The prophet Hosea who lived in the 8th century BCE and whose prophecies are featured in the Biblical book that bears his name, prophesied the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. He also predicted that the ten northern tribes of Israel would experience terrible suffering in exile, which they did. They became the so called “lost tribes of Israel”. He prophesied that they shall be known as “Lo Ami” i.e., Hebrew for “not my people”. Meaning, Hosea basically said that ten of the twelve tribes of Israel will lose their identity to the point that they will seem like they are “not my people” i.e., they will seem like non-Israelites. Nonetheless, he says that their numbers will grow and that the day will arrive when they will re-establish their Israelite identity and re-unite with the tribe of Judah i.e., the Jews, to usher in the messianic age – a new dawn for all humanity. These are Hosea’s words:

“…the number of the people of Israel will be like ocean sand, which can neither be measured nor counted. And the time will come when instead of it being said, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.’ And the people of Judah and the people of Israel will be united as one” (Hosea 1:10-11).

Recently, there has been a lot of emphasis on the resurgence of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, good old fashioned Jew hatred masquerading as anti-Israel sentiments. But very few have noticed the millions of people – I repeat, millions of people – who are coming out of the woodwork to declare that they are Israelites. Some of them are simply happy to reconnect with Israel and the Jewish people, others are following the Biblical commandments for “Noahides” i.e., the sons of Noah, still others are converting to Judaism. This spontaneous Israelite/Jewish combustion is happening across the world from Ghana to Alabama and now to Papua New Guinea (click here to read more about this).

Coincidence? Some scholars are dismissing these peoples’ claims as “offbeat anthropology”. Really? Why would millions of people invent a false Israelite history for themselves? Others see this as part of the messianic process – prophecy.

Here is a link to an important award-winning web site that my friend and colleague James Tabor began back in 1993 called “The Jewish Roman World of Jesus”. It is used by students and faculty alike in accessing original source materials related to the study of the historical Jesus, the New Testament, earliest Christianity, ancient Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, apocalypticism, archaeology, the ancient Mediterranean world, et al. It has a wealth of information, original sources, and so forth: http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/james-tabor/

Enjoy!

I don’t know which is more shocking – his use of a bulldozer to do fine archaeology or his “defense” of his methodology. Here is a man who finds “remains of a ceramic workshop” and is motivated to look for it in a specific area. He digs for a week and when he doesn’t come up with the goods, he decides to accelerate the process. He then gets a permit from the IAA and gives the green light to the digger driver to plow into the ground. Prof. Goren finishes his defense of his bulldozer methodology by saying that even though they found some “swept sherds” i.e., archaeology, the bulldozer confirmed his “impression [emphasis added] that there were no remains” of the ceramic workshop in Area B. Good grief! He used a bulldozer to excavate an area because it was his “impression” that it didn’t have significant finds beneath the ground. I sincerely hope the bulldozer didn’t destroy the workshop during its fact finding mission. In any event, after the bulldozer excavation, Prof. Goren says he closed Area B. He then ends his defense by saying that they are continuing their excavations at Areas A and C on the Tel. Incredibly, this is what he has to say about the future excavations: “Needless to say, with no tractors or the like”. I’m not kidding, this is a quote. He promises that in the future he will use Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), rather than tractors, “in order to locate the lost ceramic workshop”. Does this make any sense? If he finds bulldozers such an effective tool of archaeology, why is he promising online readers that in the future he is not going to use “tractors or the like”? It’s all too bizarre.

For all those who care about the archaeology of Israel, at least we now have this to be thankful for. Prof. Goren has moved from bulldozers to GPR.

Recently, in contrast to the Goren approach, my team designed a robotic arm to infiltrate a sealed 2,000 year old tomb in Jerusalem. A few weeks ago, the New York Festivals awarded us a Gold Medal for Innovation in Filmmaking that pushed the envelope of Jerusalem based archaeology. The whole point of the exercise was to use technology in a non-invasive manner. Professor Goren, please abandon the bulldozer approach. We’re willing to lend you our robotic arm.

Sven Schuette with a statue on an archaeological site on March 22, 2013 in Cologne (AFP, Patrik Stollarz)

Click here and here (for Haaretz subscribers) to learn more.

For some, however, the Holocaust has never ended. Think for a moment of those survivors who, in their old age, are now suffering from Alzheimer’s. They get to relive the Holocaust everyday – with their families watching the unrelenting suffering in real time.

One Holocaust survivor has decided to reclaim his past by finding his long lost twin. They were separated at the age of 4 but they have sequential Auschwitz numbers tattooed by the Nazis on their arms. The brother now living in Israel is hoping that through Facebook he will find his twin that he suspects was adopted by a Christian family and taken to America after the war. You can help by sharing the Facebook page. It is a moral outrage to experience Holocaust fatigue. The only moral stance is to fight against the Nazis, past and present. By reuniting two elderly men, separated by the forces of evil when they were children, we can win a small victory against the forces of darkness that swept the planet not that long ago, and are attempting to do so again.

Click here and here to read more.

The people who are offended by the idea that Jesus was married call ancient sources for this, like the gnostic gospels, “obscure”. What’s obscure about them? The gnostic gospels, for example, are at least as old as the gospels of the regular cannon. The only difference is that gnostics didn’t burn the other guys’ gospels. Also, why are we ignoring the archaeology of Talpiot, Jerusalem? As we have demonstrated in two films (The Lost Tomb of Jesus and The Resurrection Tomb Mystery/The Jesus Discovery) and two books (The Jesus Family Tomb and The Jesus Discovery) the Jesus family tomb has been discovered just outside of Jerusalem. In it was discovered an ossuary with the Hebrew name “Jesus son of Joseph” inscribed on it. Next to it was found an ossuary with the name “Mariamene” inscribed in Greek. This name is associated – in the entire body of Greek literature – only with Mary Magdalene!

Why are people upset by all this? Why aren’t they moved by the fact that at the end of the day Jesus and Mary Magdalene were buried next to each other as husband and wife?

Click here to read the BBC article.

In 2004, 17 medieval bodies – 11 of them children – were found in a well in Norwich. The Jewish community has been trying to bury them for years. This week they were finally given a decent, Jewish burial.

Thank God. May their memory be for a blessing and may we live in a world where these kind of crimes are a matter of history.

Click here and here for more information on this historic event.

Video on the history of the Norwich Blood Libel

Click here for a link to the article.