Archaeology Odyssey

In the Gospel of John, the seven-day Passover festival does not begin until after Jesus is crucified, ruling out the possibility that the Last Supper was a Passover ritual.

See Truly Fake: Moses Wilhelm Shapira, Master Forger (Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 2000). The following description of the fakes is taken largely from the essay by Irit Salmon, “The Life and Times of Moses Wilhelm Shapira,” in the catalogue. Ms. Salmon, who was also the curator of the exhibition held in the summer of 2000 at Ticho House, in Jerusalem, has graciously reviewed the manuscript. The responsibility for all errors, of course, is the author’s.

According to the documentary hypothesis, the first five books of the Bible (the Torah or Pentateuch) consist of at least four discrete textual strands, labeled with the letters J, E, P, D. In strand J, God is referred to as “Yahweh” (or “Jahweh” in German), while in E, God is referred to as “Elohim.” P, which stands for Priestly Code, makes up much of Leviticus, and D, or Deuteronomist, largely consists of the Book of Deuteronomy.

The remainder of the text has been reconstructed from a squeeze, unfortunately itself in seven pieces, made for Clermont-Ganneau by a certain Ya’qub Karavaca (see Horn, “Moabite Stone”).

Another story is recounted in Horn, “Moabite Stone.”

The British representative was Captain Charles Warren, an engineer who surveyed the Holy Land on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The Germans were represented by the Prussian consul J. Heinrich Petermann. Whether Shapira was also involved in the German negotiations is not known.

See Siegfried H. Horn, “Why the Moabite Stone Was Blown to Pieces,” BAR 12:03.

The Suda is a tenth-century A.D. Byzantine lexicon that preserves some valuable information about the ancient Greek world—and not a little misinformation, too.

See Cemal Pulak, “Shipwreck! Recovering 3,000- Year-Old Cargo,” AO 02:04.

See Birgit Brandau, “Can Archaeology Discover Homer’s Troy?” AO 01:01.