Your Filters
- (-) Remove Scholars filter Scholars
- (-) Remove Authors: Anthony J. Saldarini filter Authors: Anthony J. Saldarini
- (-) Remove Authors: David Ussishkin filter Authors: David Ussishkin
- (-) Remove Authors: William H.C. Propp filter Authors: William H.C. Propp
Displaying 1 - 20 of 35 results
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
What Price the Uniqueness of Jesus?
To wrench Jesus out of his Jewish world destroys Jesus and destroys Christianity.
Bible Review, June 1999
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
Answers at Lachish
Sennacherib’s destruction of Lachish identified; dispute over a century’s difference in Israelite pottery dating resolved by new excavations; stamp impressions of Judean kings finally dated.
Lachish was one of the most important cities of the Biblical era in the Holy Land. The impressive mound, named Tel Lachish in Hebrew or Tell ed-Duweir in Arabic, is situated about 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem in the Judean hills. Once a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1979
Big City, Few People
Jerusalem in the Persian Period
I would like to take a somewhat radical, maximalist view of the size of Jerusalem when the Israelites (or, more precisely, the Judahites) returned from the Babylonian Exile and restored the city walls, as described in the Book of Nehemiah...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2005
Kadesh-Barnea—In the Bible and on the Ground
Kadesh-Barnea, Tell el-Qudeirat, hasn’t been excavated since the 1980s, but a new pottery analysis indicates a settlement was there at the time of the Exodus.
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2015
Back to Megiddo
A new expedition will explore the jewel in the crown of Canaan/Israel
Tel Megiddo is widely regarded as the most important archaeological site in Israel from Biblical times, and as one of the most significant sites for the study of the ancient Near East...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1994
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
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
Santa and His Asherah
The ancient Near Eastern roots of American Yuletide customs are manifold and fascinating. I will concentrate here on just two major points: that the Christmas tree was originally a symbol of the Canaanite goddess Asherah and that Santa Claus...
Bible Review, December 1998
Jezreel—Where Jezebel Was Thrown to the Dogs
One day in 1989 rumor reached me that monumental Israelite architecture had accidentally been uncovered at Tel Jezreel in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. I was then, as now, a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2010
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
Lachish—Key to the Israelite Conquest of Canaan?
It is now more than seven years since my first report to BAR readers on the excavation at Biblical Lachish (“Answers at Lachish,” BAR 05:06). At that time, I primarily discussed Iron Age Lachish, the Lachish of the Judean monarchy. Judean...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1987
Why Moses Could Not Enter The Promised Land
Why was Moses condemned to die in the wilderness? Perhaps the historical Moses simply expired before reaching the Promised Land and was buried in Transjordan in a now-forgotten grave (...
Bible Review, June 1998
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
Restoring the Great Gate at Lachish
BAR’s Archaeological Preservation Fund makes substantial contribution
The largest and most impressive city gateway in ancient Israel is being restored. It stands at the entrance to the ruins of the great Judean city of Lachish—a mighty reminder of past...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1988
News from the Field: Defensive Judean Counter-Ramp Found at Lachish in 1983 Season
Our expedition to Lachish is described in detail in the review/article “Destruction of Judean Fortress Portrayed in Dramatic Eighth-Century B.C. Pictures.” In this brief note I would like to describe for BAR readers the exciting results of...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1984
Babatha’s Story
Personal archive offers a glimpse of ancient Jewish life
The column of Roman soldiers marched slowly south along the western shore of the Dead Sea toward En-Gedi, one of the region’s major governmental and commercial centers and a stronghold...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1998
Book Notes
Bible Review, June 1995
Book Notes
Bible Review, October 1995