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T h e
February 1928
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
of the great temple there. He gives thanks to the Egyp tian Queen (Pharaoh’s daughter) for having rescued him from the Nile as a child and having been his friend ever since. He expresses his gratitude for the positions of power she has given him and refers to the temple as be longing to the Egyptian goddess, Hathor, and the Jewish God, Jehovah. Parts of the foregoing translation were of necessity filled in by Prof. Grimme, since the carvings were incomplete. * * * * M anuscript O n L ife of J esús Ancient manuscripts are not often found in these days, .but recent find o f one has been reported from Vienna, according to The Jewish Daily Bulletin, a Jewish paper published in'N ew York. It is said to contain a life of Jesus. It is remarkable that this information should come through a Jewish publication. This paper gives the fol lowing account of the manuscript and its finding: “ The Italian authorities have appointed a special commission to inquire into the authenticity o f a manuscript o f the post evangelical apocrypha, the origin of which is claimed to be in Jerusalem during the siege o f Titus. A despatch to the Vienna Journal states that the Italian authorities have requisitioned the Luigi Maccia. The manuscript, which is on parchment and consists o f thirty pages, is said to con tain a new life o f JesUs and the author is claimed to be Joseph o f Jerusalem. The manuscript is distinguished by the fact that it contains many expressions of an anti- Roman Jewish patriotism. Luigi Macci claims that he obtained the manuscript in 1919 from a Jewish refugee, a resident o f Jerusalem.” s|c i}í jjí sfc O n T rack of A rk of C ovenant A. F. Futterer has written us from Jerusalem that he now has his permit for excavations which he hopes will bring to light the Ark of the Covenant. Developments have been such as to lead him to believe he has the correct location not only of the ark, but the grave of Moses in Mt. Nebo. He hopes soon to bring mankind face to face with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. O f the finding of the Sinai inscriptions, he says: “ The sensational reports of the discovery o f the Sinai inscription by the Harvard Expedition has aroused thrills of interest through the world in our little country and the neighboring desert tract that borders it with Egypt. The Sinai inscription will undoubtedly give a clue to the alphabet of the tongue o f the ancient Hebrew peoples who trod that weary, forty- year-long path from Egypt to Canaan on their notable conquest o f the Promised Land.” * * H« * A ncient S odom In April Dr. Melvin G. Kyle at a meeting of the V ic toria Institute, gave a paper on “ Ancient Sodom in the Light o f Modern Science.” He presented much evidence brought to light on an expedition headed by himself. He shows that: “ The civilization of the days of Abraham, which the Bible represents to have been on the plain at that time, is found to have been actually there, and the absence of any trace of civilization from that period down to 600 A. D. is in exact accord with the silence of biblical history concerning this plain from the destruction of the city to the end of the history. The natural conditions of life on the plain also, as described in the account in Genesis, are exactly confirmed today— ‘like the garden o f tlte Lord before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.’
Archeological Summary For the Year 1927
NBELIEF disguised as science marches through the lands proclaiming with an air of triumph that it has conquered and that the Bible must be abandoned. Atheists display so much bold ness and confidence that the uninitiated ob server would think the era of Christianity closed forever. Apostate preachers at the same time at tempt to harmonize their messages with the guess work of skeptical thinkers. Is it not striking that we see sober men o f science dig ging away in Bible lands and coming forth with piece after piece o f evidence substantiating the reliability of the Bible ? The last two years have supplied Christians with Arche ological evidence that furnishes a most formidable weapon in the encounter with modernism. In our January issue (1927) we gave a summary for 1926, and herewith we note some o f the findings during 1927. * * * * A ncient B ethel Excavations by American Archeologists have appar ently confirmed the site of Bethel, the place of Jacob’s dream and Jeroboam’s Golden Calf. Israelite pottery was found surprisingly near the surface. H* * * * A portrait of a builder o f the Temple of Dagon, men tioned in the Book of Chronicles,; and other important dis coveries have been unearthed by Archeologists of the Uni versity o f Pennsylvania Museum in Beisan, the biblical Bethshan in Palestine. H< * * * S in a i I nscriptions The recent discovery on Mt. Serabit of fragments of the mysterious “ Sinai inscriptions” which have puzzled Archeologists for years was the reward of painstaking work and a difficult journey into the interior of Sinai peninsula by Profs. Kirsopp Lake and Robert Blake of Harvard University. Sinai slabs originally were found in 1906 by Sir Flinders Petri, the noted British Archeologist, but were not deciphered until 1916, when Prof. Alan Gar diner, the British authority, deciphered one word, “ baalat,” which means “ mistress.” In 1923 the German Archeolo gist, Prof. Grimmer, gave out a complete translation of the slabs, saying that they referred to the finding of Moses in the bulrushes. The recent find may throw new. light on Moses and biblical history and furnish the key to the baffling characters of the strange half-Egyptian, half- Semitic language which flourished nearly 3,000 years ago. * * * * M oses R escued F rom N ile One small portion of the Sinai inscription has been puzzled out by a German scientist, Prof. Hubert Grimme o f the University of Munster. Moses, the lawgiver, him self was the writer o f the sentences which Prof. Grimme believes are contained in the unknown script. Moses identifies himself by name, declaring himself the superin tendent o f mine workers on Mt. Sinai and the caretaker
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