BIBLE NEWS: Archeologist finds David's Water Tunnel

Since the start of modern archeology, scientists and historians have debated whether it made sense to use the Bible as a guide to finding ancient sites.  Some skeptics dismiss the historicity of the Bible entirely due to its use as a religious document.  Others believe that the Bible recounts history.  

An Israeli archeologist may have bolstered the "Bible as history" argument by discovering the water tunnel that David used to conquer Jerusalem.

In the second Book of Samuel, David orders the capture of the walled city by entering it through the water shaft. Shukron's excavation uncovered a narrow shaft where spring water flowed into a carved pool, thought to be where city inhabitants would gather to draw water. Excess water would have flowed out of the walled city through another section of the shaft Shukron said he discovered — where he believes the city was penetrated.

PHOTO OF THE WEEK: A Tomb like Jesus Was Laid In

Have you ever wondered what the tomb that Jesus was laid in on Good Friday looked like?  This isn't the same one, but gives you a good idea of how it may have looked.

BIBLE NEWS: Ancient alphabetical inscription discovered in Jerusalem

An ancient earthenware jar has been found in Jerusalem which contains the oldest alphabetical language inscription ever discovered in the region.  In general, there are two kinds of written language.  Alphabetical languages encode the sounds we make as letters - like the English alphabet.  Pictographic languages encode meaning into pictures which represent whole words - like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Working near the Temple Mount, head archaeologist Eilat Mazar uncovered the 10th century B.C.E inscription, engraved on a large pithos, a necklace ceramic jar, along with six others at the Ophel excavation site.
The inscription is written in the Canaanite language, a Biblical people who lived in the present-day Israel, and is the only of its kind to be found in Israel. The artifact predates the previously oldest inscription found in the area by 250 years and predates the Biblical Israelites' rule.