Three significant scholars—who shaped and influenced the field of Biblical archaeology—recently passed away, but their legacies live on. The impact of Lawrence E. Stager, Ephraim Stern, and James F. Strange will be felt for generations to come.

056 Political power, not religious law, motivates the ultra-Orthodox in Israel who violently protest archaeological excavations, claiming that ancient Jewish graves are being desecrated. Jewish religious law (halakhah) does not prohibit...

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is one of the world’s holiest sites; archaeological excavations are prohibited here. But, in November 1999, the Islamic trust that controls the Islamic structures on the site bulldozed a massive area in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount and dumped the excavated debris into the Kidron Valley. Two archaeologists are running a pioneering project to wet-sift this debris to search for Temple Mount artifacts that have been concealed for centuries.

026 “We shun controversy,” BAR editor Hershel Shanks likes to tell visitors to our offices. Yeah, right. BAR was not founded as a muckraking publication, but in our day we’ve had our share of causes, controversies, battles—even an international...

064 The entire staff of the Harvard Semitic Museum—home of one of this country’s most important archaeological collections—has been dismissed, leading to a rancorous contretemps concerning the institution’s leadership and its future direction...

038 According to the Gospels, Jesus died and was removed from the cross on a Friday afternoon, the eve of the Jewish Sabbath. A wealthy follower named Joseph of Arimathea requested Pontius Pilate’s permission to remove Jesus’ body from the cross...

032 032 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...

034 The first Judahite royal palace ever exposed in an archaeological excavation is bei ng rediscovered. And with this renewed interest come echoes of what is probably one of the bitterest rivalries in the history of Israeli ar chaeology—between...

044 It’s been 28 years since we finished our excavations at Nabratein and we’ve just published our final report, a hefty volume of 472 pages.1 Twenty-eight years may seem like a very long time; but for us, it seems like yesterday. We retain...

057 Some call it Turkey’s Stonehenge. In fact, the circles of massive stones standing high on a hill are more than 5,000 years older than Britain’s famous megaliths. From Göbekli Tepe (“Potbelly Hill”) in southeastern Turkey, you can see 50 or...

040 First-time visitors to Jerusalem are often surprised to learn that two very different sites vie for recognition as the burial place of Jesus. One is, as its name implies, the Holy Sepulchre Church; it is located in a crowded area of the...

The Ophel excavations at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount have yielded numerous exciting discoveries, including a new Biblical signature. Archaeologist Eilat Mazar reveals what may be a seal impression of the prophet Isaiah—unveiled here for the first time ever—in honor of Hershel Shanks’s retirement as Editor of BAR.

077 Four participants in a Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls were interviewed in a MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour report this past spring. The four had attended a BAS seminar at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North...

053 After the Romans destroyed the Temple and burned Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Xth Legion (Fretensis) of the Roman army camped on the southwestern hill of the city, in the area known today as the Citadel, by Jaffa Gate.1 This was not,...

034 The relatively plain ossuary (bone box) described in the preceding article by André Lemaire is doubly important to the study of early Christianity. It is the earliest archaeological artifact ever found that refers to Jesus; in fact, it is the...

032 The Talmud is, after the Bible itself, Judaism’s most significant and revered collection of sacred writings. Although the Talmud was in fact written and compiled between the Second and Fifth centuries A.D., rabbinic tradition holds that...

038 Dedicated to the memory of Professor Yigal Shiloh. The love and devotion he brought to the discovery of ancient Jerusalem will continue to inspire us for many years to come. For ten years—from 1968 to 1977—the area adjacent to the southern...

052 053 The search for the historical patriarchs of Genesis has taken some dizzying turns in the last half-century. From the 1940s through the 1960s, scholars proclaimed that the patriarchal...

016 016 There can be little doubt that King David had a palace. The Bible tells us that Hiram of Tyre (who would later help King Solomon build the Temple) constructed the palace for David: “...