Category Archives: Archaeology

Indiana Jones, Egyptian Chariot Wheels in the Red Sea, The True Cross… and Fringe Archaeology

 

Harrison Ford’s classic character “Indiana Jones,” has affinities with Hans Solo from the Star Wars franchise. A younger version of Harrison Ford’s  Hans Solo character, is the central focus in the 2018 Solo: A Star Wars Story movie.

Now that Hans Solo is back on the pop culture radar….

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is one my favorite movies of all time. Harrison Ford, elsewhere known as Hans Solo, played this iconic, adventurous character, looking for the Ark of the Covenant. Who knew that Bible archaeology could be such fun?

Let us explore how the Bible and archaeological adventures connect, and find out…

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg took the mega-popular Hans Solo character of Star Wars, and put him back on earth in the 1930s, as one Indiana Jones. One of my favorite scenes shows this studious looking archaeology professor talking about the Ark of the Covenant, the great chest of the Old Testament that stored the Ten Commandments, that went missing sometime during Israel’s ancient history. Within minutes after this scene, our Indiana Jones would be traveling the world, fedora hat on head, with bullwhip in hand, chasing trucks, trying to beat the Nazis to recover the missing Ark of the Covenant.

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Fragments of Truth

Interested in the integrity of biblical manuscripts? Don’t miss this one-night-only showing on April 24th, 2018.

Local showings: https://www.fathomevents.com/events/fragments-of-truth

Buy your tickets through the above link (they are going fast).

HT: Dave Rudy


Historic Jesus

JamestownVeracity


Was Jericho a “City” or a Military Fortification?

The ruins of ancient Jericho, scarred by over a hundred years of archaeological digs, as seen from the air.

The ruins of ancient Jericho, scarred by over a hundred years of archaeological digs, as seen from the air. It would probably take no more than an hour or so to walk around the “city.”

I had the privilege of visiting the Holy Land some years ago, and one day our tour bus drove through the modern city of Jericho. At one point during our drive, our tour guide announced that we were passing the ancient site of Jericho. But before I had enough time to pull out my camera, we were gone and left the ancient “city” far behind.

It was not quite what I had imagined. As a kid, I was accustomed to hear the story of how “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho,” and destroyed the “city.” Now, when I think of “city,” I think of a relatively large population area. My hometown, Williamsburg, Virginia, is fairly small by the standard of most cities today, about 9.1 square miles in size, or just a little under 6,000 acres. Contrast that with ancient Jericho, which is approximately only 6 acres in size.

That’s about less than half the size of my small neighborhood.

Wow…. If ancient Jericho was really a “city,” then it must have been a really, itsy-bitsy small one. I suppose the people in such a really small “city” could have been packed in like sardines, but it got me thinking about what the Bible says in Joshua 6 about the “city” of Jericho. What are we to make of this?
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A Day at the Museum

Clarke referenced the Codex Sinaiticus and the Septuagint in a couple of posts last week, so Marion and I decided to hop a plane to London and have a look at the original. (That’s not exactly how things progressed, but isn’t far from the truth.)

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We’re in London this week to learn about the Codex Sinaiticus and other artifacts that point to the veracity of the text of the Bible.

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important books in the world. It contains the oldest complete New Testament in existence, and dates to around 350 A.D. The Old Testament portion is a copy of the Septuagint. Codex Sinaiticus is used by scholars today to create the most accurate translations of the biblical text. The manuscript is served in high definition on the Internet, and it doesn’t take long to see how scribes painstakingly corrected the original writing. There are corrections plastered in the margins everywhere. It was obviously important for the scribes to make sure the work was as accurate as possible and up to par with the best copies of the Bible in existence at the time.

The British Library’s portion of Sinaiticus is currently on display in a special exhibit at the British Museum. We asked Clive Anderson, co-author of Through the British Museum with the Bible, if he could guide us through the exhibits. Although Clive wasn’t scheduled to conduct a tour while we were in town, he graciously agreed.

Some days are better than others. Today was the day for our tour.
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