Why Is Life So Much Harder for Some People Than Others?

CHRISTY FITZWATER

 

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(http://www.stockfreeimages.com)

Why does one woman suffer with diabetes her entire life while another is healthy?

Why does one woman lose her house in a fire while another woman’s house stands?

Why does one woman wait longingly to see one positive pregnancy strip while another woman drives a van full of kids?

I made a discovery in the Bible recently that helped to answer this question for me.

Turn, Turn, Turn

With gratitude to God, I write these words overlooking the walls of Jerusalem just two hours before the holyday of Sukot starts and just two miles from where King David himself celebrated Tabernacles. 

Yet, even while wrapped in Jerusalem’s eternal spiritual transcendence, I am typing on a first rate computer connected to high speed Internet in an air-conditioned office.

Many cities like Istanbul, Prague, and Tallinn display similar contrasts between ancient and modern.  But Israel’s ever-present ancient aura is the fuel propelling the country into modernity.

With fewer than 10% of the population of her four contiguous neighbors, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, Israel’s Gross Domestic Product is about equivalent to the aggregate of those four countries.  Imagine if tiny Rhode Island produced more wealth than Georgia.  Instead, as you’d expect, Rhode Island’s GDP is about 1/10th of Georgia, which has about ten times the population of Rhode Island.

One explanation routinely offered for the abysmal economic performance by Israel’s four neighbors is Israel’s existence.  There are problems with that excuse.  One, they weren’t doing any better before 1948 or before they launched several unsuccessful wars against Israel.  Two, being surrounded by enemies, the monumental costs of self-defense impose a disproportionate burden upon the tiny Jewish state. 

The Great Purpose of Christian Stewardship

1 Chronicles 16:23–36

Retired missionary Paul R. Lindholm begins a reflection on what he views as the overriding purpose of Christian stewardship—glorifying God—with a humorous vignette:

A church choir director asked a clerk in a music store for a copy of an anthem with the title, “The Glory of the Lord.” The clerk called to the person working in the storage shelves for a copy. Finding none, the clerk called down: “The Glory of the Lord” is out of print.

In print and in thought, the shekinah glory of our Lord does not have the prominence nor attention it should have.

Ant Safari

by Dennis Fisher

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Read: Proverbs 6:6-11

Go to the ant . . . . Consider her ways and be wise. —Proverbs 6:6

Bible in a Year:
Proverbs 4-7

In his book Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions,Mark Moffett reflects on his early childhood fascination with ants—an interest that didn’t die as he grew older. Moffett’s preoccupation led to his earning a doctorate at Harvard and then embarking on worldwide travel as an expert on the subject. His study has given him marvelous insights about these industrious creatures.

Long before Moffett discovered some of the wonders of the ant world, the Scriptures remarked on the ingenuity and work ethic of these tiny insects. Ants are held up by wise King Solomon as an example of industry for those who tend to be lazy: “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain . . . provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest” (Prov. 6:6-8).

Choose Your Part

“Then the king said, ‘Bring me a sword.’ So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order: ‘Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.’ The woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, ‘Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!’ But the other said, ‘Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!’ ” — 1 Kings 3:24–26

In the opening chapters of the book of Kings, King Solomon is granted one wish. In this original genie-in-the-bottle moment, God appears to Solomon in a dream and invites him to ask for anything. King Solomon chooses to ask for wisdom. He places wealth, health, and immortality on the back burner, so that he can best serve God in his role as the king.

Immediately afterwards, we read the famous story about two women who approach the king about a dispute over a baby. The first woman claims that the other woman stole her baby after the woman accidentally killed her own child when she rolled over the baby during the night. The second woman denies the claim and insists that the living child is hers. King Solomon’s new gift of wisdom is demonstrated to the nation as he cleverly discerns the truth by offering to cut the baby in two in order to give both women half. As Solomon anticipates, the true mother is revealed when the second woman pleads with the king to give the whole child to the other woman rather than put the child to death.

What Does It Mean to Say the Holy Spirit Is "in Me"?

JAH230
Hank Hanegraaff

Over the past several decades, I have been asked the “in” question in a variety of different ways such as: “What does it mean to say God is ‘in’ my life, Jesus is ‘in’ my heart, or the Holy Spirit is ‘in’ me?” Does it mean that everyone simultaneously has a little piece of God in them? Or is the Bible communicating something far more precious?

First, to say that the Holy Spirit is in you is not to point out where the Holy Spirit is physically located, but rather to acknowledge that you have come into an intimate, personal relationship with Him through faith and repentance. As such, the preposition in is not a locational but a relational term. Similarly, when Jesus says, “the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 10:38 NIV), He is not speaking of physical location but intimacy of relationship.

Furthermore, to deny that the Holy Spirit is spatially locatable within us is not to deny that He is actively locatable within us, working redemptively to conform us to the image of Christ. Far from detracting from our nearness to the Holy Spirit, the classical Christian view intensifies the intimacy of our relationship to the Creator as well as the benefits of our redemption.

Finally, according to the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit is not a physical being, thus to ask where the Holy Spirit is, is to confuse categories. Asking spatial questions about a Being who does not have extension in space makes about as much sense as asking what the color blue tastes like. King Solomon reveals the utter futility of believing that the infinite Holy Spirit can be physically contained in any finite space, let alone the human body, when he exclaimed, “Will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27 NIV).²

— Hank Hanegraaff

NOTES

1.        Adapted from Hank Hanegraaff, The Bible Answer Book (Nashville: J. Countryman, 2004).

2.        For further study, see Hank Hanegraaff, “The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit,” http://www.equip.org/articles/the-indwelling-of-the-holy-spirit.

This article first appeared in the Ask Hank column of the Christian Research Journal, volume 29, number 4 (2006). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to:http://www.equip.org

gotquestions  http://www.equip.org/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-say-the-holy-spirit-is-in-me-

TREASURE OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

Posted on Sep 12, 2008 in Lost Treasure

 

aftermath of the First Crusade of 1096 AD, a small group of French noblemen led by Hugues de Payens formed a monastic order of knights. Their mission was ostensibly, to make the roads of the holy land safe for Christian pilgrims – but protection of the holy land may have just been a cover story…

Many believe the Knights had actually traveled to the holy land in search of buried treasure!

It’s believed the Templars were in possession of an ancient scroll – a treasure map of sorts, pointing to the fabled treasures of King Solomon. So, it’s no surprise that the knights chose, as their command post, the captured Al Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount – which just happened to be constructed right over the ruins of the second temple of King Solomon.

The Al Aqsa Mosque, on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The Crusaders called it The Temple of Solomon, as it was built on top of the ruins of the original Temple. It was from this location that the Order took their name - The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or just plain ol' Knights Templar.

According to legend, the Templars spent the next nine years excavated beneath the ancient temple, eventually finding a vast network of tunnels – and then Solomon’s treasure.

There’s been much speculation about what the treasure consisted of – The Ark of the Covenant, massive hordes of gold from King Solomon’s Mines, or ancient texts revealing secret knowledge or the Holy Grail have all been suggested.

But there’s no doubt that they found something of enormous value, because upon their return to France in 1118 Pope Innocent II granted the order total freedom from every authority but his own.

With their newfound autonomy the Knights Templar quickly became the most powerful military organization in the medieval world.

THE TEMPLARS RISE TO POWER

After the Templars were recognized by the Pope, noblemen flocked to join them. New members were required to turn over all their worldly possessions to the order, so vast estates were acquired throughout Europe. Benefactors such as Alfonso I of Aragon bequeathed his entire kingdom to the Templars.

The swelling ranks of nobles made the Knights vastly rich, and they grew still richer through international trade, banking, and the spoils of war. Their commercial activities rivaled many states and could be compared with multi-national conglomerates of today.

The Templar’s Stronghold in Paris became a key European financial center, its strongrooms reputed to hold a fortune in gold, silver and gems.

But In the end the Templars were victims of their own sucess…

AH, TREACHERY!

Success, wealth and power bred envy and resentment, especially from those who were heavily in debt to the order – and there was no one more heavily indebted to the Knights than King Philip IV of France. When the King asked the Templars to forgive his massive debt, they refused. So, King Philip devised one of the most devious schemes in the history of mankind.

By this time the Templars were so strong and powerful that King Philip dared not face them in open battle – instead he drew up a list of trumped up charges against the Order, among them; denying Christ, worshiping the devil and sodomy.

In the early hours of Friday, October 13th, 1307, envelopes containing secret arrest orders were opened simultaneously by hundreds of French Sheriffs throughout the land. The Templar’s Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, along with hundreds of other prominent Templars, were arrested in the name of the Inquisition and, with blessing of Pope Clement V, charged with heresy.

The day came to be known as Black Friday, and from that day on, Friday the 13th would be considered unlucky.

As the flames took hold, de Molay, spoke his final words..."Clement, iniquitous judge and cruel torturer, I assign you to appear in forty days, in front of God's court! And you too, King Philip!" De Molay's curse came to fruition - both the King and the Pope died later that year.

On March 18th, 1314, seven years after his capture,  Jacques de Molay – 22nd and final Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Templar – was burned at the stake, taking the secret of the Templar’s disappearing treasure to the grave.

THE VANISHING TREASURY

While the goal of defeating the order had succeeded, the real goal of King Philip had failed. Immediately after the arrests, the King’s agents found the Templar treasury had vanished without a trace, as had almost the entire Templar naval fleet.

Confirmation of the disappearance of the treasure was made by John of Chalons, a Templar sergeant, who gave evidence at his own trial. Chalons said that some of the Templars had been tipped off about the arrests and a a group of 24 brave Knights managed to sneak the gold, silver, and jewels out of Paris in three wagons covered over with hay.

The Templars made their way to La Rochelle, a port city on the Atlantic coast of France, where they loaded the treasure aboard Templar ships. Then the Templar fleet simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.

WHERE DID THE TEMPLAR’S TREASURE GO?

The destination of the Templar fleet and the treasure it allegedly carried has been debated ever since, but many historians and treasure buffs agree that the most likely destination would have been Scotland.

At the time of the Templar Holocaust, Robert the Bruce controlled most of Scotland. Bruce had been excommunicated by the Pope in 1306, one year before the persecution of the Templars began.

Basically, the papal decree that outlawed the Knights Templar was not applicable in Scotland, or at least the parts of the country that Robert the Bruce controlled. This would have made Scotland a very desirable location for the outlaw fleet.

While there is no concrete historical evidence that the Templars ended up in Scotland, there are some tantalizing clues…

Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn
• The Battle of Bannockburn On June 24 of 1314, Robert the Bruce, with approximately 6,000 Scots miraculously defeated 20,000 English soldiers at the Battle of Bannockburn.
  Exactly what took place has never really been recorded, but It’s believed by some that Bruce won with the help of a special force of Knights Templar. The Battle of Bannockburn was made famous in the Finale of Mel Gibson’s 1995 Oscar-winning movie, Braveheart. Unfortunately, the Knights Templar weren’t in Mel’s Version.
• Templar Symbols Throughout Scotland there are carvings and tombstones using early Templar imagery – skull and crossbones, Templar swords, Templar crosses – and Masonic symbols (compass and square). This has led some historians to believe that modern Freemasonry was originally developed as a way for the surviving Templars in Scotland to preserve their history and to do so in secrecy – as they were hunted men at this time.
• Rosslyn Chapel The Knights Templar built an extraordinary number of castles, churches, cathedrals and temples all over Europe. These edifices were built in styles previously unknown. Most noticeable were the unusual icons which suggest pagan connections.
  An excellent example can be found in Rosslyn Chapel in the village of Rosslyn, Scotland. The chapel was built in 1446, by Sir William St. Clair, more than a century after the formal suppression of the order. Many people have speculated that the ornate carvings in the chapel hold the key to the secret of the Templar’s fabled treasure.
  Rosslyn Chapel figures prominently in Dan Brown’s Davinci Code, and Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

For more information on the Knights Templar check out http://www.templarhistory.com/http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/treasure-of-the-knights-templar/#more-180

Queen Of Sheba And Ethiopian Gold

Ethiopia has been an independent state since ancient times, being one of the oldest countries in the world. A monarchical state for most of its history, the Ethiopian dynasty traces its roots to the 10th century BC. Besides being an ancient country, Ethiopia is one of the oldest sites of human existence known to scientists today, having yielded some of humanity’s oldest traces, it might be the place where Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond.

Ethiopia has close historical ties to all three of the world’s major Abrahamic religions. It was one of the very first Christian countries in the world, having officially adopted Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century and it still has a Christian majority.

The area now that is now the country named Ethiopia was once called the Empire of Axum. The Axumite (Aksumite) Empire at its height extended across most of present-day Eritrea, northern Ethiopia, Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia and northern Sudan. The capital city of the empire was Axum (Aksum), now in northern Ethiopia.

Axum was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa, growing from the proto-Aksumite period ca. 4th century BC to achieve prominence by the 1st century AD. It was a major player in the commerce between the Roman Empire and Ancient India and the Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own currency. The state established its hegemony over the declining Kingdom of Kush and regularly entered the politics of the kingdoms on the Arabian peninsula, and would eventually extend its rule over the region with the conquest of the Himyarite Kingdom.

Under Ezana Aksum became the first major empire to convert to Christianity and was named by Mani as one of the four great powers of his time along with Persia, Rome, and China. In the 7th century the Muslims who originally converged in Mecca, sought refuge from Quraysh persecution in by travelling to Aksum which is known in Islamic history as the First Hijra. Its ancient capital is found in northern Ethiopia. The Kingdom used the name “Ethiopia” as early as the 4th century. It is also the alleged resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and the purported home of the Queen of Sheba.

Aksum is mentioned in the 1st century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea for its importance in trade, which was exporting throughout the ancient world, and states that the ruler of Aksum in the 1st century AD was Zoskales, who, besides ruling in Aksum also controlled two harbours on the Red Sea: Adulis (near Massawa) and Avalites (Assab) located in Eritrea. He is also said to have been familiar with Greek literature.

Aksum was deeply involved in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean. It benefited from a major transformation of the maritime trading system that linked the Roman Empire and India. This change took place around the start of the Common Era. The older trading system involved coastal sailing and many intermediary ports. The Red Sea was of secondary importance to the Persian Gulf and overland connections to the Levant. Starting around 100 BC a route from Egypt to India was established, making use of the Red Sea and using monsoon winds to cross the Arabian Sea directly to southern India. By about 100 AD the volume of traffic being shipped on this route had eclipsed older routes. Roman demand for goods from southern India increased dramatically, resulting in greater number of large ships sailing down the Red Sea from Roman rule in Egypt to the Arabian Sea and India.

The Empire of Aksum was the first African polity economically and politically ambitious enough to issue its own coins, which bore legends in Ge’ez and Greek. From the reign of Endubis up to Armah (approximately 270 to 610), gold, silver and bronze coins were minted. Issuing coinage in ancient times was an act of great importance in itself, for it proclaimed that the Axumite Empire considered itself equal to its neighbors. Many of the coins are used as signposts about what was happening when they were minted. An example being the addition of the cross to the coin after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Ethiopia was the first country to print the

The 1st coin to use the cross. Struck after King Ezanas' conversion to Christianity in 330 AD

Christian cross on its coin. The presence of coins also simplified trade, and was at once a useful instrument of propaganda and a source of profit to the empire.

According to the Hebrew Bible, the unnamed queen of the land of Sheba heard of the great wisdom of King Solomon of Israel and journeyed there with gifts of spices, gold, precious stones, and beautiful wood and to test him with questions, as recorded in First Kings 10:1-13 (largely copied in 2 Chronicles 9:1–12).

2 Chronicles 9:1 And when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon, she came to prove Solomon with hard questions at Jerusalem, with a very great company, and camels that bare spices, and gold in abundance, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.

9 And she gave the king an hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices great abundance, and precious stones: neither was there any such spice as the queen of Sheba gave king Solomon.

It is related further that the queen was awed by Solomon’s great wisdom and wealth, and pronounced a blessing on Solomon’s God. Solomon reciprocated with gifts and “everything she desired,” whereupon the queen returned to her country. The queen apparently was quite rich, however, as she brought four and a half tons of gold with her to give to Solomon (1 Kings 10:10).

In the biblical passages which refer explicitly to the Queen of Sheba there is no hint of love or sexual attraction between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The two are depicted merely as fellow monarchs engaged in the affairs of state.

The biblical text, Song of Solomon (Song of Songs), contains some references, which at various times, have been interpreted as referring to love between Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The young woman of the Song of Songs, however, continues to deny the romantic advances of her suitor, whom many commentators identify as King Solomon. In any case, there is little to identify this speaker in the text with the rich and powerful foreign queen depicted in the Book of Kings. The woman of the text of the song clearly does regard “The Daughters of Jerusalem” as her peer group.

Today gold remains one of Ethiopia’s main exports.

http://ethiopiangold.com/history/

WAS THERE A QUEEN OF SHEBA? EVIDENCE MAKES HER MORE LIKELY

By COLIN CAMPBELL

THE Queen of Sheba is described in the first Book of Kings, Chapter X, as having visited King Solomon in Jerusalem ''with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones.'' She tested the wise king with ''hard questions,'' evidently got the right answers, and then departed as mysteriously as she had arrived.

But did she really exist? The question has been argued for years. Many scholars and archeologists have assumed that the biblical land of Sheba was in southwestern Arabia, where the ancient Greeks placed the Sabaeans and where some noble ruins testify to the inhabitants' former glory. So perhaps, since her country existed, the biblical Queen of Sheba existed.

One flaw in this hypothesis has been that Solomon ruled Israel in the 10th century B.C., three centuries earlier than the oldest known remains of Sheba's highest civilization.

But now an archeologist at the University of Pennylvania, James A. Sauer, who has headed an archeological project in the area of ancient Sheba for the past five years, argues that Sheba is older than some scholars have believed.

Dr. Sauer's hypothesis, stated in a recent paper on the project, is based partly on an excavation in a dry valley called Wadi al-Jubah, about 25 miles south of the remains of Sheba's capital at Marib, in the eastern region of present-day Yemen.

The cut was made in a likely-looking mound called Hajar at-Tamrah, the Mound of the Date Palm, and near its bottom archeologists found broken pottery and a piece of timber that radiocarbon tests indicated was from the 13th century B.C. In such tests traces of carbon 14, a natural radioactive isotope of carbon, are used to determine the age of fossil and archeological remains.

At another, larger mound, Hajar ar-Rayhani, American excavators have turned up pottery, ash and evidence of a copper foundry dating to the 7th century B.C., and the diggers still have several yards and several centuries to go before they reach the oldest layers of the mound.

Although such findings are still just hints, Dr. Sauer believes that further excavations will eventually provide evidence for those scholars who have assumed that Sheba was a considerable trading nation by the time of Solomon, and was thus capable of sending a monarch to pay a call on another rich monarch whose capital lay 1,400 miles to the north.

''These findings are very preliminary,'' Dr. Sauer said recently as he stood in his darkened office at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia. A satellite photograph projected on the wall beside him showed the Arabian Peninsula, a red and yellow block surrounded by bright blue seas. ''But they fit in with recent excavations in Saudi Arabia, where some very early finds have also turned up, also older than the 10th century B.C., and I think they demolish the idea that South Arabian civilization is too young to have sent a queen to Jerusalem.''

Although archeological excavations since the 1920's have convinced some specialists that southern Arabian civilization dates to the 10th or 11th century B.C., part of the evidence for this chronology comes from excavations in what is now the country of Southern Yemen rather than from the area around Marib, Sheba's capital. In ancient times there were several kingdoms in southern Arabia, including Hadhramaut, Main and Qataban as well as Sheba.

In Sheba, however, a great stone dam near Marib, an elegant temple to the local moon god, bronze and albaster statues and other signs of wealth and civilization are all considerably younger than Solomon's time. Riddle of Greek Alphabet

One other factor that has tended to cast doubt on the idea that Solomon and the Queen of Sheba actually met has been the argument by the Belgian scholar Jacqueline Pirenne that the many inscriptions from the ancient kingdoms of southern Arabia were based on the Greek alphabet, and that the area's high civilization, heavily influenced by the Greeks, probably dated back no further than about the 5th century B.C.

This thesis, which has been advanced since the mid-1950's, has been rejected by most American linguists and archeologists. The Americans say that the alphabets of southern Arabia derived, not from the Greek alphabet, but from northern Semitic alphabets such as the Phonecian, from which the Greek alphabet was also derived. But the Pirenne hypothesis has helped keep the matter of South Arabian chronology somewhat doubtful.

Commenting on Dr. Sauer's archeological work in general, Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeology magazine, said: ''He's very good on chronology. If he says it's 10th century or 13th century, it probably is.''

From Washington, Dr. Gus W. Van Beek, curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, said Dr. Sauer's project in Wadi al-Jubah was potentially important. Dr. Van Beek also believes in the plausibility of a Queen of Sheba visiting Solomon, although her visit would have been for trade and economic reasons, the normal modern explanation, rather than to test Solomon's wisdom.

Dr. van Beek cautioned, however, that carbon 14 dates could be misleading, and that further samples needed to be taken. Dr. Sauer agrees, and has pointed out that the piece of wood from Wadi al-Jubah that the carbon 14 test dated in the 13th century B.C. could already have been a century or more old when it was put to use in that settlement, and thus much older than the pottery and other signs of human culture found in the same layer. Civil War Hampers Research

Dr. Van Beek's own archeological research in southern Arabia makes him think that high civilization in the area dates to perhaps the 10th or 11th century B.C., when it was imported from the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and the eastern Mediterranean coast, but not as far back as the 13th century.

Dr. Van Beek was a member of a major expedition in southern Arabia in the early 1950's that was organized by Wendell Phillips and included the eminent biblical archeologist William F. Albright. Dr. Van Beek conducted detailed investigations at Hajar Bin Humeid, a site south of where Dr. Sauer has been working. Hajar Bin Humeid was part of the ancient kingdom of Qataban. Today the site is in Southern Yemen, a Marxist country where a civil war was recently fought.

One reason that southern Arabian archeology is filled with uncertainties is that careful work in Yemen and Southern Yemen has been hampered by insecurity. The Phillips expedition abandoned its equipment and fled Sheba's capital by truck one morning, saying their lives had been threatened by hostile tribesmen. Now, more than three decades later, Dr. Sauer's archeologists are usually accompanied by armed Government guards. Domestication of the Camel

The Wadi al-Jubah is a valley that Dr. Sauer believes was once inhabited by people who made their living as the people at nearby Marib did, by irrigated agriculture, exploiting the water that periodically rushes down from the rainy mountains to the west. He suspects the ancient inhabitants also traded in frankincense and myrrh derived from plants native to southern Arabia and East Africa.

A key to the spice trade was the domestication of the camel, which some scholars date around the 12th century B.C. The camel was the only pack animal able to negotiate the long waterless marches between southern Arabia and the markets to the north, including Egypt and Mesopotamia as well as the Israel of Solomon.

Dr. Van Beek, Dr. Sauer and others argue that the reason the Queen of Sheba visited Solomon was to help assure that her incense would be properly distributed. Israel was strategically located between empires and was itself enjoying its wealthiest period. The temple in Jerusalem was said to have consumed huge quantities of incense. As for the gold and precious stones in the biblical account, they too might have come from southern Arabia or East Africa.

Unfortunately, the account of Sheba in the Bible provides few other details, and the elaborate tales about the Queen that have been told for centuries seem to have originated elsewhere. Some legends gave her a name: Nikaule in Greek, Bilqis in Arabic, Makeda in Ethiopic. Ethiopian stories about the Queen of Sheba became extraordinarily rich, and are still written in an alphabet closely related to the ancient Sabaean alphabet. Ethiopian tradition held that the country's kings were descendants of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Other Problems Are Posed

Despite the leanings of some modern archeologists, the Biblical Queen of Sheba still poses many problems, according to Dr. Sauer and others.

For one thing, the ancient inscriptions of southern Arabia name many kings but no queens. There were queens elsewhere in ancient Arabia, according to Assyrian documents, but apart from the Biblical story and related traditions, no evidence has appeared of a queen in southern Arabia.

Dr. Karl Lamberg-Karlovsky, director of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, has followed Dr. Sauer's work with what he calls ''constructive skepticism.'' The carbon 14 dating is ''very tenuous,'' he said in a telephone interview. He also said there was no hard information on the relations between Wadi al-Jubah, Marib and Sheba, and little data to link the area with camels and camel caravans.

Dr. Lamberg-Karlovsky said it was jumping to conclusions to link Marib, Sheba and Wadi al-Jubah with a story in the Bible. Such stories, he suggested, sometimes cloud historical and scientific issues. Archeologists still know very little, he said, about the cultures of ancient southern Arabia.

Other archeologists, including Dr. Sauer, agree about the extent of archeological ignorance. The large mound of Marib, Sheba's capital, has barely been scratched by archeologists, and the Government of Yemen, whose capital is Sana, has responded cautiously to proposals to cut into it.

But Dr. Van Beek and others said the Dr. Sauer's approach was sound. His group has been conducting excavations that generally involve the painstaking analysis of every bead, bone, seed and shard.

One member of Dr. Sauer's project has been Albert Jamme, a leading expert on inscriptions from southern Arabia. Dr. Jamme was the chief epigrapher for the Wendell Phillips expedition in the early 1950's.

Other archeologists in the project include Jeffrey A. Blakely, William Glanzman and Abdu O. Ghaleb, all graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, and Michael Toplyn of Harvard. The project is under the auspices of Harvard's Peabody Museum, Pennsylvania's University Museum and the American Schools of Oriental Research. The project has been largely financed by the American Foundation for the Study of Man, founded by Wendell Phillips. Mr. Phillips, who also made a fortune in the oil business, died in 1975.

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/04/science/was-there-a-queen-of-sheba-evidence-makes-her-more-likely.html?pagewanted=all