045 046 One of the most devastating earthquakes ever to hit the Mediterranean struck a little after daybreak on July 21, 365 A.D. The fourth-century A.D. Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus...

042 043 The pendulum is beginning to swing back again. Before 20th-century archaeologists began uncovering it, Jesus’ Galilee was generally considered rural Jewish terrain. Then archaeologists...

028 In BAR’s version of Superman’s original costume, pictured in “The Hebrew Origins of Superman,” in this issue, Superman the scribe wears the Hebrew letter samekh on his chest. But even people who know how to read modern Hebrew—as it is...

040 Underwater archaeology, no longer in its infancy, is rapidly becoming a youth. A current exhibition by the Israel Museum at Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum of recent finds recovered from Israel’s coast illustrates this growth. As Israel was an...

046 In the May/June 1986 BAR, Yaakov Meshorer published for the first time an exquisite gold ring excavated just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (“Ancient Gold Ring Depicts the Holy Sepulchre,” BAR 12:03). According to Meshorer, the bezel...

013 Contacts with history in high school or college have left most of us with something of a distaste for chronology. At least those in the over-thirty generation can hardly have escaped history courses where the instructor concentrated almost...

012 Gamla has been found. Israelis are calling it the Masada of the north. Masada, south of Jerusalem in the Judean wilderness, was the last Jewish outpost to fall to the Romans thus ending, in 73 A.D., the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Jews...

002 The Lerner Archaeological Series is written for readers twelve and above, but like many well written books for youngsters, this series can be enjoyable and informative to adults as well. Individual volumes are about 85 pages long and cover a...

053 Why spend your summer vacation on your hands and knees or crawling up ladders and down into trenches when you could be lounging by the pool, sipping piña coladas? Well, many archaeology enthusiasts imagine unearthing a tarnished coin last...

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...

042 Herod the Great gets all the press. His son Herod Antipas is known mostly, as the preceding article explains, as the Herod for whom Salome danced and who ordered John the Baptist to be beheaded. Many people mistakenly think it was Herod the...

028 It seldom rains in the Judean wilderness; this climatic condition accounts for the preservation of some rare Jewish coffins recently discovered in the hills overlooking Jericho. These coffins are made of wood, are painted, and date to the...

The first-century Capernaum synagogue in which Jesus preached has probably been found. Because more than one synagogue may have existed in Capernaum at this time, we cannot be sure that this new find was Jesus’ synagogue. But this recently discovered first-century building is certainly a...

Dating is one of the most important aspects of the archaeological world. In the first article of a new series called Biblical Archaeology 101, discover the difference between relative and absolute dating, and learn about the many techniques archaeologists use to date sites, people, objects, and historical events.

022 “Woe unto you, Chorazin!” So says Jesus of this town in the Galilee (Matthew 11:21; Luke 10:13). Chorazin is one of several Galilean towns condemned because they did not repent: “Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you Beth-saida! For if the mighty...

046 047 Of the thousands of limestone ossuaries, or bone boxes, found in and around Jerusalem, at least one depicts the facade of the Temple—this from a time when that magnificent structure...

043 Most people assume that the name Palestine derives from “Land of the Philistines” (Peleshetin the Hebrew Bible; see Psalms 60:10; Isaiah 14:29, 31), via the Greek Palaistinêand the Latin Palaestina. But there is evidence...

001 Since it opened last spring at the Israel Museum, the exhibition of finds from the Jewish Quarter excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem has been drawing large and enthusiastic crowds. And well it should. On display are the exciting results...

049 Vigorous, muscular and armorclad, Emperor Hadrian—in the rare bronze sculpture featured on the cover of this issue—appears as the adept military leader who dominated the Mediterranean world from 117 to 138 C.E. His commanding appearance is...