055 First Publication: A Newly Discovered House Shrine Should We Ignore Unprovenanced Artifacts? A long, sometimes bitter debate has been going on in BAR as to whether Yahweh, the God of ancient Israel, had a consort. One of America’s most...

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...

For 30 years, archaeologists have been excavating et-Tell in the Lower Golan, east of the Jordan Rift Valley. See why they believe their site is biblical Bethsaida.

051 It was a fitting climax. We had been excavating at Tel Dor—an 80-acre tell, or mound, on the Mediterranean coast of Israel—for 20 exciting years. This was to be our last season. It was near the end of the dig when we found evidence of a Greek...

021 The Bible imagines the religion of ancient Israel as purely monotheistic. And doubtless there were Israelites, particularly those associated with the Jerusalem Temple, who were strict monotheists. But the archaeological evidence (and the...

050 051 Part of a Persian period pit produced a perplexing prize find. It was discovered at the end of our 13th season (1993) at Tel Dor.a Persian period pits (fifth-fourth century B.C.E.) are...

018 019 018 Tel Dor, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, is the site of one of the most conquered cities in the Levant. Although practically...

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...

030 The Bible portrays the Philistines as Israel’s cruel and ruthless enemy. The two peoples engaged in a fierce struggle for control of the land in the 12th–11th centuries B.C.E. We all know the stories of Samson’s struggles against the...

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...

040 Although Professor Dever objects to the use of the term “Biblical archaeology” (see “Should the Term ‘Biblical Archaeology’ Be Abandoned?” BAR 07:03), few are as articulate as he in describing what archaeology, and particularly Syro-...

046 In the preceding article Phil King and Larry Stager explain that the Hebrew term ‘ebed, literally “servant,” can designate anything from a slave or household servant to a high royal official, a servant of the king. The same is true in...

With a commercial empire that lasted a millennium, the Phoenicians were major players in the ancient Mediterranean world. Spreading their culture and goods, they came into contact with many different groups, but their relationship with the Israelites was distinct. Join Ephraim Stern as he explores the Phoenicians’ identity and interactions with their close neighbor and ally, Israel.

022 History runs deep at Tel Dor—45 feet deep to be exact! Layer upon layer of ancient cities, each built on the ruins of its predecessor, have formed this immense mound on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, about 12 miles south of Haifa. As...

022 Accidental discoveries of two pits containing cult figurines have led me to discern an extraordinary development in Israelite religious observance. This development occurred when the Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile in the sixth to...

052 The following article has been adapted from Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research, by William G. Dever (Seattle: Univ of Washington Press, 1990). As a matter of principal Professor Dever does not write for BAR (see...

045 The Assyrians and Babylonians both ravaged large parts of ancient Israel, yet the archaeological evidence from the aftermath of their respective conquests tells two very different stories. Why? In 721 B.C.E., the Assyrians brought an end to...

Is the Hebrew Bible a bunch of tales with no value to a historian? Does archaeology hold the keys to truth instead? What are the limitations of both sources of information? Is it even possible to write a comprehensive and honest history of ancient Israel? Focusing on King David as a case study, eminent archaeologist William G. Dever attempts to marry archaeology and the Bible—giving BAR readers a sneak-peak of his upcoming book.

040 For nearly a century before the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E., Jews, especially in the Jerusalem area, would inter the bones of their deceased in stone boxes, or ossuaries, about 2 feet long and a foot high. The ossuary had to be...

028 There are some who claim that the Bible contains little or no historical information about ancient Israel. I want to combat these “minimalist” or “revisionist” views of the history of ancient Israel by showing how archaeology can and does...