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Displaying 1 - 20 of 53 results
Early Israel: An Egalitarian Society
This is going to be a difficult article to illustrate, I thought to myself as I started to write this article for BAR. How do you illustrate something that isn’t there? This is an article about burials—or perhaps tombs would be more accurate...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2013
How Did Israel Become a People?
The genesis of Israelite identity
It used to be easy to identify the earliest Israelites. They are referred to in a well-known hieroglyphic stele known as the Merneptah Stele or, sometimes, the Israel Stele. The Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramesses II, proclaims in...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2009
Purity and Impurity in Iron Age Israel
Purification practices of ancient Israelite society before the introduction of mikva’ot remain largely unexplored. Recent excavations at Tel ‘Eton, in the southeastern Shephelah, yielded rich data on household life and practices in the tenth through the eighth centuries B.C.E. A large four-room house at Tel ‘Eton offers a rare glimpse of how Iron Age Israelites coped with the issues of ritual impurity, and it enables the author to reconstruct the purification ritual.
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2019
Pottery Talks
What Ceramics Tell Us About the Social World of Ancient Israel
So often it seems that pottery is boring. But the little bits of sherds that are ubiquitous on excavations tell us a lot. Thanks to pottery we can date structures such as buildings and...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2004
Aegeans in Israel: Minoan Frescoes at Tel Kabri
More than 3,500 years ago, the Aegean civilizations that produced the gorgeous frescoes of Minoan Crete and Santorini impacted Canaanite civilization in what is now northern Israel. We are presently excavating the palace in western Galilee...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2013
Were Words Separated in Ancient Hebrew Writing?
Twice in recent issues of Bible Review, in otherwise excellent articles, Harvey Minkoff has asserted that “Ancient [Hebrew] manuscripts generally did not leave space between words.”a Writing without word divisions is called scriptio...
Bible Review, June 1992
Ancient Biblical Interpreters vs. Archaeology & Modern Scholars
Around 25 years ago, Jim Kugel and I confided to each other that we each wanted to write a book for the general public. We both believed it important to make scholarship accessible to all. As it turned out, we each wrote several such books...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2008
The Question of Israelite Literacy
How widespread was the ability to read and Write in ancient Israel? Until recently, the answer usually was, “Quite limited.” The ability to write, it was said, was restricted to a class of professional scribes, who possessed a skill...
Bible Review, Fall 1987
Ideology in Stone
Understanding the four-room house
During the late 1920s, an expedition by the Pacific School of Religion discovered three houses of strikingly similar design at Tell en-Nasbeh, Biblical Mizpah. When the first of these was unearthed in 1927, excavators thought it was a temple...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2002
Samson in the Synagogue
At 6:00 A.M. on Wednesday, June 20, 2012, Bryan Bozung made an exciting discovery. A recent graduate of Brigham Young University, he has now begun studying for a Masters in Theological Studies at Yale University. But this morning he was...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2013
Does the Bible Exaggerate King Solomon’s Golden Wealth?
Those who read the Biblical text and make a subjective judgment as to its reliability often conclude—and understandably so—that the descriptions of Solomon’s gold are gross...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1989
Taking the Biblical Text Apart
For centuries, scholars from many backgrounds—religious and nonreligious, Christian and Jewish—have worked on discovering how the Bible came to be. Their task was not to prove whether the Bible’s words were divinely revealed to the authors...
Bible Review, Fall 2005
Re-creating the Tablets of the Law
How should we imagine the Tablets of the Law that Moses twice brought down from the mountain? Whether the story is legend or...
Bible Review, February 1994
Warren’s Shaft
Yes, It Really Was Used to Draw Water
So many articles have been written about Warren’s Shaft, the ink would probably fill it to overflowing. Yet the puzzle remains unsolved. By far the most intriguing suggestion that has been made about this 40-foot-deep1 vertical rock chimney...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2003
Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?
It’s one of the most famous lines in the Bible: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Impressive. Fascinating. Inspiring. Capable of a thousand interpretations and raising 10,000 questions. A remarkable proposition coming out of...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2014
Fleeing the Romans
Judean Refugees Hide in Caves
The Second Jewish Revolt against Rome, also known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt after its almost legendary leader, lasted from 132 to 135 C.E. Like the First Jewish Revolt of 66–70 C.E., it...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2006
Ebla and the Bible
What’s left (if anything)?
I remember it well. It was early October 1975. We were sitting on top of the tell having lunch. One of our guests, Afif Bahnassi, the director of the Department of Antiquities of Syria...
Bible Review, April 1992
Literacy in the Time of Jesus
Could His Words Have Been Recorded in His Lifetime?
How likely is it that someone would have written down and collected Jesus’ sayings into a book in Jesus’ lifetime? Several lines of evidence converge to suggest it is quite probable. The first factor to consider is how prevalent literacy was...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2003
Surprises at Yattir: Unexpected Evidence of Early Christianity
Archaeology is full of surprises. Sometimes we don’t find what we had expected to find. Or we find something we never expected to find. Either way, the experience is always exciting—and...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2001
How I Found a Fourth-Century B.C. Papyrus Scroll on My First Time Out!
This is almost as much a personal story of luck and adventure as it is an archaeological story. It tells of my first dig—my own dig, that is—after graduating with a B.A. in archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My story will...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1989