An Internet Search for the Riddle of the Sepulcher
The thesis of this paper is that the architecture of the Internet (the present) can be a valuable, yet limited, approach to the study of archaeology (the past). When seeking answers concerning the past, archaeology is a valuable resource, as long as it is remembered that archaeology, when answering questions, also poses new questions which in turn must be investigated. This concept is confirmed by a study of one sub domain of a larger domain, www.us-israel.org/jsource, which is essentially a portal site that is sponsored by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). This site, which is an introduction to all things Jewish, was selected as the source to test this thesis. It was decided that there would be a specific research question -- "Why is there so much uncertainty about the location of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher?" -- and that the complete source for answers would be one domain and its sub-domains. The answer to this question, if it is to be found (or, more importantly, understood) could be discovered at this site, since this site is said to be a good source for the investigation of archaeological questions. It was anticipated at the beginning of this project that there could be clues to the problem, if the available evidence were correctly analyzed. This investigation revealed one important conclusion: Researching on the Internet is quite similar to archaeological investigation but has several drawbacks. We shall analyze three of those drawbacks: 1) Point of View, 2) Scope, and 3) Intellectual fairness. These observations will be coordinated in a final conclusion.
After inputting the domain and locator, http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Archaeology/archintro.html, we are taken to a well-designed page that lists several specific topics that can be investigated more thoroughly. Hilla Geva, the author of the page tells us that "Archeology provides a valu...