“Searching for Paul’s Shipwreck on Malta”

A Critique of the 700 Club’s February 26, 2010 Program
内容: Tags: munxar reef, bob cornuke, shipwreck, malta, acts 27, 700 club--> On Friday morning, February 26, 2010, on CBN’s 700 Club program, Chuck Holton submitted a report about a man who believes he found an “amazing Biblical discovery” on Malta. This nine-minute video segment featured Robert Cornuke presenting his theory about the location of the Apostle Paul’s shipwreck on the island of Malta.http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/February/Searching-for-Pauls-Shipwreck-on-Malta/Cornuke, in his persona as a “former Los Angeles crime scene investigator,” approached the account of the shipwreck of Paul in Acts 27 and 28 as a “crime scene.” As he read the Biblical text, he concluded there were four “clues” that needed to be found in order to solve the “crime.” He identified these as: (1) a bay with a beach; (2) a reef or sandbar where “two seas meet”; (3) a seafloor with a depth of 90 feet; and (4) a place the sailors would not have recognized. Cornuke concludes that the shipwreck occurred on the eastern shore of Malta, not on the northern side of the island as most scholars believe.Conuke’s theory and investigations, as presented in this news segment, were already set forth in his 2003 book entitled, The Lost Shipwreck of Paul (Bend, OR: Global Publishing Service). In the book, his view is that the Alexandrian grain ship containing the Apostle Paul and Dr. Luke was shipwrecked on the Munxar Reef on the island’s eastern end. Cornuke claims to have located, from among the local spear fishermen and divers, six anchor stocks which could have been from this shipwreck (cf. Acts 27:29, 40), four of which were located on the east side of the Munxar Reef in fifteen fathoms, or ninety feet of water (cf. Acts 27:28). He identifies the “place where two seas meet” (cf. Acts 27:41) as the Munxar Reef and the “bay with the beach” as St. Thomas Bay (cf. Acts 27:39). He concluded that neither the sea captain nor his crew would have recognized the eastern shoreline of the Maltese coast when it became light on the morning after they dropped anchor (cf. Acts 27:39). Unfortunately, Cornuke’s theory simply does not hold water.Experts and Computer ModelsCornuke consulted Graham Hutt, an expert on Mediterranean storms, and Hutt concluded that the ship would have been driven by the winds to the southeast quadrant of the island, and that the more likely place of the shipwreck was the Bay of St. Thomas.In the book, Cornuke described a visit to the Rescue Coordination Center of the Armed Forces of Malta (2003:184-193). Here he watched a computer model that plotted the possible course of a ship caught in a windstorm from Crete to Malta. The ship landed, after 14 days in a severe windstorm, in the St. Thomas Bay!The limitations of storm experts and computer models were well illustrated by the recent Nor’easter that hit the Northeast United States on Feb. 25-26, 2010. The storm was a prime example of what computer models and meteorologists could not predict. The meteorologists on television said that this “monster storm” defied all the computer models and did not behave as any of the meteorologists predicted it should!Bay with a beachThe beach in the St. Thomas Bay was identified as the “bay with the beach.” The earliest maps of Malta show that the Munxar Reef, at one time, was actually a series of small islands. Possibly in the first century AD, this location would have been a lengthy peninsula that has now eroded away. If that is the case, the sea captain, in all probability, would not have been able to see the low-lying beach of St. Thomas Bay from the area where the four anchor stocks were found and almost certainly, he would not have dared to sail his ship through the dangerous islands or peninsula to reach the beach! Thus, the Bay of St. Thomas could not be the beach that the captain saw or where the sailors and passengers swam to.Reef or Sandbar where the “two seas meet”Several times in the news segment the Munxar Reef is described as a “sandbar.” A careful examination of a geological map would have identified the reef as being made of “Middle Globigerina Limestone.” This soft limestone is rock not a sandbar.The identification of the “two seas meet” is based on two Greek words, “topos dithalasson”, that are translated different ways in different translations. Professor Mario Buhagiar, of the University of Malta, cautions that this term does not offer any real help because it can have several meanings and the way it is used in Acts 27:41, does not facilitate an interpretation. A place where two seas meet (Authorized and Revised versions) and a cross sea (Knox Version) are the normally accepted translations but any beach off a headland (Liddell and Scott) or an isthmus whose extremity is covered by the waves (Grimms and Thayer), as indeed most water channels, can qualify as the place where the boat grounded. The truth is that the Acts do not give us sufficient clues to help in the identification of the site (see link at bottom for full bibliography).Anchors at 90 feetMr. Cornuke interviewed people, primarily divers and spear fishermen, who claimed to have located four anchors on the south side of the Munxar Reef at 15 fathoms, or 90 feet of water. Two other anchors were allegedly found near the Munxar Reef in 10 meters (ca. 33 feet) of water. Cornuke implied in his book that these two anchors were the ones put in the skiff when the sailors tried to escape (Acts 27:30). These interviews are the author’s primary evidence for Paul’s shipwreck.Unfortunately only two actual anchor stocks can be examined. They are on display on the second floor of the Malta Maritime Museum in Vittoriosa. The other four, however, are not available for scholarly consideration. One of the anchor stocks was melted down, another is in a private collection, and two were allegedly sold on the antiquities market.Unfortunately the video clip of the anchors in the Malta Maritime Museum is very misleading. It shows 6 or 7 anchors on display, but only two are from the Munxar Reef. One of them, called “Tony’s anchor,” was one of the smallest of those on display. It measured about 3 feet, 8 inches in length and would be too small for the stern of an Alexandrian grain ship.On the other hand, Professor Mario Buhagiar examined the other anchor and gave a cautious analysis, “It could have belonged to a cargo ship, possibly a grain cargo ship, and possibly one from Alexandria” (2003: 183). He went on to conjecture, “This anchor stock would fit very well within the era of St. Paul” (2003: 184). Although this anchor could have been from an Alexandrian grain ship, suggesting that it was from Paul’s shipwreck certainly goes beyond the available evidence.Did not recognize the landIn the 1st century AD, the island of Malta was, in essence, the “Turn Right to Sicily” sign in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Malta was the landmark for sailors sailing west from Crete who were about to turn north to Sicily.

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Tall el-Hammam 2008: A Personal Perspective

Tags: sodom, gomorrah, tall el-hammam--> In January 2009, we will be back in the field for our fourth season of excavating at Tall el-Hammam1, Jordan.Situated seven miles north of the Dead Seaand nine miles east of the Jordan River, it is the largest site in the southern Jordan River Valley.Surface surveys and archaeological excavations suggest that activity at the site began with the earliest Biblical references to the region and continued intermittently right through New Testament times.Tall el-Hammam is rich with remains from almost every period.While I will have more to tell after we return and have an opportunity to analyze our finds from this season, as I leave for Jordan I wanted to share what we presently know about the site down through history, especially as it relates to the Bible. One of the most important things that happenedduring the 2008 digseason was the completion of a joint agreement with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.While we already have an excavation permit from the Kingdom’s Department of Antiquities (DoA), we now have officially entered into a whole new level of relationship with the department.The Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project (TeHEP) is now a cooperative effort between the College of Archaeology, Trinity Southwest University and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan.This partnership allows for our excavation team to work hand-in-hand with our Jordanian counterparts both in the field during the excavation season as well as in the research lab the rest of the year.Their expertise will provide great insight and support to our research. Map of the southern Jordan River Valley, the area known as the kikkar (“the plain of the Jordan” – Gn 13:10) in the Hebrew Bible.Tall el-Hammam is number 8 on the map, a site which many scholars have suggested was Abel Shittim in the time of Moses and the TeHEP thesis is that the site might have been Sodom in Abraham’s time).Note that the sites on the east side are a good distance from the Jordan River and close to the Jordan mountain range, east of the Jordan River Valley – suggesting a river flooding problem and the ancient roadway circling wide along the edge of eastern mountains.It would have been from these mountains that Balaam looked down on the Israelites and tried to curse them (Nu 22-24) and it was to these mountains that Moses ascended up to Mount Nebo and died (Dt 34). Credit: Trinity Southwest Seminary The Early Bronze Age: Tall el-Hammam and the Table of NationsThe earliest city was centered on the lower tall (tel in Hebrew [Jos 11:13] and tell or tall in Arabic; an artificial mound created by the building, destruction and rebuilding of cities at the same location) and pottery we collected here suggests that occupation goes back well before 3,000 BC. It appears the site was continuously occupied from the Chalcolithic Period through the Middle Bronze Age. The working hypothesis of the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project is that our site is the best candidate for the Biblical city of Sodom.That would make the lower tall the city mentioned in Genesis 10 (the Table of Nations).This chapter describes the post-Flood population as it spread throughout the ancient Near East, listing a number of cities by name.It says that descendants of Ham built four cities in ancient southern Mesopotamia (Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh), four cities in northern Mesopotamia (Nineveh, Rehoboth, Calah and Resen), three cities on the western border of Canaan (Sidon, Gerar, Gaza), and five cities on Canaan’s eastern border (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Lasha). Scholars generally believe the Bible locates Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim (called cities of the plain/kikkar of the Jordan – Gn 13:10) on the eastern side of the Jordan River and Dead Sea. That would also locate the eastern border of Canaan and the Canaanite culture there (Gn 19:10).While rivers regularly served as ancient national borders, the Jordan River appears not to have been the eastern boundary of Canaanite culture throughout many of the Biblical periods.Apparently an even greater boundary in the area was the high Jordanian mountains.Getting up and down those mountain slopes was even more difficult than fording the Jordan River. Similarities in the archaeological evidence from both sides of the Jordan River Valley support such a cultural boundary.Pottery from the Early Bronze Age at Tall el-Hammam connects most closely to pottery at early sites west of the Jordan River. Consequently, our lower tall would represent the Sodom whose wickedness brought God’s judgment by the time of Abraham (Gn 13:13; 18:20).Based on architectural and ceramic evidence we found this season, it appears this oldest city was actually twice as large as we thought before the season began.The lower tall (over 40 acres) was surrounded by a four-meter wide city wall with towers.A continuation of the wall’s stone foundation was traced this year around the base of the upper tall (another 40 acres) as well.That would make Early Bronze Age Tall el-Hammam about a kilometer long from east to west, with a circumference of three to four kilometers – one of the largest cities at that time in all the ancient Near East. Whole storage jar from 8th-7th centuries BC, found just a foot below the modern surface of the tall.It came from the remains of a typical house of that time period. In connection with this Early Bronze city at Tall el-Hammam, and about 200 yards east of the site, is a massive dolmen field on the edge of the foothills.Dolmens are ancient miniature “Stonehenge”-type structures.Each one was constructed with upright megalithic stones serving as the four walls and flat top, 7 x 7 x 7 feet on average.While scholars are not really certain how they were used, the lack of both pottery and bones seems to suggest they were neither houses nor tombs.Instead, they may have served a cultic or ceremonial purpose, each one possibly representing an extended family.Dating as far back as the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (3000 BC), they may have served as a sort of family shrine or funerary monument for the departed. Called the Ar Rawda Dolmen Field, with over 100 extant dolmens, the area is being threatened by development.So, TeHEP is fortunate to have a couple of contemporary studies being done on this dolmen field connected to our site.An international project is conducting an ongoing spatial analysis of the dolmen field while a comprehensive survey to identify and record all the dolmens in the area has been undertaken by Hussein al-Jarrah on behalf of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities.Hussein is also the DoA director of the region where Tall el-Hammam is located, and he works side by side with us when we are excavating as a member of the TeHEP staff. The Middle Bronze Age: Tall el-Hammam in the Days of Abraham and LotThe Middle Bronze Age city, destroyed by fire, was centered on the 40-acre upper tall.In fact, the shape of the tall today is due to the construction of a mudbrick rampart which may extend from the top of the tall and down the slope all the way to that Early Bronze Age city wall at its base.On the upper tall we had already identified the rampart beneath Iron Age city structures in a number of squares.Its construction would have been a massive undertaking and evidence of both a strong government and a prosperous community. Last season we were also able to trace the Middle Bronze Age stone city wall and a couple of towers around much of the western end of the lower tall.That, along with ceramic evidence in the lower city, suggests the Middle Bronze Age city also extended over that area as well.We will need to excavate in the lower tall to clarify these things; but either way, the massive rampart makes it clear that the central city at that time was focused on the upper tall. Down twelve feet from the modern surface of Tall el-Hammam, the excavators reached a Middle Bronze Age house in a destruction layer, beneath 10 feet of Iron Age strata.Steven Collins, Director of the Tall el-Hammam Excavation Project (TeHEP), is in the foreground left, the author is in the rear on the right. On the upper tall a number of mudbrick walls have been found still partially standing,

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