032 Slowly it emerged from the ground: a beautiful, 8-inch-long bronze incense shovel, the prize find of the 1996 excavations at Bethsaida, near the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The shovel lay in a first-century C.E. refuse pit. Just...

044 Bethsaida is the town that disappeared. Soon after playing a prominent role in the Gospels—Bethsaida is mentioned more often in the New Testament than any city except Jerusalem and Capernaum—this fishing village on the Sea of Galilee simply...

050 051 Most stories in BAR are about sites that have been excavated. In fact, I can’t recall a single story about a place that hadn’t been extensively excavated. This story—about Sussita/...

012 Many early copies of the New Testament abbreviate sacred words (nomina sacra). The earliest of these abbreviations stand for “God,” “Lord,” “Christ,” and “Jesus.” Abbreviations of these...

015 New evidence indicates that the Gospel of Matthew was an original Hebrew composition. Indeed, it is now possible to recover much of this original Hebrew composition from an extant manuscript. But before explaining how this can be done, let me...

038 In the late 1990s, authorities at the prison that sits near the base of Tel Megiddo in northern Israel decided they needed more room. Accordingly, an addition was planned within the prison compound and work commenced. It was not long, however...

025 A small shovel started it all. In the summer of 1996, at the excavation of the Galilee site of Bethsaida (which we codirect), we uncovered a small bronze incense shovel. Others like it were used in the imperial cult throughout the Roman...