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Displaying 1 - 20 of 26 results
Acting Like Apes
The Bible’s Alpha Males
A few weeks ago, my family went ape. Literally. Within the space of seven days, we visited the primate exhibits at the San Diego Zoo, watched an IMAX film about Jane Goodall, borrowed an educational video about apes from the library and...
Bible Review, June 2004
Exorcising Demons
Pazuzu...Lamashtu...Khatyu...Sheseru...Sasam...Lilith...Asmodeus...Beelzebub.... Names to conjure with. Literally. Years ago, when I was a student at Harvard, my teacher Frank Moore Cross raised a puzzling question: Why do demons—so prominent...
Bible Review, October 2004
Did Moses Have Horns?
Michelangelo’s monumental Moses immediately captures the attention of visitors to the church of St. Peter in Chains in Rome. The sculptor has created a vision not merely of the lawgiver, but of Israel’s God as conceived by pre-modern...
Bible Review, February 1988
The “House of David” and the House of the Deconstructionists
Davies is an amateur who “can safely be ignored”
In response to Philip R. Davies’s brief article (“‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20:04), a few observations are in order. Apart from the details of the Dan (and now the Mesha) inscriptions, there is a wider issue that concerns both...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1994
Who Wrote Second Isaiah?
The Book of Isaiah contains the most astounding prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. Ostensibly, the Prophet Isaiah, who flourished in the eighth century B.C.E., according to Isaiah 1:1, accurately foresaw events that occurred a couple hundred years...
Bible Review, October 2003
The Many Masters of Dor, Part 2: How Bad Was Ahab?
Tel Dor, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, is the site of one of the most conquered cities in the Levant. Although practically...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1993
Pagan Yahwism: The Folk Religion of Ancient Israel
The Bible imagines the religion of ancient Israel as purely monotheistic. And doubtless there were Israelites, particularly those associated with the Jerusalem Temple, who were strict monotheists. But the archaeological evidence (and the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2001
The Other “Philistines”
The Bible portrays the Philistines as Israel’s cruel and ruthless enemy. The two peoples engaged in a fierce struggle for control of the land in the 12th–11th centuries B.C.E. We all know the stories of Samson’s struggles against the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2014
Shasu or Habiru: Who Were the Early Israelites?
It is time to clarify for BAR readers the widely discussed relationship between the habiru, who are well documented in Egyptian and Near Eastern inscriptions, and the Hebrews of the Bible. There is absolutely no relationship! The first...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2008
Yohanan Aharoni—The Man and His Work
Research in the land of the Bible has suffered a heavy loss in the untimely death of Yohanan Aharoni, chairman of the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. To his associates he has bequeathed the task of continuing and summarizing...
Biblical Archaeology Review, December 1976
Bah, Humbug!
A scholar rips Handel’s Messiah
Every December, concert halls and churches throughout the English-speaking world resound with the strains of George Frederic Handel‘s mighty Messiah. For centuries, music lovers have gone home humming the arias and choruses that Handel‘s...
Bible Review, December 2002
Inside, Outside: Where Did the Early Israelites Come From?
Before they settled in the hill country of Canaan, where did the earliest Israelites come from and what was the nature of their society? The Bible is very clear. They were pastoral nomads who came from east of the Jordan. Much of the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2008
Arad—An Ancient Israelite Fortress with a Temple to Yahweh
The Israelite fortress at Arad is unique in the Land of Israel. It’s the only site excavated with modern archaeological methods that contains a continuous archaeological record from the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1987
The Many Masters of Dor, Part 1: When Canaanites Became Phoenician Sailors
History runs deep at Tel Dor—45 feet deep to be exact! Layer upon layer of ancient cities, each built on the ruins of its predecessor, have formed this immense mound on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, about 12 miles south of Haifa. As...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1993
Is Psalm 45 an Erotic Poem?
You probably know the old joke about the psychiatrist who gave his patient a series of Rohrschach tests. The patient identified every single inkblot pattern as depicting a man and a woman copulating. The doctor then pronounced his official...
Bible Review, April 2004
Circumcision
The Private Sign of the Covenant
And God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your seed after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant ... every male of yours must be circumcised. When you circumcise your foreskin flesh, it will...
Bible Review, August 2004
Rainey’s Challenge
In a brilliant piece of detective work entitled “3,200-Year-Old Picture of Israelites Found in Egypt,” BAR 16:05, Frank J. Yurco analyzes the reliefs on a wall of the Cour de la Cachette in the Karnak temple in Upper Egypt. But he points to...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1991
Buried Treasure: The Silver Hoard from Dor
At first, our discovery—an unadorned clay jar—seemed deceptively modest. For months we had been excavating an area overlooking the southern harbor of ancient Dor, south of Haifa on...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1998
Moses
From vigilante to lawgiver
Moses’ brief and violent encounter with the Egyptian taskmaster in Exodus reads like a crime report or movie script: Moses … went out to his brothers and saw their labors. He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers. He...
Bible Review, February 2003
The Saga of Eliashib
Office files found of commander of fort at Arad
Over 20 years ago, I was excavating a room on the south side of the Israelite fortress at Arad—it was the 1964 season—when...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1987