1062 Hebron

Hebron was familiar territory to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as Joshua, Caleb, David and many more Old Testament figures. Outside of Jerusalem, Hebron may well have been the most important Old Testament City. If you go there today you can see the building Herod constructed to shelter the tombs of the patriarchs. And nearby is the ancient city gate where Abraham may have made his purchase of the cave from Ephron the Hittite. Unfortunately not many people go there today because it's one of the flash points in the ongoing tensions between Jews and Palestinians.

We seldom mention Hebron on THE BOOK & THE SPADE, despite its fascinating history, because very little archaeology has been done there. But Jeffrey Chadwick knows the archaeology as well as almost anyone and he is our guest again for this program.

Take a tour of the Tomb of the Patriarchs at Holyland Photos and/or BiblePlaces.com.

About three years ago we did a series of interview with Christopher Moroney of SAVAE, The San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, on their Ancient Echoes CD. The ensemble attempts to replicate the music of the Bible as accurately as possible. One of the songs from their CD is now online as a video, "Tubwayhun L'ahvday Shlama," which means "Blessed are the peacemakers." They're also working on a new musical project, "Yeshua," on the life of Jesus in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.

1060-1061 Tell es-Safi/Gath

Jeffrey Chadwick fills us in on the excavations into the Philistine city of Gath, the fifth and final city of the Philistine pentapolis to be excavated. Jeffrey is a professor of Archaeology and Near Eastern Studies at Brigham Young University. We works with head archaeologist Aren Maier, of Bar Ilan University.


Excavation website
Excavation weblog
Jeffrey Chadwick examining a sherd at the excavation.
More pictures of Gath at Bibleplaces.com

1059-The Mysteries of Hyrcania & Qumran

A few years back we did an interview with an airline pilot named Dwayne Boucher about a mysterious project in the Judean Desert being excavated by a volunteer team of Continental Airline employees and some other folks. Dwayne kept the location a mystery but now we know the name of it, thanks to the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Israeli Archaeologist Oren Gutfeld, who worked with them on the project, wrote a very interesting article. However, no mysteries were revealed. It will take more digging for that to be accomplished.

On this program Dr. Schoville and I also discussed an intriguing new theory on Qumran offered by archaeologist Yitzhak Magen. He thinks that instead of being an Essene monastery, Qumran was an industrial pottery manufacturing site. An interesting idea, with a few holes in it.

In other archaeology news online, a Nebraska pastor talks about his experience on the excvations at Hippos/Sussita this summer. You can learn more about Hippos/Sussita in Hershel Shank's personal account of his visit to the site. One of these days we're going to do a series of programs on Hippos/Sussita.