JIHAD WATCH - Posted By Raymond Ibrahim - October 25, 2008
Unbeknownst to most English speakers, Islam is currently "under attack" (at least that's how many Muslims depict it) from Christian, Arabic missionary satellite stations. Spearheading this phenomenon is Al-Haya (or "Life TV"), a station dedicated to discussing issues relating to Islam and Christianity, specifically, demonstrating the many shortcomings and problems of the former, while pointing out how those problems are not present in the latter.

Life TV has been extremely successful in winning converts from the Islamic world. Unprecedented in all ways-Middle Eastern Christians (dhimmis) being confrontational and critical towards Islam, while unabashedly proclaiming their faith-Life TV has rocked the Islamic world.

Perhaps most (in)famous is Coptic priest Zakaria Botros. After finding out about him and watching some of his shows on the Internet, I wrote about him for NRO. (I am told that mine was the first major and widespread article about Botros, which subsequently led to many reporters inquiring and writing more about the priest-a natural result considering that what he and Life TV are doing is both extremely newsworthy and practically unknown in the Western world. I'm only happy that it worked out this way.)

Aside from Zakaria Botros' shows (Questions about Faith and Dialogue of Truth), there in another program I've been recently following called Su'al Jari', that is, "Daring Question." Hosted by apostate Muslim converts to Christianity known only by their first names, Rashid and Ahmed, the show's no-holds barred style has made it, along with Zakaria's shows, one of the most watched programs on Arabic satellite. And, as with the Coptic priest's shows, theirs has come under increasing attack from the Muslim world-not least because it is instrumental in gaining converts from Islam. (The above YouTube video is an English sub-titled clip of Rashid and Ahmed talking to a weeping Muslim woman living in England who wants to convert to Christianity but is afraid of her Muslim husband.)

The show typically deals with a theme in Islam-most recently, the absurdities of recent fatwas. Next the hosts, who, as former pious Muslims are evidently very learned in their former faith, proceed to describe the legitimacy of that theme straight from Islam's sources-first the Koran, followed by (often little known) hadiths, and then the words of the ulema-that is, usul al-fiqh. After demonstrating the problem, as well as Islam's support for it-recently, that drinking camel's urine is salutary-they discuss the issue, as well as welcome calls from viewers, some sympathetic apostates, some on-the-fence Muslims, others Muslim zealots who promise the hosts death and misery in this world and the hereafter.

Though all this is important, it is also all done in Arabic, preventing English speakers from following the debate, the issues, the outbursts, and the threats. While the show is geared towards proselytizing Muslims, it does this by exposing Islam-and it is this latter aspect which should be of particular importance to Jihad Watch readers, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack thereof.

I will, therefore, begin watching Life TV more regularly, summarizing the more important episodes-including making better known otherwise obscure hadiths and ulemaic verdicts and fatwas, as well as modern day Muslims' views on these issues-thereby keeping Jihad Watch readers informed of this very important debate going on in the Islamic world and exclusively in Allah's language.
See Video Here
Original Report

Also:

Highly recommended for those interested in sharing the gospel with those deceived by Islam as well as an excellent teaching tool for the church:
Southern California Prophecy Conference
Authors: Brigitte Gabriel, Ed Hindson, Don Perkins, Jacob Prasch, David Reagan, Kamal Saleem, Walid Shoebat, & Jay Smith

Visit the Moriel website, choose your country and go to the online store.

Communists see Christian messages by thousands blanketing countryside
WORLDNETDAILY - By Bob Unruh - November 18, 2008
North Korean officials are infuriated by leaflets that have been floated over the communist nation's secured borders and dropped from plastic bags attached to gas-filled balloons, and one organization behind the effort says there's good reason the atheists in power are upset - the pamphlets are carrying a Gospel message directly to the people.

Hundreds of thousands of leaflets have reportedly been distributed in just the past few months, and may have been the reason the North recently announced it would shut its border with the South. The North also has threatened to cut other communications, such as telephone lines, over the issue.

The leaflets have been attributed to "political" groups, but a spokesman for one organization sponsoring the effort said there's nothing political about it, and the tracts carry a message of hope directly to the North Korean people.


The spokesman and his organization, which spreads the Gospel around the world, couldn't be identified because of the potential for danger to affiliated activists who are dispatching the balloons.

But he told WND those who have fled government crackdowns on their faith inside North Korea are desperate to get the message of hope to their family, friends and communities behind the wall of communist information censorship.

"Each balloon carried 10,000 Gospel tracts, in three separate bags at the bottom that have a time release mechanism so that they drop at different times to spread the leaflets over a wider area," he described.

On one side, the leaflet cites a "great revival" that launched in Pyongyang in 1907.

"It began with a Bible study that took place in Changdaehyun church ... Many Koreans came together to study the Bible, the written record of God's love for Korean people and the world," it says.

"Unfortunately, this study of the truth was stopped by Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. They are not the first people to build big statues of themselves for people to bow down and worship. Throughout history, many leaders have claimed to be a god only to die later. The following is a true story from the Bible that took place thousands of years ago. It is about a man like Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il who thought he was even better than God Himself. But this story is also about 3 courageous men who knew who the real God was, and how they refused to bow down to someone who was only a man."

The pamphlet then describes Nebuchadnezzar's reign, his construction of a golden statue to himself and the refusal on the part of three Israelite captives to bow down before it. ...

"There is only one who is the true Savior. Just as King Nebuchadnezzar died, so did Kim Il-Sung and one day so will Kim Jong-Il. But unlike these 3 men, the true God, Jesus Christ rose from the dead and lives," it continues. ...

The pamphlet says, "The Bible tells us that 'God so loved the world that He sent His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but will have eternal life" (John 3:16). We love God because He first loved us. God loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die to save you-and He rose from the dead and is watching over you today. That is why you have found this paper." ...

"The good news of this story is that obviously it works," said the ministry spokesman. "If the leaflets weren't getting into North Korea, or weren't getting read by anyone, the North Korean government wouldn't be making a big deal about it."

North Korea long has had a record of banning Christianity and torturing and killing Christians. WND reported a Christian ministry launched a campaign seeking to have North Korean students who were caught reading the Bible freed from jail. ...

But detailed information from inside North Korea often is hard to obtain, many times coming only from those who have survived and escaped. WND previously reported on a North Korean who fled and said many North Koreans believe dictator Kim Jong-Il actually is a god.
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THE CHRISTIAN POST - By Jennifer Riley - November 14, 2008


An anonymous donor gave a huge sum of $50 million to Wycliffe Bible Translators this week making it possible to translate Scripture for the last people groups still without the Bible in their native tongue more quickly.

The gift, the largest in the ministry's 75-year history, will be used towards Wycliffe's Last Languages Campaign. The campaign seeks to bring language development and, in most cases, first-time literacy alongside the Bible translation program to more than 200 million people by 2025.

Interestingly, the gift comes in advance of the campaign's official launch on Nov. 22 at the Wycliffe USA headquarters in Orlando, Fla.

"Literacy is key to helping people work their way out of poverty and resist oppression by others," said the donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, in a statement released Wednesday. "Children who first learn to read in their own language are more likely to become literate and to stay in school than those who first learn in a different language."

Today, there are 6,912 language groups in the world, with one third of the world's language groups having no Bible translation program in place.

The Last Languages Campaign will use cutting-edge translation techniques to accelerate the pace of language development and Bible translation for the world's remaining language groups from 125 years to 17 years. ...

Last year, another large donation was made to Wycliffe when the deputy chairman of the New York Stock Exchange holding company, Marshall N. Carter, donated his personal million-dollar aircraft to Wycliffe Last Languages partner JAARS for the effort.
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* Emphasis Added

The first century A.D. historian Josephus Flavius wrote that as the elderly Herod lay riddled with disease, he ordered the cream of the local Jewish aristocracy to be executed on his death, so that his passing would bring widespread mourning.

Josephus describes Herodium and Herod's lavish funeral there.

After Herod's death in the first century B.C. Herodium became a stronghold for Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupation, and the site suffered significant battle damage before it was conquered and finally destroyed by Roman forces in A.D. 71, a year after they destroyed the Jerusalem temple. - - - -
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Also:

King Herod's VIP Room for Theatergoers Discovered
ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Avraham Zuroff - November 19, 2008
Hebrew University's Archaeological Institute announced on Wednesday additional discoveries in Herod's grave, located 9 miles south of Jerusalem.
The findings include coffins of Herod's family, a theater with a VIP room, and two coffins containing the remains of most likely Herod's wife and the wife of Archelaus, Herod's son. The new findings further support the idea that the grave discovered last year belongs to Herod the Great. - - - -
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NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Natalie Angier - October 21, 2008

You're born with a little over a pint of it, by adulthood you're up to four or five quarts, and if at any point you suddenly shed more than a third of your share, you must either get a transfusion or prepare to meet your mortician.

Human cultures have long recognized that blood is essential to life and have ascribed to it a vast array of magical powers and metaphorical subroutines. Blood poultices and blood beverages were said to cure blindness, headaches, gout, goiter, worms and gray hair. The Bible mentions blood more than 400 times, William Shakespeare close to 700. It's "all in the blood," your temperament, your fate. Are you a blue-blooded Mesopotamian princess or a red-blooded American male?

Yet to scientists who study blood, even the most extravagant blood lore pales in comparison to the biochemical, evolutionary and engineering marvels of the genuine article.

The fluid tissue we call blood not only feeds us and cleans us, delivering fresh oxygen and other nutrients to all 100 trillion cells of the body and flushing out carbon dioxide, ammonia and other metabolic trash. It not only houses the immune system that defends us against the world.

Our blood is the foundation of our very existence as multicellular animals, said Andrew Schafer, a professor at Weill Cornell Medical College and the outgoing president of the American Society of Hematology. Blood is the one tissue that comes into contact with every other tissue of the body, and it is through blood that our disparate parts communicate, through blood that our organs cooperate. Without a circulatory system, there would be no internal civilization, no means of ensuring orderly devotion to the common cause that is us.

"It's an enormous communications network," Dr. Schafer said - the original cellphone system, if you will, 100 trillion users strong. ...

Blood is also a genius, able to sustain two contradictory states without going mad. To ceaselessly shuttle along the body's 60,000 miles of arteries, veins and capillaries, blood must be fluid, our trusty souvenir sea.
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Must See Video
Laminin: The Supremacy of Christ over Biology!
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 ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Hillel Fendel - September 1, 2008
The widely-disseminated Arab Moslem position that the Temple Mount is not Jewish has been debunked - by the Supreme Moslem Council (Waqf) of Jerusalem, in a Temple Mount guide published in 1925.

Guidebook Puts the Lie to Current Arab Campaign
In 1997, the chief Moslem cleric of the Palestinian Authority, Mufti Ikrama Sabri, stated, "The claim of the Jews to the right over [Jerusalem] is false, and we recognize nothing but an entirely Islamic Jerusalem under Islamic supervision..."    

Thus began a campaign to convince the world that the millennia-old natural association between Jerusalem and Jews was untrue.  As Islamic Movement chief Raed Salah stated in 2006, "We remind, for the 1,000th time, that the entire Al-Aqsa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Moslem property, and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in it."

However, it is now known that this "absolute" Moslem claim is actually not as absolute as claimed. In fact, back in 1925, the Supreme Moslem Council - also known as the Waqf, which has overseen Temple Mount activities on behalf of the Moslem religion for hundreds of years - boasted proudly that the site was none other than that of Solomon's Temple.

The Jerusalem-based Temple Institute reports that it has acquired a copy of the official 1925 Supreme Moslem Council Guide Book to Al-Haram Al-Sharif (the Moslem name for the Temple Mount).  On page 4, the Waqf states, "Its identity with the site of Solomon's Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which 'David built there an altar unto the L-rd...', citing the source in 2 Samuel XXIV,25.

In addition, on page 16, the pamphlet makes reference to the underground area in the south-east corner of the Mount, which is refers to as Solomon's Stables.  "Little is known for certain of the history of the chamber itself," the guide reads. "It dates probably as far back as the construction of Solomon's Temple. According to Josephus, it was in existence and was used as a place of refuge by the Jews at the time of the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 A.D."

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was in fact the site of the two Jewish Holy Temples which stood for nearly 1,000 years (see below).

Proof of Moslem Anti-Jewish Revisionism
The Temple Institute's Rabbi Chaim Richman writes that the pamphlet provides proof that the Waqf's current position is a departure from traditional Muslim belief.  "In recent years," he writes, "the Moslem Waqf has come to deny the historic existence of the Holy Temple, claiming that the Temple Mount belongs solely to the Moslem nation, and that there exists no connection between the Jewish nation and the Temple Mount. It is clear from this pamphlet that the revised Waqf position strays from traditional Moslem acknowledgment of the Mount's Jewish antecedents."

"The current denial of historical reality is merely one tool in the war being waged by Moslems against the G-d of Israel and the entire 'infidel' world," Richman declares.

Examples of the new Palestinian/Arab position on Jerusalem:
PA Mufti Sabri was quoted in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam on November 22, 1997 as saying, "The 'Al-Buraq' Wall [the Western Wall] is a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Jews have no relation to it."    

The same newspaper, on July 18, 1997, reported that Hamad Yusef, head of The Institution for the Rejuvenation of the Palestinian Heritage, referred to the "false historical claim of the Jews in the holy city, a claim which they were unable to prove in all of the excavations conducted by foreign groups for the past hundred years." The paper also stated that Hamad "accused the Israelis of unprecedented historical forgeries, emphasizing the Palestinian, the Arab and the Islamic nature of the holy city for the past 6,000 years. Israel fails in her attempt to find a historical connection to Jerusalem."  (courtesy of Jewish Virtual Library)

Jewish History on the Mount
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was the site of the two Jewish Holy Temples, the first of which was built by King Solomon in the year 832 BCE, close to 1,500 years before Islam was founded. It stood for over 400 years, and after the 70-year Babylonian Exile, a Second Temple was built on the same site. Thus, for nearly 1,000 years, Holy Temples stood on the site, until the Romans conquered the entire land and destroyed the Second Temple. Though the area came under the control of the Romans, Byzantines, Moslems, Christians, Turks, British and others over the intervening centuries, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount were always the focus of Jewish religious and national yearnings, and continued to be the Jews' "capital" even while in exile. In the Six Day War of 1967, the modern State of Israel liberated the Temple Mount area and all of Jerusalem, placing it under Jewish control once again after a hiatus of 1,900 years.  

Israel, however, never actualized its sovereignty over the holy Temple Mount site, but rather granted the Waqf nearly total control. Jews, in fact, have not been allowed to pray there ever since then-Chief IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren led a prayer service there on the first Tisha B'Av after the liberation.  Jews' visiting hours are also restricted.
Original Report

See pdf of 1925 Waqf Temple Mount Guide

The Temple Institute main Waqf page with links to 1925, 1950, 1954 & 1965 guides

* Emphasis Added

> See more Temple related news items further below

Also: Despite this one bit of 'good news' there is mostly this insanity . . .

Jewish Temples never existed, says top Palestinian negotiator
Official leading peace talks claims Israel trying to 'invent' historical Jerusalem link
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - November 6, 2008
JERUSALEM - The Jewish Temples never existed and Israel has been working to "invent" a Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem, the chief Palestinian negotiator asserted. ...
"The world must be mobilized against all these Israeli attempts to change the symbols and signs of Jerusalem," he said. "There is nothing Jewish about the Al Aqsa Mosque. There was no so-called Jewish Temple. It's imaginary. Jerusalem is 100 percent Muslim." ...
Qurei, who is considered moderate by U.S. and Israeli policy, has been leading talks with Israel initiated at last November's U.S.-sponsored Annapolis Summit, which seeks to create a Palestinian state, at least on paper, before President Bush leaves office. Israel is widely expected to offer the Palestinians near complete control of the West Bank and significant control of undisclosed parts of eastern Jerusalem. - - - -
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Terrorist TV - live from Temple Mount!
Hamas broadcasts all week exclusively from Judaism's holiest site
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - September 7, 2008
JERUSALEM - For the past week, Hamas' official television network exclusively broadcast Islamic prayer services live from Jerusalem's Temple Mount.
Nightly, Hamas' Al Aqsa TV has broadcast the Tarawih prayers from the Mount's Al Aqsa Mosque or additional nightly prayers recited during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which began last week. Tawawih prayers include recitation of parts of the Quran and takes about an hour.
The Hamas broadcasts serve as somewhat of a coup for the terror group, since it's the only Palestinian television network that is featuring the Tarawih from the Al Aqsa Mosque, giving Hamas the ability to share Temple Mount services with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Hamas' Al Aqsa television routinely calls for jihad against Israel and broadcasts extreme anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda. - - - -
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2 terror groups now broadcasting live from Temple Mount
Israeli authorities claimed they would halt illicit transmissions
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - September 8, 2008
JERUSALEM - Not one but two terrorist organizations now are broadcasting Islamic prayer services live from the Temple Mount - Judaism's holiest site.
Yesterday, WND broke the story Hamas' official Al Aqsa TV has for the past week broadcast from the Temple Mount's Al Aqsa Mosque the Tarawih prayers, or additional nightly prayers recited during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. - - - -
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Christians, Jews praying on Temple Mount 'seek religious war'
Muslim authorities say even right to talk to God on holy site exclusively theirs
WORLDNETDAILY - By Ryan Jones - August 1, 2008
If Jerusalem's Temple Mount stands at the heart of the Middle East conflict, and if Muslim intransigence regarding the religious rights of others at the site is any indication, then it would appear all talk of regional peace is somewhat premature.
In an interview with Israel Today, Azzam Khatib, director of the Islamic Trust (or Waqf) that safeguards the mosques that sit atop the Temple Mount, said that Jews and Christians who try to pray at the ancient holy site are effectively declaring war.
Any non-Muslim "who seeks such an approach is really seeking a religious war," said Khatib, who insisted that the Temple Mount is an exclusively Muslim site and that Jews and Christians should not.
Reprinted with permission of Israel Today
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My first introduction to Jerusalem in 2006 took place on Tisha Be'av, the fast commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. I stood at the Western Wall, during that time of the Second War in Lebanon, watching thousands of Jewish faithful, from all different walks of life - women and men, soldiers and Hassidim, Sephardim and Ashkenazim - gathered in unity to remember and to mourn. It was like entering the very soul of Israel.

This Tisha Be'av caused me to reflect further on those lost Temples, particularly now that I have spent two years in the country, during which I had occasion to visit the Temple Mount. After passing through two security checks before entering, a different world appeared - one with no visible vestige of Judaism - on that ancient and holiest of Jewish sites.

Christianity hasn't fared any better. In fact, for Christians, the writing is on the wall - literally and figuratively - the wall inside the Dome of the Rock. In Arabic calligraphy dating from the seventh century, the text declares that God has no son; that Jesus was not resurrected (Islam also denies that he was crucified); that Jews and Christians, "the People of the Book," transgress by not embracing Muhammad's revelation; and that Allah's reckoning will come swiftly on those who do not believe.

Christians' attachment to the Temple Mount is based on Jesus's words and deeds as recorded in the Gospels.
Full Report Posted on the Be Alert! Blog

ASSOCIATED PRESS - November 10, 2008
JERUSALEM -  Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old gold earring beneath a parking lot next to the walls of Jerusalem's old city, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday.

The discovery dates back to the time of Christ, during the Roman period, said Doron Ben-Ami, director of excavation at the site.

The piece was found in a Byzantine structure built several centuries after the jeweled earring was made, showing it was likely passed down through generations, he said.

The find is luxurious: A large pearl inlaid in gold with two drop pieces, each with an emerald and pearl set in gold.

"It must have belonged to someone of the elite in Jerusalem," Ben-Ami said. "Such a precious item, it couldn't be one of just ordinary people."

In a statement released Monday, the authority said the piece of jewelry was "astonishingly well-preserved."

Finds from the Roman period are rare in Jerusalem, Ben-Ami said, because the city was destroyed by the Roman Empire in the first century A.D. ...

"Jewelry is hardly preserved in archaeological context in Jerusalem," he said, because precious metals were often sold or melted down during the many historic takeovers of the city. - - - -
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U.N.-led organizations documenting the damage and how to fix it
ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Christopher Torchia and Ammar Al-Musawi - November 11, 2008
BABYLON, Iraq - It was one of the world's first, greatest cities - a place where astronomers mapped the stars millennia ago and kings created an early code of law and planted what became known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Yet little remains of the ancient capital, as seen by The Associated Press during a trip to Babylon last month on one of the few permits issued by Iraq's government since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The site has the aura of a theme park touched by the ambition of dictator Saddam Hussein and the opportunism of looters: Modern walkways run beside crumbling old walls, a reconstructed Greek theater and a palace built for Saddam atop an artificial hill.

Now, for the first time, global institutions led by the U.N. are thoroughly documenting the damage and how to fix it. A UNESCO report due out early next year will cite Saddam's construction but focus, at the Iraqi government's request, on damage done by U.S. forces from April to September 2003, and the Polish troops deployed there for more than a year afterward.

The U.S., which turned Babylon into a military base, says the looting would have been worse but for the troops' presence. The U.S. also says it will help rehabilitate Babylon, funding an effort by the World Monuments Fund and Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage, but has yet to release precise funding figures.

Archaeologists hope the effort will lead someday to new digging to follow up on the excavations done by a German team in the early 1900s.

"The site is tremendously important," said Gaetano Palumbo of the New York City-based World Monuments Fund. Yet in its present state, Babylon is "hardly understandable, as a place where so much happened in history."

Past excavations focused on the monuments such as temples. But domestic quarters remain largely unexplored, Palumbo said, and new methods could reveal new facts or reinterpret findings from excavations done 100 years ago.

For decades, Babylon has been virtually off-limits to the world whose culture it helped create.

First came Saddam's attempt to create a major tourist attraction aimed at glorifying his own image, which led to shoddy reconstruction of ancient sites and construction of restaurants and other facilities in the 1980s. Most international experts stayed away because of the regime's reputation, the eight-year war with Iran and U.N. sanctions.

Next, Babylon suffered in the chaotic days after Saddam's downfall in 2003, at roughly the same time that Baghdad's national museum was looted. Archaeologists say looters took museum items at Babylon, mostly plaster replicas, and burned excavation reports and other studies.

Then came the occupation by U.S. and Polish troops in 2003 and 2004. Heavy vehicles and machinery pounded on ancient brick and on sand rich with pottery and other fragments. Military forces built a helipad, carved out parking areas and trenches, destroyed part of an ancient brick road called the Processional Way and filled bags with sand containing bones and pottery pieces, according to Iraqi officials and a British Museum report done several years ago.

Even as Babylon was damaged, there has been no extensive, large-scale archaeological work here in nearly a century.

There is no trace of the Hanging Gardens, said to have been built for the homesick wife of King Nebuchadnezzar II, or the tower believed to have inspired the Bible's tale of Babel. King Hammurabi's code of law, inscribed on a giant stone slab almost 4,000 years ago, has long sat in Paris' Louvre. The city's symbol - the original Gate of Ishtar named for a Babylonian goddess and built by Nebuchadnezzar - is Berlin's Pergamon museum.

At the site, near the Euphrates River about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Baghdad, the AP journalists saw a gaudy reconstruction of the Ishtar gate built during Saddam's time, plus part of the original gate's foundations. The foundations hold unglazed depictions of a dragon, some appearing damaged.

A spell of relative peace in Iraq is giving Babylon a second chance. However, tremendous challenges remain. ...

Although Iraq's government is involved in the project, a top aide to Iraq's prime minister told the AP that the government has more pressing priorities. And it could take years for Babylon to get on UNESCO's list of World Heritage sites, a prestigious designation Iraq can only seek after implementing conservation codes.

John Curtis, keeper of the Middle East collections at the British Museum and a contributor to the upcoming UNESCO report, was one of the first to discover and document the post-invasion damage to Babylon in December 2004. Four years later, he says it's a great step that UNESCO is ready to sign off on a document, but that infrastructure and stability will be key to any new exploration. - - - -

Al-Musawi reported from Babylon and Torchia from Baghdad and Istanbul, Turkey. Associated Press writer Mazin Yahya also contributed.

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• Abraham, Sarah and their offspring didn't exist.
• There is no archaeological evidence of the Exodus.
• Monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years.
• The Israelites were actually Canaanites.

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Also:

Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real
ORLANDO SUN-SENTINEL [Tribune Company] - By Hal Boedeker, Sentinel Television Critic - July 21, 2008
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen?
The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.
"It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down."
The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association.
The program says the Bible was written in the sixth century BC and that hundreds of authors contributed.
"At least the first five books of the Bible come together during the Babylonian exile," says producer Gary Glassman. ...
"These stories are unlikely to represent real historical events, but rather there's some kernel of ancient experience in there which has survived and which helps give identity to the people at the time the Bible finally took shape centuries and centuries later," Meyers says. - - - -
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New slant on Bible's origins
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL, 'ProJo' of Providence, Rhode Island [A. H. Belo Corporation/Belo Group] - By Richard C. Dujardin - November 13, 2008
... The film largely accepts the hypothesis of scholars who say those five books represent texts that were written over a period of several hundred years, which were compiled and edited into a form familiar to people today in 536 B.C. after the Jews went into exile in Babylon. ...
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Say filmmaker's identification of burial site falls on statistical, DNA, epigraphic evidence
WORLDNETDAILY - January 26, 2008
A group of scholars is disputing the positive media coverage given a Jerusalem conference earlier this month on the so-called tomb of Jesus popularized last year by "Titanic" director James Cameron and Jewish investigative journalist and filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, saying the majority of experts and academics in attendence either rejected the identification of the site excavated in 1980 as belonging to Jesus' family or find the claim highly speculative.

As WND reported in February 2007, the Oscar-winning director's film project, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," claimed the discovery of 10 stone coffins in a Jerusalem suburb is actually the family crypt of Jesus of Nazareth.

The 90-minute film, made for the Discovery Channel, makes the case that Jesus had a son named Judah with Mary Magdalene.

Cameron and his director, Jacobovici, claimed also to have DNA evidence to back their story. ...

Cameron and Jacobovici cited statistical analysis that suggested finding the combination of related historical names in a first century crypt at 600 to 1.

Those claims were the subject of the "Third Princeton Theological Seminary Symposium on Jewish Views of the Afterlife and Burial Practices in Second Temple Judaism: Evaluating the Talpiot Tomb in Context," held Jan. 13-16, 2008, in Jerusalem. The conference was attended by some fifty international and Israeli scholars.

According to a posting on the Princeton Theological Seminary website, the consensus of the participants was against the tomb being related to Christianity's founder.

"Unfortunately, many of the initial reports in the press following the symposium gave almost the exact opposite impression, stating, instead, that the conference proceedings gave credence to the identification of the Talpiot tomb with a putative family tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. As is abundantly clear from the statements to the contrary that have been issued since the symposium by many of the participants, such representations are patently false and blatantly misrepresent the spirit and scholarly content of the deliberations."

Several scholars issued a statement on the Duke University Religion Department's website indicating their rejection of the filmmakers' claims and disputing the press coverage. ...

[See List Here]

Myer also disputed the DNA claims of the filmmakers, citing a report by the head of the DNA laboratory at Hebrew University that concluded the sampling of the bone material was invalid and contaminated and could not be used to infer that "Jesus" and "Mariemene" were unrelated adults and, therefore, likely husband and wife.

"It was not even worth discussion. That should have closed the case," Myers told Christian Post. - - - -
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ARUTZ SHEVA (Israeli National News) - By Gil Ronen - September 5, 2008
Samaria Regional Council head Gershon Mesika is spearheading a political and financial effort to rebuild the tomb of the biblical figure Joseph, located in Shechem, 30 miles north of Jerusalem. The tomb was desecrated and pillaged by Arabs in October 2000, and remains in an area under control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Mesika was among nine busloads of Jews who entered Joseph's Tomb at 1:00 A.M. Friday to say selichot, the penitential prayers that are customarily recited during the weeks preceding Rosh HaShana. The Jewish worshippers, who brought generators with them for electricity, reported that the occasion was a moving one, despite the run down and ravaged state of the tomb, which is currently being used by Arabs as a garbage dump.

Rabbi Aharon Katzin of the Izri philanthropic foundation and Abe Cohen, a philanthropist from the U.S., participated in the late night prayer service. Mesika has established a lobby group numbering 25 Knesset members for restoring Joseph's Tomb and hopes to recruit funds for the project. ...

Ephraim Bluth, a leading figure in the region, wrote the following after his night visit to the destroyed tomb of Joseph:

I recently had an opportunity to visit the Tomb of the biblical Joseph - Yosef Hatzadik - in Shechem. Given the location, in a viper's den of terrorism, such visits need be organized with the active cooperation of the IDF, which provides worshippers with several layers of security. ...

The visit was a difficult venture, from an emotional point of view. On the one hand, I felt a sense of privilege to be present at the burial site of one of our foremost religious and historical figures. ...

From the torched and scarred ruins of Joseph's tomb, amidst the rubble left behind by a local Arab mob, I was able to gaze up at the growing Jewish community of Elon Moreh and at the expanding yeshiva there which is at its core. - - - -
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Hamas flags found on burial chambers of Abraham, Jacob, Sarah
WORLDNETDAILY - By Aaron Klein - September 7, 2008
JERUSALEM - Muslim worshipers at Judaism's second holiest site this past weekend reportedly urinated next to Torah scrolls and strew Hamas flags throughout the structure.

The desecration occurred at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is believed to be home to the resting place of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. The tomb is located in the West Bank city of Hebron, site of the oldest Jewish community in the world.

The tombs of Abraham, Jacob, Sarah and Leah are open to Jews year round, whereas the tombs of Isaac and Rebecca are designated for Muslim worship only. Once a year for 10 days, usually on the Islamic Ramadan holiday, the Jewish sections are opened exclusively for Muslims. The Muslim sections are also opened for Jews once a year for 10 days, which usually includes the Jewish Passover holiday.

Muslims last week had exclusive access to the tombs of Abraham, Jacob, Sarah and Leah. Jewish worshipers who returned to the site this weekend reported a foul smell in a synagogue on the Jewish side coming from the area of an Ark containing Torah scrolls. ...

Noam Arnon, another spokesman Hebron, said there is always some sort of damage discovered after Muslims get exclusive rights to worship at the Jewish areas of the tomb.

"It is not all the Muslims," he said. "But there always are a few who in the past have ripped mezuzot off the entrances to the rooms of worship or simply leave behind vandalism. Complaints have been filed with the police in the past, but no one ever has been arrested."

Wilder added that in the past, Muslim worshipers tore up Psalm booklets and Jewish prayer books. - - - -
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'American Stonehenge' monument draws occult, pagan worshipers
WORLDNETDAILY - July 28, 2008
A Christian organization is pressuring the community of Elberton, Ga., to tear down a massive, granite monument that lists an alternative set of Ten Commandments that the organization labels satanic.

The monument, known as the Georgia Guidestones, was built under a cloud of mystery in 1980. It lists 10 commandments in eight different languages, including a call to establish a new world language, limit human population to 500 million and avoid being "a cancer on the Earth."

"We have atheists and Satanists getting the Bible's Ten Commandments removed from public property," said Mark Dice, spokesman for the group The Resistance, "yet the satanic Georgia Guidestones have stood for decades, and nobody seems to care. Well, we do."

Comparing the monument's command to "maintain humanity under 500 million in perpetual balance with nature" with an estimated world's population of over 6 billion, Dice told WND, "Regardless of anyone's religion, I think they would find it objectionable that there's this monument that calls for the elimination of over 90 percent of the world's population."

Dice told WND his group is contacting officials of the Elberton community, trying to rally citizens of the town to pressure their leaders and hoping to generate grassroots opposition from around the country. Since the land the monument sits upon is owned by a private trust and is not public property, Dice said, the battle against the monument will have to take place in the court of public opinion, rather than a court of law.

The 19-foot tall, 237,746-pound monument, sometimes referred to as "American Stonehenge," consists of four granite tablets, each 16 feet high, over 6 feet wide, and 1 foot, 7 inches thick radiating out from a central "Gnomen Stone" and crowned with a capstone that weighs nearly 25,000 pounds by itself.

Sandblasted into the tablets are over 4,000 characters that list the 10 commandments in eight languages: English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish and Swahili.

The commandments themselves are as follows:

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
• Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
• Unite humanity with a living new language.
• Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
• Balance personal rights with social duties.
• Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
• Be not a cancer on the Earth - leave room for nature - leave room for nature. ...

The monument's ties to astronomy and seasons can be seen in its design and orientation, including the directions the stones point, a hole drilled in the stone to view the North Star and a slot carved in the central stone that aligns with sun at different positions during solstices and the vernal and autumnal equinox.

The origin of the stones, however, remains part of the mystery and allure of the monument.

The modern-day mystery stems from the fact that so little is known about the stones' creation or the mysterious "R.C. Christian" who paid to have the monument built. - - - -
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