Hi everyone. Its Shelley here, VP of The Jerusalem Connection. For all who have been anxiously keeping up with the news about the Copper Scroll Dig, I am now back from Israel after three weeks covering the first phase of the archeological dig. The explorer, Jim Barfield, the rest of the team and I were very excited to finally get this project underway and get the first shovels in the ground. Unfortunately I have very little to report since there was only a small amount of digging accomplished this time around. The Copper Scroll has 60 sites listed; we dug at 3 of those sites, none of which we got to the required depth. There are a few reasons for the slow pace. Only 3 licensed diggers are allowed to excavate one site at a time so even though we had plenty of anxious volunteers no one extra was allowed to help with the labor. The other problem is that all 60 sites need to go to a depth of at least 7 feet. Considering that every chunk of dirt that comes out of the ground in Israel has to be documented and studied makes for a tedious exercise when digging that deep. Our other problem was that we just weren’t given as strict a dig schedule as any of us hoped for. We were at the mercy of a long list of holidays, our archeologist’s reserve duty, and it took extra time to get specific equipment secured.
The bad news this time is that nothing was found. But the good news is that the dig goes on and as much as nothing has been proven, it also hasn’t been disproven. This may be a long haul ahead of us but I will keep you updated along the way. Stay tuned to our July/August magazine issue where I will give a fuller report.
*Shelley Neese is the vice president of The Jerusalem Connection. Click here for her articles and videos.
Hi, cool post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for writing.