Mark Fox's Weblog

Dr. Dan Bahat, one of Israel's leading archaeologists and a senior lecturer at the Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University spoke at Beth Tikvah Synagogue today on the Dead Sea Scrolls, presenting information on the different types of scrolls and their discovery. He also had a slide presentation (yes, actual slides) showing the Dead Sea areas, its cliffs and caves and the ruins of Qumran and Masada.

It was a large turnout of many four hundred people to hear the professor speak. The discussion of the non-religious scrolls from the time of the Bar Kochba revolt was quite interesting.
Beth Tikvah will be several more lectures on the Dead Sea Scrolls as part of its educational campaign parallel to the visiting exhibit of a selection of Dead Sea Scrolls this summer at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Last week I watched the PBS Nova show, The Bible's Buried Secrets which examines the events that led to the writing of the Torah from an archaeological point of view. In an interview, Paula S. Apsell, Senior Executive Producer of Nova states that the two-hour program has three main points that may surprise viewers:

First, many viewers may not know that since the 1700s, biblical scholars have pointed to evidence that the Bible was written by human hands, and that it likely had several different authors. This is now accepted as fact by many mainstream religious organizations, seminaries, and rabbinical schools. Yet it might surprise some people. Second, although the Bible tells us that the ancient Israelites came from lands outside of Canaan, archeology suggests that the Israelites actually were themselves Canaanites, part of a splinter group who overthrew the elites of their society to establish a more simple, egalitarian culture. And third, although the Bible tells us that the ancient Israelites often lapsed into polytheism and idol worship, few viewers will know that the archeological evidence for this is overwhelming. Literally thousands of clay figurines have been found among the remains of Israelite homes. And some scholars think that these figurines represent a Canaanite goddess called Asherah, who is referred to as the wife of Yahweh in ancient Israelite inscriptions. Polytheism and idol worship likely persisted until the time of the Babylonian Exile, around 586 B.C., when it appears to have stopped entirely, since the figurines are no longer found after that date.

Personally I think that only the most literal religious people would be surprised by the first point. Similarly the third point should not be surpise at all; the Prophets spent much of their time decrying idol worship.

The second point is much more interesting. If you follow religious tradition, G-d gave the land of Canaan to the Jews. From an archaeological point of view it was always theirs.

The rest of the program was also very interesting, the fact that a silver scroll from 2,600 years ago contains the Priestly Benediction (Nesiat Kapayim) used today is amazing.

Read more about the show and reactions to it on MSNBC’s Cosmic Log blog.

Slate.com contributor David Plotz who provided blogged his experience of reading the entire Jewish Bible is now visiting Israel and on Monday wrote about his experience at Dig for a Day (MSNBC article, NY Times article), a three hour archaeological experience that involves digging, sifting , pottery examination within unexcavated cave systems, and touring the National Park of Beit Guvrin. Plotz writes about how he helped uncover pottery remains from a cave dug by the residents of Maresha, location of 170 cave systems, comprising 3,000 to 5,000 rooms.

Dig for a day is run by the Archaeological Seminars Foundation, a private license company that also has tours throughout Israel. Its director Dr. Ian Stern notes that while Archaeological Seminars Foundation is a private company its profits help fund academic study on the site. With about 30,000 to 50,000 people pay to do the dig each year, about $1 million is raised for research.

I took part in an abbreviated version of the program that involved crawling through one cave system and digging in another during a trip to Israel in 2000. During this time I uncovered a number of pottery shards and the guide, who I believe was Dr. Ian Stern uncovered a tiny oil lamp.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israel Antiquities Authority has announced that archaeologists have located an ancient stone quarry four kilometres northwest of the Old City of Jerusalem that they believe was the source of the huge high-quality limestones used in the construction of the Second Temple. In the articles archaeologist Yuval Baruch describes the findings:

CNET’s New.com technology website has a special report on Israel’s high tech industry and some of the factors that enables Israel to create and develop a vast number of start-up companies.