Showing posts with label archeology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archeology. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 06, 2025

The Apostle Peter in Rome


Jesus’ chief disciple examined
Nicola Denzey Lewis May 13, 2025 

In this blog post, Brown University Religious Studies professor Nicola Denzey Lewis answers frequently asked questions about the apostle Peter. Denzey Lewis appears in the CNN series Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery, which aims to investigate artifacts that shed light on the world in which Jesus lived.—Ed.

What traditions connect the apostle Peter to Rome?



The Repentant St. Peter by El Greco. Photo: The Phillips Collection.

Jesus’ chief disciple, Peter (also called Simon Peter or Cephas), has been associated with Rome for nearly 2,000 years. The earliest testimony to the apostle Peter’s presence in Rome is a letter from a Christian deacon named Gaius. Writing probably toward the end of the second century C.E.—so, around 170 or 180 C.E.—Gaius tells about the wondrous things in Rome, including something called a tropaion (see below for more) where Peter established a church—in fact, the Church, the Roman Catholic church at the site where St. Peter’s Basilica is today. But there are other traditions besides Peter’s tropaion.

One early Christian text, the Apocryphal Acts of Peter, recounts many things that Peter did in the city. At one point in Acts of Peter, Peter is taunted by a flamboyant heretic, Simon Magus. Simon challenges Peter to a flying contest around the Roman Forum, but Peter’s prayers make Simon crash to the ground, proving that Simon’s powers are not as great as his own.

At the end of this text, Peter, not wishing to be martyred for his faith, flees from Roman authorities on the Via Appia leading out of the city. Rather unexpectedly, Peter meets Jesus, who is traveling in the opposite direction. He asks Jesus, “Where are you going?” Jesus tells Peter that he is going to Rome “to be crucified again.” Peter realizes, from this, that he cannot flee from his fate.

“Where are you going?” in Latin is “Quo Vadis?” and there’s a medieval church in Rome called the Church of Quo Vadis at the spot where Peter met Jesus. To prove that his vision was real, you can still see there a bit of marble pavement which the faithful say miraculously preserve Jesus’ footprints.

Is it likely that the apostle Peter went to Rome and founded the church there?

Interestingly, the Bible says nothing about Peter ever traveling to Rome.

When the gospels end, Peter is in Jerusalem. It’s the same in the Book of Acts. The apostle Paul, in his letters, also talks about meeting Peter in the eastern Mediterranean. After Jesus’ death, Paul says that Jesus’ brother, James, and Peter are the co-leaders of the “church,” or assembly, of Jesus-followers in Jerusalem.

In short, there is no early textual evidence for Peter in Rome, so for some people, it’s very hard to believe that he ever traveled there. Not only is it a very long way, according to the New Testament, Peter was a fisherman who was not very educated and who spoke only Aramaic; he was not the type of person that might travel widely across the Roman Empire to a large city where Latin and Greek were the dominant languages.

The absence of connection between Peter and Rome in the New Testament, the lack of references to him in our earliest Roman Christian literature, and what we know of Peter’s background and character all combine to make it unlikely, to my mind, that he ever went to Rome.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Sodom and Gomorrah - The Real Sin City (Documentary)



History Scholar

Published on May 18, 2014

In the Book of Genesis, God punishes the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone for their sins. ...

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Saturday, February 15, 2014

Israeli archeologists’ discovery suggests the Bible is wrong about camels


EndrTimes:

Here's a scoopYet, another attempt (in a long sequence by so-called experts and scholars) to diminish the authenticity and veracity of the Holy Bible.  In vain, they will continue to challenge the Word of God; but will fail in convincing the faithful to abandon their Faith.

Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University claim camels came to biblical lands centuries after the time of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph; scholars debate impact on historical accuracy of the Bible

 By Carol Kuruvilla / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Thursday, February 13, 2014, 1:25 PM



FoggyImages/Getty Images/Flickr Open
Archeologists analyzed camel bones found in the Aravah Valley in Israel and in the Wadi Finan in Jordan.


New archeological evidence is throwing cold water on the biblical image of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph riding camels through the desert.

A team of Israeli archaeologists has studied the oldest-known camel bones from this ancient period and the results are in — camels reportedly started plodding around the eastern Mediterranean region centuries after the Bible tells us they did.

RELATED: DEAD SEA SCROLLS PUBLISHED ONLINE

After analyzing the facts from radioactive-carbon dating, Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University claim the domesticated animal arrived on the biblical scene near the 10th century B.C. Scholars believe Abraham lived at least six centuries before that, Time reports.

Still, stories about the Jewish patriarchs contain more than 20 references to the domesticated camel, according to The New York Times. In Genesis 24, Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for his son Isaac. The servant traveled on his master’s camels.


RELATED: BILL NYE ‘THE SCIENCE GUY’ DEBATES CREATION MUSEUM FOUNDER

Some scholars took these anachronisms as proof that the Bible was written centuries after the events that they talk about.



Frans Lemmens/Getty Images
Camels are mentioned numerous times in the early chapters of the Bible.


Stories about camels in the Bible “do not encapsulate memories from the second millennium,” said Noam Mizrahi, an Israeli biblical scholar, “but should be viewed as back-projections from a much later period.”

RELATED: ANCIENT HEBREW TABLET ON DISPLAY IN JERUSALEM

For the study, Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef dug through the remains of an ancient copper smelting camp in Israel’s Aravah Valley and in Jordan’s Wadi Finan. The bones they found deep under the ground belonged to wild animals that the ancients used to hunt for meat. The domesticated camels could be identified by signs in their leg bones that indicated they carried heavy packages.

The research suggests that camels were introduced to the region suddenly, perhaps as Egyptians traveled along the Mediterranean trade routes.

RELATED: EXPERTS REMAIN SKEPTICAL OF 'NOAH'S ARK' CLAIM

But Bible defenders claim that even though the findings challenge the ancient text’s time line, they do not detract from the overall spiritual message.

“If the biblical writers are not interested in the facts, but rather in getting a message across, then people of faith can concentrate, instead of trying to verify every last item in the Bible, on what the overall message of the story is, not whether it is historically true,” said Carol Meyers, a religion professor at Duke University.


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Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Revealing God's Treasure - Sodom & Gomorrah




sygnate

Uploaded on May 6, 2008


See ashen formations, brimstone, cremated bone in the cities destroyed by the wrath of God along the Dead Sea.

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Human Remains Found at Sodom!


6/23/13 at 11:45 PM 4 Comments

by Jeffrey Goodman




Genesis 19:24 Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

Human Remains Found at Sodom!

In a culture that generally believes that science and faith in the Bible are incompatible, once again scientific evidence has been discovered that supports the Bible’s testimony of a real historical event. The April 2013 book entitled Discovering the City of Sodom by Dr. Steven Collins and Dr. Latayne Scott published by Howard/Simon and Schuster details how Dr. Collins came to believe Tall el-Hammam in Jordan was the location of ancient Sodom. Dr. Collins made this determination based on Genesis 13:10 which placed Sodom and Gomorrah in the “plain of the Jordan (River),” an area that it describes as “well watered.” In an otherwise arid land, this same area that remains well watered even today could only be the somewhat circular plain at the southern end of the Jordan River before it enters the Dead Sea.

Dr. Collins, an archaeologist at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has excavated in this area for seven years. However, his breakthrough discovery came in 2011 when he found human skeletal remains and an unusual potsherd at the siteof Tall el-Hammam. While the unusual potsherd hardly compares in sheer visual drama tothe obvious glories of Stonehenge or the pyramids, it is turning out to be an artifact of monumental importance. The discovery and analysis of this potsherd provides physical evidence for what caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven.

Dr. Collins found the 4,000 year old potsherd that would fit in the palm of your hand in an undisturbed layer of hardened black ash. One side is typical of ancient pottery, but the opposite side is coated with a thin layer of a beautiful translucent greenish glass called trinitite. The trinitite tells us that one side of this clay potsherd was briefly subjected to an extremely high temperature, which caused the silicon of its clay to melt and be converted to glass. Trinitite gets its name from the first atomic bomb test in1945 near Alamogordo, NewMexico whosecode name was Trinity. Trinitite was formed when the sandy clay soil at the test site was drawn up and melted by the explosion, then rained down and solidified into glass.

We now know that a comet or large comet fragment exploding in the atmosphere can produce the same effects as an atomic explosion, including the very high temperatures necessary for the formation of desert glass such as trinitite. This trinitite coated potsherd corroborates that the brimstone and fire Genesis 19:24 says rained out of heaven came from a comet fragment that exploded in the atmosphere over Sodom and Gomorrah. Like an atomic explosion, this comet explosion over Sodom and Gomorrah would have caused a fiery column of smoke, dust, ash and debris to rise up (possibly looking like a mushroom cloud). Genesis 19:28 tells how Abraham “looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.”

The same black ash that contained the “Trinitite Potsherd” also revealed the partial skeletal remains of three individuals who were found huddled together in this black ash. Their bones were abnormally extended and twisted. The leg of one was charred off at mid-femur. While the intense heat generated by the fireball of a cometary explosion would literally vaporize everyone it directly hit, these people somehow were partially shielded. The macabre scene speaks of the sudden death and extreme trauma that engulfed these three people who were among those alive at the time the Bible says Abraham negotiated to save the city.

I am particularly excited by Dr. Collins’ discoveries because my book The Comets of God published in 2010 (www.thecometsofgod.com) analyzes the Old Testament catastrophes and their connection to cometary activity and impacts. I detailed how the scriptures make it clear that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by cometary activity. On page 416 I wrote, “The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where fire and brimstone (burning sulfur) rained from heaven (Genesis 19:24 and Luke 17:29), is an accurate description of airburst explosions.” I explained how “Airburst explosions were not recognized until after the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia had been intensely studied by scientists. The Tunguska event is now believed to be the result of an airburst explosion high in the atmosphere of a small asteroid or cometary fragment approximately 100 meters in diameter.” Since comets are rich in sulfur, cometary material can release brimstone or burning sulfur as it comes in on fire.

Today a number of astronomers believe that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah involved comet activity, but until now there was no evidence for this event. In my book (page 149) I wrote that: “The most definitive evidence for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would come from physical evidence associated with cosmic impact. Core samples from buried sediments dating to the time these cities were destroyed by fire should contain high concentrations of cosmic dust with very high concentrations of iridium, nickel, and other elements rose at impact. There could also be grains of shocked quartz, whose structure stems from the high pressures of impact or tiny spherules of fused glass like material that stems from the high temperature of impact…. The bottom line is this: if the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was caused by cosmic bombardment as the Bible indicates, there should be evidence waiting to be found.” Little did I know that at the time I wrote this in my book Dr. Collins had already located Sodom and had begun to find significant evidence for cosmic impact.

Since the initial discovery, four more trinitite coated potsherds have been excavated at the Tall. In addition, a number of small lumps of desert glass have been found at different locations within five miles of the Tall. While the brief heat flash or thermal pulse from the cosmic airburst was hot enough to melt and convert the outer surface of these clay potsherds into glass; this thermal pulse was also able to convert some of the silica of the sand on the ground into what geologists call “desert glass” which is not unlike trinitite. Geologists have come to learn that the creation of desert glass is typical of cosmic airbursts over sandy areas. It has not yet been confirmed how large of an area was affected by the cometary blast above Sodom.
As far as I know, Dr. Collins has yet to do a mass spectrometry analysis of the ash itself to see if it has a definitive “cosmic fingerprint” of specific elements brought in by the cometary material. This “cosmic DNA” test could provide the most compelling evidence of all. The ash might even contain nanodiamonds, microscopic diamonds that cosmic impacts can sometimes produce. It would be nice if a pollen study was done in the area to provide scientific evidence to confirm that the plain of the Jordan was then indeed “well watered.” A null hypothesis could also be employed to further establish that the Sodom of the Bible has finally been found. For example, pollen studies at the other proposed locations for Sodom should show that they were not in a “well watered” area. Likewise core drilling and analysis of the soils at the other proposed locations for Sodom should show that they do not contain evidence of fire and brimstone as a result of a cosmic airburst.

Interestingly the thick hardened black ash Dr. Collins found at the site sheds a different light on what happened to Lot’s wife. Genesis 19:26 should now be translated to read, “But his (Lot’s) wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of hardened ash (not salt). The Hebrew word usually translated as “salt” is the word “malach” (#4417 in Strong’s Concordance) which means “powder” as in something “pulverized” like salt, ash or dust.


www.thecometsofgod.com www.newscientificevidenceforgod.com



mmm

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Ancient Psalms Found Preserved in Irish Bog


July 26, 2006 4:00 PM


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Detail from the recently discovered book of psalms, which is more than 1,000 years old.National Museum of Ireland

Some people call it the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls: the discovery last week of fragments of an ancient book of psalms that had been buried in a bog for centuries.

Robert Siegel talks with Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, about the recent discovery in the midlands of Ireland. The text, which survived in a peat bog, is thought to have been written more than 1,000 years ago.


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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Sodom & Gomorrah Film



Uploaded by on Dec 24, 2010

Summary
A real life adventure and journey to the most barren territories on this planet. Join us as we consult Scientists, Geologists, Archaeologists and Mineral experts. DON'T CONDEMN IT. BELIEVE IT.
READ THE BOOK FOR FREE VISIT-http://www.realdiscoveries.org/

Monday, June 28, 2010

The Great Lighthouse at Alexandria


In the fall of 1994 a team of archaeological scuba divers entered the waters off of Alexandria, Egypt. Working beneath the surface they searched the bottom of the sea for artifacts. Large underwater blocks of stone were marked with floating masts so that an Electronic Distance Measurement station on shore could obtain their exact positions. Global positioning satellites were used to further fix the locations. The information was then fed into computers to create a detailed database of the sea floor.

Ironically, these scientists were using some of the most high-tech devices available at the end of the 20th century to try and discover the ruins of one of the most advanced technological achievements of the 3rd century, B.C.: The Pharos. It was the great lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Alexander the Great

The story of the Pharos starts with the founding of the city of Alexandria by the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.. Alexander started at least 17 cities named Alexandria at different locations in his vast domain. Most of them disappeared, but Alexandria in Egypt thrived for centuries and continues even today.

Alexander the Great choose the location of his new city carefully. Instead of building it on the Nile delta, he selected a site some twenty miles to the west, so that the silt and mud carried by the river would not block the city harbor. South of the city was the marshy Lake Mareotis. After a canal was constructed between the lake and the Nile, the city had two harbors: one for Nile River traffic, and the other for Mediterranean Sea trade. Both harbors would remain deep and clear.

Alexander died soon after in 323 B.C. and the city was completed by Ptolemy Soter the new ruler of Egypt. Under Ptolemy the city became rich and prosperous. However, it needed both a symbol and a mechanism to guide the many trade ships into the busy harbor. Ptolemy authorized the building of the Pharos in 290 B.C., and when it was completed some twenty years later, it was the first lighthouse in the world and the tallest building in existence, with the exception of the Great Pyramid.

Construction of the Lighthouse

The lighthouse's designer was Sostrates of Knidos. Proud of his work, Sostrates, desired to have his name carved into the foundation. Ptolemy II, the son who ruled Egypt after his father, refused this request wanting his own name to be the only one on the building. A clever man, Sostrates had the inscription:

SOSTRATES SON OF DEXIPHANES OF KNIDOS ON BEHALF OF ALL MARINERS TO THE SAVIOR GODS

chiseled into the foundation, then covered it with plaster. Into the plaster was chiseled Ptolemy's name. As the years went by the plaster aged and chipped away revealing Sostrates' declaration.

The lighthouse was built on the island of Pharos and soon the building itself acquired the name. The connection of the name with the function became so strong that the word "Pharos" became the root of the word "lighthouse" in the French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian languages.

There are two detailed descriptions made of the lighthouse in the 10th century A.D. by Moorish travelers Idrisi and Yusuf Ibn al-Shaikh. According to their accounts, the building was 300 cubits high. Because the cubit measurement varied from place to place, this could mean that the Pharos stood anywhere from 450 to 600 feet in height, although the lower figure is more likely.



The design was unlike the slim single column of most modern lighthouses (left), but more like the structure of an early twentieth century skyscraper. There were three stages, each built on top of the lower. The building was constructed of marble blocks with lead mortar. The lowest level was probably more that 200 feet in height and 100 feet square, shaped like a massive box. Inside this section was a large spiral ramp that allowed materials to be pulled to the top in horse-drawn carts.

On top of this section was an eight-sided tower. On top of the tower was a cylinder that extended up to an open cupola where the fire that provided the light burned. On the roof of the cupola was a large statue of Poseidon. The lower portion of the building contained hundreds of storage rooms.

The interior of the upper two sections had a shaft with a dumbwaiter that was used to transport fuel up to the fire. Staircases allowed visitors and the keepers to climb to the beacon chamber. There, according to reports, a large curved mirror, perhaps made of polished metal, was used to project the fire's light into a beam. It was said ships could detect the light from the tower at night or the smoke from the fire during the day up to one-hundred miles away.

There are stories that this mirror could be used as a weapon to concentrate the sun and set enemy ships ablaze as they approached. Another tale says that it was possible to use the mirror to magnify the image of the city of Constantinople from far across the sea to observe what was going on there. Both of these stories seem implausible, though.

The lighthouse was apparently a tourist attraction. Food was sold to visitors at the observation platform at the top of the first level. A smaller balcony provided a view from the top of the eight-sided tower for those that wanted to make the additional climb. The view from there must have been impressive as it was probably 300 feet above the sea. There were few places in the ancient world where a person could ascend a man-made tower to get such a perspective.

Destruction

How then did the world's first lighthouse wind up on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea? Most accounts indicate that it, like many other ancient buildings, was the victim of earthquakes. It stood for 1,500 years but was damaged by tremors in 365 and 1303 A.D. Reports indicate the final collapse came in 1326.

There is also an unlikely tale that part of the lighthouse was demolished through trickery. In 850 A.D. the Emperor of Constantinople, a rival port, devised a clever plot to get rid of the Pharos. He spread rumors that buried under the lighthouse was a fabulous treasure. When the Caliph at Cairo who controlled Alexandria heard these rumors, he ordered that the tower be pulled down to get at the treasure. It was only after the great mirror had been destroyed and the top two portions of the tower removed that the Caliph realized he'd been deceived. He tried to rebuild the tower, but couldn't, so he turned it into a mosque instead.

As colorful as this story is there does not seem to be much truth in it. Visitors in 1115 A.D. reported the Pharos intact and still operating as a lighthouse.

Did the divers actually find the remains of Pharos in the bottom of the harbor? Some of the larger blocks of stone found certainly seem to have come from a large building. Statues were located that may have stood at the base of the Pharos. Interestingly enough, much of the material found seems to be from earlier eras than the lighthouse. Scientists speculate that they may have been recycled in the construction of the Pharos from even older buildings.

There are plans to turn this site into an archaeological park with a lighthouse museum. In a few years visitors maybe able to rent snorkle gear and wet suits and dive in the bay among the remains of the great Pharos lighthouse.
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