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Bar Ilan University archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a Philistine temple in the ancient city of Gath, home of the Biblical Goliath, buried in one of the largest tels (ancient ruin mounds) in Israel. The temple and a number of ritual items dating back to the 10th century BCE were discovered at Tel Tsafit (Tell es-Safit/Gath) by Professor Aren Maeir of BIU's Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology and his international team. The tel is located about halfway between Ashkelon and Jerusalem, near Kiryat Gat along the southern coastal plain. “Interestingly, the architectural design of...

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say. The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain. Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys...

IT WAS the night before Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge was facing a succession of supernatural terrors; or, as the latest medical thinking would have it, he was succumbing to a brain disease so obscure that doctors would not give it a name for another 150 years.A pair of medico-literary sleuths claimed last week to have tracked down the illness that haunted Scrooge. They concluded that Charles Dickens brilliantly observed the symptoms in A Christmas Carol. Robert Chance Algar, a Californian neurologist, and his aunt Lisa Saunders, a medical writer and physician, believe that the affliction that made Scrooge a byword...

Doctors have been trying to diagnose King Lear for more than two centuries. They haven’t succeeded, of course, for a couple of reasons that are not mutually exclusive: first, King Lear does not exist, and second he is not available for tests or examination. The latest technology, no matter how sophisticated, will never settle the matter. No imaging studies for King Lear: he was born much too soon for them, and now will never be diagnosed properly. Not, of course, that that puts doctors off, far from it. Nineteenth-century mad doctors in Britain and America said Lear’s case was...

Was Ezekiel an epileptic? By Judy Siegel November, 19 2001 JERUSALEM (November 19) - Ezekiel's visions may have resulted as much from disease as from divine inspiration, according to a California neuroscientist, who believes the prophet suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. Dr. Eric Altschuler, of the University of California at San Diego, presented his theory about Ezekiel and epilepsy before last week's meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego and reported in the latest issue of New Scientist. Altschuler said a careful reading of the Book of Ezekiel shows he had "all the classic signs of the ...

Research into the dispersal of Philistine cooking methods among various populations in Israel shows that the Philistines spread their culture beyond the areas under their control... Unlike most of the peoples living in the region in the biblical era, the Philistines were not Semites... They prepared meals in a characteristic sealed pottery vessel suited to long cooking times at low heat, while most inhabitants of Canaan at the time used open pots and faster cooking methods. The bones found at the Philistine cities showed that... the Philistines ate mainly pork, with an occasional meal of dog meat. The Philistines' wine...