The Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) Project accessed Mercer Subglacial Lake using environmentally clean hot-water drilling to examine interactions among ice, water, sediment, rock, microbes and carbon reservoirs within the lake water column and underlying sediments. A ~0.4 m diameter borehole was melted through 1087 m of ice and maintained over ~10 days, allowing observation of ice properties and collection of water and sediment with various tools. Over this period, SALSA collected: 60 L of lake water and 10 L of deep borehole water; microbes >0.2 μm in diameter from in situ filtration of ~100 L of lake water; 10 multicores 0.32–0.49 m long; 1.0 and 1.76 m long gravity cores; three conductivity–temperature–depth profiles of borehole and lake water; five discrete depth current meter measurements in the lake and images of ice, the lake water–ice interface and lake sediments. Temperature and conductivity data showed the hydrodynamic character of water mixing between the borehole and lake after entry. Models simulating melting of the ~6 m thick basal accreted ice layer imply that debris fall-out through the ~15 m water column to the lake sediments from borehole melting had little effect on the stratigraphy of surficial sediment cores.

The WISSARD (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling) traversable hot-water drill system was designed to create various-diameter ice boreholes to a depth of >800 m, with most major components being controllable from a single user interface. The drill control system operates four low-pressure pumps for water generation and circulation, two hot-water generation units containing a total of six diesel burner modules with integrated high-pressure pumps, three winches (one with independent level-wind motor), a four-motor linear traction drive, and a large number of analog and digital sensors to monitor system performance and cleanliness. Due to development time constraints the control system design focused on utilizing commercial off-the-shelf components, while being highly modular, easily expandable and rapidly deployable. Additional emphasis was placed on providing redundant manual operator controls and maintaining a low degree of system automation to avoid dependence on software control loops for first-season deployment. The result of this design paradigm was a control system that was taken from concept to full operation in <6 months, successfully performing in the field without insurmountable problems.

A new, clean, hot-water drill system (HWDS) was developed by the Science Management Office, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for use in the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project to gain access to Subglacial Lake Whillans beneath ∼800 m of ice in West Antarctica. One primary borehole was drilled into the basal ice environment of Subglacial Lake Whillans during the initial field season in 2012/13. This paper describes the process of designing, fabricating, assembling, shipping, testing, commissioning and traversing the WISSARD HWDS leading up to the first scientific use of the system.

Successful hot-water drilling in the Antarctic is predicated on utilization of the abundant water supply available in the form of the Antarctic ice sheet. For WISSARD (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling) field operations, a snowmelting system was developed that could adequately provide water for a 1000 kW hot-water drill. The system employs ∼100 kW of waste heat from a 225 kW generator to melt snow for initial water (known as seed water) to prime the drill’s high-pressure pumps and water heaters; once the water heaters can be engaged in snowmelting, enough water can be supplied directly to the WISSARD drill to successfully melt a 40 cm diameter hole through 800 m of ice.

The fascinating legend of Solomon's magical wisdom was widespread in Late Antiquity, and new evidence for it has surfaced in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts. Yet the key literary text for understanding the legend remains the miracle story of Eleazar in Josephus's Antiquitates Judaicae 8.42–49. In this article, I would like to examine the story's form, content, and function. First, it is necessary to clarify the story by a formal analysis and by relating its form to other miracles within the corpus of Josephus, and to similar accounts of miracles in Late Antiquity. Next, I shall examine the way in which this miracle functions in the Antiquitates from the perspective of Josephus's overall apologetic purpose, his view of miracle and magic, his portrait of Solomon, his knowledge of the Jewish legend of Solomon's magical wisdom, and his immediate context for the story. Finally, I shall propose a modest hypothesis about Josephus's treatment of the Eleazar miracle in relation to his social location as a Jewish apologist to educated Greco-Roman readers in the first century CE.

A comprehensive view of the Son of David in the New Testament requires facing the following problem: on the one hand, Davidic quotations, metaphors, and the descent theme are derived from the Old Testament royal tradition as it is channeled through Jewish texts; on the other, the title Son of David is found only in the synoptic gospels and is associated primarily with a figure who is so addressed by people in need of exorcism or healing. The usual solution to this problem in works on Christology is to say that a) miracle working is not associated with the Jewish royal Messiah in general or the Son of David in particular in contemporaneous Jewish literature, and b) it is early Christian tradition and/or redaction which has transformed the traditional royal conception and linked it with miracle working.

The fundamental outlook in what follows is that there is a fairly consistent, compact, yet expanding and developing promise tradition which is founded on the promises to David (and his descendants) in the Hebrew Scriptures; that this tradition in certain ways has been rejuvenated and strengthened in the early Christian period; and that it enters Christianity in connection with the application of these promises to Jesus' resurrection apart from the title Son of David itself, a title whose acceptance and adaptation in early Christianity appears on both historical and redaction critical grounds to be relatively late. The hypothesis is not totally new. My intention will be to put some older information into what will hopefully be an illuminating perspective, to draw out some implications from the perspective itself, and to nail down the hypothesis of the use of Old Testament texts in connection with the resurrection of Jesus a little tighter. I have not undertaken here to trace out a history of tradition in the New Testament such as can now be found in C. Burger's excellent study, Jesus als Davidssohn, though the direction of the paper will support the legitimacy of his starting point in early Christian formulae.