003 In Genesis 24:2–9 Abraham has his servant Eliezer put his hand under the Patriarch’s thigh to swear “by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth” that the servant will not arrange a marriage for Abraham’s son Isaac...

006 King Saul had his problems with young David, but this did not prevent an unusually close relationship from developing between David and Saul’s son Jonathan. Indeed, the Bible reports that Jonathan “made a covenant with David,...

006 A clay tablet containing 80 Hebrew letters arranged in five lines has been found in an excavation outside Tel Aviv at Izbet Sarte. The letters appear to date from about the end of the 11th century B.C.—the time of Saul and David. If...

038 Opportunities for volunteers on archaeological excavations next summer are numerous and varied. A new American excavation will sink its spades into a virgin Tell Halif—and is seeking 30 to 40 volunteers. Under the guidance of former...

009 A tunnel 1750 feet long constructed by King Hezekiah to protect the water supply of Jerusalem from the Assyrians during Sennacherib’s siege of 701 B.C. has recently re-opened. The remarkable tunnel which winds its way under the City of...

007 On the last day of his 1975 season Professor Nachman Avigad of Hebrew University, digging in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, discovered four arrowheads buried in ashes at the base of a massive stone defense tower. The tower...

037 Cyrus Gordon—the brilliant, maverick scholar—has spent a significant part of his professional life searching for connections between the early Greeks and Hebrews. His most popular effort in this area is a book entitled The...

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...

031 The easiest and most common approach to the question of the relation between the culture of the Israelites as compared with other peoples of the Near East is to point out particular similarities between details of the Old Testament and of...

023 Again the telephone rang. An antiquities dealer was calling the professor. From previous calls, Professor Nachman Avigad of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem knew the antiquities dealer. The two men had come to like and trust each other...

041 “I agree with practically every point you make,” Ebla excavator Paolo Matthiae told BAR editor Hershel Shanks, referring to the September BAR article (Queries & Comments, BAR 02:03) cautioning against sensationalizing the...

012 As reported in the December issue of the BAR (Queries & Comments, BAR 01:04), at the time we went to press with that issue, we had received no reply from Kathleen Kenyon to the articles in our September issue (“Kathleen Kenyon...

One of the most vexed problems of Biblical history and archaeology concerns the nature of the Israelite occupation of Canaan. With the occupation, Israel became a nation and at that time its national history begins. However, the Bible itself reflects at least two views of this beginning.