The discovery in the ancient Byzantine village of Shivta has thrilled archaeologists. Although the painting is fragmented, experts from Israel's University of Haifa were able to make out the facial outline.

The painting, which is believed to date from the sixth century A.D., depicts Jesus as a short-haired youth. Continue reading

Little was known about the Philistines prior to the recent excavation in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon.

The famed arch enemies of the ancient Israelites - Goliath was a Philistine - flourished in this area of the Mediterranean, starting in the 12th century BC, but their way of life and origin have remained a mystery. Continue reading

A team of forensic researchers and the University of St Anthony of Padua's Anthropology Museum used a digital copy of the saint's skull.

They applied the latest 3D technology to come up with what they called "one of the most faithful reconstructions of the face of St Anthony".

Brazilian 3D designer Cicero Morales of the University of Sao Paolo was asked to reconstruct the saint's face, knowing only that the skull belonged to a 36-year-old male.

When he found out who the subject was, he was amazed.

The facial reconstruction is now on display at the basilica dedicated to St Anthony in Padua.

In 1946, Pope Pius XII proclaimed St Anthony a Doctor of the Church.

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Orchestrated under the Israel Antiques Authority (IAA) with support from Google, the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library is a free, online archive comprised of thousands of high resolution fragments.

History, now, is literally brought to the homes of people everywhere, accessible by computer and smart phone.

As IAA General Director Shuka Dorfman says on the library's website:

"We have succeeded in recruiting the best minds and technological means to preserve this unrivalled cultural heritage treasure which belongs to all of us, so that the public with a touch of the screen will be able to freely access history in its fullest glamour."

The first of the scrolls was discovered in 1947 in the West Bank, in what is often called one of the most important archaeological finds in history, and certainly in the 20th century. Continue reading.

Source: HuffingtonPost

Image: Fragment from the Tobit scroll, an apocryphal text from Second Temple times. Shai Halevi, IAA

Artefacts from the Hohi Mission Station at Kerikeri have uncovered details about the daily lives of the first permanent European settlers, researchers said.

University of Otago Anthropology and Archaeology Associate Professor Ian Smith and Archaeology Honourary Research Fellow Dr Angela Middleton led the excavation team. Continue reading

Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, said his evidence of the flood in Genesis comes from the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey.

He and his team were investigating a controversial theory, proposed by two Columbia University scientists, that the Black Sea was once an isolated freshwater lake surrounded by farmland — until it was flooded by an enormous wall of water from the rising Mediterranean Sea.

Four hundred feet below the surface, the team unearthed an ancient shoreline, proof to Ballard that a catastrophic event did happen in the Black Sea.

By carbon dating shells found along the shoreline, Ballard said he believes they have established a timeline for that catastrophic event, which he estimates happened around 5000 BC. Some experts believe this was around the time when Noah's flood could have occurred.

"It probably was a bad day," Ballard said. "At some magic moment, it broke through and flooded this place violently, and a lot of real estate, 150,000 square kilometers of land, went under."

In the Netherlands, John Huibers spent three years building a replica of Noah's ark exactly as outlined in Genesis.

The vessel — 427 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet high — now floats in the waters of Dordrecht, just south of Rotterdam, and is receiving up to 3000 visitors a day.

Inside, visitors can find a virtual petting zoo of a variety of domestic animals, including horses, sheep, dogs, rabbits and birds. In the absence of more dangerous animals, such as alligators and lions, or other creatures that Huibers was not able to obtain for the display, plastic models stand in their place.

Huibers says the ark serves a serious purpose. "We want to tell people about God," he says. "We wanted to build something that can help explain the Bible in real terms."

Sources:

ABC News

Christian Post

Christian News

Image: Brian Banmiller