Announcing Briercrest's 2016 Israel Study Tour

I am happy to report that Briercrest College and Seminary professor Dr. Wes Olmstead will be hosting a study tour of Israel from April 29 to May 13, 2016.

Our fantastic guide, Yoni Gerrish, describes the tour as follows:

This tour focuses considerable attention on themes from the Exodus narrative, as well as possible routes the Israelites may have followed through the Great Wilderness (portions of which include the modern Negev Wilderness). Attention will be given to life-styles of desert peoples from ancient times to the present. One of our themes will entail comparisons between the task of Moses and the role of Messiah as seen from various Jewish perspectives. Other subjects will include the conquest of the land of Canaan, and the development of Judaism through the Temple periods to the days of Jesus.

The tour will begin in the south of Israel, with four nights in the Negev and around the Dead Sea (Beer Sheva, the Ramon Crater, Eilat on the Red Sea, En Botek off the Dead Sea), one night on the Mediterranean near ancient Caesaria, three nights in Tiberius on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and four nights in Jerusalem. (Click here for a more detailed description of a very similar itinerary.)

Believe me, you want to be part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Past participants from our 2009 and 2011 Israel Study tours will tell you that it is more than worth it.

For more information, see the tour website: www.briercrest.ca/israeltour/.

Israel Tour 2011

I am happy to report that Briercrest College professors Dr. Don Taylor and Dr. Cal Macfarlane will be hosting a study tour of Israel in May 2011. The tour will be open to current Briercrest College and Seminary students as well as alumni.

For more information, see the tour website: http://www.briercrest.ca/israeltour/.

For more information on what the tour will be like, see my as yet unfinished blog series on the first Briercrest Israel tour last spring. (I'm sure I'll be disappointed not to be going along come 2011, but for now I'm happy to let others organize the trip, and I'm excited for those who will get to go!)

Who invented terrorism?

A Sri Lankan / Australian friend I met last spring in Jerusalem commented that the Tamil Tigers invented terrorism. Not so, I replied, and showed him a picture I had taken by the King David Hotel earlier that day:

(Todd Bolen has a picture of the damaged building.)

The reality, of course, is more complex as one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, and, according to this wikipedia article, the origins of terrorism lie much farther in the past.

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 6

Kudos to Tyler Smith for his work on the Beit Alpha Synagogue Inscription.

Inscription 6 is from the magnificent Nabataean city of Avdat in the Judaean wilderness:





In one end of the Avdat fortress...


...is a Byzantine church....

...with this burial inscription:

After you have transcribed and translated the inscription, let me know what you think the markings at the end are.

Israel Trip 2e (April 30) - Nazareth

We stopped briefly in Nazareth at the closest thing our guide could find to a cliff (see Luke 4:29). The historical village of Nazareth apparently fit within the compound of the Church of the Anunciation somewhere in the valley below:
Across the street from where we stopped is The Morgenthau Absorption Centre, which to a Canadian eye looks like something else:
That's it for Nazareth (I only took two pictures) and our second first day of touring. Stay tuned for day 3 two. (Getting ahead of myself.)

This is the 6th in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel
Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo
Israel Trip 2d (April 30) - Sepphoris (Zippori)

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 5

Today's inscription comes from a mosaic that lined the floor of the 6th century Beit Alpha Synagogue:
The design is not nearly as professional as the mosaics in urban Sepphoris--or perhaps it simply anticipates modern art:
Here is a close up of the inscription:
As usual, kudos and coffee to the first person who correctly transcribes and translates the Greek inscription in the comments. Bonus kudos if you translate the Aramaic too.
You can probably find a translation of the inscription online somewhere. Don't spoil the fun!

Other posts in this series:
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 3
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4 Revisited

And now for something completely different, check out these pictures of the demolition of our WWII era hangar/hockey rink: Sparrow Gardens r.i.p.

Israel Trip 2d (April 30) - Sepphoris (Zippori)

Update: See discussion of the mikveh "immersion pools" below.
Zippori (Sepphoris) is best known today for the "Mona Lisa of the Galilee," part of an amazingly detailed mosaic that once lined the floor of a triclinium dining room in a 3rd CE mansion:
At one end of the mosaic is the "Mona Lisa":
Near the other is the final scene from a drinking contest between Dionysus and Hercules:
Hercules lost.

The beautiful mosaic associated with the worship of Dionysus is intriguing because Zippori was at this time a center of Jewish religious life: Rabbi Judah the Prince moved the rabbinic Sanhedrin to Zippori at the end of the 2nd century, and the Mishnah was codified here around 200 CE.

(A miqveh immersion pool,* a sign of Jewish presence in Zippori)

"The city . . . was considered by Theodoret the church history to be entirely Jewish in the reign of Valens (364-78)" (Murphy-O'Connor 468). No doubt the city had a mixed Jewish and pagan population in the 3rd century (a 2nd CE Roman temple was recently discovered), but it is instructive to imagine the rabbis carry on their work in such a cosmopolitan setting.

*Update: That is, if the archaeologists are right in identifying the pools as immersion pools (miqva'ot). Consider Seth Schwartz in his excellent book, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. (Princeton University Press, 2001):

[O]ver twenty small bathtubs were discovered in a residential district of the city, which excavators have identified, with what justification is unclear, as miqva'ot. If this is correct, then the population of Sepphoris in approximately the third century was either radically diverse, consisting of a mixture of paganizers and the purity-obsessed or mind-bogglingly eclectic in their Jewish observance. While both options seem probable on other grounds, it is unclear why the bathtubs should not be considered simply bathtubs. (144)

Also interesting, giving the rabbinic prohibition of images, is the 5th century synagogue that we didn't take time to see: It has a colourful mosaic that contains the signs of the zodiac and depicts biblical figures such as Abraham, Isaac, and Aaron (see the pictures at the bottom of this page).

Sepphoris was made the capital of Galilee when the Romans took over in the first century BCE. It was destroyed by the Romans after a revolt in connection with Herod the Great's death (4 BCE). Herod Antipas, Herod the Great's son and successor in Galilee, rebuilt Sepphoris and made it his capital. Murphy-O'Connor speuclates that this "probably drew the artisan Joseph and his family to settle in nearby Nazareth (Matt. 2: 21-3); the project would provide work for many years" (468).

There is much more to see in Zippori--the national park pamphlet recommends 3-4 hours to view the whole 16 square kilometer site--but we were short on time, I was tired, and took few pictures.

If you want more, check out Bibleplaces.com for always excellent photos, a few of which are free to view; the Wikipedia article, and especially Biblewalks.com.

This is the 5th in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel
Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo

Israel Trip 2c (April 30) - Megiddo

What does one say about Megiddo, a tell made up of at least 20 different historical periods dating between 4000 and 400 BCE? After fourteen years of archaeological excavations by the Rockefeller expedition (1925-1939), the site now looks like a pile of rubble--at least to the unaided eye. Fortunately, there is a model in the museum that helps make sense of it all:Unfortunately, those of us who stayed behind to take pictures took a wrong turn on the way out. When we rejoined the group, our guide was talking about a Solomon-era gate (see 1 Kgs 9:15):
The palm trees in the distance . . .
. . . overlook the sacred area where archeologists uncovered ruins of four different Canaanite temples. The round altar in the next picture is is dated to 2500 BCE:
Turning around, there is a magnificent view of the Jezreel valley. In the northeast we could see Mt. Moreh on the right, Mt. Tabor barely visible in the centre, and the Nazareth ridge on the left:
In the east we could make out Mt. Gilboa near Beit-Shan, where King Saul was killed (2 Sam 21:12):
Because of its prominent position overlooking the Jezreel valley, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor calls Megiddo "the royal box in one of the great theatres of history":

From time immemorial armies have surged from the surrounding valleys to play their parts on the flat stage of the Jezreel valley. Not surprisingly, Armageddon (= Har Megedon = Mountain of Megiddo) has become the symbol for the battle to end all wars (Rev. 16: 16). Its position at the head of the most important pass through the Carmel range . . . gave Megiddo control of the Way of the Sea, the ancient trade route between Egypt and the east. Traders from all over the known world passed its gates, as did invading armies. - The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (5th ed.; Oxford: 2008), 386.

The real question for me was the identity of this building:
The archaeologists first identified the building (and others like it on the northeastern side of the tell) as Solomon's stables. We know that Megiddo was in Israelite hands by Solomon's time. According to 1 Kings 9:15, he fortified the city; 1 Kings 10:26 says that he collected horses and stationed them in chariot cities. The buildings were identified as stables because limestone troughs were found within them. I saw this example later when I visited the Rockefeller museum in Jerusalem:
The problem is that archeologists later found a palace from Solomon's time underneath the southeastern stables. Apparently most now date the stables to Ahab or Omri's time in the 9th century BCE. O'Connor isn't even convinced they are stables: "if they were stables they must have housed very small, house-broken ponies" (390)!

If you want to find out more about Megiddo, check out the Megiddo Expedition. Better yet, join the archeological dig at Megiddo that is set to begin June 13th, 2010.

This is the 4th post in a series on the 2009 Briercrest Israel Tour:
Israel Trip 1 (April 28-29) - Climate Change
Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea
Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4 Revisited

The transcription and translation below of inscription #4 is based on Charis's proposal, which beat out Danny's for a free coffee:Transcription:
επι φλ-
παλλαδιου
πορφυρου
του μεγαλοπρε
R ηγεμονος
το εργον της στοας
μετα και της
ψηφωσεως
εγενετο

Translation (updated): "The work of the stoa along with the mosaic was done (sponsored?) in the time of Flavius Palladius son of Porforius the magnificent leader."

The inscription commemorates the building of a marble sidewalk along a major street in Scythopolis, coined the 'Palladius street' by excavators (or in the Byzantine period?). This is what Jerome Murphy-O'Connor has to say: "Palladius street takes its name from a C4 [so is my date right?] AD circular inscription in the mosaic sidewalk, which reads, 'In the time of Palladius son of Porphyrius, the most magnificent governor, the work of the stoa together with the mosaic pavement'" (The Holy Land, 223). I'm not sure why O'Connor left out the date and the verb.

Comments on the Greek (updated):

• I wasn't sure what to do with φλ. Charis suggested a date, which I at first thought was correct. But when you convert the letters to arabic numerals (here, here or here), you get 530, which is a little strange for a 4th century inscription. In a comment, Stephen Carlson proposed the more likely alternative that φλ. is an abbreviation for Φλαβιος. This abbreviation is in fact common (e.g., here and here).
  
• I treat το εργον as the subject of εγενετο, since the name παλλαδιου is in the genitive case as the object of the preposition ἐπί, functioning temporally.
• μεγαλοπρε must be short for the adjective μεγαλοπρεπής (magnificent), whose genitive singular form would be μεγαλοπρεποῦς (on the analogy of ἀληθής).
• I don't know what the R is doing at the beginning of line 5. Charis read it as a rho, which Wikipedia says is possible in some Western Greek forms of the letter. Is it a sign of the rough breathing? Is it a ligature for the missing ending of μεγαλοπρε?
• ἡ ψηφωσίς means to work in or adorn with mosaics according to LSJ.
  

Other posts in this series:
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 1 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2 Revisited
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 3
Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4

Israel Trip 2b (April 30) - Views from Mt. Carmel

The Carmelites built the Mukhraka monastery at the site where they believe Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal (click here for a Google satellite image):

Elijah's extravagant command to fill 4 jars of water, and douse the altar with it 3 times (1 Kings 18:33-35) takes on new significance from this vantage point. During a drought the only water source would likely have been the Kishon River far below (aka. the creek beyond the highway in the foreground):
According to 1 Kings 18:40, the Kishon River was also the location where Elijah had the 450 prophets of Baal slaughtered.

From the rooftop there is a magnificent view of the Jezreel valley, playing field of so much of ancient Israel's history, and crucial plank on the land bridge between empires from the north (Assyria, Babylon, Persia, the Seleucids) and Egypt in the south. This photo looks north (and a bit west) at the part of the valley that faces modern day Haifa and the Mediterranean Sea.The next photo looks northeast. Barely visible in the haze following the trajectory of the left runway is Nazareth with Mt. Tabor beside it; beyond the right runway is Mt. Moreh (cf. Judg 7:1):
The Mt. Carmel panorama was especially exciting after working through Biblical Backgrounds' Regional Study Guide, Regional Study Maps, and the book, Regions on the Run. The authors do an excellent job showing how geography shapes history. For example, while I knew the Carmel range posed a major natural obstacle for anyone traveling north or south . . .
I didn't realize there were only three natural passes that "carried almost all of the commerce and military might of the ancient world passing through the Land Between, the land bridge between the Nile and Mesopotamian river valleys" (Regional Study Guide, 29). It is for this reason that George Adam Smith refers to the Jezreel valley as "the classic battle-ground of Scripture" (The Historical Geography of Scripture [1901], 391).

Each pass was guarded at or near its entrance by a city, the northernmost of which was Jokneam (mentioned in Josh 12:22; 19:11; 21:34; 1 Chr 6:77). It so happens that the modern town of the same name and the ancient tell is clearly visible from the monastery rooftop:
To the south, in the blurry distance is Megiddo, another famous gateway city, and our next major stop on our first day of touring:
The pictures, unfortunately, don't do justice to the view. You had to be there.

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 4

Here's one from Scythopolis / Beit Shean:The inscription was found on the sidewalk to the left of this street . . .
. . . not far from the Sigma:

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 3

Inscription 3 is from the 4th century CE synagogue at Capernaum:
Here is a close up of the right centre column:
As usual, I'll buy coffee for the first one to transcribe and translate the inscription.

(I carefully photographed the inscription on the left as well, only to realize when I returned home that it is a modern Latin inscription dated 1926.)

Greek Inscriptions from Israel 2 Revisited

I don't know about you, but I found Inscription 2 difficult. The transcription below is courtesy of Patrick McCullough at kata ta biblia.
Pat's Transcription:
Ἀνδρέου
ἐνδοξω
φιλοκτίστου
ἀνθυπάτου
πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη

Pat's Translation: "(May the) years of glorious proconsul Andreas, fond of building, be many!"
My variation: "[This building was erected] by Andreas, the glorious, fond of building, proconsul, may his years be many."

Comments:
(1) I didn't know what to do with the letter that looks like a Modern Hebrew Ayin (or the bottom half of the number 8) at the end of lines 1, 3 and 4. The character is apparently a Byzantine era abbreviation for the diphthong ου that is still used, on occasion, in colloquial modern Greek. (More information on ligatures here.)
(2) Pat's transcription of the article τα makes good grammatical sense, but it looks like an eta to me. Is this also an abbreviation?
(3) Is the omega in ενδοξω a typo for ου or is it dative? If the latter, why?
(4) I'm new to reading Greek inscriptions. Where does one learn this stuff? This Byzantine Paleography page is the most helpful thing I've found yet, but it doesn't deal directly with inscriptions. And here's a post on Byzantine Greek Fonts with ligatures. Is there a better reference anywhere online?

These two mosaic inscriptions from Caesarea are just a tiny sampling. A search of Brown University's excellent site devoted to Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine yields 317 inscriptions from Caesarea produced during the common era, with transcriptions, detailed descriptions, and publication information, but no pictures.

Greek Inscription # 3 from Capernaum will be easier!

Israel Trip 2a (April 30) - Caesarea

(This is the second in a series of Israel tour posts; the first is here.)

Our first stop on our first day of touring was Caesarea, well-known as the city Herod the Great transformed from the fishing village of Strato's Tower into a major port. It is also the city where, according to Acts 10-11, Peter encountered the Gentile centurion Cornelius, and where Cornelius and his invited guests encountered the Holy Spirit. The group is standing on the stage of a much-restored Herodian theatre:
Looking north from the theatre compound, there is a nice overview of the ancient city. Off to the left of the next picture is the ruins of the "Palace of the Procurators"; the stepped seats on the right overlook a Herodian amphitheatre, large enough for chariot races. In the distance are the walls of the crusader city and, on the left, the remains of the ancient city's man-made harbour:

After Herod's son Archelaus was deposed in AD 6, Judaea was ruled directly by Roman prefects and procurators, who made their capital in Caesarea, and their headquarters, apparently, in this palace:
Jerome Murphy-O'Connor (243) speculates that it was here that the apostle Paul was imprisoned for two years (see Acts 23-26). Not a bad view for a prison!

On the northeastern end of the amphitheatre . . .
. . . "are four long vaulted warehouses of the C3 AD"(O'Connor 245), one of which was transformed into Israel's only Mithareum, a place of worship for devotees of the god Mithras:
The worship of Mithras was a mystery religion popular among the Roman army. Apparently important to the construction of this Mithraeum was a hole in the roof through which a ray of sunlight would strike the altar at noon on the summer solstice (June 21):

East of the amphitheatre and parallel with it is the Byzantine Cardo, or main street. According to O'Connor, "it is extremely probable that the Herodian Cardo followed the same line" (245). The smokestacks in the background of the next picture belong to a coal-burning electricity plant south of Caesarea. On clear days, the smokestacks can be seen from Jerusalem. The mosaics to the right of the pillars contain the only inscriptions in Israel (outside of churches) containing a passage from the New Testament. (See this blog post for more details on the inscriptions.)

The lawn in the photo below once formed part of Herod's amazing man-made "circular harbour enclosing enough space for large fleets to lie at anchor near shore" (A.J. 15.334). The white caps mark part of the harbour's northern edge, now submerged:

(There is an aerial photo and an artist's reconstruction here.)

Josephus says "that the solidity of [Herod's] masonry defied the sea, while its beauty was such as if no obstacle had existed" (War 1.411):

"[H]e had blocks of stone let down into twenty fathoms of water, most of them measuring fifty feet in length by nine in depth and ten in breadth, some being even larger. Upon the submarine foundation thus laid he constructed above the surface a mole two hundred feet broad; of which one hundred were built out to break the surge...while the remainder supported a stone wall encircling the harbour. From this wall arose, at intervals, massive towers..." (War 1.411-412).

The apostle Paul would have entered this harbour on his several voyages to Caesarea. When he did so, he couldn't miss the monumental temple to Rome and Augustus that Herod built in honour of his Roman patron overlooking the harbour.

In the end, Herod's decision to build a pagan temple containing "a colossal statue of the emperor, not inferior to the Olympian Zeus" (War 1.414) played a role in the conflict between Jews and Gentiles that culminated in the Jewish revolt (2.266), and the destruction of Herod's more famous temple to the God of Israel in Jerusalem.

(Roman aqueduct built in the first century CE)