April 2016
Vol. 4, No. 4
Welcome to The Ancient Near East Today Vol. IV, No. 4! In this issue we travel from the security services of Roman Judea to the toilets of ancient Mesopotamia, with stops to consider the Iron Age in Jordan and the relationship of the Bible and archaeology.
This month, Augusta McMahon looks at the seemingly modern problems of sanitation and waste disposal in ancient Mesopotamia. Mary Rose Sheldon considers how Roman intelligence professionals would have perceived Jesus. Tristan Barako reviews excavations at the important site of Tell er-Rumeith in northern Jordan. Louis de Figueiredo interviews noted Israeli archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, on the always challenging relationship between the Bible and archaeology. We’re also pleased to have two podcast interviews with authors featured in a recent special Near Eastern Archaeologyissue on crime and punishment in the Bible and the Near East. Finally, we present the latest update to the situation in Palmyra from ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives.
As always, we encourage you to send The Ancient Near East Today articles to family and friends, post links to Facebook and Twitter, and to be in touch with the editor. Remember, being a Friend of ASOR is free, so please spread the news!
Jesus as a Security Risk: Intelligence and Repression in the Roman Empire
By Rose Mary Sheldon
Intelligence personnel tend to have a view of events that differs from historians, even other people in government, and certainly from the general public. They are often accused of being realpolitikers or just plain cynical. Although crude jokes are made about the lack of morality in the intel game (the world’s second oldest profession.
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Trash and Toilets in Mesopotamia: Sanitation and Early Urbanism
By Augusta McMahon
Sanitation is something we in the West take for granted. We shouldn’t. The recent celebration of World Toilet Day in November 2015 shone a spotlight on the variety of modern sanitation systems. Some 35% of the world’s population has no access to clean, safe toilet facilities; 14% simply defecates in the open.
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The Role of Biblical Archaeology in Exegesis: An interview with Professor Israel Finkelstein, Part 1
By Louis C. de Figueiredo
“If the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such a faith is erroneous, and therefore, our faith is also.” So wrote Father Roland de Vaux, the French Dominican archaeologist who excavated Qumran and the first editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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Reconstructing Tell er-Rumeith
By Tristan Barako
In the spring of 1967, a team of archaeologists led by the late Paul Lapp concluded excavations at the small Iron Age site of Tell er-Rumeith in northern Jordan. Nearly 50 years later, his widow, Nancy Lapp, and I published the final report of Rumeith in the ASOR Archaeological Report Series.
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The Ancient Near East Today features contributions from diverse academics, a forum featuring debates of current developments from the field, and links to news and resources. The ANE Today covers the entire Near East, and each issue presents discussions ranging from the state of biblical archaeology to archaeology after the Arab Spring.
