New Dead Sea Scroll fragments, world's oldest basket found in desert cave

Jpost MARCH 17, 2021

Some 1,900 years ago, Jewish refugees fleeing the Romans made their way to the Judean Desert. Among the belongings they carried with them were scrolls featuring the biblical books of Zechariah and Nahum. Two millennia later, fragments of those texts have reemerged, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced Tuesday.

It is the first such discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 and the early Fifties.

The inhospitable environment was considered a safe haven as the war between the Roman Empire and the Judean rebels led by Shimon Bar Kokhba raged around 130 CE. Jews found shelter in the caves and brought what they thought they needed for their new life.

In recent decades, the caves have been targeted by looters eager to find artifacts to sell on the private market. For this reason, a few years ago, the IAA, in cooperation with the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Department, launched a rescue operation to survey all the caves in the area.

 

Archaeologists Dig Up the Bible at Ancient City of Shiloh

 

The earth spinning unusually fast lately

 

Time and Date  23-Dec-2020

Many of us wish we could get through this difficult year as quickly as possible. Seems the Earth feels the same way — it has been spinning unusually fast lately. 2020 included the 28 shortest days since 1960.

Atomic Clocks Expose Earth's Irregular Speed

The Earth is an excellent timekeeper: on average, with respect to the Sun, it rotates once every 86,400 seconds, which equals 24 hours, or one mean solar day.

But it is not perfect. When highly accurate atomic clocks were developed in the 1960s, they showed that the length of a mean solar day can vary by milliseconds (1 millisecond equals 0.001 seconds). These differences are obtained by measuring the Earth's rotation with respect to distant astronomical objects, and using a mathematical formula to calculate the mean solar day.

2020 Had Shortest Days on Record

Before this year began, the shortest day since 1973 was July 5, 2005, when the Earth's rotation took 1.0516 milliseconds less than 86,400 seconds.

But in the middle of 2020, the Earth beat that record no less than 28 times. The shortest day of all came on July 19, when the Earth completed its rotation in 1.4602 milliseconds less than 86,400 seconds.

The speed of the Earth's rotation varies constantly because of the complex motion of its molten core, oceans and atmosphere, plus other effects. 

2021 Is Predicted to Be Even Shorter

Scientists monitoring the Earth's rotational speed expect the trend of having shorter days to follow us into 2021 as well.

According to their calculations, an average day in 2021 will be 0.05 ms shorter than 86,400 seconds. Over the course of the entire year, atomic clocks will have accumulated a lag of about 19 ms. For comparison: in past years, they ran fast by a few hundred milliseconds per year. See yearly averages since 1973

In fact, the year 2021 is predicted to be the shortest in decades. The last time that an average day was less than 86,400 seconds across a full year was in 1937.

Analysis of teeth of individuals who lived in Megiddo then show that the Canaanites imported exotic food from India and Southeast Asia.

JPost DECEMBER 22, 2020 

Bronze Age cuisine in Israel included exotic foodstuffs, such as bananas, soybeans and turmeric, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. It pushes back the evidence for these foods by centuries.

The conclusion is based on analysis of micro-remains and proteins preserved in the tooth tartar of individuals who lived in Megiddo and Tel Erani during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. 

 “Human dental calculus is wonderful material, full of information about past food habits,” Prof. Philipp W. Stockhammer said. “By studying calculus from Bronze and Iron Age [remains] at the Levant, we are able to trace otherwise often invisible food and can get insights into individual nutrition.”

Codeword Barbelon

This book contains some very startling facts.   Who is really in Charge? New book exposes the secret societies and political forces behind the New World Order…. "Men occasionally stumble over the Truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing had happened.” (Sir Winston Churchill) 

Synopsis:
Utilizing records inaccessible to or overlooked by other writers, P.D. Stuart’s book puts the spotlight on the power about which President Woodrow Wilson once said, “the few who are aware of it, dare not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” A work of great insight and moral courage Codeword Barbêlôn exposes, in unequivocal terms, the secret connections, oaths and codewords of the powers that be…. 

"Good historians," wrote Horace Walpole, "are the most scarce of all writers, and no wonder! A good style is not very common; thorough information is still rare; and if these meet, what a chance that impartiality should be added to them!" P.D. Stuart's work possesses all of these qualities. Consisting of 48 chapters, and hundreds of footnotes and references, Codeword Barbêlôn covers a vast period of history, from the second and third centuries to the present day. Spatially, the work spans three continents, and focuses on Europe and North America and the hidden influence of secret societies on that continent. Indeed, reading Codeword Barbêlôn, one cannot help but feel as if he were travelling in H. G. Wells' time machine, finding himself sometimes at the City of Rome in the 16th Century, at other times in Bavarian Germany in the 18th Century, yet at other times in the political intrigues of North America in the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries. 

In doing so Codeword Barbêlôn uncovers a plot so sinister, that in the words of ex-FBI Director and founder, J. Edgar Hoover: "The individual... coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous... cannot believe it exists...." Some of it is unsettling, disquieting, and often downright scary. 

Codeword Barbêlôn is a `tough book': direct, honest, and thought provoking, with no compromise, no apologies, and no vagaries; it spares no characters—all are lashed without ceremony. It "connects the dots" completely, thoroughly, and intelligently. An instance of high scholarship and intelligence, this book recounts the little known history of the religious and political Illuminati, and reveals how knowledge of this secret organization was transmitted to America; and importantly how it has ruled the world from that country ever since. Rarely does one source "connect the dots" as completely, thoroughly, and intelligently as does this one! It gives us a stunningly plausible picture of the global religious and political landscape of the 21st century. This extraordinary project is the literary equivalent of turning over a flat rock. This book sounds a clear warning…. a gripping tell-all book, as unforgettable as it is daring. A controversial and hard-hitting exposé of the powers that be. To borrow the words of Henry Lincoln, “Something extraordinary is waiting to be found….”       Google Books

2,000-year-old seal with the image of Apollo discovered in the City of David near Jerusalem's Western Wall

Times of Israel  29 October 2020

Sun god, a symbol of health and prosperity, was the only member of the pagan pantheon used by Jews during the Second Temple period, says City of David archaeologist Eli Shukron

Discovery of a rare 2,000-year-old signet ring engraved with the Greek sun god Apollo gives new evidence of a pluralistic Jewry walking the streets of ancient Jerusalem during the Second Temple period, archaeologist Eli Shukron told The Times of Israel.

“It allows us to see a Jerusalem that wasn’t some kind of ultra-Orthodox city, it was more pluralistic,” Shukron said, who is convinced the ring would have adorned a Jew’s finger. The fact that a Jew chose the symbol of a Greek god, “shows the wide variety of practices in Jerusalem. Everyone was a Jew, but there were different groups and perspectives,” he said.

The dark brown jasper gem sealing (intaglio) was recently discovered at the Archaeological Sifting Project at Tzurim Valley National Park during the wet sifting of earth taken from ongoing City of David excavations of the foundations of the Western Wall. 

Shukron said there is absolutely no doubt that it is Apollo who is engraved on the tiny, oval-shaped, 13 millimeter-long, 11 millimeter-wide, and 3 millimeter-thick sealing. It would usually have been used as a signature stamp on beeswax to seal contracts, letters, wills, and goods or bundles of money, according to a City of David press release.

The profile of Apollo has long flowing hair spilling over his sturdy neck. He has a large nose, thick lips, and small prominent chin, according to the press release. The styled hair is braided above his forehead, with long curls reaching the shoulder.

All of this adds up to the god Apollo in the eyes of a trained archaeologist. “You cannot miss it,” Shukron said.

 

Only one in ten medical treatments are backed by high-quality evidence

The conversation September 2, 2020

When you visit your doctor, you might assume that the treatment they prescribe has solid evidence to back it up. But you'd be wrong. Only one in ten medical treatments are supported by high-quality evidence, our latest research shows.

The analysis, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, included 154 Cochrane systematic reviews published between 2015 and 2019. Only 15 (9.9%) had high-quality evidence according to the gold-standard method for determining whether they provide high or low-quality evidence, called GRADE (grading of recommendations, assessment, development and evaluation). Among these, only two had statistically significant results - meaning that the results were unlikely to have arisen due to random error - and were believed by the review authors to be useful in clinical practice. Using the same system, 37% had moderate, 31% had low, and 22% had very low-quality evidence.

The GRADE system looks at things like risk of bias. For example, studies that are "blinded" - in which patients don't know whether they are getting the actual treatment or a placebo - offer higher-quality evidence than "unblinded" studies. Blinding is important because people who know what treatment they are getting can experience greater placebo effects than those who do not know what treatment they are getting.

Ancient Biblical era temple discovered in Israel

Fox February 17

An international team of archaeologists has uncovered an ancient Biblical era temple in Israel.

The ruins of the Canaanite temple were discovered within a large Bronze Age settlement in what is now National Park Tel Lachish. The temple, which dates back to the 12th century B.C., was once part of the ancient Canaanite city of Lachish.

Professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Michael Hasel of Southern Adventist University in Tennessee led a team of researchers that uncovered the temple.

Lachish was built around 1800 B.C., destroyed and rebuilt on a number of occasions over the following centuries, according to Hebrew University.

“The settlement is mentioned in both the Bible and in various Egyptian sources and was one of the few Canaanite cities to survive into the 12th century BCE,” it explained in a statement.

The city’s deliverance "into Israel's hands," for example, is described in the Book of Joshua.

The ancient Canaanite civilization, which created the first alphabet and is mentioned frequently in the Bible, has long fascinated historians.

Secular evidence of Jesus existence

Bible History    November 2019

The first historical evidence for the life of Jesus, mentioned outside of the Bible, comes from a Jewish historian by the name of Josephus.

Josephus was born in 37 A.D., just a few years after the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was the son of a priest named Matthias and at the age of 19 he became a Pharisee in Jerusalem. Later in his life he was appointed a commander in Galilee during the Jewish revolt against Rome.
      

After surrendering to the Romans, he was taken before the Roman Commander Vespasian and prophesied that God had shown him in a dream that Vespasian and his son Titus would soon become Emperor's of Rome. Shortly afterwards the dream became reality and Josephus became a member of Vespasian's household. During his stay in Rome he wrote two works dealing with Jewish history.
       

In his work entitled Jewish Antiquities, which was written between 70 and 100 A.D., he mentions Jesus the Messiah.

Josephus is quoted below by Eusebius, an early Christian Bishop, in 324 A.D.:
       

"It was during this timeframe that Jesus lived, a wise man, if anyone could really call him a man. For he did many deeds that were out of the ordinary and was an instructor of those who accept the truth. Many of the Jews and Greeks put their trust in him. He being the Messiah. When our chief leaders accused him, Pilate condemned him to the cross, but his original disciples continued to follow him; for he had appeared before them on the third day alive again, as the prophets of God had spoken of these and countless other marvelous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, who had been named after him, remains to this present day."
      A later Arabic manuscript written by a tenth-century Melkite historian named Agapius also quotes from the same passage of Josephus as follows:
      "During this time there was a wise man named Jesus, and his actions were good, and he was known to be holy. Many people among the Jews and from other nations became his followers. He was condemned to be crucified and to die by the order of Pilate. But those who had become his disciples did not stray from his teaching. They proclaimed that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was restored to life. Thus, he may have been the Christ, of whom wondrous things have been spoken of through the prophets. And the Christians, who were known by his name, have remained to this very day."
     

 These statements confirm the following Christian truths found in the Bible:

1) Jesus was the Messiah spoken of by the prophets.  

2) He performed miracles.

3) He was crucified under Pontius Pilate

4) He arose from the dead three days later and appeared to his disciples.

Jesus Christ was not just another man, He was God in human flesh. There is no greater truth than knowing Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.    

Sources:

1) Josephus The Essential Writings, Author: Paul L. Maier, ISBN 0-8254-2964-1
Pg.10-11 (Josephus background), Pg.264-265 (Jesus history).

2) Antiquities of the Jews - The Historian Flavius Josephus.
Book 18 Chapter 3 (Josephus's account of Jesus in history showing Jesus was real).          

The same message

I understood that some were anxious to know if Mrs. White still held the same views that she did years ago when they had heard her speak in the sanitarium grove, in the Tabernacle, and at the camp meetings held in the suburbs of Battle Creek. I assured them that the message she bears today is the same that she has borne during the sixty years of her public ministry. She has the same service to do for the Master that was laid upon her in her girlhood. She receives lessons from the same Instructor. The directions given her are, “Make known to others what I have revealed to you. Write out the messages that I give you, that the people may have them.” This is what she has endeavored to do.  

I have written many books, and they have been given a wide circulation. Of myself I could not have brought out the truth in these books, but the Lord has given me the help of His Holy Spirit. These books, giving the instruction that the Lord has given me during the past sixty years, contain light from heaven, and will bear the test of investigation.      1 SM p. 35

A 2,700-year-old clay seal impression found in Jerusalem which may have belonged to prophet Isaiah

Times of Israel   22 February 2018

The hand of the Prophet Isaiah himself may have created an 8th century BCE seal impression discovered in First Temple remains near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, according to Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar.

“We appear to have discovered a seal impression, which may have belonged to the prophet Isaiah, in a scientific, archaeological excavation,” said Mazar this week in a press release announcing the breathtaking discovery.

Mazar’s team uncovered the minuscule bulla, or seal impression, during renewed excavations at the Ophel, located at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was published on Wednesday in an article, “Is This the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature?” as part of a massive March-June issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review dedicated to its recently retired founding editor, Hershel Shanks.

The clay impression is inscribed with letters and what appears to be a grazing doe, “a motif of blessing and protection found in Judah, particularly in Jerusalem,” according to the BAR article.

Massive section of Western Wall and Roman theater uncovered after 1,700 years

Times of Israel 16 October 2017,

Archaeologists are one step closer to solving the riddle of what took place in Jerusalem following the destruction of the city by Romans in 70 CE.

Israel Antiquity Authority archaeologists announced Monday that for the past two years they have been excavating and exposing a massive eight-meter deep section of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, unseen for 1,700 years.

And in the course of their work, which has been quietly proceeding directly beneath Wilson’s Arch — the area immediately adjacent to the men’s section of the Western Wall — they unexpectedly discovered a small Roman theater. The dig has not encroached under the Temple Mount.

During the two years of excavations, a new reinforced floor was constructed so as not to interrupt daily worship at Judaism’s holiest site for prayer.

The work is set to continue for another six months, and the expectation is that First Temple-era findings will be uncovered. When the work is completed, the site will be opened to the public.

Proof that the Burning of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was real

By Lulu Morris 03 August 2017

An excavation at The City of David in Jerusalem has unearthed an ancient biblical story.
 

Archaeologists at the site have exhumed burnt artefacts dated 2,600 years ago. The discovery of the artefacts solidifies the passage in the bible, where Jerusalem is burnt down by the Babylonians around 587 BC.

Researchers found burnt pieces of wood, grape seeds, burnt pottery and bone all concealed by layers of ash. The burning of Jerusalem was described in the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah.

"Now on the seventh day of the fifth month, which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. He burned the house of the Lord, the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem; even every great house he burned with fire."

The archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority were looking under layers of rock in the eastern area of the City of David when they found the artefacts. Alongside the burnt remains found were storage jars, many bearing stamped handles and rosette seals. The seals were the driving evidence that led the researchers to date the artefacts at 2,600 years. Dr Joel Uziel, the leader of the excavation, explains

“These seals are characteristic of the end of the First Temple Period, [They] were used for the administrative system that developed towards the end of the Judean dynasty."

Find ing the burnt pottery and artefacts in the dig site corroborate Jeremiah’s testament, though perhaps not to the extent he described it, but Jerusalem was at one point, during 587BC burnt to the ground by Babylonian invaders 2,600 years ago.         National Geographic

A team of scientists find evidence of ancient Canaanites

28 July 2017, 6:07 am EDT By Luan Chan Tech Times

A team of scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and its collaborators successfully sequenced the genes of five Bronze Age Canaanite remains found in an archaeological site in the Near East and made a remarkable discovery.

After comparing the ancient DNA with the DNA of modern-day people, researchers learned that present-day Lebanese had actually descended from Canaanites, who were supposedly annihilated after being subjected to divine judgment.

Who Are The Canaanites?

Canaanites were a mysterious race of people that was effectively driven out of their land and annihilated by Israelites after the Exodus, according to the Old Testament; however, the DNA evidence uncovered by archaeologists offers proof that the ancient race did not actually meet its end.

"We know about ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks, but we know very little about the ancient Canaanites because their records didn't survive. What is known about the Canaanites is that they lived and traded along the eastern coast of the present-day Mediterranean," lead author of the study Marc Haber explains.

So when Haber's team of researchers extracted and sequenced DNA from the five remains from the Sidon excavation site, they compared it with various ancient populations throughout history. Then they further narrowed it down and compared the ancient DNA with DNA samples extracted from a sample of 99 people — Christians, Druze, and Muslims — currently living in Lebanon. To their surprise, the results showed that the present-day Lebanese and the remains in Sidon share 93 percent of their ancestry.

"We can see the present-day Lebanese can trace most of their ancestry to the Canaanites or a genetically equivalent population. They derive just over 90 percent of their ancestry from the Canaanites," geneticist and co-author of the study Chris Tyler-Smith confirms.

The remaining 7 percent is actually derived from ancient people who migrated from the Steppes.

Did The Bible Get It Wrong?

For a long time, researchers could only look through ancient Greek and Egyptian texts, as well as accounts from the Bible, to learn about the mysterious Canaanites, but the new evidence seems to suggest that the Bible has made a mistake.

Then again, the contents of the Bible were translated mostly from dead languages so there is a big probability that the translation was either wrong or the meaning of the words have changed over time — the same way that what we consider finite numbers now seemed infinite for ancient people.

Even with the strong connection between ancient Canaanites and modern-day Lebanese, the fact that no "pure" Canaanite individual seems to survive today could be considered as "killing off" the ancestry.

Still the implication of the discovery is huge for modern-day Lebanese, especially since the different religions argue over their ancestry, where Christians and Muslims debate whether they descended from Phoenicians or Arabs. As the DNA evidence suggests, they are actually all Canaanites.

"We all belong to the same people. We have always had a difficult past ... but we have a shared heritage we have to preserve," excavation director Claude Doumet-Serhal said.

The team's findings have been published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.         Techtimes

The Father and the Son alone are to be exalted

Our students need lessons that they have not yet received. There must be no lowering of the standard as to what constitutes true education. It must be raised far above where it now stands. It is not men whom we are to exalt and worship; it is God, the only true and living God, to whom our worship and reverence are due. According to the teaching of the Scriptures, it dishonors God to address ministers as “reverend.” No mortal has any right to attach this to his own name, or to the name of any other human being. It belongs only to God, to distinguish him from every other being. Those who lay claim to this title take to themselves God's holy honor. They have no right to the stolen word, whatever, their position may be. “Holy and reverend is his name.” We dishonor God when we use this word where it does not belong.

“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” “And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Let the brightest example the world has yet seen be your example, rather than the greatest and most learned men of the age, who know not God, nor Jesus Christ whom he has sent. The Father and the Son alone are to be exalted. YI July 7, 1898, par. 2

When Evidence Says No, But Doctors Say Yes

By David Epstein,  February 22, 2017

First, listen to the story with the happy ending: At 61, the executive was in excellent health. His blood pressure was a bit high, but everything else looked good, and he exercised regularly. Then he had a scare. He went for a brisk post-lunch walk on a cool winter day, and his chest began to hurt. Back inside his office, he sat down, and the pain disappeared as quickly as it had come.

 

That night, he thought more about it: middle-aged man, high blood pressure, stressful job, chest discomfort. The next day, he went to a local emergency department. Doctors determined that the man had not suffered a heart attack and that the electrical activity of his heart was completely normal. All signs suggested that the executive had stable angina — chest pain that occurs when the heart muscle is getting less blood-borne oxygen than it needs, often because an artery is partially blocked.

  A cardiologist recommended that the man immediately have a coronary angiogram, in which a catheter is threaded into an artery to the heart and injects a dye that then shows up on special x-rays that look for blockages. If the test found a blockage, the cardiologist advised, the executive should get a stent, a metal tube that slips into the artery and forces it open.

While he was waiting in the emergency department, the executive took out his phone and searched “treatment of coronary artery disease.” He immediately found information from medical journals that said medications, like aspirin and blood-pressure-lowering drugs, should be the first line of treatment. The man was an unusually self-possessed patient, so he asked the cardiologist about what he had found. The cardiologist was dismissive and told the man to “do more research.” Unsatisfied, the man declined to have the angiogram and consulted his primary-care doctor.

The primary-care physician suggested a different kind of angiogram, one that did not require a catheter but instead used multiple x-rays to image arteries. That test revealed an artery that was partially blocked by plaque, and though the man’s heart was pumping blood normally, the test was incapable of determining whether the blockage was dangerous. Still, his primary-care doctor, like the cardiologist at the emergency room, suggested that the executive have an angiogram with a catheter, likely followed by a procedure to implant a stent. The man set up an appointment with the cardiologist he was referred to for the catheterization, but when he tried to contact that doctor directly ahead of time, he was told the doctor wouldn’t be available prior to the procedure. And so the executive sought yet another opinion. That’s when he found Dr. David L. Brown, a professor in the cardiovascular division of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The executive told Brown that he’d felt pressured by the previous doctors and wanted more information. He was willing to try all manner of noninvasive treatments — from a strict diet to retiring from his stressful job — before having a stent implanted.

The executive had been very smart to seek more information, and now, by coming to Brown, he was very lucky, too. Brown is part of the RightCare Alliance, a collaboration between health-care professionals and community groups that seeks to counter a trend: increasing medical costs without increasing patient benefits. As Brown put it, RightCare is “bringing medicine back into balance, where everybody gets the treatment they need, and nobody gets the treatment they don’t need.” And the stent procedure was a classic example of the latter. In 2012, Brown had coauthored a paper that examined every randomized clinical trial that compared stent implantation with more conservative forms of treatment, and he found that stents for stable patients prevent zero heart attacks and extend the lives of patients a grand total of not at all. In general, Brown says, “nobody that’s not having a heart attack needs a stent.” (Brown added that stents may improve chest pain in some patients, albeit fleetingly.) Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of stable patients receive stents annually, and one in 50 will suffer a serious complication or die as a result of the implantation procedure.      Read More

World leaders duped manipulated global warming data

By David Rose February 4, 2017

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organization that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.

His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal – so triggering an intense political row.      DailyMail

Prove all Things

Ancient Roman theater found in northern Israel may have been used for religious ceremonies

Daniel K. Eisenbud 10 January 2017

A Roman amphitheater discovered during an excavation by the University of Haifa at Hippos, a site overlooking the Sea of Galilee, may support the hypothesis that the facility was used for religious ceremonies instead of entertainment.

Hippos, which is situated on a prominent hill some two kilometers east of the Sea of Galilee within Sussita National Park, is operated by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.  

According to the University of Haifa’s Dr. Michael Eisenberg, who heads the Hippos Excavations Project, the digs outside the city over the past few years “are falling into place like in a detective story.”

“First, we found a mask of Pan, then the monumental gate leading to what we began to assume was a large public compound, a sanctuary,” he said this week at an annual research conference at the school’s Zinman Institute of Archeology. “And now, this year, we find a public bathhouse and theater in the same location – both facilities that in the Roman period could be associated with the god of medicine Asclepius, or with gods of nature, such as Dionysus and Pan.”

During the Roman period, Hippos was an important city in the Golan Heights, and the area east of the Sea of Galilee, or Lake Kinneret. Over the past two years, researchers from the university’s Institute of Archeology have repeatedly been surprised by the unexpected findings uncovered outside the city’s walls.

However, one feature that was missing in the excavated city, until now, was the theater – a public building capable of accommodating thousands of people, which served as the venue for the popular public shows.     JPost

Are Any Plastics Safe? Industry Tries to Hide New Evidence on BPA-Free Containers