TaborBlog

Two weeks ago I announced that the ever popular Bible History Daily, published via e-mail and on on the Web, has begun a regular feature of republishing selected posts from my blog. I am both honored and also always a bit curious as to which of the 500 or so posts from the past few years they might choose to feature. Today it is an article I published some years ago but have recently updated and expanded: “The Only Ancient Jewish Male Hair Ever Found.” You can see the BHD post here and the original blog post here.

It is about a totally accidental discovery that Dr. Shimon Gibson, my UNC Charlotte students, and I made late evening when we stumbled across a freshly robbed ancient tomb while hiking in the Valley of Hinnom just south of Jerusalem. It was high adventure. It doesn’t get better than this. Be sure to notice the surprise DNA announcement that I make at the end, linking this tomb somehow to the “Jesus family tomb” in Talpiot–who could have ever guessed that? We still have no idea why or what it might mean in terms of 1st century Jerusalem populations. More on that in a future blog post.

I really recommend my readers subscribe to Bible History Daily. It is free and one of the the best ways to keep up with any breaking news related to “Biblical Archaeology,” as well as special features on many topics related thereto. The free subscription also allows you to download a whole series of free e-Books, on a variety of topics. You can sign up here. If you have not spent a bit of time lately browsing the every growing resources of the Biblical Archaeology Society web site you will be impressively surprised at how much is there and what is available free of charge. The web site, under the direction of Noah Wiener, just keeps getting better and better. ^[1]

1. A paid digital subscription gets you everything–including  archive of over 30 years of BAS publications and all sorts of other premiums [↩]