Archaeology

After the Hobby Lobby scandal, a spotlight on antiquities sales in Israel
- Global Church, Religion News Service
- August 17, 2017
In 2010, Hobby Lobby, which is headquartered in Oklahoma City, paid $1.6 million for 5,500 ancient artifacts from Iraq. Six years later, an investigation by U.S. and Israeli law enforcement and tax officials determined that dealers in the United Emirates and Israel had intentionally misidentified the items as Turkish ceramics. Many archaeologists in Israel and elsewhere are against the sale of antiquities because it leads to the destruction of cultural heritage.
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This priest preserves Iraqi culture found in historic manuscripts
- Catholic News Agency, Global Church
- August 9, 2017
Since 1750 many antique manuscripts had been kept in the library of the Dominican monastery in Mosul. They were moved from the monastery starting in 2007, amid the backdrop of increased violence against Christians and other minorities at the hands of extremist groups. The documents include more than 25 subjects, including theology, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, history, and geography, many of which date back to the 10th, 11th, and 12th century in Aramaic, which is the language of Jesus Christ.
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Is this unearthed fishing village the birthplace of three of Jesus’ apostles?
- Global Church, Religion News Service
- August 8, 2017
This year and last an archaeology team discovered dozens of golden glass mosaics, evidence of an “important” and “magnificent” church in the Holy Land. The finding supports the testimony of an eighth-century Christian pilgrim who said he had at “the house of Tsaida,” a church built “in honor of Peter and Andreas, two of Jesus’ apostles.”
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