Some Sunday Evening Praise & Worship

Masada Dig Date Palm Seed Planted

The Jerusalem Post:

A date tree grown from the oldest viable seed in the world to be sprouted was planted Thursday at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava, for therapeutic  uses.

The tree, now 2.5-meters tall, was grown from a 2,000-year-old seed that archeologists found at a Masada dig in the 1960s. A team of researchers  sprouted it, and it was initially planted in a secret location so it would not  be stolen.

Now it is hoped that the plant, which is of a rare species,  will produce fruit that could be used for medicinal purposes and for food…

How fascinating!  Do read on here.

HT:  Bible Places

Scholars Slam Bill to Change Makeup of Israel Antiquities Authority

Haaretz reports on the politics presently plaguing the appointment of a Chairman to the Israel Antiquities Authority:

Culture Minister Limor Livnat previously asked Prof. Oded Abramsky, a neurologist at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital and member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, to serve as chairman of the board of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Haaretz has learned.

Livnat turned to Abramsky after rejecting three historians and archaeologists from among the academy’s ranks who were nominated by Prof. Ruth Arnon, the academy’s president. After this idea proved impractical – possibly because Abramsky refused, though that remains unclear – Livnat submitted a bill to let her appoint someone who isn’t an academy member as the authority’s chairman.

This is impossible under current law.

The bill, which the Knesset Education Committee is set to discuss on Sunday, would allow any “senior researcher in the field of history or archaeology” to be chairman of the board, even if they are not an academy member. It would also allow the two representatives of academia on the board to be chosen from the faculty of the colleges, rather than from only the country’s five universities. The board sets policy for the authority and approves its budget.

Now, the academy has given the committee a position paper attacking the bill…

… The academy document said 12 of its approximately 100 members are historians or archaeologists, and another half dozen work in related fields – hardly making up a “limited list of candidates.”

The document said Livnat submitted her bill after rejecting the academy’s three nominees – Prof. Yoel Rak, an anthropologist from Tel Aviv University; Prof. Margalit Finkelberg, a classicist from Tel Aviv University; and Prof. Yoram Tsafrir, an archaeologist from Hebrew University – rather than exploring further options within the academy.

The document charged that the bill would undermine “perceptions of the scientific and national stature of the Antiquities Authority.” This view has been echoed by the heads of the country’s four university archaeology institutes, by the chairman of the Israel Archaeological Council and by the authority’s incumbent chairman.

One source said the “red flag” from Livnat’s standpoint was apparently Arnon’s nomination of Tsafrir. He is the only archaeologist in the academy, but he is also an avowed leftist who has spoken out against Elad, the organization that runs Jerusalem’s City of David national park and works to settle Jews in East Jerusalem. Recently, he opposed a planned construction project over an archaeological site in the Western Wall Plaza.

Livnat’s spokesman said she would respond to all “politically motivated” attacks on the bill at tomorrow’s Knesset session.

However, he added, the rule that the Antiquities Authority chairman must be a member of the academy applies…

After Centuries, Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity to Get New Roof

Associated Press is reporting on the renovation:

Bethlehem, West Bank (AP) — Preparations for a long-needed renovation of the 1,500-year-old Church of the Nativity are moving ahead in Bethlehem, the town of Jesus’ birth, in the face of political and religious conflicts that have kept one of Christendom’s holiest sites in a state of decay for centuries.

The first and most urgent part of the renovation, initiated by the Palestinian government in the West Bank, is meant to replace the building’s roof. Ancient wooden beams pose a danger to visitors, officials say, and leaks have already ruined many of the church’s priceless mosaics and paintings.

If the repairs go ahead as planned next year, it will be the first time the crumbling basilica has seen major renovation work in more than a century and a half.

Altering a building like the Church of the Nativity, built 1,500 years ago on the site of a church 200 years older than that, is never a simple affair. The building is shared by three Christian sects — Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenians — who have traditionally viewed each other with suspicion and are wary of upsetting the brittle status quo that governs the site.

To repair a part of the church is to own it, according to accepted practice, meaning that letting other sects undertake renovations or pay for them could allow one to gain ground at another’s expense.

The resulting paralysis and disrepair has been a recurring theme at the church.

“In the roof the timbers which were constructed in ancient times are rotting, and this structure is falling daily into ruin,” wrote one visitor. That was in 1461.

Some measure of the complications involved in a renovation of this type can be found in the Nativity’s similarly ancient and fractious sister church, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem…

… Today, the increasingly dire state of the Nativity’s roof and the intervention of an external player in the form of the Palestinian Authority — which has circumvented the old rivalries and allowed all to save face — has led the three churches to agree to a renovation to be arranged and funded by the Palestinian government and international donors…

… The roof is in such poor condition that there is a “risk of collapsing beams within the wooden structure which could hurt people inside the church,” said Issam Juha of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation…

… The roof was first built, along with the rest of the basilica, by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century A.D. following the destruction of the original church built on the site of the grotto where Jesus was believed to have been born. Some of Justinian’s massive wooden beams are still in use.

In 1480, with Bethlehem under Muslim rule and the roof disintegrating, permission was granted to replace it. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, sent craftsmen, wood and iron. King Edward IV of England sent lead, and the Doge of Venice provided ships. Major work was carried out again two centuries later.

When the British controlled the Holy Land between 1917 and 1948, they recognized the urgency of replacing the roof but simply could not navigate the explosive rivalries between the sects in the church, traditionally backed by powers like France and Russia.

In the mid-1800s the tensions had become so fierce that Russian Czar Nicholas I actually deployed troops along the Danube to threaten a Turkish sultan who had been favoring the Catholics over the Orthodox.

The British managed only small repairs. The same went for the Jordanians, who ruled Bethlehem from 1948 to 1967, and for the Israelis, who captured the West Bank from the Jordanians and turned the city over to the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.

A UNESCO report in 1997 found that because of water leaking from the roof, most of the mosaics and paintings, some dating from Byzantine times, had been “damaged beyond repair.”…

Give the article a full read here.

Semper Paratus!

On The Sacred Page:

… My father once served as chaplain for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (New London, CT)—this Gospel reminds me of the US Coast Guard motto: semper paratus, “always prepared.” This should be the motto of the Christian life as well. We do not know the time of the return of Christ (despite Harold Camping’s antics) or the time of our own death and particular judgment. What should we be doing in the meanwhile? Our Lord refers to “placing servants in charge, each with his work.” As we wait for the Lord, it is best to be busy about the work that God has left in our charge, trying to be faithful in our own generation. Doing our professional work well and with excellence; fulfilling our duties to family with care and love; speaking of Christ to any who will listen; living a lifestyle of prayer, modesty, and acts of self-denial—if we are busy about these things we can anticipate the coming of Christ with joy, not fear.

Read from the start here.

Advent Quote

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.

       – Dietrich Bonhoeffer