Our Feature Article

King David's Lost Tomb and Treasure

Josephus claimed that King David's tomb contained a huge quantity of treasure�silver, gold, and precious objects. Does this famous sepulcher and treasury remain in�tact today?

by Gary Arvidson

PART I The World's Richest King

The first century historian, Flavius Josephus, reported that ancient Israel's king David was the world�s richest king. The tally of David�s riches was incredible�estimated at over 40 billion dollars by today's standards. Josephus declared that: �He [David] also left behind him greater wealth than any other king, either of the Hebrews or, of other nations, ever did� (Josephus Ant. 7.15.2; Whiston 1957:237).

Writing late in the first century Josephus suggested to his Roman readers that King David's wealth was so great that exceeded even that of Alexander the Great. But is that claim true, or false? Had Israel's king really accumulated riches in excess of those known to have fallen to Alexander the Great? If so, what happened to this vast treasure?

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Spinning the New Testament: A True and Tested Formula for Its Misunderstanding

Rank-and-file Christians don't ordinarily think of their ministers, pastors, priests, and lay friends as spinning the Bible. Yet, from the earliest days of the Church, clerics and laity alike placed their spin on God's word. Today theological spin doctors continue to spin the New Testament to reach denominational objectives. How does this affect your understanding?

by Michael P. Germano

Spinning is a very old phenomenon. Ancient spin masters, or spindoctors if you prefer, spun their yarns to explain events, to create history, and to boaster the reputations of their masters. Spin masters served the pharaohs of Egypt, the emperors of Rome, the royal families of Europe, and the despots of every century across the globe. They spun the events of their day to bring their publics into their world view.

It is in the very nature of a set of facts that enables them to be amenable to multiple interpretation or spun. A single set of facts can provide multiple meanings. A skilled spin master argues facts to make his or her point plausible and convincing. The search for truth and meaning is not the objective but rather the advancing of a cause, damage control, or winning. In spinning, the objective is for us to adopt the opinions the spin masters want us to reach and to accept the reality they wish us to believe. The effective spin doctor spins the facts to bring us there. It is, of course, quite self-serving and results in an inaccurate understanding of the facts themselves.

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The United States and Great Britain in Prophecy

Have the prophetic identities of Ephraim and Manasseh been reversed? Proponents argue that the prophetic identity of the USA, which they claim is a "company of nations," is Ephraim. This role has been that of Great Britain.

by Michael P. Germano

Are the United States of America and Great Britain mentioned in biblical prophecy? The equation of America, Britain, and various northern European nations with specific Israelite tribes serves to impart an exciting prophetic hermeneutic for understanding why the world is the way it is and what is going to happen in the course of future events. This paradigm is, of course, not without controversy.

Prophecy buffs who prophetically identify the United States of America and Great Britain as the end-time Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim face a new challenge. Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Jacob's son Joseph, were descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Their grandfather Jacob adopted them. Some claim that advocates of the theory have reversed the prophetic identities of the two tribes. The switch has raised the hackles of some Brits.

●Complete Story

Questions & Answers

Please feel free to submit short questions. We reserve the right to answer and publish those we believe to be in the public interest. We reserve the right to use or not use questions (in whole or in part), to include your name, and to edit or condense your questions for clarity and space. Click here to submit a question to the editor.

Information Vacuum

I am a student at Florida State University, for one of my classes I have to evaluate different websites and how they are applicable to study of the Old Testament. One of the points of the evaluation is the source or author of the website. As I have been looking around BibArch I have noticed that it isn't written anywhere who authored and maintains the website. Also, there are no credentials about such an author. I found it difficult to even find a place like this where I would be able to email someone. I just wondered if you could pass on any of this information to me. It might be a good idea to start including such things as authorship, who maintains the site, and credentials, as well as an express purpose of the website, in the future.

−Katherine McIntyre

We may have had a temporary server problem. We use a FrontPage server in southern California and occasionally the menu fails due to corruptions. Normally you can use the menu to read about authorship, our purpose, and credentials.

�Editor

Crossing Over from BCE to CE 

I am sure you receive many e-mails with questions and cannot respond to all but I hope you can find the time to answer a puzzling question for me. I came across a statement you made in your thesis on the decrees of Artaxerxes (see The Decree of Artaxerxes: Is It a Key to the Date of the Crucifixion?). You stated that Yamauchi, Halley and others made mistakes in their chronology by not adding one more year for year 0 when crossing over from B.C. to A.D.. I am kind of an amateur chronologist. I have made charts and tables of chronology for years for my own personal study. Chronology is fascinating to me. But your statement through my thought process for a loop. Ernest Martin, Finegan, Newton, Ussher, Nolen Jones, Donald Wiseman and others all subtract the 0 from the crossover of B.C. to A.D. I am sure you have a solid reason for adding the zero. I am definitely interested in knowing why. Maybe you have expounded on this in another area and I just haven�t came across the article. If you could answer my question I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you and God bless.

�Michael Sutton

In crossing from BCE to CE, or visa versa, one must correct for there being no year 0. The formula is: Date CE = [Period of Years From the BCE Date] +1 - [Date BCE]. In this case the date CE = 483+1-457 = 27. So the correct date is CE 27 not 26. The correction has been made and Yamauchi and Halley are still wrong because they did not made a correction.

�Editor

Search Engine Not Working

Tried to do a search on Peter or David .... got this reply ....can you fix it?

Error from search: can't open the word hash file e:\web\b\bibarc\_vti_txt\default.wti\All.dct

No documents found. Please try again.

−Anonymous

BibArch runs on a FrontPage server. For some reason Microsoft FrontPage gets its server extensions corrupted constantly. This appears to be a flaw in their system. It takes four hours to go through the procedure of reinstalling the website so that the search engine will work. As you asked us to do this we restored it. It is working right now. How long it will we do not know. Good hunting!

�Editor

Touring Israel 

We're planning to visit Israel and we're hoping to find a tour we can join (there are just 2 of us) of one or more archeological sites with a tour guide who can explain what we're seeing. I'm having a hard time finding this information on the internet. Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated.

�Carole Lax

You will probably be able to book sightseeing tours when you get there. However, I suggest you take a look at the tour options listed in Fodor's Israel. You can order from Amazon.com or a local bookstore like Barnes & Noble.

--Editor

Perspectives, published quarterly, provides a place for editorials, the opinion of our editors and viewers, answers to short questions from our viewers, and occasional feature articles. You can also access previous editions by using the More Editions of Perspectives link.

See Article Submissions for information regarding authoring materials for publication.

Locating Jerusalem's Fountain Gate

When Nehemiah left the City of David in the middle of the night to inspect the old city wall he went to the Gihon Spring. What was he looking for? In this second installment of the Locating the Fountain Gate series Bill Lavers wants you to know.

by Bill Lavers

PART II Visiting the Secret Places

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The Water System of Jerusalem and Its Implications for the Historicity of Joab's Conquest

As recent geological, philological and archaeological evidence converges in affirming the existence of some type of substantial water system in Jebusite Jerusalem, it appears that a reasonable case can be made for the plausibility of the depiction in II Samuel 5.

by Terrence J. Kleven

Within the last decade several significant discoveries have broadened our knowledge of the nature and history of Jerusalem and reaffirmed our understanding of the history of Jerusalem and reaffirmed in some ways the depiction of the conquest of the city in II Samuel 5:8. The most recent discoveries are a result of the archaeological work conducted by R. Reich and E. Shukron (1999; 2000; summarized by Shanks 1999a:20-29; 1999b:31-35; 2000:39-41). One of the purposes of their investigation was to explore the Gihon Spring in order to clarify the nature of the ancient building projects surrounding the spring. Although Reich and Shukron have provided some details of their discoveries and have published several short articles (Reich and Shukron 1997:3-8; 1998a:136-37; 1998b:5-13; 1999:22-33, 72; 2000:5-17; and 2002:75-80), including a few initial hypotheses that have emerged from their work (1999:22-23 and 72), scholars continue to await their conclusions. However, as we await these discussions we may nevertheless reconsider the history, and textual, philological, and archaeological evidence connected with the Gihon water system.

●Complete Article

Comments from Our Viewers

Please send us your comments by e-mail. All submissions must be signed and include your street or route address and telephone number, which we require for verification purposes only. We reserve the right to use or not use comments so addressed (in whole or in part, as deemed in the public interest), to include your name, and to edit or condense your comments for clarity and space. Click here to send us Comments.

Our Website

I stumbled across your website while putting together worksheets for Bible study. I'm a former anthropology student & have always been interested in archaeology. I love the way your site is designed; it makes it very easy to find stuff I've been looking for. I only wish this had been around when I was still at university and debating my profs over apes, bones & evolutionary theory. My days in the hallowed halls of anthropology departments led me to seek more ways to counter my professors & confirm my beliefs. I just wanted to say thanks for maintaining such a great site, and I know I'll keep checking back for new stuff.

"Coolwaittillitelltheguys!!"

�Ronya FMT

Mount Sinai

I would like to suggest a link to www.harkarkom.com for inclusion in your Useful Links page. The site includes in full Prof. Emmanuel Anati's latest book about 20 years of archaeological research at Mount Karkom in the Negev desert (Israel), including the reasons why this most probably is the biblical Mount Sinai.

�Michael

The link now appears on the links page.

--Editor

Marvin Rosenthal

Just a little note of spelling correction. I'm usually the last person that would correct anyone's spelling because way back in third grade I won a spelling be. It went to my head and it's been down hill ever since. On http://www.bibarch.com/Biographs/Con-temporary/Rosenthal-Marvin%20J.htm , in the second paragraph, the word "know" in "A nationally know Bible teacher" should be "known". Tonight our Bible study meeting is with Marvin Rosenthal at The Holy Land Experience. I look forward each week to God Word and Marv's spirit filled interpretation. God Bless you and God Bless America.

�Charlie Barta

We hope you enjoyed The Holy Land Experience. We suggest a visit by all the people of God visiting the Orlando area. The word known was keyed in wrong. We appreciate you pointing it out. We think you meant spelling bee though.

--Editor

Questions & Answers (continued)

The Genealogy of Jesus 

I am a Christian who subscribes to the same general belief system given on your site, and have found the information you supply to be extremely informative and objective. Recently I have been browsing documents written by non believers in hopes to add an element of challenge to my justification of the scriptures. As a result of this I have found a document which seems very well constructed, and I am quite frankly stumped as to how certain arguments can be refuted. I am wondering if you have seen this before?

If so, are you aware of any writers who have dealt with these specific apparent contradictions, or perhaps you could make quick work of them? I have been able to combat several, but certain points such as the differences in Jesus' genealogy seem difficult to reconcile. Please tell me what you think, as I have yet to find a site as unbiased as your own.

�Timothy S. Green

Matthew's gospel records the legal genealogy, written when the church was made up of people of primarily Jewish descent, through Joseph. Luke's gospel, written to a church from a more gentile point of view, contains the physical genealogy through Mary's father Heli. The English "son of"  is in the sense of "descendant of" so the line not a literal man by man direct line.

A better translation of Luke 3:23 is: "Now Jesus himself was beginning to be about thirty years old, being--as was supposed--the son of Joseph, who was the son-in-law of Heli, son of Matthat,...

--Editor