Free Republic

The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery of the pumice would open a new field of study in Egyptology. "Geologists will help us study how ... natural disasters, such as the Santorini tsunami, affected the Pharaonic period," he said... While noting that layers of ash from Santorini have been found in Egypt's Nile Delta, he told The Associated Press that he thought it more likely the floating pumice was carried to the Sinai by regular ocean currents. The archaeological team found the pumice while excavating at Tel Habuwa in the desert northeast of Qantara,...

Article by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor published in Science magazineBEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL June 17, 2010 -- In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt. The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of...

During the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean volcanic island of Thera erupted violently, spreading pumice and ash across the eastern Mediterranean and triggering frosts as far away as what is now California. The Theran town of Akrotiri was completely buried. Tsunamis up to 12 meters high crashed onto the shores of Crete, 110 kilometers to the south, and the cataclysm may ultimately have sped the demise of Crete's famed Minoan civilization. For nearly 30 years, archaeologists have fought over when the eruption took place. Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly...

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

While some depict the Bible’s Passover meal and Jews’ Exodus from Egypt as a fable, archeological and other evidence squares with the Bible’s account.Tonight begins Passover, or Pasach, celebrated worldwide by Jews. As recounted in Exodus 13:3-10, this ritual meal marks their ancestors’ escape from Egyptian captivity.About three weeks earlier, Christians celebrated Easter to commemorate Jesus’ Resurrection. Judaism and Christianity share not merely monotheism, but also recount their miraculous foundations as history.Together they form the moral foundation for Western culture, a foundation that is collapsing, in part due to post-Enlightenment critiques of the historicity of these religions. But, as a...

A 3,500-year-old inscription on a stone block found in Egypt is what archaeologists say the oldest weather report of the world. The inscription on a six-foot-tall calcite stone, called the Tempest Stela, describes rain, darkness and "the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses," according to Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute who have translated the 40-line inscription. The stela's text also describes bodies floating down the Nile like "skiffs of papyrus." "This was clearly a major storm, and different from the kinds of heavy rains that Egypt...

The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed. Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based. But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of...

Debate erupts anew: Did Thera's explosion doom Minoan Crete? William J. Broad Thursday, October 23, 2003 For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 110 kilometers from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people. . This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland...

Did Moses really part the Red Sea like it says in the Old Testament? What about the Nile turning blood red or the plagues that finally compelled Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery? Did those things actually happen? These are among the questions Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici attempts to answer in "The Exodus Decoded" which premieres Aug. 20, 8-9:30 p.m. (check local listings) on cable's History Channel. Challenging opinions that dismiss those events as myth, the thought-provoking documentary uses investigative journalism aided by modern science to examine archaeological and geological evidence in separating historical fact from fiction. Jacobovici...

NAILS controversially linked to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ have fragments of ancient bone and wood embedded in them, a bombshell new study has revealed. The nails were allegedly found in Jerusalem, in a first-century burial cave believed to be the resting place of Caiaphas - the Jewish priest who sent Jesus to his death in the Bible. At some point after the cave was excavated in 1990, however, the nails went missing. Years later, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici claimed to have found the nails, even saying that they were used to crucify Jesus himself in the 2011 documentary, Nails Of...

Journalist Simcha Jacobovici believes that the nails discovered in a Jerusalem cave are revolutionary in their implications regarding the birth of Christianity. The Peace Forest is a small grove of pines sandwiched between the Abu Tor neighborhood and main promenade in Jerusalem. Anyone walking along the road that snakes through the grove can see a green pipe rising from the ground and reaching a height of several meters. This pipe, if journalist Simcha Jacobovici is to be believed, this is the physical tip of an archaeological detective story in the style of the Da Vinci Code. And this pipe is...

A few weeks ago, an Israeli geologist met with a reporter from the New York Times in the lobby of Jerusalem's King David Hotel. The geologist brought along evidence. Just before Easter, the Times came out with his story. The geologist, Aryeh Shimron, claims to have proof of a connection between a famous ossuary, or burial box for bones, and a tomb of in the environs of Jerusalem that, he believes, was the final resting place for Jesus of Nazareth, his wife and his family. If he were right, his theory would call into question the truth of the Resurrection. The Times...

Results could shed light on origins of various diseasesJune 3, 2010 — (BRONX, NY) — Using sophisticated genetic analysis, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and New York University School of Medicine have published a study indicating that Jews are a widely dispersed people with a common ancestry. Jews from different regions of the world were found to share many genetic traits that are distinct from other groups and that date back to ancient times. The study also provides the first detailed genetic maps of the major Jewish subpopulations, a resource that can be used to...

Asoka's edicts are to be found scattered in more than thirty places throughout India, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Most of them are written in Brahmi script from which all Indian scripts and many of those used in Southeast Asia later developed. The language used in the edicts found in the eastern part of the sub-continent is a type of Magadhi, probably the official language of Asoka's court. The language used in the edicts found in the western part of India is closer to Sanskrit although one bilingual edict in Afghanistan is written in Aramaic and Greek. Asoka's edicts, which...

The Israeli government is expected to approve the long awaited 'aliyah' (immigration) of more than 7,200 Indian Jews from the north-eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram in the coming weeks, a media report said. The decision to allow the last members of the "lost" Bnei Menashe tribe to immigrate to Israel is being greeted with excitement by local Evangelical Christian groups, who view it as fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and who have pledged financial support for the move, 'The Jerusalem Post' daily reported. The ministerial committee on immigration and absorption, headed by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, decided, about three months...

Early reports that two heavily armed Islamist extremists had broken into a mottled apartment block in south Mumbai almost escaped notice. Within hours, however, it had dawned on India’s Jews, a community that traces its roots to the court of King Solomon, that for the first time in their history they had been targeted because of their religion. SNIP “We are a tolerant society, we’ve never had any antiSemitism in India. We can’t fathom the reasons for this attack,” Elijah Jacob, a local Jewish leader, said. “We can no longer remain complacent.” Numbering only about 5,000 in a city of...

Explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to China in the year 1260 AD, returning a few years later with tales of black stones that heated rooms (coal), clothing laced with gold, and the presence of prosperous Jews in Beijing. These outlandish claims earned him the nickname "man of a million lies." Two hundred years later Jesuit missionaries confirmed, at least, the presence of Jews in Beijing. Jesuit Matthew Ricci, in 1605, encountered a young Chinese man, Ai T’ien. In stark contrast to the rest of the Chinese population, Ai T'ien claimed to worship a single God. Further questioning (after Ai...

A team of senior Israeli rabbis is due to rule soon on whether thousands of Indians who say they are members of one of the lost tribes of Israel can settle there. Only 5,000 of the Benei Menashes have converted to Judaism Shlomo Amar recently led a delegation of rabbis to the north-eastern Indian states of Manipur and Mizoram where members of the Benei Menashe tribe live and practise Judaism. At the Beith-el Synagogue in the Manipur capital, Imphal, nine men wearing knitted skull caps read silently from the Old Testament. Four others stand on a wooden platform in the...

It is well known that "jiaozi," world's earliest paper money, originated in China some 800 years ago. But latest research indicate that Jews used to assist ancient China in doing this might surprise most people. "Jiaozi," also named "jiaochao," appeared in China in 1154 during the reign of the Jin regime (1115-1234). It was believed in the past that Jin regime hired coining workers of Song (960-1279), Jin's preceding dynasty, to make the paper notes. But Qiu Shiyu, researcher of the Harbin Academy of Sciences and expert of Jin history, concluded that Jews used to take part in the work...

King Jehoiachin was only 18 years old and had occupied the throne of Judah barely three months when he was led off into Babylonian captivity in 598 BCE together with his wives, his mother, his servants, his eunuchs and thousands of "the chief men of the land." But what happened to them when they reached Babylon? And what happened there to the tens of thousands of others who joined them in exile when the First Temple was destroyed a decade later? The Bible tells us of the return to Judah half a century later but virtually nothing of what the...