Monday, March 21, 2011

In Search of Atlantis: It is the Biblical City of Tarshish

Simcha Jacobovici, the Naked Archaeology, has claimed that the Biblical city of Tarshish is the lost city of Atlantis. His claim is based on the work of Professor Richard Freund which has been presented in a documentary aired on The National Geographic Channel. Freund has been excavating the old Spanish city of Tartessos located in southern Spain.

Below is an excerpt of a report published in The Jerusalem Post:

Hartford University Prof. Richard Freund’s work in uncovering Atlantis is the subject of the documentary Finding Atlantis, which the National Geographic Channel began airing this month. The film was largely an Israeli creation, produced in part by Israeli producer Simcha Jacobovici.

According to Jacobovici, “it is generally acknowledged that the Biblical Tarshish is what the historians call Tartessos, which was in southern Spain. In the Tanach, Tarshish is a great city with a huge navy, with silver and gold. Jonah sails towards Tarshish. Solomon has naval expeditions with Tarshish. Tarshish disappears from the Biblical record. Tartessos disappears from the historical record.”

Says Jacobovici, “Tarshish is Atlantis itself.”

Below is a video featuring Professor Freund:



I have to say that I do not believe that Atlantis was the Biblical city of Tarshish. I saw the documentary and was not convinced that Atlantis was in Spain.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am the author of the "Atlantis refers to Tartessos" theory which inspired the "Finding Atlantis" documentary by the National Geographic Channel. Maybe it will be helpful if I post some comments here.

My theory was published in the June 2004 issue of the journal "Antiquity". My scientific article inspired the team headed by Sebastian Celestino Perez and Juan Jose Villarias Robles to perform the archaeological and geological expedition in the Donana National Park. Their work began in 2005. They performed two expeditions in the Marisma de Hinojos to test the theory. The first one (for one week) in July 2006 and the second one (for five weeks) in August and September 2009. Richard Freund and collaborators contributed significantly to the geological and geophysical work of the second expedition. I am not a member of the two teams, but I stay in contact with them.

The National Geographic documentary was performed in November 2010. I was filmed on 8 November, Juan Villarias (and collaborators) the following day.

My theory was published here:
http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/kuhne/
http://www.springerlink.com/index/l230650842118002.pdf

The preprint of the second article was posted here:
http://vixra.org/abs/1103.0058

A very brief version of my Tartessos = Tarshish = Atlantis theory can be found here:
http://vixra.org/abs/1103.0040

I posted a very brief review of the preliminary results of the archaeological expedition of the team headed by Celestino and Villarias here:
http://vixra.org/abs/1104.0035

I hope that these comments may be helpful.

Kind regards,

Rainer W. Kühne

Dr. Claude Mariottini said...

Dear Dr. Kühne,

Thank you for this information. I will read your articles and respond to them at a later date. The readers of my posts who want to know more about your theories will appreciate reading the articles.

Claude Mariottini