028 028 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...

024 As work begins on the infrastructure required to relocate the Israeli army’s bases and training facilities from Sinai to the Negev—in accordance with the Middle East peace agreements—Israel’s archaeological institutions have been mobilized to...

019 One of the most critical battles in early Israelite history was fought about 1050 B.C. between the Israelites and the Philistines. At that time, the Bible tells us, the twelve tribes had settled the land and the Ark of the Covenant had been...

044 BAR readers, as well as scholars, have long puzzled over the distinctive tripartite pillared buildings that have been discovered in so many excavations in Israel. Their architecture seems simple enough: long rectangular buildings divided into...

030 031 Not without some justification did Absalom arrange the murder of his half-brother Amnon. Amnon had raped Absalom’s sister Tamar. Nonetheless, fratricide among King David’s sons was not...

032 Seven times in one chapter (23) of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus curses the “scribes and Pharisees” as hypocrites and blind guides. This occurs after numerous disputes with leaders of the Jewish community in Galilee and a series of...

039 Recently Ada Yardeni, the foremost paleographer working in Israel today, made a startling claim: More than 50 Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts were copied by the same scribe.1 The 54 manuscripts came from six different caves: Qumran Caves 1, 2, 3...

023 At a site called Izbet Sartah, now believed by some scholars, to be Biblical Ebenezer, a recent excavation by Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan Universities has uncovered a small clay potsherd—unrelated to the Biblical story—which, however,...

How was the first woman created in Genesis 2? Was she made from the man’s rib or, as recently suggested in BAR, from his os baculum (penis bone)?

022023 Brave, wise and stunningly beautiful, Esther and Judith have much in common. Both Jewish heroines live under foreign domination. Both risk their lives to save their people from...

038 In this issue four prominent scholars tell BAR readers how the scrolls changed their lives. Harvard’s Frank Cross is the doyen of Dead Sea Scroll scholars; his views come in an interview with BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In the pages that...

028 029 It is a commonplace that every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Actually, this is true only if you count Ezra-Nehemiah as one book—as,...

We like to think of Holy Writ as unchanging, but the ancients didn’t. A study of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals that texts could exist in different forms—even be consciously modified—without losing their sanctity.