051 A little more than a year ago, we reported on a new excavation (directed by the Hebrew University’s Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor) of an imposing Israelite fort on the border with Philistia dating to the late 11th–early tenth century B.C.E...

040 A deep fissure runs through Biblical studies today. On one side are those who maintain that the Bible contains much reliable history; on the other side are those who say the Biblical texts were written much later than the events they describe...

058 Hershel Shanks: Père Benoit, you are in a consummate way representative of the French in Jerusalem, or of the scholarly world of France in Jerusalem. Most people in the United States are not aware that so many different nationalities have...

031 Continuing their wide-ranging conversation, excavator Bill Dever and Hershel Shanks turn to a crucial issue: How the Bible and archaeology can be used—and misused—to illuminate each other. HS: What does it mean to be an Israelite in the 12th...

036 It is now clear that anti-Zionist political pressures in Syria are attempting to affect the scholarly interpretation of the Ebla tablets. The Syrians are furious that in the West the intense interest shown in this fantastic cache of tablets...

058 Mitchell Dahood is dead at 60. He died in Rome on March 8 of a sudden, unexpected and massive heart attack. I should write Father Mitchell Dahood, for he was a Roman Catholic priest, a Jesuit, who spent nearly 20 years teaching at Rome’s...

028 028 028 Hershel Shanks: I have known each of you for many years. And I know that the Bible has been a central influence in your lives—...

036 Why do we seek to retrace the footsteps of Moses and Jesus? Why do we look for the places they lived? Many archaeologists and scholars may quietly—or not so quietly—scoff at this interest. I cannot explain it, but I will confess to it. And so...

028 029 Two extremely important Hebrew inscriptions have recently surfaced on the antiquities market. One appears to be a receipt for a donation of three silver shekels to the Temple of Yahweh...

038 The stone tablet that purports to have been commissioned by Jehoash, the ninth-century B.C.E. king of Judah, raised questions from the start. The first line of the inscription is missing, including the name Jehoash; the top of the plaque is...

036 037 I didn’t realize how big Denver is. I learned when trying to cover three (or four) meetings at the same time last November in two locations in downtown Denver and nearby Boulder...

046 Phyllis Trible is surely one of the most distinguished feminist Biblical scholars in the world. In 1994, she served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature, only the second woman to serve in that capacity since the organization was...

036 Perhaps the greatest disaster to befall ancient Israel was the conquest, at the end of the sixth century B.C.E. and start of the fifth, by the Babylonian empire. The fall of Judah to this new regional superpower occurred in two stages: Major...

038 Query: Why is Disney World like Kansas City? Answer: Both proved hopelessly inept and inadequate in hosting the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR).a It will be a long time...

063 There, on a moonlit night beside the ruins of Qumran, was the voice of Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most illustrious archaeologist, dead these 13 years, reading in the original language from a letter by Shimon bar Kosiba, better known as Bar-Kokhba...

058 The Siloam Inscription is the most famous, most significant and most precious ancient Hebrew inscription ever discovered. Carved in elegant paleo-Hebrew letters, the kind used by the Israelites before the Babylonian Exile, it was found in...

038 Yigal Shiloh, director of the City of David Excavations in Jerusalem from 1978 to 1985, died last November at the age of 50. Less than five months before his death, Shiloh was interviewed by BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In Part I of the...

058 Trude Dothan is professor of archaeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a pioneer of Israeli archaeology. She is a world-renowned expert on the Philistines and has excavated a number of their sites, including the major long-term...

040 One of the most astounding inscriptions to surface in recent years records a donation of three shekels to the Temple of the Lord (Beyt Yhwh) in Jerusalem. It is written on a broken piece of pottery (called an ostracon) and dates...

012 For a week in April, all Jerusalem was aglitter with archaeology. The occasion was the International Congress on Biblical Archaeology marking the 70th anniversary of the Israel Exploration Society. At the opening session, the Acting President...