The archaeologist who looked after ancient ruins of Palmyra in Syria for 40 years is reported to have been killed by Islamic State (IS) militants.
Khaled al-Asaad had been held for about a month by the group, which seized the Unesco World Heritage site in May.
John Bartam alerted me to his fascinating-looking website and blog which compiles a lot of archaeological evidence in the strain…
It’s been known since the 19th century that there are striking parallels between the Ark story contained in the Bible and a narrative episode included in the Mesopotamian story of the Epic of King Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh, a hero Utnapishti is tasked with saving both human and animal life from a destructive flood (for which somewhat surprisingly, no reason is given) by the god Ea. Like Noah, Utnapishti builds a boat, fills it with animals, and finds himself lodged on the top of a mountain. What’s more, just like Noah, Utnapishti sends out birds on three test flights to establish that the flood waters were receding:
Jayman, occasional Christian commenter here has replied to my post, The Problem with Yahweh #2. That itself was a second part…
There has been a number of articles on this due, perhaps, to a Channel 4 Documentary on this due to be shown in August (that’s a long way off!). It seems that instructions for the Ark in the Bible were lifted from an earlier source (which is no surprise since the flood account is lifted from the Gilgamesh or both from an earlier ancestor).
A Tel Aviv University Press Release has built on work hinted at in Israel Finkelstein’s The Bible Unearthed which claimed that camels were not domesticated in the Ancient Near East to long after they are claimed to be existent and members of a goodly number of biblical stories. In other words, these anachronisms strongly suggest that the claims of the Bible are made up. Here is the story:
I am on holiday now, but if anyone with a critical mind wants to analyse these claims for consistent rigorousness, I would be interested to see what you find out!:
From here.
Two royal public buildings, the likes of which have not previously been found in the Kingdom of Judah of the tenth century BCE, were uncovered this past year by researchers of the Hebrew University and the Israel Antiquities Authority at Khirbet Qeiyafa – a fortified city in Judah dating to the time of King David and identified with the biblical city of Shaarayim.