My goodness, Ms. Schuster has been busy! I'm just now catching up with her.
It was hot in Israel this summer, the land baking in heatwave after heatwave, dismaying farmers up and down the land and desiccating the vegetation. In the dry season, wildfires are always caused by somebody tossing a cigarette or neglecting to douse a barbecue. There are no rainstorms in summer, no lightning strikes and Israel has no active volcanoes so the wildfire that ate the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee in late August was not an act of God. But it helped clear up one of the great biblical mysteries – where the lost city of Bethsaida, home of the Apostles Peter, Andrew and Philip, really is.For PaleoJudaica on the wildfire at Tel Araj (Bethsaida?), see here; on the late-antique (extreme ascetic?) woman found buried in chains near Jerusalem, see here and here; on the late-antique African figurines excavated in the Negev, see here; on the educational excavation at Chorazin, see here; on the Byzantine-era menorah amulet excavated near the Temple Mount, see here; on the late-antique monastery and inscribed mosaic excavated near Kiryat Gat, see here; on the Be'er Shema (Birsama) mosaic exhibition, see here; on the menorah-decorated pillar capital excavated near Jerusalem, see here. I missed Elon Gilad's article asking when Jesus was born and when December 25th was picked to celebrate, but it's worth a read. For more on those questions, start from the links here. For the late-antique Samaritan estate (with the watermelon mosaic) excavated in Israel, see here.In other news of early Christianity, a Byzantine-era skeleton found in chains in Jerusalem belies the assumption that all martyrs were male, archaeologists find a hitherto unknown (and wealthy) early Byzantine settlement and monastery in the desert, and child archaeologists break new ground at Chorazin (and you can too!) Here are some of the hottest stories in Christian archaeology in 2025 and one analysis courtesy of Elon Gilad: Why actually is Christmas celebrated on December 25?
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