1. One of our oldest complete Hebrew Bibles is the
Aleppo Codex. Written in about 930 CE. In Jewish
tradition conical books must be written in Hebrew.
2. Our oldest fragments of the Hebrew Bible were
uncovered at the site of Qumran near the Dead
Sea.
3. Great Isaiah Scroll is the most famous of the Dead Sea Scrolls—
dates to 100 BCE., making it the oldest and best-preserved book
of the Hebrew Bible.
4. Third-century BCE fragment of Exodus
uncovered at Qumran. One of the five books of
the Torah. The word Torah means ―law‖.
5. One of our oldest complete copies of the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Bible was uncovered at the Monastery of St
Catherine in the Sinai. It dates to the 4th century CE.
6. Codex Sinaiticus one of oldest copies of the
Old Testament from St. Catherin’s Monastery
. The Greek translation is called the
Septuagint.
7. Plains of Megiddo. According to the
Bible the land that the Israelites entered
was called Canaan.
8. Arial view of Megiddo. As early as 3500 BCE
Megiddo was inhabited. Today its monumental
architecture provides the most impressive evidence
of the rise of the first cities in Canaan.
10. The Sea of Galilee is fed by the Jordan River, It is
13 miles by 7 miles and 686 feet below sea level.
It is the lowest freshwater lake in the world.
11. The Jordan River is a major water source that flows
from the base of Mt. Hermon in the North through
the Sea of Galilee into the Dead Sea.
12. Satellite image of the Dead Sea. Note
Jordan River emptying into the sea from
the north.
13. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth measuring 1,312 ft.
below sea level. It has the highest concentration of salt in the
world. The lake’s salinity prevents the existence all forms of life
except bacteria.
14. The Dead Sea is the saltiest body of water and lowest point
on earth. More than 30 percent of the water consists of
various salts, making its salinity ten times higher than the
Mediterranean Sea.
15. The Judean Desert extends from Jerusalem
in the north to the Negev Desert on the south,
and runs to the west of the Dead Sea.
16. A cylinder seal of the Mesopotamia creation
myth Enuma Elish. Tiamat is depicted as the
dragon.
17. In the 1870s at the British Museum, George Smith
discovered a story inscribed on clay tablets of the
exploits of Gilgamesh. The story contained a
description of a deluge startlingly similar to the
biblical account of Noah and the Flood.
18. The tablet with the deluge story was the 11th and final tablet
of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The Gilgamesh story also contains
elements similar to the Garden of Eden story in Genesis.
21. Cuneiform Tablet. A writing system created by the
Sumerians in 3200 BCE. The system was based on wedge-
shaped characters on wet clay tablets that would be baked.
22. The location of "the mountains of Ararat", where Noah’s Ark
was said to have come to rest, are simply unknown. The
location of the modern Ararat is shown here in Turkey.
23. Others before Baruch Spinoza, such as Ibn Ezra, had suggested that
Moses was not the author of the Torah, but Spinoza was more forceful.
Spinoza was doubtful that Moses wrote any of the Torah. He also
argued that the Bible should be read like any other historical work; based
on scientific principles. He is regarded as the first modern biblical
scholar.
24. Jean Astruc identified two sources in the
Torah using different names for the deity in
Genesis.
25. Julius Wellhausan (1844-1918 ) developed the documentary
hypothesis. He argued that the Torah is composed of four
primary sources, representing four authors that he identified
as JEP and D.
