Near Eastern Archaeology Vol. 64 No. 3, September 2001,
carried a lead illustrated article, Herod the Great Shows His True Colors by David M. Jacobson, which we missed.
The opening paragraph, a quote, states "It is well known that ancient coins, and especially those of the Roman Imperial period, were used as a vehicle of political propaganda and ruler ideology. Herod's coinage is no exception. The largest bronze coin is perhaps the most enigmatic. Like his other coins, it refrains from depicting human images, presumably out of deference to the religious sensibilities of Herod's Jewish subjects, but displays attributes of pagan deities. The obverse of this coin portrays the tripod of Apollo. The reverse image includes the characteristic Dioscuri cap, a pointed hat topped with a star to denote the cosmic connection. "In Greek mythology the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, had both human and divine attributes and, in their role as "saviors," they responded to appeals for help from mortals in time of crisis, including war (Parker 1996)

Science, Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 296 No. 5577, 28 June, 2002 p. 2331 -
Random Samples edited by Constance Holden: "Noah's Flood" Theory Questioned - Many scientists accept the idea that the biblical story of Noah's flood was inspired by a sudden inundation of the Black Sea by the Mediterranean 7500 years ago. But new research suggests that no such flood occurred.
The "Noah's Flood Hypothesis," crafted in 1997 by Columbia University geologists Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman, proposes that during the last Ice age some 18,000 years ago, sea levels dropped, and the Black Sea became a freshwater lake isolated from the Mediterranean Sea. When the climate warmed, melting glaciers boosted sea level until the salty Mediterranean burst through the Bosporus and filled the Black Sea. The key to the theory is the sudden appearance of saltwater mollusks in 7500-year-old Black Sea sediments.
But a group of geologists led by Ali Aksu of Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, says there probably was no flood. Seismic images of sediments in the Mediterranean's Marmara Sea, across the Bosporus from the Black Sea, reveal a 10,000-year-old buried delta formed by water flowing out of the Black Sea. The images suggest that the flow reversed and salty water began pouring into the Black sea about 9000 years ago, the scientists report in an article in press at Marine Geology. So the appearance of the saltwater mollusks was not due to a sudden flood, Aksu says, but a steady rise in the Black Sea's salt content. The new evidence makes "the flood hypothesis impossible," says David Piper of the Geological Survey of Canada. But Ryan says the new theory can't explain why there are 9000-year-old beach deposits 350 feet below the surface of the Black Sea, suggesting that the sea dried up after the delta formed.

COMMENT: Won't it be satisfying when Christ returns to settle all such questions!

Science, Vol. 297 No. 5579, 12 July, 2002 p. 189 - Random Samples edited by Constance Holden
"In Me I Trust" People apparently really do like seeing themselves in others. A new study reveals that players bargaining for money in games are more likely to trust faces that remind them of their own.
Animal studies have revealed that many critters favor conspecifics that resemble them, a phenomenon called kin selection. "Since relatives share your DNA, it's another way of making sure your genes survive," explains evolutionary psychologist Lisa DeBruine of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. To see if humans do the same thing, DeBruine set up two-person games in which subjects, playing via computer, either divide a few dollars equally or trust the other player to divide a larger sum. In each "bargaining round," a subject interacted with one of 16 possible partners, whose faces were shown on the monitor. Some of these faces were totally unfamiliar, others were "morphs," made by combining photos of the 24 players themselves with photos of strangers.
In a paper in the 7 July issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, DeBruine reports that the subjects trusted faces resembling their own more than two times out of three, whereas they trusted unfamiliar faces only half the time. DeBruine tried morphs resembling celebrities such as Ben Affleck to see if mere familiarity inspired confidence, but it was only the self-resemblance that did it... .

Toronto Globe and Mail 1 August, 2002:

1. -UN report on Jenin faults both sides - by Irwin Arieff, UNITED NATIONS A UN report on an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp is expected to avoid using the word "massacre," as Palestinians have charged, but faults Israel for keeping out aid and medical workers after the raid, diplomatic sources said yesterday... . [Summary: The report mentions stockpiling of weapons in the West Bank, and the fierce fighting in Jenin, home to 14,000 Palestinians. Casualty reports from the two sides differ substantially.] Reuters News Agency [The Weekly Telegraph No. 576, Aug. 7-13, 2002 carried similar account.]

2. Flight 93's cockpit door rammed with cart: book - New York. Passengers aboard doomed United Flight 93 broke down the cockpit door with a food cart on Sept. 11, sending the hijacked airliner hurtling to the ground in western Pennsylvania, according to a new book. Among the Heroes says an assistant U.S. attorney told relatives of those aboard the flight about the use of the food cart as a battering ram when he met with them three months ago in Princeton, N.J. AP

Toronto Globe and Mail 2 August, 2002:
- Cornish is back - Britain plans to recognize Cornish, an ancient Celtic tongue, as an official minority language that is protected under European Union law. The last native speakers of Cornish died out in the 19th century, but scholars have revived it. There are about 3,500 speakers, with varying degrees of fluency, reports The London Observer. This year, the first Cornish feature film, Hwerow Hweg (Bitter Sweet) was released; it deals with the love affair between a drug addict and his teenage lover. Some handy Cornish phrases: Deth da, fatla genough why? (Hello, how are you?); Ues coref? (Is there any beer); and Ma na vyn cows Sawsnak (I will not speak English).

Also from the same source: Ancient Teenagers - The Sumerians have been credited with starting the first civilization and with inventing writing, reports Faye Flam in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Scholars are eagerly awaiting the first Sumerian dictionary, a 30-year project of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. Sumerologists at the museum hope to release an early version in 2004. Sumerians left a large number of clay tablets covered in a writing system that uses 600 symbols. Sumerologist Steve Tinney says his favourite Sumerian proverb is: "The road is bad, beer is good," which he takes to mean "travel is hard, but the beer is worth it." The Sumerians also seemed to have had multiple words for female genitalia. However, noted Sumerologist Tonia Sherlach, "you have to remember, many of these (tablets) came from a school" attended by preteen and teenage boys.

Time Magazine, August 6, 2002 carried a colour-illustrated half-page account of a possible buried "sleeping" Buddha, between (and larger than) those destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 575, July 31-Aug 6, 2002:

1. - Thoughts on the road to Canterbury - Dr. Rowan Williams was probably the least eager of the candidates for primate to push himself forward. However, in a previously unpublished interview, he gave Graham Turner his candid assessment of some of the most important issues facing the Church of England today [Summary: - The main, three-column, illustrated article investigates the views of the new Archbishop. Under the sub-heading "The hairy Lefty who nearly became a Catholic monk," an accompanying two-column article yields biographical information.

2. - Peter Simple writes of a surgeon who had to break off halfway through an operation because assistants did not know enough English to understand his orders. When he spoke of this, he was at once accused of racism. This pertains to another report in the same paper by Nicole Martin which begins: A SURGEON who complained that patients' lives could be put at risk by foreign nurses with a poor command of English is facing disciplinary action. David Nunn, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas's hospital NHS Trust in London, said he was forced to stop halfway through an operation because some of the nurses could not follow his instructions. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, meanwhile, confirmed that from next month all nurses trained outside the European Union who wish to work in Britain would face compulsory English tests... .

3. - World ends on Feb. 1, 2019 (maybe) heads an article by David Derbyshire SCIENTISTS had good news last week for people concerned about how long their pensions will last. The world could end anyway on Feb 1, 2019. Astronomers say a huge asteroid is scheduled to crash into the Earth at 11:47am on that day. If it does it would wipe out an entire continent, plunge the world into a nuclear winter and take humanity to the brink of extinction.
However, as seasoned asteroid story watchers will have realised, there is a catch. The odds that the world will end are currently estimated to be one in 250,000 and lengthening. That compares with the one in 10,000 chance of a person being killed in a car crash in any one year and the one in 100,000 of being murdered. The odds of winning the national lottery jackpot are one in 14 million. With astronomers taking an increased interest in the threat of near-Earth objects, doomsday asteroids are cropping up regularly. The latest armageddon rock is called 2002NT7. It was first seen on July 9 and since then scientists at Nasa and Pisa University in Italy have carried out orbit calculations every day. At one stage last week the chance was estimated at one in 60,000. They now believe it orbits the sun every 837 days, travels in a tilted orbit between Mars and Earth and is between 0.6 and 2.5 miles across. Preliminary calculations suggest that it will come close to the Earth in 2019. If it collides, its impact velocity on the Earth would be 18 mile a second - enough to throw up sufficient dust to block out the Sun, bringing devastation to the world's food supply. Dr Alan Fitzsimmons, of Queen's University, Belfast, and a scientist with the National Space Centre, said: Although we know roughly where it is going, its orbit needs to be refined." ...

4. - School head says no to other faiths By Liz Lightfoot, Education correspondent -
AN ANGLICAN priest who heads one of the most successful Church of England secondary schools has accused bishops of political correctness over their insistence that non-Christian pupils be admitted...[More details followed.]

5. (Editorial) Gibraltar strikes back [A referendum is being proposed.]

Toronto Globe and Mail, August 7, 2002: Obituary - Ira Puddington, NRC chemist whiz resisted 'brain drain' The Ottawa scientist conceived 57 major inventions during his career by Randy Ray, Ottawa
Ira Puddington had an uncanny ability to see the practical application of a theory or idea long before most others. Over the years his insight helped the Ottawa scientist conceive 57 major inventions that generated 125 patents in 19 countries... . [Summary notes: A New Brunswick native, He worked for the National Research Council of Canada for 63 years, inventing such things as a novel process for making precision ballbearings used in ballpoint pens, and "tilted settling," a process that causes minerals suspended in water to settle five times more quickly when the vessel containing them is tilted sideways. A university lecturer and professor, he also worked in industry. He died in Ottawa at 91.]

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 576, Aug 7-13, 2002:

1. Queen makes first visit to a British mosque by Jonathan Petre, THE QUEEN made her first visit to a British mosque last week in the cause of inter-faith tolerance and asked: "Which direction is Mecca?" She slipped off her shoes to enter the Islamic Centre in Scunthorpe, as part of efforts to repair relations between the Christian and Muslim communities after the September 11 attacks on America. The centre was included in the Queen's Golden Jubilee tour after it was vandalised in the anti-Islamic backlash. Its windows were smashed and slogans reading "Kill Muslims" were daubed on its walls... . [A paragraph later in the article stated that "The Queen's visit provoked warnings from traditionalist Protestants who said she was in danger of compromising her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. David Phillips, the general secretary of the Church Society, said that she risked "sending out the message that all faiths are equally valid".]

2. [Heading:] 2m migrants for UK 'each decade' leads an article by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor, which reports on "Migration Watch."

3. One third of clergy do not believe in the Resurrection, by Jonathan Petre, Religion correspondent.
A THIRD of Church of England clergy doubt or disbelieve in the physical Resurrection and only half are convinced of the truth of the Virgin birth, according to a new survey.
The poll of nearly 2,000 of the Church's 10,000 clergy also found that only half believe that faith in Christ is the only route to salvation.
Few bishops would share the views of the former bishop of Durham, the Rt Rev David Jenkins, who caused a scandal in the 1980's when he contrasted the Resurrection with a "conjuring trick with bones".
Nevertheless liberal clergy, who represent about one in eight of the total, remain profoundly uncertain about the Church's core doctrines. Two thirds expressed doubts in the physical Resurrection and three quarters are unconvinced by the Virgin birth.
Similar levels of belief were found in organisations such as affirming Catholicism, a liberal Anglo-Catholic group of which the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is a founding member.
Although Dr Williams holds firmly orthodox views on the Resurrection and the Virgin birth, the proportion of members of Affirming Catholicism who believe without question in the two doctrines is 35 and 24 per cent respectively.
Among the Modern Church-People's Union, whose president is the bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Rev John Saxbee, only a quarter believe in the physical Resurrection and just eight per cent in the Virgin birth. The survey, carried out by Christian Research, did find that clergy were more orthodox on other doctrines. More than 75 per cent accept the doctrine of the Trinity and a similar proportion believe that Christ died to take away the sins of the world. More than 80 per cent were happy with the idea that God the Father created the world. Unsurprisingly, the organisations whose members were the most traditional were Reform, a conservative evangelical group, and Forward in Faith, a traditionalist body.
The Rev Robbie Low, of Cost of Conscience, the traditionalist organisation which commissioned the survey. Said "There are clearly two Churches operating in the Church of England: the believing Church and the disbelieving Church, and that is a scandal." The survey was undertaken among 4,000 churches and reflected a representative sample of clergy, in terms of churchmanship and belief.

4. 'Aryan Rebel' was a spy - GERMAN police who arrested a man thought to be the leader of one of the country's most notorious neo-Nazi heavy metal bands found that he was an informant working for Brandenburg state, writes Hannah Cleaver. The 27-year-old, known as "Tilo S", is said to be the only permanent member of the banned music group White Aryan Rebels.

5. Stonehenge to let grass grow - FUNDING for a £57 million scheme that will replace visitors' facilities at Stonehenge, once described as a "national disgrace", and return the monument to a vast grassland landscape by 2008 was announced last week. The Government will pay £160 an acre to persuade arable farmers within the boundary of the 7,000-acre Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage site to restore their land to grass.

6. [Editorial:] Migration needs watching heads comments on the subject.

The Daily Telegraph, 6 August, 2002 [repeated in The Weekly Telegraph of August 14-20, 2002] carried an article by David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent, which reports "Half of all Europeans 'may have Arab genes'",
which would not surprise any who know that descendants of the Biblical Patriarchs form much of the population of the continent.

Toronto Globe and Mail of August 8 and 9, 2002: [and The Weekly Telegraph of August 14-20, 2002:] A number of news items in both sources detail the tragedy of Zimbabwe's present economic situation which is blamed on mismanagement and illegalities of astounding proportions.

Toronto Globe and Mail of August 9, 2002:

1. Plant genes can migrate, scientists say - Scientists say they have confirmed what farmers suspected for years: that genes introduced into plants can migrate to nearby weeds, possibly making them stronger and more resistant to chemicals... .

2. Painting restored to former glory - BATTLE, ENGLAND - A giant painting celebrating England's Battle of Hastings was restored to its former glory yesterday after spending nearly three decades stuffed under the floorboards of a local museum. The painting, measuring 10.8 metres by 6.8 metres, was commissioned from artist Frank Wilkin in 1820 to mark the epochal battle in 1066, when William the Conqueror's Normans defeated an English army led by King Harold.

Toronto Globe and Mail of August 13, 2002:

1. Controllers knew fate of plane on Sept. 11, officials say headed a column by Grant McCool, NEW YORK, which explained that air traffic controllers knew for 11 agonizing minutes that the second hijacked jet liner was going to hit the World Trade Center, but were helpless to do anything about it.

2. Test backs creation of oil deep in Earth By Stephen Strauss - Russian and American researchers have come up with a radically new recipe for making oil. [Summary: It involves rusty iron, marble, water, heat and pressure thought to exist more than 100 kilometres below the surface of the Earth. Methane, ethane, butane, propane and other hydrocarbons can result.]

3. First peek at fetus is no longer a blur, and Ultrasound gives anti-abortion groups new weapon in emotional war are headings to an article which shows that new instrumentation details and reveals the life of a fetus with more human indications not previously obvious.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 577, Aug 14-20, 2002:

1. The Queen and her subjects celebrate her Golden jubilee with colourful style.

2. The Archbishop in waiting becomes a druid with appropriate ceremonies.

3. Lab-grown teeth could replace dentures by Robert Uhlig and David Dedrbyshire
False teeth may be consigned to history after a British scientist succeeded in growing teeth in the laboratory. The breakthrough by Prof Paul Sharpe, head of cranio-facial development at King's College London, could herald the day when dentures are replaced by bio-engineered teeth grown in the laboratory.

The Foreword of The Ontario Press Council 29th Annual Report 2001
mentions the plight of news reporters in several countries. Mentioned are: murder in Pakistan, injury by grenade in Afghanistan, civil war, with both sides bent on silencing the press, in Algeria, and oppressive regime caprice in Botswana and Zimbabwe. "In fact in some countries arrest and jailing is a routine procedure."

The Globe and Mail, August 21, 2002: Obituary - Evdokia Petrov, 88,
the spy who, with her husband defected in 1954, and was shown in world press photos being hustled aboard a plane between two agents, bound for the Soviet Union from Australia. She was rescued when the plane stopped in Darwin to refuel.

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 578, August 21-27, 2002: Catholics in U-turn on converting Jews by David Rennie in Washington -

AMERICAN Christians are divided over a statement by US leaders of the Roman Catholic Church declaring that Jews should not be targeted for conversion. The statement, jointly issued by representatives of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Jewish leaders, states that the "saving covenant" God made with Israel is still valid, and was not superseded by the teachings of Jesus Christ.
America's largest denominations, notably evangelical Protestant groups, insist that conversion of Jews is a religious obligation and raise millions of pounds annually for missionary projects aimed at American Jews. America has the world's largest Jewish community. The declaration follows decades of improving relations between the Jewish faith and the Catholic Church, which advocated forced conversion of Jews until the 19th century. The statement, issued by a committee headed by Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, said: "A deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of a divinely given mission to Jews to witness to God's faithful love, lead to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable."
However, Martin King, a spokesman for the missionary wing of the Southern Baptist Convention - the second largest church in America after the Catholics - said that his church would continue their work of reaching out to Jews.
"The Bible says there is only one name under which man can be saved - Jesus Christ." He said.
Christian conservatives are staunch supporters of the state of Israel, rallying their faithful to demand strong backing for Israel from Congress. Many evangelical Christians defend Israel because they believe that the end of the world as predicted in the Book of Revelations, is imminent, and that those "End Times" must unfold in a Jewish state of Israel.

COMMENT: We trust that we speak clearly when we state that God's "Saving Covenant" to "Israel" in Biblical prophecy is that which is to be found alone in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).

The Globe and Mail, August 24, 2002: Obituary - Dorothy Macham,
The Driving force of Women's College Hospital. A former army nurse who attained the rank of major, and who was known as an efficient, thrifty administrator who exerted a spirit of gentleness and compassion. Died at 91.

The Globe and Mail, August 30, 2002: Obituary - Meredith Gardner, 89.
Reclusive genius cracked vital Soviet codes. Language whiz and crossword addict helped unmask wartime spy rings that passed atomic bomb secrets to Moscow. [Also in The Weekly Telegraph, No. 579, Aug. 28-Sept. 3, 2002.]