Current Events Articles: July 2009

The Central Penn Business Journal is pleased to announce that Associates for Biblical Research has been selected as a finalist of the 2009 Best of the Web awards. The ABR Website ranked among the top three in the Non-profit & Cultural category for its success as a quality, engaging Web site.

ABR will be honored at a luncheon as part of the Central Penn Business Journal's Internet Summit on July 27, 2009, at the Radisson Penn Harris & Convention Center in Camp Hill, PA. The summit will feature a morning symposium presented by local Internet experts, along with networking opportunities and exhibitors. The morning sessions will be followed by the Best of the Web luncheon, where the winners of each category will be announced and presented with the Best of the Web Award. More information about the day’s agenda and a list of all award finalists is available at http://www.centralpennbusiness.com/section.asp?secID=56. 

On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery that dates back to the time of the People of Israel’s settlement in the country: For the first time, enclosed sites identified with the biblical sites termed in Hebrew gilgal, which were used for assemblies, preparation for battle, and rituals, have been revealed in the Jordan valley.

Read the latest update on this important discovery.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=1100766

From April, 2009:

'Foot' Structures Found in the Jordan Valley

What happened to the Jewish people when they reached Babylon? And what happened there to the tens of thousands of others who joined them in exile when the First Temple was destroyed a decade later? The Bible tells us of the return to Judah half a century later but virtually nothing of what the expellees experienced in Babylon itself. It tells us even less about the fate of the northern tribes of Israel - the "10 lost tribes" - which had been marched out of history by the Assyrians a century earlier. Scholars have been able to gain a measure of access to these missing years from cuneiform documents unearthed in Iraq in the last century, including a trove illicitly dug up in the final years of Saddam Hussein's regime and only now nearing publication. The documents are innocuous - business records, land deeds, tax accounts - but together are able to shed light, feeble but suggestive, on this central period in Jewish history.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1246443825291&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/26/wheeled-vehicle-camel.html

Editorial note: The almost unanimous opinion of Biblical scholars is that mention of domesticated camels in the Patriarchal narratives (Gn 12:16; 24:10; 30:43) constitutes an anachronism. Camels, they say, were not domesticated until late in the second millennium BC, centuries after the Patriarchs were supposed to have lived. Yet evidence continues to amass that camel domestication was widely known earlier. The following articles provide data to show the skeptics are incorrect.

Patriarchal Wealth and Early Domestication of the Camel

Bronze Age Camel Petroglyphs In The Wadi Nasib, Sinai

TWO THOUSAND years of tradition have held that the bones of Paul of Tarsus lie in the basilica of St. Paul Without The Walls. Now, Pope Benedict XVI says, science has confirmed it...

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0630/1224249784768.html