Trent and Rebekah reporting on the archaeological excavations at Ashkelon in Israel
Category Archives: History
Footnote 21 – Father’s Day Note on Rick Atkinson’s Liberation Trilogy III
Footnote 21 – Father’s Day Note
On this Father’s Day of 2013, I am thinking of course of my father, James H. Wolfgang, now nearing his 91st birthday. His only trip to Europe occurred at age 21 – via Omaha Beach. His unit, the 654th Engineering Battalion, was responsible for producing the millions of maps with which Steven Ambrose, fifteen years ago, opened his book Citizen Soldiers.
Today I began reading the most recent version of the war in the European theatre, Rick Atkinson’s third volume of his Liberation Trilogy. A testament to the engineers who translated hard-won intelligence-gathering information into usable maps and models, Atkinson’s Prologue includes an account of the mammoth plaster-cast model of the beaches of Normandy, constructed under armed guard by the 654th Engineering Battalion in a small village in the Cotswalds during the spring of 1944, and then transported to London. The massive model is featured in the orientation film at the D-Day Museum in the old Higgins Boat factory in New Orleans. Here part of Atkinson’s Prologue:
“Nowhere were the uniforms more impressive on Monday morning, May 15, than along Hammersmith Row in west London. Here the greatest Anglo-American military conclave of World War II gathered the 1,720th day of the war to rehearse the death blow intended to destroy Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Admirals, generals, field marshals, logisticians, and staff wizards by the score climbed from their limousines and marched … into the Model room … [formerly an auditorium] at St. Paul’s School … Top secret charts and maps now lined the Model Room …Behind [Eisenhower] in the cockpit of the Model Room lay an immense plaster relief map of the Normandy coast where the River Seine spilled into the Atlantic. Thirty feet wide and set on a tilted platform…[it] depicted, in bright colors and a scale six inches to the mile, the rivers, villages, beaches and uplands of what would become the world’s most famous battlefield.”
Early in his life, my father was a part of that vast enterprise by the millions of “the greatest generation” who played various roles, in ending oppressively tyrannical regimes across the globe, remaking the world (for good – or ill – in varying circumstances), and indirectly allowing the gospel to be heard in many new places around the globe. Returning home to marry his high school sweetheart, he raised his family to obey God, honor their country, and be of service to others. From his Bible class on Romans I (and others) first learned the foundational gospel truths anchored in the concept of “justification by faith,” and through him I developed my earliest love for hymns by observing him develop his abilities in leading hymns for public worship, thus enabling other Christians to worship God in song. And that is merely the beginning of the “short list” of important things he taught and modeled.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad – and thanks for all those things you did, in war and peace – and still do! I love you!
Footnote 21 – Father’s Day Note Rick Atkinson, The Guns At Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (New York Henry Holt and Company, 2013), Kindle edition, Locations 157, 172, 223.
Samaria neglected and vandalized
Back in April I noted here the difficulty of getting to the biblical site of Samaria in Sebastia.
The hill Samaria was bought by Omri, king of Israel, to serve as the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:23-24). After a visit to Samaria in December, 2009, I posted a photo of the hill of Samaria suitable for use in teaching. I thought I would share this with you today. Samaria was built on a hill surrounded by a deep valley and then mountains.
Samaria was destroyed by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. By New Testament times Samaria had been rebuilt by Herod the Great, and was visited by Peter and John (Acts 8).
A few days ago Todd Bolen (Bible Places Blog) called attention to an Associated Press article reporting that the archaeological site of Samaria is neglected, and is being vandalized. You can…
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‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler
‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler
‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ – Interview with filmmaker Chris Wheeler
By Gerald D. Swick Originally published on HistoryNet.com. Published Online: June 12, 2013 –
‘Civil War: The Untold Story’ examines the war in the Western Theater. Photo by Justin Koehler
Civil War: The Untold Story is a five-hour documentary from Great Divide Pictures, which has produced award-winning historical documentaries such as How the West Was Lost and visitor center films for several Civil War National Parks. Currently scheduled to air in the first quarter of 2014, Civil War: The Untold Story is produced and directed by Chris Wheeler. HistoryNet talked with him recently about the project.
HistoryNet: Your documentary is titled Civil War: The Untold Story. With all that has been written about the war, and all the documentaries that have been done, what is your “Untold Story”?
Chris Wheeler: It’s really on multiple levels. Instead of focusing on the Virginia-Maryland-Pennsylvania campaign, we’re telling the story of the Civil War through the lens of the Western Theater, the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River: Fort Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and the Atlanta Campaign. While it is not entirely an untold story, the story of that part of the war is not told very often. Many historians believe the Western Campaign is where the war was won and lost. We’re not going to ignore the East; we’ll briefly mention events there and put them in perspective within what’s happening in the West.
HN: There is a widespread belief that the seat of war was in the Virginia-Maryland-Pennsylvania region, and that everything that happened in the Western Theater was simply a sideshow. Why do you think it is that the Western Theater gets less respect?
Chris Wheeler during filiming. Photo by Justin Koehler
CW: I think there’s no denying the Eastern Theater was very important—the catastrophic loss of life makes it tragic, and that alone brings attention to the East, and deservedly so. It would be wrong for us to ignore the Eastern Theater, but we are focusing on the West. The war in the East was fought in a highly populated area around the capitals of Washington and Richmond. The media—newspapers and magazines—had very easy access to the Eastern Theater, and so logically it was covered more extensively at the time.
The lands between the Appalachians and Mississippi River were not the frontier by that time, but it was rougher country. Journalists had to cover hundreds of miles, from Fort Donelson to Shiloh to Vicksburg, eastward to Tennessee and onward to Atlanta. So the Western Campaign didn’t get nearly the media coverage at the time the war was happening. I think that is part of the reason the West has gotten short shrift when it comes to interpreting the Civil War.
HN: Most of the photographers’ studios were in the East as well. It’s not as easy to find photos taken in the Western Theater.
Fighting in the Peach Orchard at Shiloh. Photo by Justin Koehler
CW: The reality is that there are very few photographs that cover the West. We use battle recreations in the documentary to tell the story. If we had to depend on period photos we wouldn’t have much to tell. I believe Ken Burns has been criticized for not doing more to cover the Western Theater in his series on the Civil War, but I think such criticism is unfair. You have to have images to make compelling television.
HN: We’ve seen a media release about your documentary series that says, “It’s not just about who we were then. It’s about who we are now.” Would you like to expand on that thought?
CW: This film is not just a historical retelling of arguably the most important event in our country’s history. Hopefully our series will resonate with viewers and help Americans realize that many of the issues we fought over in the Civil War are still being discussed today: states rights versus a strong centralized government; civil rights; the Constitution; issues of race. A lot of these things still remain unresolved. Hopefully, after watching, viewers will have a better understanding of these issues and understand how the history of the Civil War remains relevant to all Americans today.
HN: The series will be narrated by someone very familiar to viewers of the PBS series Downton Abbey— actress Elizabeth McGovern. What led you to approach her about being the narrator?
Elizabeth McGovern
CW: I’ve worked with Peter Coyote in the past; his agent also represents Elizabeth McGovern. I heard a demo of her doing some voice work, and I thought Elizabeth struck the perfect tone for what we’re trying to get across. She has a strong delivery but also a natural empathy. Elizabeth brings a sense of calm to this story while taking viewers through the horror, the carnage of the Civil War. One hundred fifty years later, it’s still hard to get your head around how truly horrible this war was. Elizabeth is a calming presence who in essence, takes viewers on a journey through hell.
Our series includes female historians who are very good on camera, but most of the voices in our documentary, whether historians or the voices from diaries and letters of the time, are male. A female narrator such as Elizabeth McGovern, brings much needed balance to the narrative.
Civil War: The Untold Story is being distributed to public television stations by American Public Television, but stations are not required to air the series. So from a distribution perspective, having Elizabeth involved in the show will hopefully encourage PBS stations to broadcast it.
HN: Tell us a bit about your own background if you will.
CW: I started off in the television business in 1981 as a news photographer. I loved history but wasn’t sure I wanted to be a teacher. My first big project came when I was given the opportunity to create How the West Was Lost for the Discovery Channel. Since then I’ve produced films on the Korean War (Our Time in Hell: the Korean War) and a documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite on John Glenn (Godspeed, John Glenn). I’ve continued to produce documentaries on Native Americans. In recent years we’ve had the opportunity to produce visitor center films for National Park Civil War battlefields, and that has given me the chance to tell some of these stories that are so dramatic and so important to America today.
To return to your question about “What is the untold story?” we also want to bring a strong presence to the African American story in the Western Theater. At Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Georgia, for example, I asked staff members if they receive a lot of African American visitors, since the park is just outside Atlanta. They replied “No. Unfortunately, African Americans do not feel like they are part of the story of the Civil War.” To me, that is tragedy. And it has been a motivating factor for us to tell a produce a series that conveys to modern day African Americans that their ancestors were an important and inspirational part of the Civil War story.
HN: It is often claimed that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation didn’t free a single slave, but in fact it freed Army officers from having to return runaway slaves to their owners as the armies penetrated deeper into the South, and allowed many, many thousands of slaves to find freedom by getting behind Union lines—”contrabands,” they were called. That was particularly true with the Western armies, which conquered the largest portion of Dixie.
Contrabands. Library of Congress
CW: I really liked the story of the contrabands, which we go into in our second episode. Early in the war, slaves began escaping to Union lines. Thousands of them! No one in the North had anticipated escaping slaves seeking refuge in these kinds of numbers. It led to a Constitutional question central to the war: Lincoln never recognized the Confederacy, so Federal law still applied to rebelling states. The Fugitive Slave Act was still the law of the land, so by law, runaway slaves had to be returned to their owners. But as a Union army officer, do you want to return the escaping slaves back over to the very people with whom you are engaged with in battle?
Lincoln is credited as the Great Emancipator, and certainly he was, but the slaves themselves put Lincoln in the position where he had to do something, and that was the Emancipation Proclamation. Most people don’t realize the Emancipation Proclamation also gave African Americans the right to join the army and fight for the Union and defend their new-found freedom.
In our series, we also want to tell little-known stories about Lincoln himself. He was a man of the West, so he had a pretty good understanding of why the Western Campaign was so important—perhaps more so than most others in Washington did. Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln begins in January 1865; our documentary ends about where Spielberg’s movie begins, so The Untold Story could be considered a prequel to Spielberg’s film, showing Lincoln’s ups and downs—secession, the military campaigns, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the crucial 1864 presidential campaign.
I don’t think Americans today realize how close Lincoln came to not being reelected. His opponent was George McClellan, the popular former commander of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan represented a Democratic party that wanted to end the war, to let the Southern states keep their slaves and come back into the Union. By 1864, Northerners were tired of the war that had no end in sight, tired of seeing their sons die. One of the biggest events that turned things around was in September 1864, when Union General William T. Sherman captured Atlanta, which was the next-best thing to capturing Richmond. For the first time, people in the North now had hope this war could be won. The Battle of Atlanta plays very much into the political campaign story we tell in “Civil War: the Untold Story.” Lincoln wins in a landslide. Just a few weeks earlier he had told his cabinet, “We must prepare for McClellan to be president.”
HN: How will civilians’ stories figure into the documentary?
From a scene in the caves at Vicksburg. Photo by Justin Koehler
CW: The story of Southern civilians is a big part of the “untold story”. I don’t think a lot of people in our nation today realize that the war was fought almost entirely in the South. Civilians in places like Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Atlanta found themselves in the path of the war. Vicksburg is perhaps the most dramatic example, with the civilian population trapped there for six weeks under bombardment during the siege in 1863 by Ulysses S. Grant’s army. The experience for Southern civilians was very different than for Northern civilians. Northern civilians could read about what was happening in the war, but it was fought on Southern doorsteps, and it devastated the South for years afterward.
So in Civil War: The Untold Story, you’ll see the military story, the social story of the civilians and African Americans, and the political story of Abraham Lincoln.
HN: Is there anything you’d like to add in closing?
CW: I hope this series brings our country’s people together at a time when we are arguably as divided as we were in 1860. I hope it will bring a better understanding of the Civil War and help people to see what happens when we disagree, when we stop trying to solve our problems together. I think it is time for Americans to hear this story again, not just because it is the 150th anniversary of the war, but because of the state of our nation today. Ken Burns did a fantastic job of telling the story of the war in 1990, but it has been a generation since our nation heard the story of the Civil War. I sincerely hope a sense of healing and unity can come out of viewing this. Over 600,00 young men died from North and South. It is an American tragedy, one Americans should never forget.
Click here to watch a trailer of Civil War: The Untold Story.
See more at: http://www.historynet.com/civil-war-the-untold-story-interview-with-filmmaker-chris-wheeler.htm#sthash.CTczPLws.dpuf
More about Ephraim
Check out the other articles!
In the previous post we pointed out that Ephraim, where Jesus went a short time before His death (John 11:54), is identified with Taybeh on the edge of the wilderness.
Ephraim is included on the Madaba Map dating to about 560-565 A.D. Below is a photo of a portion of the Madaba Map. The large town with palm trees around it represents Jericho. Below Jericho the land color changes to black. The entry closest to Jericho, but a little to the right, is Ephraim.
According to the website dealing with The Madaba Map, provided by the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum – Jerusalem, the two lines of white lettering read,
Ephron also Ephraia, where went the Lord
Here is a larger cropped portion of the map identifying Ephron. If your Byzantine Greek is up to date, you can make out all of the words.
The inscription is located close to the wilderness, but…
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Old Torah Scroll Found in Italian University Library
Old Torah Scroll Found in Italian University Library
Old Torah scroll found in Italy university library
By NICOLE WINFIELD | Associated Press
View GalleryOldest known complete Torah found
ROME (AP) — An Italian expert in Hebrew manuscripts said Wednesday he has discovered the oldest known complete Torah scroll, a sheepskin document dating from 1155-1225. It was right under his nose, in the University of Bologna library, where it had been mistakenly catalogued a century ago as dating from the 17th century.
The find isn’t the oldest Torah text in the world: the Leningrad and the Aleppo bibles — both of them Hebrew codexes, or books — pre-date the Bologna scroll by more than 200 years. But this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to Mauro Perani, a professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna’s cultural heritage department.
Two separate carbon-dating tests — performed by the University of Salento in Italy and the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign — confirmed the revised dating, according to a statement from the University of Bologna.
Such scrolls — this one is 36 meters (40 yards) long and 64 centimeters (25 inches) high — are brought out in synagogues on the Sabbath and holidays, and portions are read aloud in public. Few such scrolls have survived since old or damaged Torahs have to be buried or stored in a closed room in a synagogue.
In a telephone interview Wednesday, Perani said he was updating the library’s Hebrew manuscript catalogue when he stumbled upon the scroll in February. He said he immediately recognized the scroll had been wrongly dated by the last cataloguer in 1889, because he recognized that its script and other graphic notations were far older.
Specifically, he said the scroll doesn’t take into account the rabbinical rules that standardized how the Pentateuch should be copied that were established by Maimonides in the late 12th century. The scroll contains many features and markings that would be forbidden under those rules, he said.
The 1889 cataloguer, a Jew named Leonello Modona, had described the letters in the scroll as “an Italian script, rather clumsy-looking, in which certain letters, as well as the usual crowns and strokes show uncommon and strange appendices,” according to the University of Bologna release.
Perani, however, saw in the document an elegant script whose square letters were of Babylonian tradition, the statement said.
Perani told The Associated Press it was “completely normal” for a cataloguer to make such a mistake in the late 1800s, given the “science of manuscripts was not yet born.”
Outside experts said the finding was important, even though older Hebrew bibles do exist.
“It is fairly big news,” said James Aiken, a lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament studies at Cambridge University. “Hebrew scholars get excited by very small things, but it certainly is important and clearly looks like a very beautiful scroll.”
However, Giovanni Garbini, a leading expert on ancient Semitic languages and retired professor at Rome’s La Sapienza university, said the discovery doesn’t change much about what the world knows about Hebrew manuscripts.
“It’s an example of an ancient scroll, but from the point of view of knowledge, it doesn’t change anything,” he said in a telephone interview.
But Stephen Phann, acting president of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem and an expert in ancient Jewish manuscripts, said if accurately dated, the scroll is a rare and important find. “We don’t have anything much from that period,” Phann said.
There are far older scraps of Torah scrolls that can be dated back to the 8th century, but Phann said it was rare to find a complete manuscript.
The find was also emotionally important, he said because the scroll, as opposed to a bound book, is used for reading Torah portions throughout the year in synagogue.
“It’s almost a friendship — that they have come to know the Torah scroll in their midst, and they draw their knowledge and focus on worship on how they live their daily life,” Phann said.
Perani said it remains a mystery how the scroll came to be part of the Bologna university library but that he anticipated further study would now begin.
The scroll remains in the library and doesn’t require any extra conservation precautions beyond what it already has, he said.
___
Diaa Hadid contributed from Jerusalem.
Bob Dylan, Doc Watson and the White Pilgrim, or Restoration History Shows Up in Unexpected Places
Lexington Theological Seminary Sells Campus to UK
Lexington Theological Seminary Sells Campus to UK
University of Kentucky to buy campus of Lexington Theological Seminary
Published: May 13, 2013
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/05/13/2639159/university-of-kentucky-purchasing.html#storylink=cpy
By Linda B. Blackford — lblackford@herald-leader.com
The University of Kentucky will buy the Lexington Theological Seminary’s 7-acre campus on South Limestone for $13.5 million, officials announced late Monday.
The UK Board of Trustees is expected to approve the deal at its meeting Tuesday, adding room for expansion on the west side of Limestone. The seminary has moved almost all of its instruction online since 2011 and plans to relocate to a smaller campus in Lexington.
“When high-quality space adjacent to your campus becomes available, the responsible thing is to explore the possibilities,” UK President Eli Capilouto said. “The Lexington Theological Seminary space represents great potential for the university as we grapple with how to grow and manage within our existing footprint.”
In the immediate future, UK plans to use seminary buildings as “swing space” for the Gatton School of Business as it starts a major renovation and expansion across the street.
The 63-year-old seminary property includes 131,000 square feet of built space, including four classroom buildings, 44 apartments, 16 townhouses, a maintenance building and a parking lot. For the past 20 years, about 75 percent of the seminary’s housing has been rented to UK students, said seminary President Charisse Gillett. UK officials said they would honor any current leases made with Lexington Theological Seminary for the next academic year, then fold those spaces into UK Housing.
Gillett said the seminary’s move — which she hopes will be to a downtown location — is part of the school’s new identity.
“Change for every academic institution is inevitable, and change has been our mantra,” she said Monday. “This is another step in our transformation and revitalization.”
Eric Monday, UK’s vice president of finance and administration, said the sale would be a cash deal, paid for with $13.5 million in excess funds created by increased enrollment last fall. Going forward, recurring money from increased enrollment will be used to soften budget cuts across campus, Monday said.
Bob Wiseman, UK’s vice president for facilities, said the seminary’s buildings probably would become a temporary home for various programs during the next five to 10 years as UK embarks on construction and renovation projects throughout campus.
Wiseman said the seminary’s academic buildings and housing spaces were in good physical shape. “With the amount of building we are doing, we have a great need for swing space,” he said. “This is very helpful for short-term.”
In addition, the 284-space parking lot will help ease UK’s chronic parking woes, he said. Wiseman said the new property would be folded into UK’s ongoing master planning process, but there are no immediate plans to designate a permanent use for the land. Although the property is across the street from UK’s law school, which is looking to expand, “you couldn’t easily reconfigure the space for a law school,” he said.
Lexington Theological Seminary was founded in 1865 as part of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Gillett said the seminary once was on the campus of Transylvania University, then moved closer to UK when it became a residential seminary.
The 2008 economic downturn hit the seminary’s finances and enrollment hard, pushing the school to put much of its instruction online by 2011. Today, enrollment has climbed to about 110 students, 55 of whom are full-time. Most still seek a master’s degree in divinity, Gillett said, but a growing number of students are seeking certificates in pastoral ministry.
Half the coursework is online and half is done in congregations. Students also come to campus twice a year for two weeks of intensive residential instruction.
The seminary’s 23 full-time employees were notified about the sale Monday.
Gillett said the $13.5 million from the sale of the property would help establish a new location for the seminary and give the school more financial stability.
Linda Blackford: (859) 231-1359. Twitter: @lbblackford.
Biblical Archaeology Society
Try the Latest Technology for Yourself
Biblical Archaeology Society Staff • 10/14/2011
Bruce Zuckerman
In Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR)’s November/December 2011 issue, Biblical scholar and digital imaging expert Bruce Zuckerman introduces readers to RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), a revolutionary imaging technology that is changing the way scholars read and interpret ancient texts.
In “New Eyeballs on Ancient Texts,” Zuckerman explains why RTI images, created by merging a series of pictures taken with multiple light sources at different angles and distances around an object, are much more powerful than standard digital photographs. When viewed on a computer, RTI images of ancient texts can be virtually manipulated to reveal subtle details invisible to the naked eye, such as the thickness of a letter inked on a Dead Sea Scroll or the impressed signs of an ancient and worn cuneiform tablet.
But, as Zuckerman writes, “it’s hard to explain what an RTI image looks like in mere words,” which is why we’ve put together this guide to help you better understand RTI and experience these impressive images for yourself.
RTI images can help reveal hidden details in ancient texts, such as this 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet (top). In an RTI image (bottom), almost all of the tablet’s wedge-shaped characters can be clearly discerned.
First, click here to download the InscriptiFact standalone RTI image viewer developed by the West Semitic Research Project (WSRP).*
Next, click here to download some RTI images to your computer. The WSRP has made these three RTI image files available especially for BAR readers. The first image (Coin_10534_Obv) is a first-century C.E. Jewish coin dated to the third year of the First Jewish Revolt; the second image (DSS_SOC1Q34BISDobv) is a fragment of a Dead Sea Scroll containing an ancient Jewish prayer of atonement; and the third image (USCARC_6711_OBV) is a 4,000-year-old administrative tablet written in early cuneiform.
To download and save an image to your computer, click on the file name and, when directed, save the file to an easily accessible location on your hard drive, such as the desktop. The RTI files will be downloaded to your computer as compressed .zip files, so it may take a few minutes to complete each image download. You should then “unzip” the files once they are downloaded to your computer.
Now you can start viewing the images. Open the InscriptiFact viewer and click “Open” in the viewer’s menu bar. Navigate to the location where you saved the downloaded RTI image onto your computer’s hard drive and then click the Open button. The RTI image will then appear in a window within the viewer. At this point, you can begin experimenting with a variety of tools (especially those found under “Options” and “Effects” in the menu bar) that allow you to virtually manipulate the artifact image. Click below to watch a YouTube video that details the viewer’s various tools and how they work.
PLEASE NOTE: Neither the Biblical Archaeology Society nor the West Semitic Research Project will address or resolve questions, problems, error messages or any other issues that arise out of reader attempts to access, download, save, view or otherwise use the InscriptiFact RTI viewer or the RTI images.
If you want to learn more about RTI and its uses, you can also watch the informative YouTube video below that details how art conservators with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are using RTI to better understand and conserve centuries-old paintings within their collections.
Herculaneum: the unknown city
via the British Museum Blog
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