Move evidence of Babylonian-Egyptian contacts

Austrian Times reports here on the discovery of a Babylonian seal impression at Tell el-Dab’a in Egypt.

Austrian archaeologists have found a Babylonian seal in Egypt that confirms contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos during the second millennium B.C.

Irene Forstner-Müller, the head of the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s (ÖAI) branch office in Cairo, said today (Thurs) the find had occurred at the site of the ancient town of Avaris near what is today the city of Tell el-Dab’a in the eastern Nile delta.

The Hyksos conquered Egypt and reigned there from 1640 to 1530 B.C.

She said a recently-discovered cuneiform tablet had led archaeologists to suspect there had been contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos.

Forstner-Müller added that Manfred Bietak had begun archaeological research on the period of Hyksos dominance at the remains of a Hyksos palace at Avaris in 1966.

Babylonian seal impression.

Earlier in the year we reported on the discovery of a Babylonian tablet at Tell el-Dab’a here.

The report  says the Austrian plan to build a museum in the area. A more complete report in Die Presse says they also have plans to restore the river. The Pelusiac branch of the Nile once flowed by this ancient site. Below is a photo of the canal which often follows the course of the Pelusiac.

Canal along the Pelusiac Branch of the Nile near Tell el-Dab’a. Photo by FJ.

Tell el-Dab’a is in the eastern Nile Delta. In Biblical times it was known as the Land of Goshen, and served as the home of the Israelites.

“Hurry and go up to my father, and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, “God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. “You shall live in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children and your flocks and your herds and all that you have. “There I will also provide for you, for there are still five years of famine to come, and you and your household and all that you have would be impoverished.” (Genesis 45:9-11 NAU)

These new findings might shed some light on the plausibility of Achan finding a garment from Shinar (Babylon) at Jericho (Joshua 7).

HT: Biblical Paths

Buying the best Bible Software

As time permits I am trying to catch up on some of the blogs that I follow. I see that C. Michael Patton has a post at Parchment and Pen (I love that title) on “The Other Best Bible Software.” He is talking about Logos Bible Software. The other one he reviewed earlier is BibleWorks 8. Michael says he uses both. So do I.

Every young preacher should stop buying junk, ready-mixed pabulum, and get some real tools. Another advantage is that you will have no books to loan! Read Patton’s review here.

You will find some comments about the free software that so many preachers and teachers use.

The earlier review about BibleWorks 8 is here.

David Instone-Brewer, Tyndale Tech, has also written recently about Logos Libronix 3 here.

Morris Proctor is an (the?) authorized trainer for Logos Bible Software. His Tips and Tricks are helpful. You might also find a helpful note at the Logos Blog.

You will also find notes about both of these programs at Biblical Studies and Technological Tools.

Recently I wrote here about the problem of having to use Pradis to have access to Zondervan publications. In recent weeks, Zondervan and Logos announced that Zondervan books will be available from Logos. Good news. Now we must wait to see have much (or little?) we will have to pay for the conversion of the programs we already have.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)

Make every effort to present yourself before God as a proven worker who does not need to be ashamed, teaching the message of truth accurately. (2 Timothy 2:15 NET)

Piper: “I want all the words”

John Piper is doubtless one of today’s most respected evangelical leaders. He is a scholar and preaches like a scholar, but with a broad appeal. That is not an easy combination. To say Piper is a Calvinist is an understatement. I am not a Calvinist, but I often profit from the lessons of John Piper. One always comes away challenged.

In this video clip Piper takes on versions that do not allow the reader to know all the words of a text. Many read to get the idea and never learn the details. This can be misleading. I think preachers who never grapple with textual problems and leave their hearers in the dark do them a great disservice.

Piper is discussing John 4:44-45. Here is how it reads in the NASB:

44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. 45 So when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things that He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they themselves also went to the feast.

Here is the NIV rendering of the same text:

44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.

Listen and think.

Great source for periodical articles

Rob Bradshaw, over in the UK, has a passion for making available good, scholarly articles from old periodicals. This isn’t as easy as it may sound. He must know the literature, be able to locate a copy of the journal, obtain permission from the author or publisher, scan it, OCR, put into Word format, put it into a portable format such as PDF, post it online, etc.

Most recently I have downloaded J. A. Thompson’s 1964 booklet, The Ancient Near Eastern Treaties and the Old Testament. It is true that I have a copy of this booklet in my library, but I like having the material on my computer for easy searching. A couple of evenings ago I noticed that John R. W. Stott’s The Preacher’s Portrait. Some New Testament Word Studies was available. Now I have a copy on my computer. Did I mention that Rob sometimes scans books? Recently he has made available Carl F. H. Henry’s Revelation and the Bible. There are some great chapters in that book.

Use the search box to locate authors in which you may be interested. There is material by Edward J. Young, F. F. Bruce, et al.

Follow the link to this treasure of significant material: BiblicalStudies.org.uk. Thanks Rob.

Prof. Israel Finkelstein visits Khirbet Qeiyafa

Luke Chandler reports here, with photos, that Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University, paid a visit to Khirbet Qeiyafa (the ElahFortress) on the last day of the dig. He has posted a couple of photos of Finkelstein with Prof. Yossi Garfinkel, director of the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavation.

Prof. Finkelstein at the SBL Annual Meeting 2008. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

Luke describes Finkelstein as “a leading face of Biblical Minimalism.” He also comments on the evidence from Khirbet Qeiyafa:

The evidence there so far points to an organized, strong, Jerusalem-centered kingdom in the 10th century B.C. – the early Iron Age of David.

It is quite common for archaeologists to visit the excavations throughout the season. In this way they hear first hand from the director of the dig about what has been uncovered.

UN reports Babylon damaged by US troops

According to a report on CNN.com U.S. troops are accused by a United Nations report of damaging ancient Babylon. Well, surprise!, surprise! I think its called war.

The troops and their contractors caused “major damage” by digging, cutting, scraping and leveling while they were revamping the site to meet military standards, the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, said in a report.

“Key structures that were damaged include the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way,” the report added.

The Ishtar Gate, an entrance to the northern part of the city, is decorated with animals that portray the symbol of the god of the city of Babylon.

“Damage to the gate includes smashed bricks on nine of the bodies of the animals adorning the gate,” according to the report.

To those of us interested in the past this damage is to be regretted. Babylon is important in Biblical history. The report goes on to say that local residents had contributed to the damage through development. One could fill a book with accounts of this happening at important historic sites.

The report introduces another aspect.

During colonial times, archaeologists hauled off Babylon’s artifacts to Europe. Some of those artifacts can be seen in a museum in Berlin, Germany.

Yes. Thankfully the German archaeologists excavated the Ishtar Gate and the Procession Street and took those things to Berlin for preservation and restoration. It is now possible to visit the Museum of the Ancient Near East (Vorderasiatisches Museum), also called the Pergamum Museum, and see the Ishtar Gate and the Procession Street. I note that the Museum site now has some small, but nice photos online here. You may also see panels from the Procession Street at other great museum of the world including several in the United States.

We have previously written about Babylon, with photos, here, here, and here.

We commented on those dreaded colonial archaeologists here.

Check these reports: The Irish Times; The Washington Post. I do not doubt damage, but the photos show the site much the same as it was in 1970 when I visited.

HT: Harriet; Biblical Paths.

Happy Birthday to the WWW

The World Wide Web is now 20 years old. There are still a lot of people who are at least 20 years behind. Read the full account and links to related topics here.

In March 1989, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, then a scientist at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, published a paper, entitled Information Management: A Proposal, which aimed to provide a framework for academic institutions to organise and share electronic documents across the internet, and were crucial in the creation of the world wide web.

“Tim pulled together ideas of a markup language, getting files on the internet and hypertext,” said Wendy Hall, a professor in the computer science department at the University of Southampton. “The things that made it work were open standards and protocols so anyone could set up their own web server and HTML documents, the fact that it was completely distributed and scalable, and that it worked over the network.”

Sir Tim will mark the occasion with a speech to scientists and technologists in Geneva, exploring the history of the web, and future applications of internet technology.

Earlier this week, Sir Tim warned a parliamentary round-table that allowing advertisers to target internet users by tracking their browsing habits was akin to putting a “spy camera” in people’s homes.

When I first began to use the WWW I would go to the CERN site, long before Google, to search for links to information. I remember telling my students in the 1990s that if they started reading all the pages on the WWW they would never finish. How much more today! Of course, most of the pages are probably not worth reading.

My first web page of biblical information, established May 14, 1996, later became the domain BiblicalStudies.info. BibleWord.com went online September 26, 1998.

On our recent trip to Alexandria, Egypt, we visited the famous new library. One of the guides showed us the computers that store about 85  —  web pages archived since 1998. Try it here. You can see what Bible World looked like in 1999.

Wayback computers in the library at Alexandria, Egypt. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

BTW, Al Gore was Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001.

HT: Paleojudaica

Albright – “dean of biblical archaeologists”

The Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters begins the entry on William F. Albright with these words:

Called the dean of biblical archaeologists in his last decades, William Foxwell Albright was also to become a well-known biblical interpreter.

Todd Bolen  calls attention to a new appreciation of William F. Albright by Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman at The Bible and Interpretation. You may read Todd’s comments on The Legacy of William F. Albright at his Bible Places Blog. All of this is good reading.

Traveling without a bag

Read the previous post, Treasures old and new, for an introduction to this one.

Recently I was reading a section in Light From the Ancient East by Adolf Deissman about the value of understanding the meaning of New Testament words through words in common use in New Testament times.

Deissman takes up the account of Jesus sending out the twelve and shows how one simple word is understood better through the use of documents from the same time period.

Jesus said to the disciples,

“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give. “Do not acquire gold, or silver, or copper for your money belts, or a bag for your journey, or even two coats, or sandals, or a staff; for the worker is worthy of his support. (Matthew 10:8-10 NASB)

See also Mark 6:8 (the KJV uses scrip for the Greek pera) and Luke 9:3; 22:35-36.

A path at Shiloh. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

Below is the rather lengthy quotation from Deissman which I have in the Libronix format now. Because of the length of this paragraph I will not indent it as we normally do, and will divide it into three paragraphs for ease of reading.

——

One of the characteristic utterances of Jesus has here been handed down, not without variations, but still in such form that the original can be discerned beneath them: the apostles were told to take with them for their journey only the barest necessaries, among which was to be reckoned neither money nor bread. According to St. Matthew’s report they were further forbidden even to earn money on their way, as they might have done by working miracles of healing, etc. The meaning of the “wallet” (A.V. “scrip”) has seldom been questioned, because it seems so obvious: most commentators probably think of it as a travelling-bag, or, more precisely defined, as a bread-bag.

The word in the original Greek, πήρα, is capable of either meaning, according to circumstances. In the context “travelling-bag” would do very well; “bread-bag” not so well, being superfluous after the mention of “bread,” and tautology seems out of place in these brief, pointed commands given by Jesus. But there is a special meaning, suggested by one of the monuments, which suits the context at least as well as the more general sense of “bag” or “travelling-bag.” The monument in question was erected in the Roman Imperial period at Kefr-Hauar in Syria by a person who calls himself, in the Greek inscription, a “slave” of the Syrian goddess. “Sent by the lady,” as he says himself, this heathen apostle tells of the journeys on which he went begging for the “lady” and boasts triumphantly that “each journey brought in seventy bags.”

The word here employed is πήρα. Of course it has nothing to do with well-filled provision-bags for the journey: it clearly means the beggar’s collecting-bag. The same special meaning would make excellent sense in our text, particularly in St. Matthew’s version: there is to be no earning, and also no begging of money. With this possible explanation of the word πήρα the divine simplicity of Jesus stands out afresh against the background suggested by the heathen inscription. While Christianity was still young the beggar-priest was making his rounds in the land of Syria on behalf of the national goddess. The caravan conveying the pious robber’s booty to the shrine lengthens as he passes from village to village, and assuredly the lady will not forget her slave. In the same age and country One who had not where to lay His head sent forth His apostles, saying:—

“Freely ye received, freely give. Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses: no wallet for your journey.”

——

I was looking at some material on the financial support of preachers. John encouraged his readers to receive those who come preaching the gospel. He says,

You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. (3 John 1:6-7)

The Linguistic and Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament points out the difference between those who went out preaching the message of Christ and those who were out for the money. The preachers of Christ were to be supported by fellow Christians. This was “in marked contrast both to the wandering philosophers of the day and to the beggar priests of the Syrian goddess” [mentioned by Deissmann].

Society of Biblical Literature in Boston

The annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature is being held in Boston this year. I have been attending these meetings for many years. I come in order to hear a few of the many valuable, and some not so valuable, presentations by scholars who are presenting their latest research on some particular topic.  When I was still actively teaching I often attended sessions that were related to the courses I was teaching. Now I tend to go to what is of interest.

These meetings attract more than 5000 members, most of whom are teachers in some field relating to biblical studies.

One of my favorite topics is archaeology and how it relates to biblical history. Many of the leading archaeologists make presentations or read papers telling about the most recent excavations. This, of course, puts me far ahead of the curve if one is waiting to read the information in a magazine or a book. In fact, I observe that many presentations given at SBL will eventually be a chapter in a volume published by the author some years later.

Saturday I heard Thomas Levy and other colleagues from the University of California San Diego tell about the recent work in southern Jordan dealing with the ancient Edomites and copper mining in the area. Levy has discovered that copper mining was common in the area from the 10th century B.C. I have already reported on this discovery, with photos, here, with a related post about mining at Timna here. I hope you will take time to read those reports.

In the afternoon I attended a session on the Wall of Jerusalem in the Persian Period. I suspect that the person making room assignments has no idea about some of the presenters. The most controversial of the speakers here was Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University. He has been dubbed the father of minimalism. Actually he is currently the most prominent in a long line of those who devalue the biblical record. The room was full and overflowing. I sat on the floor in order to be able to see the screen and hear the speaker. The presentations by Ronny Reich, Alon de Groot,  and Wolfgang Zwickel were also informative. Evidence from the Persian period is limited, possibly because it was a significant but short period of biblical history. Here are some of the major events:

• The Jews were allowed to return from Babylonian Exile in 536 B.C. because of the decree of Cyrus. Remember that only a remnant returned.
• The temple was rebuilt in 520-516 B.C.
• Ezra returned with a second group in 458 B.C.
• Nehemiah returned to help rebuild the wall in 444 B.C.

The evidence presented regarding the number of inscriptions, pottery, jewelry, etc. from the Persian period indicated a small number of items in comparison to the much larger number from the Iron Age and the Hellenistic Age. This is really not surprising when we consider the the circumstances of the period, the possible reuse of materials by later builders, etc.

Everywhere one puts down a pick in Jerusalem there is evidence of earlier civilizations. Keep digging!

Before closing, let me add a little something Persian to this post. Here is a photo of the Cyrus Cylinder, now in the British Museum.

The Cyrus Cylinder. British Museum. Photo by Ferrell Jenkins.

This document records that Cyrus allowed captive peoples to return to their homelands, build their temples and worship their gods. This is similar to the account given in 2 Chronicles 36 and Ezra 1 regarding the Judeans.

Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia– in order to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah– the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying,  23 “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you of all His people, may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up!’” (2 Chronicles 36:22-23)