By Andrew L. Jaffee

Sir Isaac Newton — no slouch, inventor of calculus, discoverer of the basic principles of planetary orbital motion, a father of optics, who elucidated gravity — predicted the world will end in 2060. Correspondingly, consider the list of “10 Failed Doomsday Predictions.” Now consider that evidence has surfaced showing that the much-over-hyped Mayan “prediction” of the end of the world in 2012 may be off-target:

… A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, much as our year ends on Dec. 31.) …

Hmmm… I’m still not convinced that the Maya “predicted” anything for 2012. Rather, their civilization collapsed, their astronomers lost their jobs, and probably stopped calculating calendric events (maybe just simple dates) when they reached 2012.

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By Barry Rubin

In my entire life I have rarely read an article which simultaneously showed the need to be well-informed before reading a newspaper and the shocking shortcomings of mass media coverage of the Middle East than this minor piece about the reopening of the Cairo synagogue. I’ve never said this before but will now: If you want to understand the Middle East’s reality and how it is distorted in the media, read the following analysis.

Have a little patience and I think you will see precisely what I mean.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

An alliance — if one can call it that — of Arabs, Muslims, leftists, and fascists — has spent years trying to delegitimize Israel’s existence and deny the rights of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland. Yet any cursory look at these delegitimizers’ “proof” shows them to be ignorant, racist people — especially uninformed about archaeology. Yet more evidence has been found showing an ancient Jewish presence in the Holy Land:

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered an ancient quarry where they believe King Herod extracted stones for the construction of the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Monday. The archaeologists believe the 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) quarry was part of a much larger network of quarries used by Herod in the city. …

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by Cinnamon Stillwell*

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue.

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More evidence has been found corroborating Biblical texts:

A wall mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says. …

The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians. …

See also: Jeremiah: Biblical and Historical Convergence

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them… Did the great Maya — masters of astronomy, architecture, poetry, hydrology, engineering, mathematics, art, written language, agriculture, road building, politics, pageantry, propaganda, weaponry — see the end coming? Were they so different from us? Millions now sit back indulging in perversions masquerading as “entertainment,” like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, Xtreme Fighting, Grand Theft Auto, and Top (Dead) Model’s beautiful corpses. Are we so different from them? Look at this Classic Age fresco, from National Geographic, most assuredly a piece of mainstream Mayan propaganda and/or art (below).

Are we at the edge now? Not yet. Is the precipice in sight? I would say that prime time porn and violence is a bad sign. Don’t remember the Mayan ball game? How about the Colosseum or Circus Maximus? It hasn’t been that long since Andy Griffith was considered mainstream. Look where we are now. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when they are enumerated in text books?

In a terrifying expression of royal power, a stucco mural at Toniná shows a turtle-footed skeleton grabbing the hair of a severed head—with portrait-like features, perhaps of a real person—and a mythical rodent holding another head in a ritual bundle. These characters were the wayob, the affliction-spewing alter egos of kings that were used to curse enemies. They work here amid a scaffold bearing the heads of human sacrifices.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Regardless of the “larger debate between scholars known as biblical ‘minimalists’ and ‘maximalists’,” this little clay tablet proves that the Babylonians knew about Jews and Israel in 595 B.C. Sorry to the historical revisionists: you cannot erase Jewish history. From Time Magazine:

… The tablet itself is certainly genuine. On July 10 the [British] Museum announced that a Viennese expert working his way through thousands of similar clay documents in its possession translated one dating from 595 B.C that described a gift of 1.7 lbs. of gold to a Babylonian temple by a “chief eunuch” named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin.

A museum official called it “a world-class find.” What makes the ancient but seemingly mundane receipt significant is that the book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) mentions the exact same official — though under a different transliteration, Nebo-Sarsekim, and a different title, chief officer, as accompanying the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar when he marched against Jerusalem in 587.

According to some experts, that proves that whoever wrote Jeremiah wasn’t making it up. …

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The violent history of the Maya has been sanitized as nonviolent, proving that having a “Ph.D.” after your name doesn’t really prove anything. Case in point: Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night accused Mel Gibson “of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie” Apocalypto. Estrada, in a superior display of historic ignorance, argued “that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist.”

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I don’t know how many of you are fans of archeology, let alone that of Meso-America, but there are certainly those of you interested in the politically-correct whitewashing of terrorism. How are the two subjects related? Let me explain. The justification of current-day terrorism is advocated by the same ilk, those who would rewrite the modern-day cause of terrorist atrocities (e.g., “Palestinians are driven by desperation”), as well as those who would edit, for example, the pre-Columbian history of Mexico. Recent archeological evidence shows that the Aztecs were indeed as despicable as reported by Spanish Conquistadors, defying politically-correct rationalizations for the tribe’s thirst for human sacrifice.

I recently watched a History Channel “documentary” which either 1) rationalized the Aztec tribe’s insatiable appetite for human sacrifice on the grounds that they were “deeply religious” people, afraid that, if not enough ritual blood was spilled, the sun wouldn’t rise the next day; or 2) the Spanish Conquistadors, led by Hernando Cortez, made up their accounts of mass Aztec human sacrifice rituals as a form of propaganda.

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