Turkey Trip

Rex Geisller, President of ArcImaging, and I leave for Turkey next Sunday for an 8 day trip to meet with Turkish officials and Ataturk University's archaeological department. We hope to finalize plans to secure our research permits to work on Mt. Ararat in July. We will be traveling extensively over the 8 days and hope to have a few photo's to share. There has been alot of instability in the eastern part of the country so please pray for us as we travel.

More info on Sodom

Here is more detailed information on Sodom for those who wish to check it out. It's the Sodom topic from the Biblical Scroll, the CD rom I've developed and distribute through eGames. This is a rewrite of the online Sodom article reflecting the new information available since my visit and work with Dr. Steven Collins at Tall el-Hammam. This new information will not be found on the CD but only available online as the CD's are already produced and in stores.

The photo is of Field D at Tall el-Hammam: That me in the centre clearing and clarification of cut-away section created by military trenching reveals a 3m-thick Iron Age city wall built into and over an earlier, massive structure built of packed earth and yellowish mudbrick (the Middle Bronze rampart?). This is where I ran into the snake!! (see the January 14th post).

Truth about the Da Vinci Code

There is so much hype over Dan Brown's book the Da Vinci Code it demands a response. Here is a great site for information setting the record straight and telling you what Dan Brown failed to tell the public. His book is a masterful work of fiction based on many Gnostic falacies and misinformation. The site is sponsored by Westminster Theological Seminary and called The Truth about Da Vinci.

Event of Abel-Shittim around Tall el-Hammam

Tall el-Hammam overlooking the Jordan Valley

The area around Tall el-Hammam (TeH), in the Late Bronze Age, is identified by most scholars as Abel Shittim (Heb. meaning “Acacias of Mourning”), which is the location of Israel’s encampment prior to entering the Promised Land (Num 25:1, Deut 34:9; Josh 2:1; 3:1). In Merrill’s article under the section titled “The Shittim Plain,” he states:

When the Hebrews came down from the mountains of Moab, they pitched from Beth Jeshimoth on the south, to Abel Shittim on the north, and their tents must have covered the whole plain. . . .  between Tel Kefrein and Tel er Eama [sic Tall er-Ramah] on the west, and the mountains on the east, there are two important tells which remain to be noticed. These are Tel el Hammam in the north, where there are extensive ruins and a hot spring [5 hots springs]; and Tel Ektanu [Iktanu] in the south [emphasis added]. [1]

The NIV Archaeological Study Bible identifies Tall el-Hammam as Abel-Shittim, however it gives no archaeological evidence for this identification, perhaps because its identification is based on geographic location instead of physical discoveries [2]. In Moses day (Late Bronze period) the region of Abel-Shittim, below Mt. Pisgah (beside Mt. Nebo), was described as a “desert” (“wasteland below Pisgah” Num 21:20 NIV; “Bamoth to the valley lying in the region of Moab by the top of Pisgah that looks down on the desert” Num 21:20 ESV). 

Perhaps better than identifying a site with Shittim we should be looking at an event known as the mourning of the Acacia trees (Abel Shittim) and a region on the plain around Tall el-Hammam.
 
While Moses and Joshua were camped out around TeH they did not leave behind much in the way of discernible artifacts. There is a small LB structure on the acropolis of Tall el-Hammam that was likely a watch/signal tower to communicate with Jerusalem, Jericho and other cities around the Jordan Valley.

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Footnotes

[1] Merrill, Selah. “Modern Researches in Palestine.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 9 (1877): 109–25 [see 117]; Merrill, Selah. “Modern Researches in Palestine.” Palestine Exploration Fund: Quarterly Statement (PEFSt). 11, no. 1 (1879): 138–54 [see 144].
[2]  Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., and Duane Garrett, eds. NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 233.

Bibliography

Aharoni, Yohanan. The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography. Translated by Anson F. Rainey. 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster/Knox, 1981), 419.Avi-Yonah, Michael. The Madaba Mosaic Map with Introduction and Commentary (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1954), 37. 
Davies, Graham I. The Way of the Wilderness a Geographical Study of the Wilderness Itineraries in the Old Testament. SOTSMS 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 36.
Glueck, Nelson. Explorations in Eastern Palestine II. AASOR 15. (New Haven, CT: ASOR, 1935), 378;

Glueck, Nelson. “Some Ancient Towns in the Plains of Moab.” BASOR 91 (1943): 7–26 [see 15].

Harrison, R. K. “Shittim,” ed. Edward M. Blaiklock, The New International Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983), 413.

Kaiser, Jr., Walter C., and Duane Garrett, eds. NIV Archaeological Study Bible: An Illustrated Walk Through Biblical History and Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 233.

Khouri, Rami G. Antiquities of the Jordan Rift Valley (Manchester, MI: Solipsist, 1988),76.Miller, J. Maxwell and Gene M. Tucker, The Book of Joshua, The Cambridge Bible Commentary of the English Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 199.

MacDonald, Burton, East of the Jordan: Territories and Sites of the Hebrew Scriptures, ed. Victor H. Matthews, ASOR Books 6 (Boston, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2000), 90.

Merrill, Selah. “Modern Researches in Palestine.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York 9 (1877): 109–25 [see 117].

Merrill, Selah. “Modern Researches in Palestine.” Palestine Exploration Fund: Quarterly Statement (PEFSt). 11, no. 1 (1879): 138–54 [see 144].
Negev and Gibson, call the site Tell el-Harman [sic. Tall el-Hammam] “Abel Shittim; Shittim, ” in The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (1 Vol., Rev and updated ed. Avraham Negev and Shimon Gibson, 3rd ed. 2001), 1.
Slayton, Joel C. “Shittim.” In Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1996), 5:1222.
Thomson, William M. The Land and the Book: Lebanon, Damascus, and Beyond Jordan. Vol. 3. 3 vols. (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1886), 3:669.
Walton, John H., Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 169, 213.

 

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Gospel of Judas

Well by now everyone has heard of the Gospel of Judas Codex (leather bound booklet). This document is part of a collection of three Gnostic works (part of the Nag Hammadi Codices) written in a dialect of Coptic and dating from about AD 300. What is not often mentioned is that scholars have been aware of this document since the time of Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. A.D. 180; 2nd century AD) who likely referring to this document in his massive work Against Heresies (Book 1, Chapter 31, Section 1). Irenaeus was a Christian apologist who was writing against a heretical sect in the early church called Gnostics in his chapter on “Doctrines of the Cainites.” Here is the section that Irenaeus mentions the document.


Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.31.1 [Schaff]).

It appears that we now have this document that is mentioned by Irenaeus and others although this is the earliest mention. This would mean that it would date to before AD 180 perhaps as early as AD 130-170 and probably originally written in Greek. The text is available at http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/. There are many related article here as well.

The Gospel of Judas opens as most Gnostic gospels to with “The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot…” The Gnostics claimed that they had kept the secret information of early Christianity and that is why we have never heard it before. Sounds like an early conspiracy theory doesn’t it.

I was aware of this document 6 months before it was announced from conversations with a scholar working on the translation. From an archaeological perspective it is an impressive find even though it is false teaching in the early church. (like most things we need to be discerning and not believe everything we read as gospel truth, ancient or modern). It doesn't affect my faith at all but confirms that what Irenaeus said in the 2rd century was true. It is error circulating in the early church and is not to be believed. From a casual read of the Gospel of Judas and from what Gnostic scholars are saying we can be assured that what we have here is second-century Gnostic myth and not first-century history.