1800s in a previously unknown room at Cairo's ancient Ben Ezra Synagogue. It was in private hands until the late 1970s, when its Lebanese-born American owner turned it over to the Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.

The manuscript is now on extended loan to the Israel Museum and is on display in the museum's Shrine of the Book, which also houses the Dead Sea Scrolls.

[Soldier4Christ]

Second Temple Jewish settlement found between Jerusalem and TA

A Second Temple Jewish settlement has been uncovered between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, including structures that may have been used as hiding places during the Bar Kochba Revolt, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

The remains, found during a salvage archeological excavation by the Ben-Shemen interchange, include two-millennium-old structures, and several Jewish ritual baths or mikvaot.

An elaborate arched structure made of hewn stone at the side of one of the rituals baths was also found fully intact.

Secret passages discovered inside the structures at the site led archeologists to surmise that these were secret hideouts dug during the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132 CE against the Roman Empire.

Similar hiding places have been found in the area in the past.

The discovery of the site clarifies that the size of Jewish settlement in the area was larger than what had been assumed in the past, said Ronit Lupo, the director of excavations at the site.

An assortment of glass vessels, candles, cooking utensils and coins were also found.

[Soldier4Christ]

Biblical passage and forensic analysis suggest new theory on human remains at Masada

An Israeli anthropologist is using modern forensics and an obscure Biblical passage to challenge the accepted wisdom about mysterious human remains found at Masada, the desert fortress famous as the scene of a mass suicide nearly 2,000 years ago.

A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site — two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought to have belonged to a family of Zealots, the fanatic Jewish rebels said to have killed themselves rather than fall into Roman slavery in the spring of 73 A.D., a story that became an important part of Israel's national mythology.

Along with other bodies found at Masada, the three were recognized as Jewish heroes by Israel's government in 1969 and given a state burial, complete with Israeli soldiers carrying flag-draped coffins.

But Israel might have mistakenly bestowed that posthumous honor on three Romans, according to a paper in the June issue of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology by anthropologist Joe Zias and forensics expert Azriel Gorski.

The remains of the three became a key part of the site's story when Masada was excavated in the 1960s. Yigael Yadin, the renowned Israeli archeologist in charge of the dig, thought they illustrated the historical account of Zealot men killing their wives and children and then themselves before the Roman legionnaires breached Masada's defenses.

Upon finding the remains, the crew "relived the final and most tragic moments of the drama at Masada," Yadin wrote in his book documenting the dig, mentioning that the woman's "dark hair, beautifully plaited, looked as if it had just been freshly coiffeured."

"There could be no doubt," Yadin wrote, "that what our eyes beheld were the remains of some of the defenders of Masada."

The new paper focuses on the hair, noting the odd absence of a skeleton to go with it. The researchers' new forensic analysis showed an even stranger fact — the hair had been cut off the woman's head with a sharp instrument while she was still alive.

The new findings could not be reconciled with the original identification of the remains.

Zias' attempt to explain the discrepancy led him to the Old Testament's Book of Deuteronomy, where a passage requires that foreign women captured in battle by Jews cut off all their hair, apparently an attempt to make them less attractive to their captors.

Zias concluded that the hair belonged not to a Jewish woman but to a foreign woman who fell captive in the hands of Jewish fighters.

In his scenario, the woman was attached to the Roman garrison stationed at Masada in 66 A.D., when the Zealots took over the fortress and killed the Roman soldiers. Jewish fighters in Masada's northern palace threw two Roman bodies into the bathhouse, which Zias thinks the Zealots used as a garbage dump because of other debris found inside. They took the woman captive and treated her according to Jewish law, cutting off her hair, which they threw in along with the bodies.

The new paper is only the latest in a string of attacks on the original Masada dig, which some scholars now think was colored less by scientific rigor than by a desire to enshrine the desert fortress as a national myth of heroism and sacrifice.

Once a pillar of Israeli identity — army units used to be sworn in on the mountaintop, shouting the sentence "Masada will not fall again" — the Masada story has fallen out of favor as Israelis became less comfortable with glorifying mass suicide and identifying with religious fanatics.

The very story of the suicide, as recounted in dramatic detail by the first century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus Flavius, has come increasingly into doubt, and many scholars now believe that it was either greatly exaggerated or never happened at all.

The original archeologists at the site, Zias said, "had the story and went around trying to find the proof." No concrete evidence for the Zealot suicide has been found, he said.

But others have pointed out that many details of Josephus' story are matched precisely by archeological evidence, and have charged that for archeologists today debunking the Masada myth has become as popular as creating it was 40 years ago.

Ehud Netzer, a veteran Hebrew University archeologist who participated in the Masada dig in the 1960s and later oversaw restoration work there, questioned the new findings.

Zias is "building a story on assumptions built on assumptions," he said.

"I think that with the existing information, you can't make such theories, and I think that those people should be allowed to rest in peace," Netzer said.

[Soldier4Christ]

Pope OKs opening
of St. Paul's tomb 
Investigators to remove plug
from stone coffin, insert probe

Eighteen months after the sarcophagus believed to have once contained the remains of St. Paul the apostle was positively identified by Vatican archaeologists, Pope Benedict XVI has given his approval to plans by investigators to examine the interior of the ancient stone coffin with an optical probe, according to a German Catholic paper.

As WND reported in 2005, the sarcophagus was discovered during excavations in 2002 and 2003 around the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in south Rome.

"The tomb that we discovered is the one that the popes and the Emperor Theodosius [A.D. 379-395] saved and presented to the whole world as being the tomb of the apostle," said Giorgio Filippi, a specialist with the Vatican Museums.

The excavation was conducted after the administrator of St. Paul's basilica, Archbishop Francesco Gioia, received inquiries about the location of the apostle's tomb from thousands of pilgrims visiting during the Jubilee Year of 2000.

Over the centuries, the basilica grew over the small church built at the burial site early in the 4th century. While the authenticity of the site – or at least, the authenticity conferred by the actions of Theodosius – was not in doubt, repeated enlargements and rebuildings, as well as a fire in 1823, meant the exact location of the sarcophagus was lost for many years.

"There has been no doubt for the past 20 centuries that the tomb is there. It was variously visible and not visible in times past and then it was covered up. We made an opening (in the basilica floor) to make it visible at least in part," Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the basilica, told Reuters last year.

An initial survey of the basilica enabled archaeologists to reconstruct the fourth century building's original shape.

The Vatican team found the sarcophagus during a second excavation under the basilica's main altar.

Under the altar, a marble plaque is visible, dating to the 4th century, bearing the inscription "Apostle Paul, martyr."

Surprisingly, said Filippi, "nobody ever thought to look behind that plaque," where the Vatican team found the sarcophagus.

"We tried to X-ray it to see what was inside but the stone was too thick," said Montezemolo.

Since the rediscovery of the tomb, measuring approximately eight feet long, four feet wide and 3 feet high, archaeologists have cleared away centuries of debris and plaster that surrounded the site. According to Kath.net, investigators have been given permission to remove a plug with which the coffin has been sealed so an endoscopic probe can be inserted and images of the contents captured.

"Absolute proof that it holds St. Paul's bones is impossible," Leonard Rutgers, an archaeologist at the University of Utrecht who visited the excavation, told Archaeology magazine in April.

St. Paul's remains were removed from the original burial site in A.D. 258, according to documentary evidence, reburied in another part of Rome, and then moved back to the site of the basilica when it was built over the original church in the late fourth century.

"So they were schlepping these bones around a lot," says Rutgers. "It's hard to say if the remains in the sarcophagus itself belong to the saint. But it is still a significant late-fourth-century burial."

The Bible does not state how Paul died. Many scholars believe he was beheaded in Rome in about A.D. 64 during the reign of Roman Emperor Nero. The "apostle to the gentiles," as he described himself, was the most prolific of all the New Testament writers.

[Soldier4Christ]

Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament
Babylonian relic names Nebuchadnezzar's chief eunuch from Book of Jeremiah

The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room, which holds its collection of 130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years.

But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.

Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered - Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as "the chief eunuch" of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.

Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name - Nebo-Sarsekim.

Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II's "chief officer" and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city.

The small tablet, the size of "a packet of 10 cigarettes" according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin's payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon.

The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.

Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.

"This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find," Dr Finkel said yesterday. "If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power."

Cuneiform is the oldest known form of writing and was commonly used in the Middle East between 3,200 BC and the second century AD. It was created by pressing a wedge-shaped instrument, usually a cut reed, into moist clay.

The full translation of the tablet reads: (Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

[Soldier4Christ]

Discoveries in Sudan reveal economic organization of an ancient African state—the kingdom of Kush

Archaeologists from the Oriental Institute have discovered a gold-processing center along the middle Nile in the Sudan, an installation that produced the precious metal sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The center, along with a cemetery they discovered, documents extensive control by the first sub-Saharan kingdom, the kingdom of Kush.

The team found more than 55 grinding stones made of granite-like gneiss along the Nile at the site of Hosh el-Guruf, about 225 miles north of Khartoum. The region also was known as Nubia in ancient times. Groups of similar grinding stones have been found on desert sites, mostly in Egypt, where they were used to grind ore to recover the precious metal. The ground ore was likely washed with water nearby to separate the gold flakes.

“This large number of grinding stones and other tools used to crush and grind ore shows that the site was a center for organized gold production,” said Geoff Emberling, Director of the Oriental Institute Museum and a co-leader of the expedition. The research was funded by the National Geographic Society and the Packard Humanities Institute, which also offered to support all the other teams working in the Fourth Cataract salvage project, the location of the University’s expedition.

“Even today, panning for gold is a traditional activity in the area,” said expedition co-leader Bruce Williams, Research Associate in the Oriental Institute and a Systems Team Leader in NSIT at the University. “Water is a key ingredient for the production of gold, and it is possible that bits of gold ore were found in gravel deposits nearby in wadis (dry creek beds) and crushed on the site.”

The team also uncovered burials with artifacts in a cemetery they excavated, which suggest the region was part of the kingdom of Kush, which would have ruled an area much larger than previously believed. Such discoveries show that the kingdom was the first in sub-Saharan Africa to control a territory as much as 750 miles in length.

“This work is extremely exciting because it can give us our first look at the economic organization of this very important, but little-known ancient African state,” said Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute. “Until now, virtually all that we have known about Kush came from the historical records of their Egyptian neighbors, and from explorations of monumental architecture and cemeteries at the Kugotcha2e capital city Kerma. The Oriental Institute excavations at Hosh el-Guruf will allow scholars to understand the rural sources of the riches of Kush.”

The University expedition is part of an international recovery project that is underway. Before archaeological sites are covered by the steadily rising Nile, expedition teams are working to find artifacts related to Kush and other civilizations that flourished in the area. The Hamdab or Merowe Dam, located at the downstream end of the Fourth Cataract, is flooding the area. The lake to be formed by this dam will flood about 100 miles of the Nile Valley in an area that had previously seen no archaeological work.

“Surveys suggest that there are as many as 2,500 archaeological sites to be investigated in the area. Fortunately, this is an international effort; teams from Sudan, England, Poland, Hungary, Germany and the United States have been working since 1996, with a large increase in the number of archaeologists working in the area since 2003,” Emberling said. The area will probably be flooded next year, but the team hopes to return for another season of exploration.

Stein noted, “The current excavations mark a return to Nubia for the Oriental Institute. The Institute played a key role in the large-scale international salvage excavations in Nubia during the 1960s in connection with the construction of the Aswan High dam. Materials from these rescue excavations in the Oriental Institute’s museum form one of the largest collections of scientifically excavated Nubian artifacts in the United States.”

The sites studied by Emberling and Williams provide important new information on the ancient Kingdom of Kush, which flourished from about 2000 to 1500 B.C.

“The Kingdom of Kush was unusual in that it was able to use the tools of power—military and governance—without having a system of writing, an extensive bureaucracy or numerous urban centers,” Emberling said. “Studying Kush helps scholars have a better idea of what statehood meant in an ancient context outside such established power centers of Egypt and Mesopotamia.” Among the artifacts they found in burials nearby at the site al-Widay were high-status pottery vessels that appear to have been made in the center of the kingdom, a city called Kerma, some 225 miles downstream.

The graves for the cemetery, which were for elite members of the community, included 90 closely packed, roughly constructed stone circles—covered shafts that were circular and lined with stones, a feature noted in the so-called Pan Graves of Lower Nubia and Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, about 1700 B.C., said Williams. “These, and the broad-bottomed, black-topped cups they contained, are generally assigned to the Medjay, people of the Eastern Desert, who at times served as soldiers and police in Egypt.”

Williams noted, “A few of the tombs had the rectangular shafts of the later Classic Kerma burials, graceful tulip-shaped beakers and jars of Kerma-type, and even imported vessels from Egypt, as well as scarabs and faience and carnelian beads, and there were even several beds or biers.”

“Finds of Kerma materials at the Fourth Cataract was one of the major surprises of the salvage effort, and they suggest the leaders of Kush were able to expand their influence much further than was previously known, possibly including as much as 750 miles along the banks of the Nile.” he said.

The Oriental Institute team worked on sites that were in the concession of the mission from the Gdansk Archaeological Museum.

[nChrist]

Hello Brother Roger,

It's been awhile, so I just want to thank you for this thread. It's one of my favorites because the evidence is mounting higher and higher that the Bible is completely TRUE AND ACCURATE. More and more of the Bible is being proven as absolute FACT, and this does make me think that GOD is allowing a few more hints before the end of this Age of Grace. I just hope that the lost are hearing about these discoveries and they understand the significance.

The significance is simple:  THE HOLY BIBLE IS GOD'S WORD!

Love In Christ,
Tom

[Soldier4Christ]

You're welcome, brother. It has been my pleasure.

Much of these finds are not getting very much media attention so many people are not seeing it. Then when they do it is not easy for them to see the significance such as the last article on Kush. Those that do not know the Bible very well would not know the significance of Kush in the Bible.

[nChrist]

You're welcome, brother. It has been my pleasure.

Much of these finds are not getting very much media attention so many people are not seeing it. Then when they do it is not easy for them to see the significance such as the last article on Kush. Those that do not know the Bible very well would not know the significance of Kush in the Bible.

Brother, things like this make me wonder why there isn't something like a Christian Discovery Channel. There are mountains of material that are absolutely fascinating. Sadly, it's rare to have a first class Christian documentary on television. They could be accompanied by Bible lessons that would explain the significance of the discoveries. Obviously, I would be talking about programming from a Biblical and Christian perspective, NOT just something thrown together by secular folks. I think that most Christians would support something like this.

Love In Christ,
Tom

[Soldier4Christ]

That would be a wonderful thing and I for one would be watching it all the time and trying to convince others to do so also.

[Soldier4Christ]

Jerusalem seeks return of ancient tablet

Jerusalem's mayor has asked the Turkish government to return a 2,700-year-old tablet uncovered in an ancient subterranean passage in the city, sugggesting that it could be a "gesture of goodwill" between allies.

Known as the Siloam inscription, the tablet was found in a tunnel hewed to channel water from a spring outside Jerusalem's walls into the city around 700 B.C. — a project mentioned in the Old Testament's Book of Chronicles. It was discovered in 1880 and taken by the Holy Land's Ottoman rulers to Istanbul, where it is now in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeology Museum.

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski made the request in a Thursday meeting with Turkey's ambassador to Israel, Namik Tan, Lupolianski spokesman Gidi Schmerling said Friday. Lupolianski suggested the tablet's return could be a "gesture of goodwill" from Turkey, Schmerling said Friday.

Turkey and Israel are close regional allies.

An official at Turkey's embassy in Israel said the request would be passed on to the Turkish government. A transfer of ownership was unlikely, the official said, but Turkey would look into lending the tablet to Israel or creating a replica. The official spoke on condition of anonymity as required by embassy regulations.

In the Bible's account, the Siloam water tunnel was constructed by King Hezekiah to solve one of ancient Jerusalem's most pressing problems — its most important water source, the Siloam spring, was outside the city walls and vulnerable to the kingdom's Assyrian enemies.

The tunnel, around 500 yards long, was hollowed out of the bedrock by two teams of diggers starting from each end, according to the tablet, which was installed to celebrate the moment the two teams met underground, "pickax to pickax."

"When there were only three cubits more to cut through, the men were heard calling from one side to the other," the Hebrew inscription recounts.

The tunnel and spring are located in what is today the east Jerusalem Arab neighborhood of Silwan, controlled by Israel since 1967.