Solitary Man

That's regular with archaeology of the Levant, unfortunately. Just look at the Temech seal, or "David's palace" in the past year.

gstafleu

It's not a straw man, it is a non-sequitur. Which you can of course turn into a sequitur via the well established principle of "Ex deo ex machina sequitur quodlibet."

Gerard Stafleu

Solitary Man

Yes, it's a non-sequitur, too. Two fallacies in one - you're pretty bad at this logic stuff, huh?

Toto

Things I love about Google - search on Rihab Christian Church and find some paid ads for Christian rehab - "30 Days at an Affordable $6000 Christ Centered Biblically Based" :rolling:

Anyhow:

BBCIt is not clear why the inscription "the 70 beloved by God and Divine" refers to Christians, or why these 70 should be identified as Jesus' disciples, or what they were doing between the time that Jesus told them to go out and preach, and the destruction of the Temple.

Travel notes quotes an AP story: I wonder why St Geogeous is not listed on the Oldest Churches in the World?

Casper

Maybe it just got consideration for being listed, and added to tour agendas?

:Cheeky:

andrewcriddle

What I'm not sure about is who or what Saint Georgeous was.
Is he the Saint AKA Saint George ?

Andrew Criddle

Clivedurdle

http://www.armageddonchurch.com/?An_...Megiddo_prison.

The actual earliest church is a very different beastie than Churches now - no crosses but fish.


Hmmm.


Might the cross have been introduced by Constantine after a certain battle?

Toto

Another photo posted on a blog. (See also this photo.) The light from above shining down on the archeologists milks this for all it's worth.

A story with another photo involving light.

A photo with a cross in an news story that notes:

skunker

Nice pics! Of course, if I were a photographer, I'd want to get the best photos possible, and those pics did it. Thanks.

Charles Gadda

At the risk of provoking another angry response from the SBL crew, I would like to point out that the term "archaeological community," as used in the above statement, seems to imply a distinction between "archaeology" and "biblical archaeology." Or at least it makes more sense if understood as referring to the former.

For what have we seen in biblical archaeology? An entire series of unconvincing, tendentious, sensationalist claims, of which this one is only the latest. There was the "Essene toilet." I vaguely recall the "golden calf." There were the "bedouin" women of the Qumran cemetery. There was the "Yahad ostracon," where words and traces were (on more than one occasion) mysteriously transformed to concoct "physical evidence." There was the "tomb of Jesus" with its illegible scrawl. There was the "world's first" 3-D Qumran film, where the carefully edited reality of "Essene monks" just sprang right out at hundreds of thousands of people... Wasn't there a "Noah's ark" at some point?

Such claims are discussed in earnest, scholarly tones on austere websites like "ANE-2" (the name itself evokes science fiction) and international conferences like ASOR/SBL (where "biblical archaeologists," as I recall, socialize and entertain themselves in the most collegial of manners). Yes, we are expected to give more credence to such claims than to the interpretations of ancient artifacts offered by the author of the "Chariots of the Gods." Ultimately, as if by magic, they make their way into popular discourse, magazine articles, museum exhibits and hundreds of websites, where they are presented as "facts."

Meanwhile, Einstein gets excluded from a list of the world's "great scientists." Dinesh D'Souzy meets biblical archaeology... and "true," heaven-sent science comes into being. Personally, I prefer to regard all such rubbish with "some skepticism."