The Jesus Discovery?

James Tabor, the controversial archaeologist who produced the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" a few years ago is back in the news again. Tabor has just released his findings from a robotic excavation of a tomb in East Talpiot, Jerusalem.

This tomb is thought to predate the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It was first studied in 1981 but was then sealed under a condominium. However, a newer excavation using robots has revealed a four-line Greek inscription and a controversial image (a Christian fish symbol? a nephesh tomb marker?).

Tabor suggests these inscriptions teach us about early Christian views of the resurrection, and that Jesus' body was initially buried at the Holy Sepulchre site, but was later relocated to the Talpiot tomb. The full findings are in a newly released book The Jesus Discovery by Tabor and Jacobovici. It has already skyrocketed to #1 in all of its categories at Amazon and has an overall rank of #174.


Obviously, Tabor's thesis contradicts the biblical record (Matt. 28:5-8; Mark 16:2-8; Lk. 24:1-8; Jn. 20:1-10) and attacks the gospel itself (1 Cor. 15:12-19). But it is also shoddy archaeology, plain and simple. Tabor has a knack for the sensational (and the lucrative?) that led one scholar to remark archaeology has been “hijacked in the service of non-scientific interests.” The excavation on this tomb is noteworthy, but any conclusions by Tabor must be taken with more than a grain of salt - more like a heaping spoonful.

For updates to this developing story, check out the Bibleplaces Blog by Todd Bolen, former archaeology professor at the Master's College IBEX campus in Israel.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The final week leading up to Christ's death and resurrection is known as His "Passion Week" because of the intense suffering our Lord experienced. It's almost unthinkable how much our Lord packed into one week -- from His symbolic anointing by Mary, to His triumphal entry, to His cleansing of the temple, to His controversial "woes," to His Olivet Discourse on the second coming, to His Last Supper. Through it all, the Son of Man stayed focused on His mission and "loved us to the uttermost" (John 13:1).

We must not forget that Jesus' death and resurrection were real events that took place in space and time. This is not the stuff of fairy tales. You can hop on a jet today, and in less than 24 hours, see the very place where Jesus died and rose again. The traditional site of Golgotha and the Empty tomb is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. To learn more about this famous church, I encourage you to watch this 3-D video.

All I remember from visiting the tomb years ago was the smell of incense; the dark, cold, maze-like stone interior; the somber Catholic and Orthodox priests; and the crowds of tourists. Hardly edifying.

But this video peels back the layers of the church and explains how it inherited its puzzle-like design. After watching the first couple minutes on the present day church, I encourage you to see the church at the height of the Byzantine Period (6:30 into the video). It must have been quite a spectacle.

Then travel back further in time and witness how Rome tried to erase all memory of Jesus by building a pagan shrine to Jupiter over the empty tomb (9:00 into the video). How ironic. Jupiter has now been relegated to books on Roman mythology and the name of a planet 400 million miles away. Meanwhile, the gospel of Jesus is spreading like wildfire and changing the lives of people around the world. We serve a risen Savior. He lives!

HT: Chris McKinney

Herod who??

I must admit, I still get confused by all those Herods mentioned in the New Testament. To keep them straight, I find it helpful to read the biblical text with a genealogy of Herod's family at my side (here's one from the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible).

Well, so much for simplicity. Even this chart looks more like an engineering schematic than a family tree. To boil it all down, there are four key members of Herod's family mentioned in the Gospels...

Herod the Great. This is the original Herod of them all. The very name sent shivers up the spine of ancient Jews. Son of Antipater, he was a cunning politician, ruthless dictator, and brilliant architect. He was responsible for constructing the temple mount in Jerusalem, fortress palaces at Herodium and Masada, and a harbor at Caesarea -- all which continue to astound archaeologists and engineers today. In addition to killing several kin who threatened his throne, Herod murdered all the young boys in Bethlehem at the news that a baby king named Jesus had been born (Mt. 2:16). Herod died a short time later, splitting his kingdom between three sons.


Herod Philip - son of Herod the Great through his wife Cleopatra. Ruled over a vast area of NE Palestine until AD 34. The city of Caesarea Philippi up in the foothills gets its name from this man.

Herod Antipas - son of Herod the Great through his wife Malthace. Ruled over Galilee and Perea until AD 39. Antipas is the one who stole Herodias from another half-brother named Philip (Mt. 14:3) and was responsible for executing John the Baptist (Mt. 14:10). He's also the Herod who appears during the Roman trial of Jesus (Lk. 23:7).

Archelaus - Another son of Herod the Great through his wife Malthace. A vicious and inept king who ruled for about a decade over Judea and Samaria, but was de-throned while Jesus was still a child (he is mentioned only in Mt. 2:22). By the time Jesus began His public ministry, this region had long been taken away from Herodian control and assigned to Roman procurators/governors.

There are even more descendants of Herod mentioned in the book of Acts, but I won't take time to discuss them now. Here's a map from the Holman Bible Atlas showing the political boundaries right after Herod the Great's death. This is how Israel looked when Jesus' family returned from Egypt and settled up in Nazareth.

Has Noah's ark been found?

At last, the article I've been waiting all week to read. Life and Land blog responds to this week's reports that Noah's Ark has been discovered on Mount Ararat. Once again, Bill Crouse and Gordon Franz offer a good dose of common sense and caution.

Their conclusion: "At this point we are skeptical of the claims but would rejoice in the end if they proved to be true...For the person in the pew, we caution you to not get too excited about something that is at best, unsubstantiated; and at worst, a fraud perpetrated by the Kurdish guide."

Related posts:

• Tabloid archaeology

Restoring old photos of Israel

In his latest newsletter, Todd Bolen explains the painstaking process of restoring old photos to create the 8-volume American Colony and Eric Matson Collection. It’s a fascinating project that really makes you appreciate the end result. Here’s his full article…

Shortly after producing a collection of modern-day photographs in the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands (initially released in January 2000), I began work on a supplementary collection that would peel back the recent layers of time to reveal the sites of the Holy Land before the changes brought by modernization.  The initial fruit of this work was the release of 8 volumes of Historic Views of the Holy Land in November 2004.

About that same time, I learned that the Library of Congress was digitizing the G. Eric and Edith Matson Negatives.  Between 1966 and 1981, Eric Matson and his beneficiary donated this collection to the Library of Congress. But public access was limited and costly until 2004, when the first negatives were scanned and made available online, a huge job in itself!  In browsing through these photographs, I quickly realized two things.  First, these photos would be extremely useful to teachers and researchers of Palestine and the surrounding areas.  Second, the collection could be greatly improved in a number of ways.

The Kazneh (Treasury) at Petra, damaged stereographic image

The first step in the process that culminated in this published collection was downloading all of the online images, which were made available in three sizes. The medium size was 1024 pixels wide.  This is too small if 1) the photo is damaged; 2) the photo is a stereographic image; 3) one wanted to enlarge a particular portion; or 4) one desired to print the image.  The large size was a much higher resolution (e.g., 5200 x 3600 pixels), but these were in tif format, which meant the file sizes were so large that they were impractical for regular use.  At 25-70 MB each in size, these images would take a long time to download and quickly fill up hard drives.  To make this the best collection possible, I downloaded all of the tif files and converted them to jpg format, thus retaining the highest resolution, but at a more manageable file size.

The next step was to identify each image as accurately as possible.  Some of the images would be immediately recognizable to a recent visitor to Israel, but many are difficult to identify even for long-time residents.  To expedite the process, Tony Garland, with helpful advice from staff at the Library of Congress, created a script so that all of the descriptive information for the photos on the Library of Congress website could be accessed in a personal database.  Seth Rodriquez, now finishing his PhD dissertation, went through all of the images and wrote a short, descriptive filename for each one.  Andrei Tsvirinko then copied the names from the database to the jpg image itself.  All of the steps described here are simple enough in themselves, but repeating them 14,000 times requires great perseverance!

The next step in the process was cropping the photos.  Many images are stereographs, that is, nearly identical side-by-side images which, when viewed through a stereoscope, appear as a single, three-dimensional image.  Other photographs had tape marks, water damage, or other blemishes which were best removed by cropping.  At a later stage, some photos were cropped to alter the orientation from vertical to horizontal, thus creating a more compact view for computer use and eliminating extensive stretches of sky or earth (see example below). Other adjustments were required for photos that had been scanned in mirror-image or were uploaded upside-down.

Sidon castle, stereographic image, before cropping

Sidon castle, after cropping and adjustments

At this point, I began sorting the images into categories.  It was necessary to accomplish this step early in the process because of the numerous duplicates and near-duplicates in the collection.  An important contribution, therefore, of this edition over the online collection is its selection of the best images and its logical arrangement of them (either geographically or topically).

City of David, 1900-1920, before and after cropping

Along the way, numerous corrections and refinements were made to the descriptions provided by the photographers of the American Colony and Eric Matson photo services.  Some images were misidentified in the photographers' notes, some were labeled only generally, and some bore names no longer in use today.  In other cases, we were able to correct or improve upon the supplied dates and identify images that were presented in mirror image.

One of the most time-consuming tasks of this project was the removal of blemishes from the images.  Some of the negatives are over 100 years old, and time, transport, and storage have taken their toll on the material.  Since the goal of this project was to provide "teaching quality" images, larger specks and markings were removed, though smaller blemishes may still be visible when magnified. In some cases, the damage was so great that it was impossible to restore the image.  Other adjustments were made to photos for brightness, contrast, and color.

Old City of Jerusalem, before and after restoration (enlarge for detail)

The creation of PowerPoint presentations with the images serves several purposes.  First, unlike jpg files, slides in a PowerPoint file can be arranged in sequential order, and usually I have organized these following a natural tour route.  As many will use these photographs in presentations, having the images already properly sized and placed in PowerPoint makes it quick and easy to copy slides from one presentation to another.

Second, explanatory notes or relevant quotations can be "attached" to the photograph by means of the "speaker's notes" section in PowerPoint (see screenshot).  Many of the photographs in these volumes are now accompanied by quotations from 19th century explorers, travelers, and writers.  (The Jerusalem volume is annotated with original notes by Tom Powers.) Yuliya Molitvenik spent hundreds of hours reading old books and rare journals in search of choice descriptive statements.  These were usually written before the photos were taken (in the early 20th century), but they provide additional insight into the sites and scenes depicted in the photographs.  Sometimes the quotations describe details that precisely match what is in the photo, and other times they may provide a different "picture."  The quotations come from the best available sources of the day, and are valuable in their own right.  

Ultimately, we believe this collection has been improved through editing, organization, corrections, and the addition of supplemental quotations. Its superior resolution, format, and presentation will make it easy to use.

Tour the temple mount

Have you always wanted to travel to Jerusalem and see where the temple once stood? Here's the next best thing (and much cheaper). A virtual tour of the temple mount.

Todd Bolen writes, "The creators did a fantastic job with this. The photography is superb, the narration is helpful, and the location is one of the most religiously (and politically) important in the world." He notes the focus of the tour is on the Islamic structures presently on the mount, though the tour does not deny the earlier existence of the Jewish temple, porticoes, etc.

When I had the privilege of studying and traveling in Israel nearly 10 years ago with the IBEX program, I journaled about my experience on the temple mount:

We then made our way to the present day Temple Mount, which is only open to the general public a couple hours a day. Due to the Arab presence, we were instructed to keep our Bibles in our backpacks. In the south of the large courtyard was the El-Aqsa Mosque, and further to the north, directly over where the Holy of Holies is believed to have once rested, we saw the famous Dome of the Rock. A few tourist groups wandered around the courtyard, but mostly, there was an aura of quietness and reverence throughout the place. For the Arabs, this is one of the most sacred sites in the world. The Jews, who despise the Arab presence, are rarely seen on the Mount. They long for a day when the temple can be restored, and dreading the thought of standing on holy ground unworthily, they are content for now to stay outside the Western Wall (or "Wailing Wall"). From the Wall, Jewish prayers to Jehovah are considered a "local call."

Jews begin work on bronze altar

You may not have heard about this, but a group of Jews called the Temple Institute have been diligently working for the last three decades to reconstruct all the furniture for the Temple. (I actually got to see the menorah when I visited Israel ten years ago.) Their hope is to one day rebuild the temple and reestablish sacrifices. Hmmm. Sounds like something I read in Revelation.

The Temple Institute will begin building the sacrificial altar on Thursday, Tisha B’av, a fast day when Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple some 2,000 years ago.

The sacrificial altar was located in the center of the Temple, and upon it the Kohanim (priests) offered the numerous voluntary and obligatory sacrifices commanded in the Bible.

The Temple Institute, which has already built many of the vessels for the Holy Temple, such as the ark and the menorah, has now embarked on a project to build the altar. Construction begins Thursday in Mitzpe Yericho (east of Jerusalem) at 5:30 p.m.

“Unfortunately, we cannot currently build the altar in its proper place, on the Temple Mount,” Temple Institute director Yehudah Glick said. “We are building an altar of the minimum possible size so that we will be able to transport it to the Temple when it is rebuilt."

Even a minimum size altar will work out to be approximately 2 meters tall, 3 meters long, and 3 meters wide. Workers have collected around 10 cubic meters of rocks weighing several tons already.

The rocks were gathered from the Dead Sea area and wrapped individually to assure they remain whole and are not touched by metal, as the Bible requires.

“The Torah says that no iron tools should be used on the altar’s stones,” Glick explained. “The altar represents a connection to life and to the creation of the world. Iron is the opposite – it is used to build tools of war, death, and destruction.”

HT: Todd Bolen

Tabloid archaeology

Gordon Franz writes,

One day a friend sent me an invitation to a church meeting and asked me if I knew anything about the subject. On the flyer was a picture of a human skeleton with crooked teeth and a rock embedded in his forehead. The title above the skull read: “They’ve Found Goliath’s Skull!”

Has Goliath's skull really been discovered? To find out, you'll have to read rest of the story here.

This is a good example of what Franz calls "Tabloid Archaeology," and unfortunately, many Christians buy into this stuff hook, line, and sinker. If it sounds good and seems to give credibility to the Bible, then no matter its source (email, blog, tabloid, video) or level of scholarship, we assume it must be true and with great excitement pass it on to our friends.

To avoid future embarassment, we can all be grateful for a new website Franz has developed called Life and Land Seminars. It has a lot of material on Bible backgrounds, but some articles deal specifically with sensational theories and discoveries. The site is formatted like a blog, so navigation can be tricky. But if you use the search bar in the top right corner, you should be able to search and find any pertinent articles quickly. Think of it like a "Snopes" for biblical archaeology. Here's a few other debunking articles Franz has written:

Does “The Lost Shipwreck of Paul” Hold Water? – A critique of the theory of Robert Cornuke.

Mount Sinai is Not at Jebel Al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia (and parts 2 and 3) – A careful refutation of the theory of Ron Wyatt that has captivated many gullible Bible believers.

Did the BASE Institute Discover Noah’s Ark in Iran? – The historical and geographical problems with a recent theory promoted in Christian circles.

The So-Called Jesus Family Tomb “Rediscovered” in Jerusalem – A lengthy analysis of the Talpiyot tomb that recent movie producers have claimed belonged to Jesus of Nazareth.

HT: Todd Bolen