Historically Speaking

Fragments of a cuneiform tablet containing a law code which parallels parts of the famous Babylonian Hammurabi Code have been found in northern Israel.

The find - the first of its kind in Israel - was made during excavations conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Hazor. The fragments date from the 18th and 17th centuries BC - the Middle Bronze Age - and are written in the Akkadian cuneiform script. They refer to issues of personal injury law relating to the relationship between slaves and their masters and the researchers say they also reflect the Biblical concept of a ‘tooth for a tooth’.

The fragments are now being prepared for publication by a team headed by Professor Wayne Horowitz of the university’s Institute of Archaeology.

“At this stage, it is difficult to determine whether this document was actually written at Hazor, where a school for scribes was located, or brought from somewhere else,” said Professor Horowitz in a statement released by the university.

He said the discovery opens an avenue for further investigation into the connection between Biblical law and the Code of Hammurabi.

• Meanwhile nearly half of Israelis want the Biblical Temple to be rebuilt in Jerusalem according to a major opinion poll.

The poll, commissioned by Israel’s Knesset Television Channel, shows that of those questioned, 49 per cent said they want the rebuilding of the destroyed Temple to take place, while only 23 per cent opposed it. The remaining 28 per cent of those polled were unsure.

The public is nearly split on whether the third Temple will become a reality, with 42 per cent saying it will happen and 39 per cent claiming it won’t.

On the final poll question, “Should the State of Israel take active steps towards the reconstruction?” nearly half of the participants (48 per cent) answered “no”, while only 27 per cent said “yes”, researchers added.

The Temple was destroyed in 70AD after a siege by the Romans.

- DAVID ADAMS. With reporting by GEORGE WHITTEN, BosNewsLife.com.

A new database has gone online in the UK containing the records of more than 224,000 religious dissenters including luminaries such as author Daniel Defoe, Quakers founder George Fox and British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

The database was created by family history website Ancestry.co.uk, drawing on original paper records held by the London Metropolitan Archives. It covers the period 1694 to 1921 and includes baptism and marriage registers as well as burial inscriptions.

Non-conformists - who include Methodists, Prebyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers - were only recorded by the state after 1837 meaning that for many of those who refused to conform to the doctrine of the Anglican Church at the time, the records are the only ones in existence.

The Ancestry.co.uk website describes the non-conformists as often being “intellectuals and free-thinkers who advanced progressive causes which formed the bedrock of modern civil liberties”. The Quakers, for example, were the first religious group to denounce slavery, the Unitarians were known for their campaign for better conditions for factory workers and the Methodists were advocates for womens’ rights.

Their stance came at a high cost however. Until 1828, non-conformists were prevented from working for the state or holding positions of public office. They were also prevented from studying at English universities until the founding of University College London in 1826.

Dan Jones, international content director at Ancestry.co.uk, says many free, multi-faith and multi-cultural societies owe a great deal to the 18th and 19th century conformists.

“Anyone who is lucky enough to find an ancestor within these records can be proud in the knowledge that their forebear was someone who wasn’t afraid to be different or stand up for what they believed in”.

Other famous non-conformists include 18th and 19th century artist William Blake and John Adams, second president of the United States.

See www.ancestry.co.uk/LMA.

- DAVID ADAMS

Upon entering Jerusalem’s Old City through the Jaffa Gate, you are enveloped in the bustling and colorful David Street, lined with souvenirs shops and local shopkeepers. Now, an archaeological dig has confirmed that this very street has been on the map, literally, for 1,500 years.

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the find earlier this month. At the time, the thoroughfare was 4.5 meters below the current street level. The road dates from the time when Jerusalem became a Christian city in the Byzantine era. While other locations on the Madaba Map have been discovered, the road had remained hidden until now.

The existence of the road is confirmed on the Madaba Map, an ancient mosaic map of Jerusalem from the 6th century. It is located in a church in Jordan and is the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of Israel.

The Madaba Map describes Israel with an emphasis on Christian sites at a time when the country transitioned from paganism to Christianity. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is among the identifiable sites on the map. All of the churches on the map are portrayed with red roofs on the map.

Dr. Ofer Sion, director of this excavation, said that after digging through “a number of archeological strata” the team discovered meter-long flagstones of the ancient street.

“It is wonderful to see that David Street, which is teeming with so much life today, actually preserved the route of the noisy street from 1,500 years ago,” Sion said.

During the Byzantine period (4th-7th centuries), Jerusalem was a Christian city. Thousands of Christian pilgrims came to Jerusalem to worship and many left written descriptions of the city and its holy places. The Madaba Map was one of them, showing the city walls, gates, the main streets and the churches. The main thoroughfare, the Cardo, was a colonnaded street that bisected the city from north to south.

The IAA said that the 8 x 16 metre Madaba Map also clearly showed an entrance to Jerusalem from the west through a large gate that led to a single, central thoroughfare on that side of the city. Excavations had never been performed in this area since it is still a main thoroughfare in the Old City frequented by tourists and locals alike. However, the dig will continue now allowing tourists to catch a rare glimpse of history.

The flagstones found were cracked from the burden of centuries. Next to the road archaeologists also discovered a stone foundation which supported a sidewalk and a row of columns. Other artifacts discovered in the excavations include pottery vessels, coins and five small square bronze weights that shopkeepers once used for weighing precious metals.

During the Middle Ages, a very large building that faced the street was constructed on the stone foundation of the Byzantine period. Later, during the Mamluk period (13th to 14th centuries) rooms were built inside this structure, apparently used as shops and storerooms. Beneath this building, right below the street that runs between David’s Citadel and David Street and leads to the Armenian Quarter, is a cistern, 8 x 12 metres and 5 metres deep, which supplied water to its occupants.

- NICOLE JANSEZIAN, http://www.Travelujah.com
Assist News Service

The remains of what is believed to be the oldest church in the world may soon be open to the public - despite being currently located inside the walls of a high security Israeli prison.

A report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper says that plans are underway for the Megiddo prison to be relocated so that visitors may come and see the site of the church.

Believed to date from the 3rd or 4th century AD, the church’s foundations were discovered during a prison renovation four years ago. The remains include a mosiac floor which features inscriptions including a reference to Jesus.

The Haaretz article quotes the head of the regional council, Hanan Erez, as saying that a tourism complex is to be built on the site.

The church remains is not the only site vying for the title of the world’s oldest.

Others include a cave in Jordan, the use of which as a chapel some claim may date as far back as between 33 and 70 AD and which, according to some, may have been used to shelter some of the earliest Christians.

- DAVID ADAMS

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed the largest ever cache of rare coins dating from the period of the Bar-Kokhba Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire in the second century.

News of the find - which included 120 gold, silver and bronze coins as well as pottery and iron weapons - were presented at a press conference in Israel earlier this month.

The discovery was made during excavations of a series of caves used by Jewish fighters during the rebellion which took place from 132-35 AD.

The excavations are part of a comprehensive cave mapping and research project which is being conducted by representatives of the Cave Research Unit, part of the Department of Geography at Hebrew University and the Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University and has the support of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

Many of the coins are said to be in excellent condition and most were originally Roman coins which were overstruck with the designs of the rebels. These designs include an image of the facade of the Temple of Jerusalem and the slogan “For the freedom of Jerusalem”.

Coins from this period and quality have never been found in such a great quantity in a single location.

The Bar-Kokhba revolt, led by Simon bar-Kokhba, was the third and last of the Jewish-Roman wars and was aimed at overthrowing Roman rule of Judea. The rebellion led to Jewish rule over parts of Judea for two years before it was finally put down by as many as 12 Roman legions. Jews were then barred from Jerusalem. It is estimated that more than 500,000 Jews died as a result of the revolt.

Professor Amos Frumkin, of the Cave Research Unit, noted the proximity of the discovery site to the ancient city of Betar, the site of the “last stand” by the Jewish rebels.

“This discovery verifies the assumption that the refugees of the revolt fled to caves in the center of a populated area in addition to the caves found in more isolated areas of the Judean Desert,” he said.

- DAVID ADAMS

The 400th anniversary of the founding of the Baptist movement was marked in Amsterdam late last month.

The first Baptist church was founded in the Netherlands city in 1609 by British exiles fleeing religious persecution at home.

Denton Lotz, a former general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, told a special worship service at the Singelkerk - a Mennonite Church in Amsterdam built a year before Baptists first met at a nearby bakery in 1609 - that Baptist pioneers such as John Smyth and Roger Williams were “persecuted, reviled, mocked, and often (endured) legal oppression” and used the opportunity to call on those present to continue to defend religious freedom against the “religion of secularism”.

“If we fail to take seriously the 21st century and merely continue to defend religious freedom as though we were living under King James I, then we will have become irrelevant and our defense of freedom irrelevant,” he said.

John Smyth was an Anglican minister who, along with Thomas Helwys, led a group of exiles from England to Amsterdam where they established a congregation.

Roger Williams, meanwhile, is credited with establishing one of the first Baptist churches in America after sailing to Boston from England.

The Baptists are noted for their refusal to baptise infants.

- DAVID ADAMS

A slave who was hanged for his role in leading an rebellion in Jamaica during the 1830s has been honored at the Baptist World Alliance’s annual gathering for his role in hastening the end of chattel slavery in the British colonies of the Caribbean.

Samuel Sharpe, described as an “educated Jamaican slave and Baptist deacon”, led the rebellion which began as a sit-down strike during the sugar cane harvest in December 1831 amid confusion over whether the British Parliament had emancipated them.

Apparently against Sharpe’s wishes, the rebellion then turned violent with reprisals from plantation owners leading to slaves burning sugar plantations. The rebellion was short-lived, however, and was put down by the British in the early months of 1832. Sharpe, along with the other ringleaders, were among some 600 slaves who were hanged.

Before his execution, Sharpe is recorded as declaring: “We must be content to die for the benefit of the rest. I, for one, am ready to die in order that the rest may be free…I depend for salvation upon the Redeemer, who shed his blood upon Calvary for sinners.”

The Baptist World Alliance recognised Sharpe as a “Baptist prophet” during its annual gathering along with British missionary and anti-slavery crusader William Knibb, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Delroy Reid-Salmon, a visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Christianity and Culture in the UK, later presented a paper exploring the significance of Sharpe’s rebellion.

“God liberates oppressed people,” Reid-Salmon told the audience. He added that God’s will is about liberation because “human beings are made for freedom”.

Meanwhile, in Israel a British-born archaeologist announced last week that a team excavating the site of a ritual bath had found an earthenware vessel dating from the time of Christ during a dig in Jerusalem.

Dr Shimon Gibson says the vessel was found on a dig being conducted by the University of North Carolina at the site ritual bath just outside the Old City of Jerusalem.

Dr Gibson, author The Final Days of Jesus - The Archaeological Evidence, was reported as saying that what sets this find apart is that the vessel has 10 lines of writing engraved upon it in either Aramaic or Hebrew. The meaning of the text is apparently yet to be decided.

- DAVID ADAMS

A quarry has been found in Jerusalem with historic significance.

The Israel Antiquities Authority announced on 6th July, the discovery of a quarry used to produce many of the stones which were used to build the outer retaining walls of the Temple Mount complex during King Herod’s building of the Second Temple over 2,000 years ago.

According to a news report from the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ), the quarry, discovered during preparations for a building site on Shmuel Hanevi street in central Jerusalem, covers one dunam (approximately a quarter acre) and contain stones up to two metres high, indicating that they were used for large building projects, of which King Herod famously built several, including the Second Temple.

“We know from historical sources that in order to build the Temple and other projects which Herod constructed, such as his palace, hundreds of thousands of various size stones were required - most of them weighing between two and five tons each,” said Dr Ofer Sion.

“The dimensions of the stones that were produced in the quarry that was revealed are suitable for the Temple walls.”

Historical records show that Herod employed over 10,000 people in the process of quarrying and transporting the stones, which was one of the most technologically complicated engineering feats of the time.

- MICHAEL IRELAND, Assist News Service

Bone fragments found in a sarcophagus placed beneath the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls in Rome appear to be those of the Apostle Paul, according to Pope Benedict XVI.

The Pope announced late last month that carbon-dating tests on the remains had shown they dated from the first or second century, leading the Pope to say that it “seems to confirm the unanimous and uncontested tradition that they are the mortal remains of the Apostle Paul”.

Paul is believed to have been beheaded in Rome during the Roman Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians sometime between 65 and 67 AD. Fragments of his skull are traditionally believed to be held at St John Lateran but it has been believed that his other remains are inside the sarcophagus at St Paul’s.

Separately, the Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has also reported that archaeologists have discovered what is believed to be the oldest image of St Paul - a fresco dating from the 4th century.

- DAVID ADAMS

Welcome to Sight’s newest blog in which we’ll be covering stories related to Christian history and archaeology - everything from the Biblically-related archaeology through to the history of the more modern church. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on our coverage!

So, to kick us off…

World’s “oldest Bible” published online

The world’s oldest Bible has been published online with free public access for the first time.

Known as the Codex Sinaiticus, the manuscript was written by hand in the mid-fourth century and originally contained Greek versions of both Old and New Testaments as well as the Apocrypha and other texts.

Half of the Old Testament has since been lost but the surviving 800 page manuscript does contain early Christian texts including a letter ascribed to the Apostle Barnabas.

Thanks to a collaboration between the British Library, Leipzig University Library, the Monastery of St Catherine in Mount Sinai, Egypt, and the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg, the manuscript has been reunited virtually.

While each of the institutions still hold different parts of the physical manuscript, the pages have been digitised and the manuscript can now be studied in its surviving totality online.

Dr Scot McKendrick, head of Western Manuscripts at the British Library, describes the codex as “one of the world’s greatest written treasures”.

“This 1600-year-old manuscript offers a window into the development of early Christianity and first-hand evidence of how the text of the Nible was transmitted from generation to generation,” he says.

Dr McKendrink says the codex is also a “landmark” in the history of books, being arguably the oldest large bound book to have survived.

“For one volume to contain all the Christian Scriptures book manufacture had to make a great technological leap forward – an advance comparable to the introduction of movable type or the availability of word processing.”

The transcription of the pages - containing more than 650,000 words - took four years.

Among the discoveries made during the project were that there were four scribes involved (only three had been previously recognised).

The text can be found at www.codexsinaiticus.org.