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Medieval Jewish Manuscripts Reportedly Found in Afghanistan
More than 150 medieval Jewish manuscripts recently came to light in the mountains of northern Afghanistan, according to scholars who have been studying the texts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Although scholars have only just begun studying the decayed, fragmentary and often illegible texts, they appear to date to the 11th century and are written in Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian. Among the discovered texts are an ancient copy of the Book of Jeremiah, previously unknown works of the medieval Jewish scholar Rabbi Sa’adia Gaon and several personal writings and poems, perhaps written by the Jewish merchants who left the manuscripts in the remote Afghanistan cave where they were supposedly discovered.
Cold War Spy Satellites Aid Archaeologists
Thanks to the efforts of researchers at the University of Arkansas, archaeologists now have free access to thousands of high-resolution declassified satellite images taken of Israel and the Middle East during the 1960s. The CORONA spy imagery, declassified in the mid-1990s and recently made freely available by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies at the University of Arkansas, is particularly important for archaeologists working in the Middle East. The region’s rapid urban expansion, agricultural intensification and many large-scale dam projects during the past decades have obscured and even destroyed countless archaeological sites. The images, therefore, provide a valuable window onto the region’s landscape and archaeology before the advent of modern development, and have already allowed archaeologists to find both lost sites as well as countless others that have never been documented.
Cairo Genizah Fragments Digitally Stitched Together
Scholars at Tel Aviv University are using digital technologies to piece together more than 350,000 fragments of the famous Cairo Geniza, a collection of ancient and medieval Jewish writings discovered in Cairo in the late 19th century. After their discovery, the fragmentary texts, which include early Jewish religious texts but also important commercial documents and personal letters from the ninth to 19th centuries, were scattered among libraries and collections across the world, from Cambridge to New York.* Now, researchers are using the latest digital imaging technology to "stitch" images of the fragments together in hopes of fully or partially reconstructing the genizah's valuable documents. Within a few months, they have already made 1,000 confirmed joins, almost as many as were made in more than 100 years of work on the genizah fragments.
The results are being made available to scholars around the world through a website. Profs. Lior Wolf and Nachum Dershowitz of TAU's Blavatnik School of Computer Science have developed sophisticated software, based on facial recognition technology, that can identify digitized Genizah fragments thought to be a part of the same work and make editorial "joins."
Google Launches Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Site
The Dead Sea Scrolls, so ancient and fragile that direct light cannot shine on them, are now available to search and read online in a project launched today by the Israel Museum and Google Inc. (GOOG)
The project follows a Google project that went live in January and put online an archive and search function for photos from Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. The world’s largest Internet search engine is also working on a project in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority that will make available on the Internet fragments of the scrolls so they can be studied by scholars.
Five of the eight scrolls housed at Israel Museum since 1965 have been digitalized, including the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Temple Scroll and the War Scroll. The Great Isaiah Scroll can be searched by column, chapter and verse, including the famous “and the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” It is accompanied by an English translation tool and includes an option for users to submit translations of verses in their own languages.
Jerusalem Tunnel Reveals Traces of Jewish Revolt
JERUSALEM (AP) — The excavation of an ancient drainage tunnel beneath Jerusalem has yielded a sword, oil lamps, pots and coins abandoned during a war here 2,000 years ago, archaeologists said Monday, suggesting the finds were debris from a pivotal episode in the city’s history when rebels hid from Roman soldiers crushing a Jewish revolt.
The tunnel was built two millennia ago underneath one of Roman-era Jerusalem’s main streets, which today largely lies under an Arab neighborhood in the city’s eastern sector. After a four-year excavation, the tunnel is part of a growing network of subterranean passages under the politically combustible modern city.
Apostle Philip’s Tomb Found in Turkey?
Italian archaeologists working at the site of Hierapolis in southwestern Turkey believe they have discovered the tomb of St. Philip, one of Jesus’ 12 apostles. According to excavator Francesco D’Andria, Philip’s tomb has traditionally been associated with the martyrium church built at the site, though no evidence of the ancient burial was ever found. Last month, however, D’Andria and his team located a smaller church less than 150 feet away from the martyrium that appears to contain the grave of the apostle.
Ancient Lead Codices Discovered. Too Good To Be True?
On 3 March 2011 the Jewish Chronicle ran an article interviewing a metallurgist named Robert Feather, who it stated was trying to authenticate a collection of 20 metal books which, it said, could be linked to the Kabbalah and were in the possession of an Israeli Bedouin farmer named Hassan Saeda, who claimed that they had been found by his great-grandfather in a cave a century ago. It added that a piece of leather from the find had already been carbon dated to 2,000 years ago.
On 22 March 2011 David Elkington issued a press release stating that a hoard of ancient books made of lead and copper, together with other artifacts, probably dating from the 1st century AD, had been found in Jordan, and that they might predate the writings of St. Paul and that “leading academics” believed they might be as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
These codices created a good deal of excitement around the world, but have been pronounced as fakes by several reliable scholars.
Ancient Ritual Blue Color Rediscovered
What was known about tekhelet (pronounced t-CHELL-et) was that the Talmud said it was produced from the secretion of the sea snail, which is still found on Israeli beaches.
Traditional interpretations have characterized tekhelet as a pure blue, symbolic of the heavens so that Jews would remember God. Not so, according to an Israeli scholar who has a new analysis: tekhelet appears to have been closer to a bluish purple.
The scholar, Zvi C. Koren, a professor specializing in the analytical chemistry of ancient colorants, says he has identified the first known physical sample of tekhelet in a tiny, 2,000-year-old patch of dyed fabric recovered from Masada, King Herod’s Judean Desert fortress, later the site of a mass suicide by Jewish zealots after a long standoff against the Romans.
“It really is majestic,” Dr. Koren said of the shade, which he said remained close to its original hue and appeared to be indigo.
Israelites found in Ancient Egypt
For a long time, archaeologists and biblical minimalists have renounced the idea of an Israelite captivity in Egypt corresponding to the biblical record of the Exodus. Today, evidence has been published to the contrary. Manfred Bietak, director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Vienna and of the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo, has published an article in the Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) citing several evidences of the existence of ancient Israelite slaves in Egypt.
Bietak's impetus was the recent unearthing of Israelite-style four-room homes found among Medinet Habu, opposite Luxor in Egypt near the remains of the temple of Ay and Horemheb. He compares these homes to the many which have been found in excavations in the land of Israel, and notes the distinct similarities of pattern & function, making a clear point to say they are not Egyptian at all in design. This is a great moment for those anyone who both appreciates the science of archaeology, but holds to the authority of the biblical record.
Israel Antiquities Authority + Google = Free Dead Sea Scrolls
The scribes who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls could not have imagined their texts’ one day being Googled. But the Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the scrolls, the 2,000-year-old biblical and apocryphal texts discovered last century in caves in the Judean desert, announced Tuesday that it was collaborating with Google’s research and development arm in Israel on uploading newly digitized images of the closely guarded manuscripts and making them available to all online in a matter of months.
The scrolls, which contain the earliest known copies of almost every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), will complete their journey from ancient world to cyberspace with the help of new imaging technology. The antiquities authority says it will ensure the preservation and scholarship of the texts for generations to come.
