Levant

The land between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the peoples who held it — Canaanite, Israelite, Philistine, Assyrian, Persian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonean, Herodian and Roman.

Timelines

Memos

Abraham: Three Lines

Abraham's three descent lines — through Ishmael, Jacob, and Esau — and what they left: the Kaaba, Judaism and Christianity, and the Herodian enclosure over the Cave of the Patriarchs.

From Moriah to the Morel

Following the MOR root through human language. One phoneme, five thousand years, across three unrelated civilisations and four reconstructed linguistic roots.

Herod the Builder

The building program — works, dimensions, methods, materials, and what survives

Mordecai of Benjamin

Mordecai — an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, of the house of King Saul — rose to steward the Persian court, refused to bow to Haman, and helped turn back a royal decree to…

The Arithmetic of Islam

The claim that Islam itself is radical, tested against the counted number of jihadists, the terrorism death toll, the verdict of Islam’s own scholars, the survey record, and a…

The Covenant Line

Ishmael to Muhammad to today: the covenant bloodline from Noah as Islam’s own books carry it — the twelve princes, the head tribe, the custodians of the sanctuary, and the two…

The Herod Question

Part of the claimants thread. Everything the record holds on Herod the Great, and then the question of what it can support about him — and what it cannot.

The Julii of Judaea

Part of the claimants thread. The genealogy of the house of Herod as bearers of the Julian name — the marriages, the issue, the offices and the dates, stated from the record; the…

The Man of the Open Country

Part 1 of Bias Found, Bias Removed. The verse translated for centuries as “a wild ass of a man” living “in hostility toward all his brothers” — what the words…

Where Rachel Died

A death and a birth at a single spot on the road — yet the site is placed in the lands of two tribes at once, the mother is left out of the family tomb, and the birthplace of the…

Who Ruled the Land

Thirteen divisions of the country between the Jordan and the sea, c. 1200 BC – AD 135.