According to the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the Samaritan leader Sanballat promised to build a temple on Gerizim, the Samaritan’s holy mountain, in imitation of the Jerusalem temple. This, Josephus tells us, occurred at the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest of the...

036 On Tuesday morning, June 7, 1099, the knights of the First Crusade caught their first glimpse of Jerusalem—from a height near the campsite where they had spent the night. The Crusaders called the hill Mons Gaudii—Mount Joy, or Montjoie in...

038 Four miles east of Jerusalem on a hilltop in the Judean desert on the road to Jericho sits Ma‘ale Adummim, a modern city of over 20 thousand people. In its midst is one of the largest, most important and most elaborate ancient monasteries in...

048 The name of the northern kingdom of Israel’s last king has turned up on a beautiful seal from the eighth century B.C.E.! Although the seal did not belong to the king himself, it was the property of one of his high-ranking ministers. The king...

026 Since 1960, the Armenian, the Greek and the Latin religious communities that are responsible for the care of the Holy Sepulchre Church in Jerusalem have been engaged in a joint restoration project of one of the most fascinating and complex...

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...

030 031 Between 1968 and 1982 and from 1985 to the present, Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs has exposed over 900 feet of the western wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by digging a...