
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 29, 1994                   TAG: 9407290071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: JERUSALEM                                LENGTH: Short

DISCOVERY CLAIMED OF JOSHUA'S CAMP

Vendyl Jones, a Texas Bible scholar, says he used NASA satellite photos to discover the spot where the Israelites camped when they arrived in the Promised Land. Jones said Thursday that the site lies in a lost city ``greater than Troy, greater than Pompeii.''

The only existing evidence of the Jews' arrival in Canaan about 1500 B.C., consists of references in ancient Egyptian writings.

Israeli archaeologists cast doubt on the find. ``Nobody knows where the real Gilgal is,'' said Avraham Biran, director of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. ``His guess is as good as any, but it could be anything,''

Gilgal was the first of four sites where the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred chest containing the Ten Commandments, rested in the Holy Land.

- Associated Press

by CNB