Archaeology Professor Gabriel Barkay on The Sifting Project

Описание: Archaeologists in Jerusalem say they have uncovered evidence from the Temple Mount that appears to corroborate large sections of the Bible’s description of religious practice in the ancient city.

Speaking to reporters during an exhibition of artifacts removed from the Temple Mount by Islamic officials in 1999, Prof. Gabriel Barkay, an adjunct professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University the co-founder of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, said that sifting through mounds of dirt removed from site has unearthed an historical treasure trove of findings from the past three millennia of human history.

“Some archaeologists have posited that King David and King Solomon were invented by the authors of the bible,” said Barkay, a Jerusalem Prize laureate. “Now, I can’t tell you that we’ve got a business card saying ‘King David.’ But the thousands of coins, stone weights, arrowheads, pottery, mosaic pieces and more show clearly that there was significant human activity at the right time and place to support the existence of David and Solomon’s kingdoms.”

Another example is the base of a pillar bearing the image of Astarte, an ancient goddess of fertility. “The way the pillar was broken shows that it was destroyed deliberately,” Barkay says, adding that ancient Jews would have viewed the carving of the goddess as idolatry and felt a religious duty to destroy it.