Monday, December 28, 2015

Biblical Archaeology 2015

HAARETZ: Biblical Archaeology in 2015: King Hezekiah's Seal and Other Exciting Discoveries. And some maybes: Archaeologists think they may have found where Jesus lived in Nazareth and was tried in Jerusalem (Ruth Schuster).
Is the bible literally true? Are at least parts of it plausible? In digs throughout the region, biblical archaeology sets out to shed light on these questions. It is a difficult task made all the harder by the pull of our deepest wishes: Even artifacts found in situ, exactly where they had been left thousands of years ago, can be of controversial origin, let alone purpose.

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Background on that New-Age gold object is here; on Ben Carson's Egypt gaffe is here; on the possible discovery of the Acra is here and links; on the Hezekiah bulla is here, here, and here; on the discovery of a first-century CE house (rather than "Jesus' house") in Nazareth is here; on the possible discovery of Herod's palace in Jerusalem is here and here; and on the possible discovery of Sodom is here. I didn't post about the stories on the Philistines mentioned in this article, but instead see this year's post Psychedelic Philistines.

UPDATE (31 December): Another list is noted here.