Barney Zeitz, 65, an artist on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, doesn’t know where in Europe his ancestors lived. But it could have been a town like Flieden, Germany, where there was a Jewish community from 1562 until 1938.
Israeli archaeologists have made two recent discoveries expanding knowledge of Jewish history as far back as the time of the First Temple in the seventh century BC.
In one find, Israeli archaeologists unveiled the earliest known reference to Jerusalem in the Hebrew language that doesn’t come from the Bible. On a small piece of papyrus, part of a wine-shipping order, is written in ancient Hebrew: “From the king’s maidservant, from Na’arat, jars of wine, to Jerusalem.”
(The Christian Science Monitor) Future pilgrims to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre will be able to glimpse what is, according to tradition, the tomb of Jesus.
It’s all thanks to a team from the National Technical University of Athens, which is undertaking critical repair work on the site. The team started excavating the tomb in late October in an effort to uncover the original limestone slab on which Jesus was supposedly laid.
Every family in Joseph Dade Guiwil’s community has been harmed by the cholera epidemic in Haiti, the worst outbreak in recent history.
“I say to the UN: give us justice,” Guiwil told Katharine Oswald of Mennonite Central Committee, a Christian relief and development organization.
United Nations peacekeepers have been found to be the source of the cholera outbreak that began six years ago and has killed thousands. MCC has joined other faith-based organizations, Haitian groups, and others in a call for the UN to accept moral responsibility.
Two years ago, when fighters from the self-described Islamic State began their assault on Karemlash, a town 18 miles southeast of Mosul, Martin Banni, a Chaldean Catholic priest, grabbed communion elements, the church’s official documents, and a few personal items and fled.
More than 100,000 Christians from the area had already left. The archbishop of Mosul begged Christians to flee.
“We were few in number with no weapons, and we could do nothing to face the Islamic State,” Banni said. “We ran.”