The historical-critical method of Bible interpretation is “indispensable”, declares a remarkable new report of the Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Roman Catholic Church.1 “Proper understanding [of the Bible] not only admits the use of this method but actually requires it...

038 Feminism—and the movement arising from it—may be the most important revolutionary development in human history. It seeks nothing less than the true equality of women. Some have compared the feminist movement to the Copernican revolution: Like...

044 The passage from Mark which follows, has always been a puzzle: If your hand offends you, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled, than with both hands to depart for hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot offends...

010 Karl Marx, when he was living in Highgate, London, was once asked to address a group of theologians. On his arrival, the meeting place was full of tobacco smoke, and Marx remarked, “Theologians always cloud the issues.” When I remind...

062 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...

080 Not long after the unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls became accessible last autumn, Professor Robert Eisenman of California State University, Long Beach, disclosed that he had discovered among the hitherto secret manuscripts a small, five-line...

058 059 The common romantic image of the archaeologist—a discoverer clearing his way through the jungle to explore ruined cities and temples or crawling into mysterious tombs full of ancient...

034 Archaeologists often accuse Biblical scholars of ignoring archaeological materials that could significantly illuminate the Biblical texts that scholars are studying. As one archaeologist recently put it: “Most [Biblical] commentators do not...

074 On January 29, 1935, during the third season of excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, a site thought to be Biblical Lachish, archaeologists discovered a collection of 18 ostraca, or inscribed potsherds. The ostraca had been covered by a thick layer...

070 In “The Case of the Gilded Staircase,” BAR 10:05, Professor Morton Smith attempts to prove that the Temple envisioned by the Essenes had a gilded staircase to reach the roof of the Temple where members of the Dead Sea sect worshipped the sun...

Debir, a district capital of the Judean monarchy which figures prominently in Joshua and Judges, was misidentified by the great William F. Albright, according to Professor Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University. Professor Kochavi argues that he, not Albright has excavated the true site of Debir—at Khirbet Rabud, in the Judean hill country, twelve miles southwest of Hebron.

041 ”You may not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk” is one of the Bible’s more puzzling interdictions. This short phrase—only five words in Hebrew (lo’ tebasûsûel gdi bah\aleb ‘immo)—is repeated three times, once in Exodus 23:19, again in...

020 021 Sermons in stone,” “sermons in glass”—these multimedia figures of speech should surprise no one, since for long periods of time and in a broad range of places the largely illiterate...

038 Among his many other accomplishments, the third president of the United States rewrote the Bible. That might seem a remarkably audacious thing for anyone to do, but it was quite natural for a man of Thomas Jefferson’s complex nature. He was a...

023 Most people think that the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible are two names for the same thing. Actually, they are quite different, as I shall show—even though all of the books of the Hebrew Bible are indeed included in the Old Testament:...

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.

038 Computers can find patterns hidden in obscure recesses of biblical literature. Knowing what patterns to look for, however, still requires human intelligence. What these patterns mean, once they are identified, is also a matter that requires...

028 029 028 The world’s oldest literature—poetry as well as prose—belongs to the Sumerians, that fascinating, enigmatic people who settled...

026 One of the most dramatic finds ever made relating to the Bible is the famous Black Obelisk of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (ruled 858–824 B.C.E.), excavated by Austen Henry Layard at Nimrud in 1846 and now prominently displayed in the...