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Displaying 1 - 20 of 27 results
Solomon & Sheba, Inc.
New inscription confirms trade relations between “towns of Judah” and South Arabia
Southern Arabia is 1,200 miles south of Israel. Naturally, skepticism about the reality of trade between South Arabia and Israel in ancient times seems justified. Yet the Bible documents this trade quite extensively—most famously in the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2010
The Ark of the Covenant: Where It Stood in Solomon’s Temple
Four years ago, I wrote an article for BAR in which I identified the original 500-cubit-square Temple Mount.1 By now, this location is well established in the archaeological world,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1996
Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem
Inscription containing name of God incised on ivory pomegranate
BAR recently published a fascinating article by Gabriel Barkay reporting on his excavation of a small rolled silver amulet, dating from the seventh or sixth century B.C. When the amulet was unrolled, it was found to contain the tetragrammaton...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1984
Jerusalem as Eden
For ancient Israel, the Temple of Solomon—indeed, the Temple Mount and all Jerusalem—was a symbol as well as a reality, a mythopoeic realization of heaven on earth, Paradise, the Garden of Eden. After King David’s conquest of Jerusalem, the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2000
Ritmeyer Responds to Jacobson
David Jacobson’s theory regarding the shape of Herod’s Temple Mount and the placement of the Temple within it draws heavily on Roman architectural practice. The Romans were particularly fond of symmetrical structures, as Jacobson rightly...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2000
Circumcision
Who Did It, Who Didn’t and Why
Pottery is probably the archaeologist’s most important diagnostic tool, not only for dating a stratum of an excavation, but also for determining the culture and ethnicity of the ancient people who lived there at the time. In 1969, however, at...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2006
Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem
Herod the Great—master builder! Despite his crimes and excesses, no one can doubt his prowess as a builder. One of his most imposing achievements was in Jerusalem. To feed his passion for grandeur, to immortalize his name and to attempt to...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989
Locating the Original Temple Mount
Somewhere on Jerusalem’s majestic Temple Mount—the largest man-made platform in the ancient world, the size of 24 football fields, nearly 145 acres—Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.) built a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1992
Is Everybody a Bible Expert?
Not the authors of the Book of J
It is a strange fact that we biblical scholars always seem to meet people who are surprised that we really know things about the Bible. They assume that the study of the Bible is a matter of opinions and interpretations, with few...
Bible Review, April 1991
The Great Eighth Century
A century is a wholly arbitrary block of time. History surely does not proceed by 100-year chunks. And to mark the beginning and...
Bible Review, August 1989
Taking the Biblical Text Apart
For centuries, scholars from many backgrounds—religious and nonreligious, Christian and Jewish—have worked on discovering how the Bible came to be. Their task was not to prove whether the Bible’s words were divinely revealed to the authors...
Bible Review, Fall 2005
Reconstructing the Triple Gate
Reconstructing the Triple Gate required that we answer three principal questions. What was the gate’s original width? Was it originally a double gate or a triple gate? For whom was it built? The discovery of a vault in front of the Triple...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1989
Of Fathers, Kings and the Deity
The nested households of ancient Israel
Ancient Israelite society was structured in a way that few of us in modern times experience. Its focus was on family and kin...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2002
The Kitchen Debate
Three Scholars Discuss a Major New Book on History and the Bible
When we received a copy of Kenneth A. Kitchen’s new book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, we knew that we should review it. Kitchen is one of the world’s leading scholars (he specializes in Egyptology), and the subject matter of the book—how historically accurate is the Bible?—is of central interest to many of our readers. We asked Ronald Hendel, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a columnist for our sister magazine, Bible Review, to review it for us.
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2005
The Oldest Cookbooks in the World
When the three messengers visited Abraham to announce the forthcoming birth of his beloved son Isaac, Abraham demonstrated his hospitality by inviting the messengers to a meal before...
Bible Review, August 1993
Another Temple to the Israelite God
Aramaic Hoard Documents Life in Fourth Century B.C.
The scholarly world is abuzz. During at least the past 20 years, and more likely during the last 33 years, more than a thousand potsherds inscribed in Aramaic have come onto the antiquities market. About 800 of these have now been published.1...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2004
Sumerian Literature
Background to the Bible
The world’s oldest literature—poetry as well as prose—belongs to the Sumerians, that fascinating, enigmatic people who settled...
Bible Review, June 1988
The Fury of Babylon: Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction
In 586 B.C.E. Nebuchadrezzar (also known as Nebuchadnezzar II), king of Babylon, attacked Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and burned the city. This of course is the focal point of the Biblical story. For Nebuchadrezzar, however, Jerusalem was...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1996
Why Lachish Matters
A Major Site Gets the Publication It Deserves
Among cities in ancient Judah, Lachish was second only to Jerusalem in importance. A principal Canaanite and, later, Israelite site, Lachish occupied a major tell (mound) 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem, nestled in the foothills of Judah (the region known as the Shephelah).
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2005
The Shechem Temple
Where Abimelech Massacred a Thousand
In the time of Abimelech, a powerful warrior in early Israel, great events occurred in a fortified temple in Shechem. I believe that temple was found in an excavation at Shechem more...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2003