Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1998
Features
Babatha’s Story
Personal archive offers a glimpse of ancient Jewish life
The column of Roman soldiers marched slowly south along the western shore of the Dead Sea toward En-Gedi, one of the region’s major governmental and commercial centers and a stronghold of Simon Bar Kosiba,a leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome. Two years...Read more ›
How Women Differed
Babatha’s archive, described in the foregoing article by Anthony J. Saldarini, is not the only Jewish woman’s archive found in the Judean desert. Another, much smaller archive, belonging to Salome Komaise, was discovered in nearby Wadi Seelim (according to the Bedouin from whom it...Read more ›
Illuminating Byzantine Jerusalem
Oil lamps shed light on early Christian worship
This is the story of how the puzzling inscriptions on some ancient oil lamps illuminate an entire era. These modest artifacts offer us a vivid picture of the spiritual life of the earliest Christian pilgrims. The inscriptions appear on a particular sub-sub-subtype of ceramic...Read more ›
The Missing Link
Does a new inscription establish a connection between Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls?
Not a single fragment of a Dead Sea Scroll has been discovered among the ruins of Qumran, the ancient settlement adjacent to the caves where the scrolls were found. Although many scholars have long assumed that the people who lived in this desert outpost...Read more ›
San Francisco Tremors
Not earthquakes, just academic rumbles
The Bible is the fault line that divides a significant segment of the scholarly world. It is the attitude toward the Bible that underlies the disparate battles, both institutional and substantive, that are being fought as I write. The fissures are deep. For 13...Read more ›
Where Is the Tenth Century?
Every archaeologist thinks his or her site holds the key to any issue that arises. Perhaps that is one reason why the focus was on Megiddo at the sessions titled “Where Is the Tenth Century?” at the Annual Meeting. Archaeologists David Ussishkin and Israel...Read more ›