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Displaying 1 - 20 of 41 results
Politics—Not Religious Law—Rules Ultra-Orthodox Demonstrators
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1997
Relics in Rubble: The Temple Mount Sifting Project
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.
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2016
Royal Palace, Royal Portrait?
The Tantalizing Possibilities of Ramat Raḥel
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2006
No Trained Epigraphist Would Confuse the Two
The Siloam tunnel inscription is written in a very well known Hebrew script. The script is found on other late-eighth-century B.C.E. inscriptions carved in stone, such as the so-called Royal Steward inscription found in Silwan village in 1870...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1997
The Garden Tomb: Was Jesus Buried Here?
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1986
Is This the Prophet Isaiah’s Signature?
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.
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April May/June 2018
Let’s be Serious About the Bat Creek Stone
Let me see if I have this straight. Some 19 centuries ago there was a group of Jews, citizens of one of the Judean port cities like Caesarea or Joppa, who fled their homes to escape the violence and confusion of the First Jewish Revolt...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1993
Hadrian’s Legion
Encamped on the Temple Mount
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,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2006
Royal Gateway to Ancient Jerusalem Uncovered
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1989
Did I Find King David’s Palace?
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: “...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2006
Achziv Cemeteries: Buried Treasure from Israel’s Phoenician Neighbor
Like so many archaeological projects, the excavation of the Phoenician tombs at Achziv was prompted by looters. In 1941, when Great Britain governed the land of Israel, the Mandatory Department of Antiquities assigned Dr. Immanuel Ben-Dor to...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2010
What’s an Egyptian Temple Doing in Jerusalem?
Recent attacks on the historicity of the United Monarchy of David and Solomon (in the tenth century B.C.) have focused on the scant archaeological remains that have been discovered in...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2000
Mounds of Mystery
Where the Kings of Judah Were Lamented
At the beginning of the 20th century, when Jerusalem, still centered around its ancient core, was surrounded by agricultural land and orchards, 20 mysterious earth-and-stone mounds rose above the city’s western horizon, clearly visible from...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2003
A Major New Introduction to the Bible
Norman Gottwald’s sociological-literary perspective
Norman Gottwald is one of North America’s leading biblical scholars, and he has just published a comprehensive introduction to the Hebrew Bible that will soon make his name known to a very wide audience. It is titled The Hebrew Bible—...
Bible Review, Summer 1986
Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple
A few hundred yards from Damascus Gate and over the wall from the Garden Tomb, magnificent burial cave lies beneath a Dominican monastery.
Damascus Gate, the most important entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City, fairly bustles with activity inside and out. Arab men in their robes and keffiyehs; Arab women in long embroidered...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1986
Temple Mount Excavations Unearth the Monastery of the Virgins
For ten years, between 1968 and 1978, the area south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was intensively excavated by archaeologist Benjamin Mazar.1 His many spectacular discoveries...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2004
The Mysterious Copper Scroll
Clues to hidden temple treasure?
The Copper Scroll (3Q15 or 3QTreasure) is an anomaly in the inventory of scrolls from Qumran. It does not fit readily into any of the categories customarily included when the scrolls...
Bible Review, August 1992
Burial Headrest as a Return to the Womb—A Reevaluation
In “The Peculiar Headrests for the Dead in First Temple Times,” BAR 13:04, Professor Othmar Keel takes issue with an earlier BAR article in which Amos Kloner and I discussed these stone headrests carved on top of burial benches (“Jerusalem...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1988
Is a Piece of Herod’s Temple in St. Paul’s Cathedral?
If you’d like to see what may be a piece of the Second Temple (Herod’s Temple), pay a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. I’ll tell you later where in the church it can be found. To explain how it got there, we must explore the life of a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2007
Pieces of the Puzzle
I sometimes think of Biblical studies as a vast jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. The book just published by Robert Deutsch and Michael Heltzer gives us 40 new pieces of that puzzle. In comparison with the slow pace at which...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1996