Theologically I’m most akin to Karl Barth, according to this analysis at QuizFarm. I’m not sure what brought that about – poor questions, lack of another in the list who was more compatible, or my ignorance about a few of the questions. In any case, take it yourself if you know a little theology.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite message series is Men of Whom The World Is Not Worthy. Now Justin Taylor mentions a book by Noel Piper with five biographical sketches of women. I bet it’s good. In looking up the link for Piper’s series, I see the mp3 disk with all 18 messages is now only $11 – get it and the book both!

And while I’m advertising (for others, with no personal gain of course other than the delight that comes with sharing wonderful things), yesterday I ordered the Hide the Word CD series. Each CD has 20 Scripture verses put to song and costs $10. There are lots of samples here. In any case, a treat was to get an email from Mark Altrogge about the order. He only signed it “Mark,” but I correctly guessed it was “the” Mark. Probably most who read this (all 3) don’t even know who he is, but if I had to pick the top 5 living people who have most improved my life whom I have never met, he would be on that list. He’s a songwriter, and many of his works are on the Sovereign Grace CDs. I love those, and now look forward to learning 100 great verses, without any effort and while having fun!

Today was another great running day. This blog is going to slow down while our church has a conference and I go to Sinai. A long-awaited trip with a former Israeli commander, now tour guide, who has been my neighbor for 9 years.

I haven’t done much running in the last few years, but today was such a great summer day (sunny and 70s) that it was begging for a run. Luke and Mark came along as they have before, but this time Mark wanted to run with me (not ride his bike alongside). He didn’t make it all the way (about to the turkey coops on the way to Neve Ilan, for those of you who know), and stopped with a wail. That’s a good memory for me to keep, as I expect one day I’ll be huffing and puffing to keep up with him.

One thing I’m working on this summer is on the life of Paul. I have this idea that a really popular college level course would be the “Life and Letters of Paul”, even though I’ve never seen such a course offered at any of the schools I’ve studied or taught at. In any case, one thing I learned today was that Epaphras and Epaphroditus are two different helpers of Paul. Not sure that I ever caught that before. Test your Bible knowledge – do you know which is which? (For one see Phil 2 and 4; for the other see Col 1, 4 and Philemon).

Last night we went on a family outing in search of a new grill (unsuccessful). Along the way, we stopped at McDonalds. For $15 you get 4 kids hamburgers and 1 value meal. But they still have super size here. Your choice of regular, big, or anak. Bible students remember the anakim as the giants who roamed the land before the Israelites. I ordered anak!

A new BiblePlaces Newsletter went out today. Take a look at it here if you haven’t seen it already. Cool pictures! :-)

I haven’t posted in a while. That’s in part because I was very busy and then when that ended, I had so much to do to catch up and part of me didn’t want to “publicly” return, lest I find myself with even more work. But I’ve decided to stop that (and if you’re still waiting on a reply or other from me for the last 3 months, well, I still plan to get to it :-)).

I did finish a rather large project last week. That is, I didn’t do much on it last week, but I did do the finishing part. That’s always a nice feeling. Ten other large projects are waiting; that’s not a nice feeling :-). But it beats being bored. I suppose at times like these I thank the Lord for those jobs I had in college and grad school where I actually was bored (and hated it). I don’t think I’ve felt a second of boredom for the last 9 years.

But you’re not reading for that. How about various items of interest that I’ve bumped into lately?

1. Today is Shavuot (or was, the sun has now set). Last night the moshav had a little celebration at the threshing floor. Quite appropriate and reminded me of how things might have been in ancient times. Except that I showed up after a day’s work in the office and not hot and sweaty after a day out harvesting the fields. In the synagogues they read Ruth on this holiday, and for the occasion the Jerusalem Post has an interesting article on Ruth. Interesting, but I wouldn’t necessarily agree. Does make me want to study the book more, which makes it a worthwhile read.

2. Blogger Michael Pahl raves about his experience watching a dramatic one-person performance of the Book of Mark. His comments reveal the value of this sort of thing (for instance, seeing the book as a whole, the way it was written – we so rarely do that!), and motivate me to think about doing something like this some day. I’m not much of an actor, but I don’t think it would take much acting ability to create a worthy presentation. There are various sections of Scripture that could work for this. (If you want to see more, the storyteller’s website is www.markhisword.org; I believe there are others who do this sort of thing).

3. For about a year I’ve been mentally developing a new website, and for the past few months, a friend has done a lot of work in putting pages together. The goal is for it to be a counterpart to BiblePlaces.com, in showing the land and people as they were before “modernization.” It’s the online version of the Historic Views of the Holy Land CD series (but with new material from forthcoming volumes). My immediate problem is the choice of a good domain name. I have about 30 I’ve thought of over the months, but none that seems perfect. Perfect would be 1) easily remembered, and thus not too long; 2) accurately communicates the content; 3) is appealing to a broader audience (thus “Bible” in it is better than “Palestine”); 4) is available. Any ideas?

4. On my recent trip with a group of seminary students, I played one game that lasted about one minute. It was the only “betting” type game of the entire trip. Of course I lost. My punishment was a swim in the Sea of Galilee. With a few things thrown in (or left on). Some in the group were kind enough to film it, edit it, and post it on the world wide web. I mention only for those of you who no longer have any respect for me. It is here. For those of you who still hold me in any regard whatsoever, instead read this NYTimes article on a 2,000-year-old date that sprouted and is growing. Quite amazing!

I’m at the front end of a short-term program, which means I’m both busy and tired. Today I was at the Siloam Pool excavations and they look better than ever! Everything previously exposed is re-exposed (after being buried for a time) and more. A guy there told one in our group that excavations on the garden (towards the center of the pool) will begin in 3 weeks. We will see!

The Washington Post today has an interesting article on the Dead Sea drying up (regular link with charts; printable link-one page). It’s worth reading, if the Dead Sea is a “hobby” study issue for you, as it is for me. A few comments:

Interesting fact: The north end of the Dead Sea is quickly shrinking (3 feet/year), but the south end is rising and threatening hotels.

Interesting fact #2: In 150 years, as the Dead Sea keeps shrinking, the water will become so saturated that evaporation will stop (the water level will be 434 feet lower than now!).

Stupid quote award: “You don’t have to be Jesus to walk across the Dead Sea anymore” (Gidon Bromberg, Friends of the Earth environmentalist).

Why there’s a problem: Previously about 1.3 billion cubic meters flowed into the Dead Sea each year; currently only 100 million cu. m. does.

And there’s more. By the way, I recently came across some photos showing the Jordan River a mile wide. Very impressive. And it’ll never happen again.

A colleague was in Ashkelon a few days ago and lost something while at the tell. He went back the next day and found it. When Luke (7 yrs) heard the story, he was surprised. “What, the Philistines didn’t take it?!” I suppose his parents could be faulted for not teaching him that the Philistines basically went out of existence with the invasions of Nebuchadnezzar c. 600 B.C., but I was quite happy that he knew that Ashkelon was a Philistine city. If he grew up in southern California, he’d be learning about L.A. Here, Ashkelon is just part of the neighborhood.

Today was one of those days that makes me thankful that I live in Israel. As I’ve thought many times, the opportunities here are wonderful. I was invited by the prior of Ecole Biblique to visit the campus, see the photo archive, and have lunch. This invitation arose because of his familiarity with the Survey of Western Palestine Maps CD that I recently finished (as I somewhat expected, there are about 3 people in the world interested in them, but all 3 are people I would like to get to know!).

Finally, then, I was able to see the famous Ecole Biblique library. Yes, this is the same library that sells a CD for $250 of their card catalogue! I was not disappointed. Though I spent only about 20 minutes there, I saw works I have dreamed about seeing for years (including, I’ll tell you so you see what a geek I am, Salzmann’s Photos, Wilson’s Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, and Pierotti’s Jerusalem, vol. 2: plates). All are amazing, and I wish available. I wouldn’t mind doing something about that, if I had the chance. [Since two of the three readers of this blog probably won’t understand what those books are – very briefly, all contain photos or illustrations of Jerusalem in the 1850s-60s – very early stuff!]

Anyway, I spent some time in the archive, looking at Fr. Tarragon’s work. There are about 15,000 glass slides, up to about 8×10 in size (that means very old!). He has scanned the majority of those and showed me some. Very neat stuff! For instance, there was a photo of En Rogel with water around it! And another photo from the roof of the Ecole Biblique when there was nothing between it and the Damascus Gate. And tons more. It was fun to compare notes and to see how he is going about the digitizing process.

In addition, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor joined us for lunch. That was a treat, as I’ve used his Holy Land guide for many years, but have never met him. His work is universally regarded as the best archaeological guide to Israel. Indeed, I felt very small. I’ve been in Israel ten years, but have too little to show for it. I want to study!

I did pick a bad day to visit, however. Today was “Memorial Day” in Israel, which actually means something in this country. Many people go to memorial services, entertainment places are closed, and there is a siren at 8pm (last night) and 11am today, where the whole country stops and stands. I was on the freeway into the city at the time when everyone stopped their cars and got out and stood. I think that was my first time to be “out and about” when the siren sounded. This evening Yom HaAtzmaut started, which is Independence Day. Like its counterpart in the US on July 4, it’s a day of barbecues. I have something else interesting planned tomorrow, however. :-)

A friend commented yesterday that I must be busy since I haven’t posted anything in a while. Indeed, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even realized that I haven’t posted anything in a while. I think, too, that I’m still searching for a raison d’etre and an audience for this blog. It’s certainly clear to me that running a blog updated on a daily basis is not for me, at least not now. I’ve had many things that I thought worth posting in the last few months, especially with travel, but I’m going so hard and so long that I just don’t have time to do it. Thus there’s been nothing about Cyprus (March) or Turkey (April) here.

The summer started for me on Sunday morning when our students flew out. I have 9 days before a seminary group arrives (and then 3 weeks of a “full” schedule). I have so many projects in the works that I really don’t know where to start. Yesterday I was supposed to go to court about the traffic accident, but was able to get out of that (still going 2.5 years later). Tomorrow I have a lunch invite with the prior at Ecole Biblique. I think he thinks I’m someone important; he’ll be surprised, like others before. I get a tour of the school and library, which I’ve long wanted. Next week, I hope to get my medium-format slide scanner back from the shop (it broke shortly after purchase), and plan to start scanning a large collection of old and interesting slides. Today I worked for a while on some b/w photos from the turn of the century, developing a collection from them on “Manners and Customs.” I think this collection will be very popular and I look forward to the day of its completion.

I have a dozen other thoughts running through my head, but instead I’ll close with my initial motivation for writing – I stumbled across this photo I had intended to post earlier this year. It was Luke’s birthday party at his kindergarten and one of the regular “festivities” is when the birthday boy gets to chase the kids around with a sharp object in order to pop their balloons. I wonder if they still allow such things in the States. Of course, in the States they probably don’t give out toy guns as school prizes either. Or try this one – a colleague’s third grade daughter was shown “The Matrix” in class by a substitute teacher.

I made progress last week in my goal to photograph all of the sites that Paul visited on his missionary journeys. After all I have done though, there are still many sites left. I was hoping to visit Malta and southern Italy in June with friend Gordon Franz but the timing just did not work out. Franz just emailed me with notice of a new article that he wrote on a “new discovery” on Malta. The new discovery is actually the latest fraud perpetuated by Robert Cornuke, and I appreciate Franz’s research to analyze Cornuke’s work. Previously, Cornuke claims to have discovered the real Mt. Sinai, Noah’s Ark, and the Ark of the Covenant, making him the heir to Ron Wyatt (who found all of the above plus more, and usually in different places :-)). Cornuke’s latest “finds” are the anchors from Paul’s boat that shipwrecked off of Malta. Ultimately Franz shows that Cornuke has a wish that he pretends is reality. If everyone ignored him, he wouldn’t be worth mentioning. But too many are sucked in, including, apparently, Josh McDowell, who claims this “is evidence that demands a verdict.” Is there evidence? Franz’s conclusion is that “there is no credible historical, archaeological, geographical or Biblical evidence to support [these] claims.”

I took all 9 days of Travel/Study Break this semester on a trip to Turkey, getting in at 3 this morning. I went with 4 students and we drove 1800 miles and I took 3500 photos. New sites for me included Attalia (Antalya), Perge, Aspendos, and Catal Huyuk. The Syria-Palestine wing is now open in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum and that was a first as well. In addition, I got back to places such as Lystra, Derbe, Pisidian Antioch, Laodicea, Hierapolis, Colossae, Assos, Troas, and the sites of all 7 churches of Revelation. We could have done more if we didn’t have car troubles. It was an outstanding trip – one of my favorites – and I hope to write more later. For now, a photo of our group on a boat ride from Attalia, which is where Paul set sail at the end of his first missionary journey.

In the midst of various other things, I’m preparing now for a trip to Turkey (9 days, starting in Antalya and ending in Istanbul). Something I read tonight made me cry, even though I’ve heard it before:

The library of Pergamum survived into Roman times, when it was given by
Antony to Cleopatra. She had it transported to Alexandria, where it
remained more or less intact until the 7C. There is an unsubstantiated
account that it was destroyed on the orders of the fanatical Caliph Omar after
the capture of Alexandria by the Arabs in AD 640. He ruled that if the
books were in accord with the Koran, they were unnecessary, and if they
contained matter which disagreed with the Koran, they should be destroyed.
So, it is said, the books from Pergamum were amongst those that fed the fires of
Alexandria’s 4000 public baths! (source: Blue Guide Turkey, p. 154).