Can Dinosaurs Save the West? Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Private collectors have severely damaged the world or archaeology in recent years by hording finds for themselves, with little regard to where items came from. See: Iraq. Is the same thing now happening to paleontology:
Ranchers and farmers are turning to a lucrative new crop. Wielding pickaxes, backhoes and duct tape, they are unearthing the remains of Triceratops, Velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rexes and selling the skeletons to museums and private collectors. One rancher sells T. rex teeth on eBay
Helping drive the big dig is the soaring price of prehistoric fossils. The going rate for a Triceratops skull is $250,000, up from $25,000 a decade ago, and a full T. rex skeleton with all its teeth can fetch anywhere from $1 million to $8 million. Serious fossil enthusiasts include actor Nicolas Cage and Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former chief technology officer. Interior designers are incorporating fossil fish and fossil palm fronds as décor. And in Europe, art collectors who formerly fell for Damien Hirst's pickled animals are circling natural-history auctions, looking to buy dusty bones as sculptures.
Larry Tuss, a lifelong farmer who manages 6,000 acres near Winifred, Mont., close to the center of the state, plans to quit planting wheat and barley and focus more on his backyard expeditions. In the past six years, Mr. Tuss has found five dinosaurs on his property -- including a Triceratops-like Certopian, a duck-billed Hadrasaur and two long-necked sea lizards called Plesiosaurs. All are being readied for sale by a fossil company. "Ranching isn't cutting it anymore," he says. "I'm into fossil farming now."
The Meaning of Herod's Tomb Thursday, May 10, 2007
A friend asked me how important I thought the discovery of Herod's tomb was on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 being Jesus's tomb, in other words, a hoax; 10 being the Dead Sea Scrolls, meaning the find of the century. (Great scale, by the way.) My answer: A three, maybe a four.
Why so low? First, Herod lived only 2,000 years ago, hardly the 3,000 of David or the 4,000 of Abraham. As a result, we know quite a lot about him. You can credibly write a biography of Herod (many have done so) based on the archaeological and historical record of his time under the Roman empire. This would be nearly impossible with David. And absolutely impossible with Abraham.
Second, Herod himself is not one of the biblical patriarchs, kings, or prophets. He's not a central player in the main storyline of the Bible, except for his role expanding the Second Temple and his role in setting in play a number of events surrounding Jesus. As a Roman client king, he was a political functionary, albeit a powerful and prolific one; not a person particularly touched with an intimate relationship with God.
This leads to the third reason: This discovery, if true, doesn't really alter what we know about the period, the Bible, or even Herod that much. It was found, for instance, in a place that already carries his name. As a result, it doesn't really touch on the great debates surrounding the Bible, religion, the veracity of the stories, etc. These, of course, are the really big questions that discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gnostic Gospels, and David's kingly title have done in recent decades. Especially considering that the tomb appears to be empty (meaning it contains none of the extraordinary discoveries found in, say, King Tut's tomb), it hardly advances the story. King Herod's tomb is fascinating, titillating, and important in the story of late Second Temple Judaism, but it's not a galvanizing moment in biblical archeology or world religion.
PS: The discovery has absolutely no significance at all in the conversation between Israelis and Palestinians over who should control the the West Bank, unlike this silly assertion in the paragraph 3 of the Washington Post article on the find:
The discovery dusted off the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to the region between Bethlehem and the Judean desert. Israeli settler leaders said the reported find of the Jewish king's tomb supported their historic right to the area, while Palestinians expressed fears that it would be used as a pretext to increase Jewish settlement construction south of Jerusalem.
An Israeli archaeologist on Tuesday said he has found the tomb of King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land.
Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer said the tomb was found at Herodium, a flattened hilltop in the Judean Desert where Herod built a palace compound. Netzer has been working at the site since the 1970s.
Netzer said the tomb was discovered when a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king. Although there were no bones in the container, he said the sarcophagus' location and ornate appearance indicated it is Herod's.
"It's a sarcophagus we don't just see anywhere," Netzer said at a news conference. "It is something very special."
Netzer led the team, though he said he was not on the site when the sarcophagus was found.
Jesus Tomb Backtrack Continues Thursday, April 12, 2007
The Jesus Tomb is back in the news. The Jerusalem Post is reporting what readers of Feiler Faster knew weeks ago, that most of the scholars in the film are now running fast from the film.
The dramatic clarifications, compiled by epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem in a paper titled "Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story is losing its scholarly support," come two months after the screening of The Lost Tomb of Christ that attracted widespread public interest, despite the concomitant scholarly ridicule....
The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together.
Pfann's paper reported that a statement on the Discovery Channel's Web site, which previously read "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters...concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," in keeping with Feuerverger's statement, has been altered and now reads, "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters... concludes that the probability factor is in the order of 600 to 1 that an equally 'surprising' cluster of names would arise purely by chance under given assumptions."
Another sentence on the same Web site stating that Feuerverger had concluded it was highly probable that the tomb, located in the southeastern residential Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, was the Jesus family tomb - the central point of the film - has also been changed. It now reads: "It is unlikely that an equally surprising cluster of names would have arisen by chance under purely random sampling."
Several media stories recently reported that Bart Ehrman, a leading expert on the apocryphal gospels and one of BAS’s most popular lecturers, had lost his faith as a result of his scholarly research. This raised a question for us that is not often talked about, but seemed well worth a discussion: What effect does scholarship have on faith? We asked Bart to join three other scholars to talk about this: James F. Strange, a leading archaeologist and Baptist minister; Lawrence H. Schiffman, a prominent Dead Sea Scroll scholar and Orthodox Jew; and William G. Dever, one of America’s best-known and most widely quoted archaeologists, who had been an evangelical preacher, then lost his faith, then became a Reform Jew and now says he’s a non-believer. The discussion took place in the offices of the Biblical Archaeology Society on November 19, 2006, and was moderated by BAR editor Hershel Shanks.
Discovery Sues for False Claims Thursday, March 8, 2007
I, for one, am sick of talking about "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" and have written what I hope will be my last big post about the matter, at least until some new major angle pops up. But this did make me smile: The Discovery channel has written a letter threatening to sue a Christian group in India for falsely claiming that it had pressured Discovery India from broadcasting the show. Suing for false claims a show that is about, at its heart, a false claim!! Who said irony is dead.
The Jesus Controversy: Readers Talk Back Friday, March 2, 2007
I’ve received many comments about my media appearances this week on the topic of "The Jesus Tomb." This was one of the more polite and thoughtful, and I thought I would respond.
Hi Bruce,
I just watched a couple of the clips where you spoke out vehemently against the Jesus tomb documentary as being correct or factual.
A couple of points from an outside perspective:
1. You really don't know whether these tombs are of Jesus's family or not. Nobody can prove it one way or the other. It is, however, much more likely that Jesus was not raised from the dead as opposed to him being raised from the dead. It is more likely that he was not because that's what happened to 100% of the people we have ever known about.
2. Since there is absolutely no corroborating contemporary evidence from the time I find that anyone taking a position on whether this tomb is Jesus of Nazareth or not is making a fool of him or herself. The honest answer is: we don't know.
I wish pundits like yourself would exercise some intellectual honesty and just state the obvious which is: I don't know, let's take a closer look and we can choose to believe it or not.
But to dismiss some physical evidence while believing in supernatural events without any physical evidence strikes me as self delusional and ultimately dishonest.
One theme of all of my work in this area (and something I say on an interview I taped for CNN that will be airing at 11 pm on Friday night) is that struggling with questions of faith is a wonderful part of being human. In fact, it may be the ultimate aim of being human. I am thinking of when Jacob is coming back from Mesopotamia and wrestles with God in Genesis. At the end, God leaves a mark on Jacob’s leg, suggesting that we experience God not by talking with him, seeing him, smelling him, or hearing him. But by walking with him. Then God changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means, literally, “One who strives with God.” Considering that Israel becomes the destination for the Five Books at least, the destination becomes the place where we struggle.
So, to answer the first point, I welcome an inquiry that ends with “I don’t know.” Many of the conversations with archaeologists that appear in my books end with similar notions. I’m thinking of one with Hanan Eschel in ABRAHAM that ends with his talking about having humility in matters of faith.
That’s precisely what’s not going on with Simcha Jacobovichi and James Cameron. They call their show “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” Not maybe. Not possibly. But, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” They declare these boxes “The Greatest Archaeological Discovery of All Time.” There is not a single archaeologist who agrees with them. NOT A SINGLE ONE. Even the archaeologist who did the dig, who should have a vested interest in having his name attached to such a discovery, disagrees.
In criticizing this project, I am not passing judgment on whether there was a resurrection or not. Having not walked this part of the Bible, I’ve not really grappled with this question. And I don’t believe I’ve been asked in any of the dozen interviews I’ve done on this topic this week whether I believe Jesus experienced a physical resurrection. I’ve been asked about their claim that their evidence PROVES he was buried in this tomb, PROVES he was married to Mary Magdalene, and PROVES they sired a son together. Their research hardly proves the first (it just comes up with the odds, 600-1, that it might be him); it doesn't even attempt to prove the second claim (it says only that the bones of “Jesus” and the bones of the one of the “Marys” don’t share a mother; they have no proof they ever met, no proof they are the same age, no proof they had a relationship, and no proof they ever had children); and their research doesn't even address the question of whether they had a child (they didn't even test the DNA of the supposed son, they claim). In other words, THEY HAVE NO PROOF. They just have statistical equations. I simply don’t agree that pointing out that they have no proof of their claims is dishonest. I’m not saying I know. I’m just saying that they haven’t proved that they know.
And remember, they didn't even do this research to begin with. Someone else did – 27 years ago. Those images of them carrying burial boxes from caves are all a setup. Simcha is just a journalist who reinterpreted someone else’s work. Fair enough, but then to make these grand claims is odd. Unless you look at their history, which is what’s interesting and little discussed here. Simcha writes in his book about his work on the James ossuary a few years ago, in which he and his colleagues claimed they had made “the greatest archaeological discovery in history.” (The same words they're using now.) The Israel Antiquities Authority now says that's a forgery. The man who discovered it is now on trial.
It’s beginning to sound familiar now isn't it.
And that’s the point. You have to remember that dozens of tombs have been found in this one neighborhood that have burial boxes with the name of Jesus on them. I, and the others who are criticizing this charade, are not passing judgment on whether they are the Jesus of Nazareth described in the Bible. You want it; you got it: We don’t know. And we don’t know about this claim one either. But for two people – one of whom is an investigative reporter, the other of whom is a film director – to claim that they of all the people in the world know is, as I said to Simcha the other day, irresponsible at best and tawdry at worst. Sorry, but I don’t believe that calling this exercise for what it is rises to the level of what you call “self-delusional and dishonest.” If anything, I think the events of the last week have shown the power of the Internet to insert honesty back into the conversation.
I appeared on the NPR show "Here and Now" to discuss the Jesus tomb controversy on Thursday. Here's the description on the website: The claim that Jesus wasn't physically resurrected is made in the new James Cameroon documentary which will air on the Discovery Channel this coming Sunday. The film "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" says the burial boxes discovered in this tomb years ago are inscribed with the names "Jesus", "Mary," "Mary Magdalen," "Matthew," "Joseph," and "Judah." It also claims that Judah was the son sired by Jesus and Mary Magdalen. We speak with journalist Bruce Feiler about this claim.
To listen to the interview click here. To see me discuss the show on CNN, click here. To see me debate the director on CBS, click here.
Two Jesus Hoaxes? The View From Kentucky Wednesday, February 28, 2007
I'm waking up in Louisville this morning, only to find that the Jesus Hoax controversy has followed me here. A reader sent me a tip, linking me to a piece in the Lexington Herald about Ben Witherington. Witherington denounces the new docu-hoax as the silliness it is; the piece also has a great quote from an archaeologist at the Israel Museum who says: The chances that the film's contentions are true "are more than remote. They are closer to fantasy."
Money quote: Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at the evangelical theology school in Wilmore, said Cameron's contentions were false and amounted to a publicity stunt "full of holes, conjectures and problems."
But as the piece goes on to note, Witherington himself has his own problems with hoaxes. He co-authored with my friend and colleague Herschel Shanks a book about what they claimed was an ossuary of the brother of James. That turned out to be a forgery.
In 2003, Witherington and co-author Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, wrote in The Brother of Jesus that they believed an ossuary bearing the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," was authentic.
A few months after The Brother of Jesus was published, Israel's Antiquities Authority decided that the ossuary was a fake. It charged the ossuary's owner, Oded Golan, with fraud and illegally selling archaeological artifacts outside of Israel. His trial continues, 21/2 years after it began.
Witherington said that he and Shanks stand by their conclusion that the ossuary is authentic and are not likely to change their minds, regardless of the trial's outcome.
And the ultimate kicker: Witherington and Jacobovici used to work together! In fact, Jacobovici directed the film on the James ossuary. The tangled web gets even darker. Here's a section from Witherington's blog post about all this yesterday:
First of all,I have worked with Simcha.He is a practicing Jew, indeed he is an orthodox Jew so far as I can tell.He was the producer of the Discovery Channel special on the James ossuary which I was involved with.He is a good film maker, and he knows a good sensational story when he sees one. This is such a story.Unfortunately it is a story full of holes, conjectures, and problems.It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically this is old news with a new interpretation. We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980.
For what it's worth, Jacobovici told me yesterday he was an Orthodox Jew. That was when he was barely speaking with me, before we were interviewed together on CBS. Afterwards he stormed out of the studio. To watch the interview, click here.
— If "Jesus" and "Mariamene" weren't related matrilineally, why jump to the conclusion that they were husband and wife, rather than being related through their fathers?
— The first use of "Mariamene" for Magdalene dates to a scholar who was born in 185, suggesting that Magdalene wouldn't have been called that at her death.
— St. Andrews' Bauckham defends his probabilities, noting that Jacobovici was comparing his name-cluster to the rather small sampling of names known to have been found on bone boxes, while his own basis for comparison, which adds names from contemporary literature and other sources, makes the combo far less unusual.
— Asbury Theological Seminary professor Ben Witherington, a early Christianity expert who was deeply involved with the James Ossuary, says there are physical reasons to believe it couldn't have originated in the Talpiot plot.
Darrell Bock, a professor at the conservative Protestant Dallas Seminary, whom the Discovery Channel had vet the film two weeks ago, adds another objection: why would Jesus's family or followers bury his bones in a family plot and "then turn around and preach that he had been physically raised from the dead?" If that objection smacks secular readers as relying too heavily on scripture, then Bock's larger point is still trenchant: "I told them that there were too many assumptions being claimed as discoveries, and that they were trying to connect dots that didn't belong together."
From Laurie Goodstein in the NYT:
“This is exploiting the whole trend that caught on with ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ ” said Lawrence E. Stager, the Dorot professor of archaeology of Israel at Harvard, in a telephone interview. “One of the problems is there are so many biblically illiterate people around the world that they don’t know what is real judicious assessment and what is what some of us in the field call ‘fantastic archaeology.’ ”
Professor Stager said he had not seen the film but was skeptical.
Mr. Cameron said he had been “trepidatious” about becoming involved in the project but got engaged out of “great passion for a good detective story,” not to offend and not to cash in.
“I think this is the biggest archaeological story of the century,” he said. “It’s absolutely not a publicity stunt. It’s part of a very well-considered plan to reveal this information to the world in a way that makes sense, with proper documentation.”
FEILER FASTER EXCLUSIVE: Report From Jerusalem on Jesus Hoax Monday, February 26, 2007
My phone has been ringing off the hook today with media calls about the James Cameron "Lost Tomb of Jesus" docu-hoax. As a service to readers of Feiler Faster, I telephoned my longtime archaeologist companion Avner Goren, who lives in the neighborhood in question, knows the archaeologist who first discovered the cave, and has been down this road before.
The headlines:
1. Caves like the ones where the ossuaries were discovered are commonplace in the area and were very familiar features of this neighborhood in the 1st century B.C.E. and 1st century C.E. Avner made the fascinating point that bodies used to be buried in groups but with the introduction of individualism from Greece, they started burying people in single boxes and labeling them. Basically, the way it would work is that the bodies would be buried for a year, the family would come back and collect the bones and put them in an ossuary (a stone box). Then they would take the box out once a year and have a memorial service, as Jews still do today with candle lighting.
2. A family from Nazareth would not be buried in Jerusalem. Jewish custom holds that a body should be buried within 24 hours. I recently heard of a family that hired a private plane to get a body from Cleveland to Jerusalem in time. It would have been impossible to get a body from Nazareth, in the Galilee to Jerusalem in this time period. Also, there's no way for a family to tend a grave this far away. So the idea of a multi-generational family tomb for Jesus in Jerusalem makes no sense. Even the archaeologist who discovered the tomb, Amos Kloner, has dismissed the show as "nonsense."
Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that “Jesus son of Joseph” inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years. “There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb,” Kloner said. “They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.”
3. The names on the ossuaries are very common. As Avner pointed out, 21 percent of names of women are Mary; Joseph and Jesus (Joshua) are among the top four male names. The presence of these names in a tomb would not have been rare. We have no evidence that this is a family tomb; it could have been a communal tomb, or an extended family tomb. The DNA evidence that Jesus was not connected to the Mary buried in the tomb does not prove anything, other than they are not related. There is no evidence the female body belonged to someone who was "married" to anyone else in the tomb. There is no evidence she was the the mother of anyone else in the tomb. And we can be sure they checked that! So the claim that Jesus fathered a son with the "Mary" in the tomb is bogus.
Avner is a contemporary of Amos Kloner and has known him for decades. "It takes courage to say that the names on these ossuaries were very common," Avner said. As for the filmmakers: "There is something cheap about playing on the emotions of people."
And therein is the truth of this tale: For two centuries now we have seen a tap dance between science and the Bible. Whatever the scientific breakthrough of the moment becomes the battlefield of the war -- archaeology, Darwin, physics, now DNA. What's said about this story to me is that there are many archaeologists out there who strive to find the truth. This exploitation of science is hardly new -- in fact a story like this pops up every few years or so -- but it's tawdry nonetheless.
The bottom line for me: There is more truth in Dan Brown's fiction than in James Cameron and SimchaJacobovichi's fact.
The Titanic Code: James Cameron Becomes Mel Gibson
My in-box filled this weekend with happy-talk about the new James Cameron announcement, expected on Monday, that's he's solved the mystery of Jesus. Before I pour cold water on it, let's review what he's expected to preview. As TIME puts it:
Brace yourself. James Cameron, the man who brought you 'The Titanic' is back with another blockbuster. This time, the ship he's sinking is Christianity.
In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, SimchaJacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn't resurrected --the cornerstone of Christian faith-- and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.
No, it's not a re-make of "The DaVinci Codes'. It's supposed to be true.
The story starts in 1980 in Jerusalem’s Talpiyot neighborhood, with the discovery of a 2,000 year old cave containing ten coffins. Six of the ten coffins were carved with inscriptions reading the names: Jesua son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Matthew, Jofa (Joseph, identified as Jesus’ brother), Judah son of Jesua (Jesus’ son - the filmmakers claim).
The findings in the cave, including the decipherment of the inscriptions, were first revealed about ten years ago by internationally renowned Israeli archeologist Professor Amos Kloner.
Since their discovery, the caskets were kept in the Israeli Antiquities Authority archive in BeitShemesh, but now two have been sent to New York for their first public exhibition.
Although the cave was discovered nearly 30 years ago and the casket inscriptions decoded ten years ago, the filmmakers are the first to establish that the cave was in fact the burial site of Jesus and his family.
First, let's go back eight months ago to last summer when Cameron announced that he had "solved" the riddle of the Exodus, and proclaimed, in similar grand fashion, a television show that moved the traditional dating of the Exodus from around 1250 BCE to 1500 BCE based on an outmoded theory that a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean had "caused" the Exodus. So to be clear: Then he was interested in proving the Exodus and now he's interested in disproving the Gospels. That's hard work for anyone in six months time!
Now he's picking up the similar underappreciated work of another archaeologist who has an entirely speculative theory about Jesus belonging to a dynasty far grander than the storyline in the text about his father being a carpenter. The raw facts of the story are problematic: These names were extremely common at the time, and finding them in a burial chamber is not emblematic of anything. And now comes DNA? I haven't seen the purported DNA evidence, but what's the original source? And finally, the heart of their claim is that the ossuary of Jesus was actually stolen, it's "The Lost Tomb," but as others have mentioned, it's listed as having "no inscription."
To say that this whole gesture is a money-making proposition is neither interesting nor surprising. What is surprising to me, at least, is that for most of the last century these types of grand announcements were quite common. There was a golden triangle among religious institutions, biblical scholars, and the press. The churches (and sometimes synagogues) would pay for the research; the scholars would make bold, unsupportable proclamations; and the press would report them credulously. The headline of this story to me is that the churches have been taken out of the equations and replaced with whom ... Hollywood! Mel Gibson may have met his wildest dreams: He's turned everyone in Hollywood into his or her own church.
Update: Their appearance on THE TODAY SHOW was completely unpersuasive. Not an archaeologist in site, just a journalist and a filmmaker, as they both admitted, "pimping the Bible," as one archaeologist commented. Their best case: "Nothing we discovered disproves the initial hypothesis." This is very shady and setting the bar very low: When making a claim like this, the goal is not, "We've found nothing to disprove our outrageous claim," but "We can prove it to a scientific level of certainty." At least Dan Brown had the nerve to call his story fiction.
Here we go: News of the archaeology proxy war between Israelis and Palestinians intensified today, and my email box is proof. A reader writes to link this story:
An Israeli archeologist said Wednesday that he has pinpointed the exact location of the Second Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.
The site identified by Hebrew University archeologist Prof. Joseph Patrich, based on the study of a large underground cistern on the Temple Mount and passages from the Mishna, places the Temple and its corresponding courtyards, chambers and gates in a more southeasterly and diagonal frame of reference compared to previous studies.
Patrich based his research, which is about to be published, on a study of a large underground cistern on the Temple Mount that was mapped by British engineer Sir Charles Wilson in 1866 on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund, along with passages from the Mishna.
The giant cistern, 4.5 meters wide and 54 meters long, lay near the southeastern corner of the upper platform of the Temple Mount. Examining the location and configuration of the cistern together with descriptions of the daily rite in the Temple and its surroundings found in the Mishna, Patrich said that this cistern is the only one found on the Temple Mount that can tie in with the ancient rabbinic text describing elements involved in the daily purification and sacrificial duties carried out by the priests on the altar in the Temple courtyard.
On this basis, he says, one can reconstruct the placement of a large basin that was used by the priests for their ritual washing, with the water being drawn by a waterwheel mechanism from the cistern.
The reader adds: If further studies prove it to be true, I doubt either side would be willing to share the site. I think it would be just another example of the 'all or none' philosophy that seems to control religious thought today.
As a writer, every now and then something you write comes alive, writ large in the news. This happened Friday in Jerusalem, when a riot nearly broke out on the Temple Mount during Friday prayers. As Haaretz reported: "Israeli-Arab protesters on Friday agreed to leave Temple Mount peacefully after clashing with police to protest Israeli renovation work near the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. About 200 police officers entered the area around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and hurled stun grenades to disperse Muslim protesters there midday Friday, as hundreds of demonstrators threw stones at security forces."
The backstory is that Israel is doing some renovations on the ramp that leads up to the Mount, the one that goes alongside the Western Wall. Haaretz:
Excavations near the Temple Mount's Mugrabi Gate were approved two weeks ago as a necessary precursor to replacing a ramp that provides access to the gate. The ramp collapsed three years ago, and was replaced by a temporary wooden structure. Plans have since been approved for a permanent replacement, and by law, any construction work in the Old City must be preceded by a salvage dig.
The dig is taking place in the Jewish Quarter, outside the Temple Mount, but the Islamic Movement in Israel has accused it of being meant to undermine the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, Arab ambassadors to the United Nations asked the UN Security Council on Thursday to "to take immediate and urgent measures" to stop the excavation. They said in a statement that they "denounced the Israeli occupation authority's escalation of its aggression on Islamic endowments in occupied East Jerusalem by starting to destroy a historic route."
This exact scenario is outlined in chapter 4 of WHERE GOD WAS BORN, in which I interview dueling Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists about the battle over the Temple Mount. In effect, each side uses archaeology as a proxy war to wage their geopolitical struggle over the city. Archaeology, with its mix of science and emotion, appears to be a perfect weapon in this struggle, because it appears to offer what each side would like to be the ultimate answer: Proof that their claim to the land is more legitimate. But archaeology can offer no such assurances. In fact, the sooner we disentangle scripture, faith, and science from what is, at heart, a political struggle, the sooner we are likely to find a solution. Neither the Bible nor the Koran offer a solution to the Middle East crisis.
Today is publication day for the paperback of my latest book, WHERE GOD WAS BORN: A Daring Adventure Through the Bible's Greatest Stories. A 10,000-mile adventure through the heart of the Middle East -- from the Garden of Eden to the rivers of Babylon -- WHERE GOD WAS BORN visits biblical sites unseen by Westerners in decades and explores the little-known origins of Judaism, Chrsitianity, and Islam.
In honor of the publication and the launch of this blog, I've received special permission to post a few excerpts in the coming weeks. Today, a slightly abbreviated version of the opening pages. Enjoy.
---------- I feel the tension before I know its source. My legs begin to quiver, then shake. Soon my whole body is quaking with vibration, or is it fear? Up above, the whir begins to build into a thudding bass beat. Cold air blows through the cracks and up my spine. I’m shivering. My feet are trembling. “Are you ready?” The sound in my ears is crackling, and a bit wicked. I nod. Within seconds, the shaking becomes overwhelming, the thumping dense, and the pull so strong it seems ready to suck my head off. I feel as if I’m in a full-body migraine. And then, just as suddenly, quiet. The sound dissolves, my body relaxes. I’m in the air, in a war. I’m at peace.
The helicopter pauses for a second, then accelerates into a gentle glide. Down below, the landing pad disappears, and rows of orange and avocado trees poke up toward the sky. I see the hairs on a donkey’s ears. Our nose is tipped, we’re flying, yet we’re not moving very quickly. Lifting off in a helicopter is like drifting off to sleep: You leave one realm and shift into another; the features seem dreamily unfamiliar; you want to touch what you see, but you can’t.
We bank toward the Mediterranean. Voices in my headphones interrupt. “This is the Air Force. Identify yourself! Do you have permission to be here?” Boaz, the pilot, smiles. We did have permission, garnered over the preceding six months, from three government agencies, but the flight was still risky. War was raging – between the Israelis and the Palestinians, between a fragile coalition and Iraq, between the pluralist West and Islamic extremism. Ripples were reverberating around the globe. The Cradle of Civilization – the tiny, fertile crescent of land that stretched from Mesopotamia to North Africa – had once more seized control of the world’s destiny and the future of civilization seemed to be at stake.
The bloody clash of faith and politics that filled front pages at the beginning of the new millennium seemed surprising, coming at the end of a century that seem to mark the end of God as a force in world affairs. Hadn’t Nietzsche declared at the end of the previous century (1882) that God was dead? Hadn’t science, capitalism, and the World Wide Web rendered faith a quaint hangover from the past?
History wasn’t ending, of course; it was finally coming home. The collision of politics, geography, and faith has dominated nearly every story in the Middle East since the birth of writing. It also dominates the greatest story every told. Jews and Christians who smugly console themselves that Islam is the only violent religion are willfully ignoring their past. Nowhere is the struggle between faith and violence described more vividly, and with more stomach-turning details of ruthlessness, than in the Hebrew Bible.
Yet nowhere is this conflict conveyed with more humanity and hope.
And so, I thought, what better way to confront my doubts about religion and consider the future of faith than to travel to the land where God was born? And what better guide to read along the way than the text that defines identity for half the world’s believers?
I would journey to the flashpoints in the new world war over God – Israel, Iraq, and Iran – and bring along my Bible. And I would begin my quest with the second half of the Hebrew Bible, at the moment when the children of Israel, sprung from Adam and Eve, descended from Abraham, and freed by Moses, face their harshest challenge. “Conquer the Promised Land,” God says to Joshua, Moses’s successor, at the start of the books of the Prophets. “Destroy the pagans who live on the land,” God commands. “Seize the future for yourselves – and for me.”
------------ "Breathtaking ... Goes from cover to cover, from one eye-opening story to the next, without a letup." Boston Globe
"Feiler is a real-life Indiana Jones." Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Zahi Hawass is everywhere today. In addition to bashing the Seven Wonders online poll, he is heralding the new King Tut exhibit about to open in Philly. The exhibition was controversial when it opened two years ago, largely because of the unprecedented fees and percentage of the gift shop that Egypt kept for itself. In Ft. Lauderdale, the show played at the Museum of Art, who hosted my talk on Tuesday night. Let's just say Mr. Hawass left a strong impression.
Then, on the same day, someone sent me this interview he did promoting the opening of the King Tut show in Philly next month.
Some highlights:
What do you hope people will gain from viewing the exhibition? When people visit this exhibition, they can understand one important thing: they can know that when people like Egyptians ruled in peace and had a vision of ma'at--justice and truth--they were really able to build an empire. Each artifact can tell us about those great people, and can teach us about the golden age of Egypt, and about the Valley of the Kings. It can tell them how the discovery of King Tut was not the end of archaeology. The tomb of Tutankhamun was in a valley of mystery and secrets; and I believe that it has more secrets to reveal, after KV 63. If people can understand our history, and read it well, it can give us all a good future.
Why is King Tutankhamun so important to ancient Egyptian archaeology and history? Because his tomb was found largely intact. It captured the hearts of not only archaeologists, but also of the common man. If you try to look at his name before the tomb was found, it was nothing. The discovery opened a new vision into the history of the 18th Dynasty, about the wealth of Egypt, foreign relations, and family relations. It especially made us wonder about the wealth of a tomb of someone who ruled longer that Tut--what would have been buried, for example, in the tomb of Ramesses II?
How is Egypt benefiting from the "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" touring exhibition? This is the first time that Egypt has benefited from such a show. From this exhibition and the other, King Tut II, which will be in the U.S. two years from now, Egypt will receive $100 million. There will be no free meals anymore. Before, Egypt got nothing. Museums always say it is about education, not money. But is not only about education. We need money to build museums, carry out training, do site management, and to save our monuments. No one has helped us, apart from a few countries. King Tut is helping us to restore the monuments of Egypt in a scientific way.
Last fall I gave a speech in Cleveland at the closing of a wonderful exhibition, "Cradle of Christianity." The exhibit has now been relocated to Ft. Lauderdale for the winter, and it later travels on to Emory. The photo at right, at the quote below, come from an article in the Sun-Sentinel:
The exhibit, drawn from a show at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, has some of the greatest treasures of biblical archaeology: the burial box of Caiaphas, the high priest who condemned Jesus; the only known inscription with the name of Pontius Pilate, the governor who sentenced Jesus to be crucified; pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the astonishing cache of ancient texts found in the Judean desert more than a generation ago.
"Cradle of Christianity" deals with the formation of the new faith over seven centuries, from its birth as a Judaic sect in the first century to its triumph as the state religion of the Byzantine Empire.
And a heads up: I'll be giving a speech on January 30th at the closing of the exhibition, and I''ll be at the exhibition yet again, when it moves to Emory this spring and summer.
Could Abraham Have Owned Camels? Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Nothing gets the blood boiling in a new year more than a story about camel domestication! But this may be the biggest news in biblical archaeology all year. For decades now, the best research has shown that camels weren't domesticated until the middle of the second millennium B.C.E., which would mean the references in the Bible to Abraham, say, having camels would have been an anachronism. I spent a small bit of time in Walking the Bible discussing this surprisingly fascinating topic. How do you determine when animals are domesticated?! One answer is when you discover their bones from a sacrifice, actually. See yesterday's Breaking Camel News.
Anyway, researchers in Iran have just uncovered evidence of camel domestication as early as the 3rd millennium B.C.E. Here's the key graf:
A team of anthropologists say they have identified a camel rider among the skeletal remains which belongs to a man from the 3rd millennium BC.
The team were from the Anthropology Department of Iran's Archeology Research Center and the British New Castle University, who had the mission to conduct paleo-pathological studies on the remaining skeletons of Burnt City adults.
The team say evidence of bone trauma suggests that the rider lived most of his life on camelback, possibly from the time he was a young adult to the time of death.
Herschel Shanks, the braintrust and editor behind Biblical Archaeology Review, once told me that the most popular issue of the popular magazine is the one every winter where they run lists of digs that volunteers can join. I've always loved this tidbit. In the old days (think the 1920's), digs were grand affairs, with archaeologists like Carter in the Valley of the Kings or Woolsey in Mesopotamia setting up camp, dining out on fine silver every night in the deserts, and locals running around for pennies a day. All this is harder now, so digs run on volunteers, who come to experience the romance of the past and survive on dreams that they might stumble into some fragment of the Bible.
The list should be coming out in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, BAR has a new website, Find a Dig, where you stoke your dreams online.
St. Paul's Tomb Found in Rome Wednesday, December 27, 2006
As someone well-traveled in biblical archaeology, I am usually skeptical about claims of great, breakthrough "discoveries." "We've found the Flood!" "We've found David's sword!" "We've found Jesus' shroud!" History is littered with such false finds, and the tourist trinkets sold on their backs.
But a friend tipped me off this morning about the recent "discovery" of St. Paul's tomb in Rome. On the down side, the evidence only dates back to the 4th century C.E., to the Byzantine era when grand prounouncements about the location of biblical events was very much in vogue. It's the time period that produced the linkage with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Mt. Nebo, and the burning bush. But on the (mild) upside, as pointed out in this helpful blog entry, is the fact that the "actual" site is located in the same spot as traditional location.
Either way, sell long on St. Paul's Church outside of Rome. Trinket sales are likely to surge.
