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Reclassifies Names of Palestine Towns to Aid Archaeologists

May 13, 1937
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A book reclassifying names of Palestine sites mentioned in Biblical and post-Biblical literature is published today to overcome the confusion to archaeologists and map-makers caused by frequent changes in names of towns and cities.

The book is “Onomasticon of Palestine” by Dr. Paul Romanoff, curator of the Jewish Theological Seminary Museum. It is based on a study of the entire post-Biblical literature of the first thirteen centuries and comprises the first volume of the compilation.

Dr. Romanoff points out that some names changed so much through translation from early Hebrew into Latin and Greek and through carelessness of scribes that archaeologists have, in some cases, been looking for Biblical references about sites which references have already been discovered. The village of Kefar Kos, for example, has no less than 70 variants in the Talmud, Dr. Romanoff says.

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