Today was Christmas and the first day of Hanukkah (how often does they coincide like this?). What is this day about? Christians around the world commemorate the arrival of Jesus born in lowly conditions in Bethlehem. God come to earth. God had not abandoned the earth to its sins but was personally intervening to deal to it. Jesus’ Hebrew name, Yeshua, means ‘salvation’. Going back to about 165 BC, we find the origins of Hanukkah. The land of Israel was under the rule of the Greeks. Under the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Torah was outlawed. The Temple was […]
Yearly Archives: 2016
Sermon – Grumbling and Gratitude
Sermon from November 27, 2016
Vote for Saul!
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” 1 Samuel 8:4-5 After the Israelites came out of Egypt, they conquered the land of Canaan and settled it. Then the era of the judges began. The people would be prosperous and turn from God, which would lead to ruin (invading armies). As a result, they turned back to God. God sent a judge to rescue them. […]
Tent Specifications
Celebrate this as a festival to the Lord for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come; celebrate it in the seventh month. Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters. Leviticus 23:41-42 The festival of Sukkot (tablernacles/booths) is upon us again! It began Monday. I’m typing this from within my sukkah (singular of sukkot). When I was in Israel this summer at a place called Neot Kedumim, I wandered around an area they have of various sukkot. The sages decided what made for […]
Overturned
Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” Jonah 3:4 Today was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is the holiest day of the Biblical calendar where atonement was made for the nation of Israel (see Leviticus 16). One of the traditional readings on this day is the book of Jonah because of its connection to repentance and mercy. God threatened to destroy the city of Nineveh and sent the prophet Jonah to announce its demise. After a detour at sea involving a storm and a great fish, […]
The Cover Up
As the dig came to a close, we had one final task on our last day: cover up what we found. One of the problems with archaeology is that it’s inherently destructive. You can only dig something up once. Sometimes, an exposed area is left for people to see. Other times it is buried again to preserve it. Our area was in between those extremes. First, we took some large rolls of material to cover over the major pieces of our area, steadying it with rocks and the jute bags that lined around our excavated area. Normally, this would be […]
Hard Rock
I’ve talked about digging up pottery and bones. Is that all? There’s more to find than that! There are a plethora of rocks to find, too! Rocks are numerous in Israel. Generally what survived was made out of rock, which was (and continues to be) a plentiful building material in Israel. However, not all rocks are useful. We dug through plenty of rocks which were not of any interest. Such rocks were called “floating”, meaning they were floating in the dirt and not attached to anything. We ended up with a sizable rock pile by the time the dig ended. […]
Bone Head
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. Ezekiel 37:1-2 Last time I wrote about digging up pottery. That isn’t the only thing we found during the dig. I frequently found bones, too. Why are bones useful to find? Let me give you a few examples! Bones show what […]
Pot Head
“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground.Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9 I dug up a lot of pottery at Tel Dan. Some sherds (broken pieces of pottery) are small while others are large. The most important pieces are those with distinctive attributes, like handles, bases, or rims. Most body pieces aren’t distinctive enough for good analysis. Why is pottery so important? Pottery is used to date what […]
Dirty Business
An archaeological dig involves, well, lots of digging. We have been moving a lot of dirt out of Area T1 at Tel Dan. Some of it goes to sifting, but most of it is dumped in a nearby pile (we do look through it while digging, but I’m sure plenty has been missed). We’ve been searching for an Assyrian wall that was assumed to go through the area because it was mapped in other places. The dig was a total of four weeks long and I was part of the last two. Watch the progression of our excavation! (Click for […]