Your Filters
- (-) Remove Temple filter Temple
- (-) Remove Authors: Neil Asher Silberman filter Authors: Neil Asher Silberman
- (-) Remove Authors: Giora Solar filter Authors: Giora Solar
- (-) Remove Authors: Morton Smith filter Authors: Morton Smith
- (-) Remove Authors: Oded Borowski filter Authors: Oded Borowski
- (-) Remove Publication: Biblical Archaeology Review filter Publication: Biblical Archaeology Review
- (-) Remove Authors: Lawrence E. Stager filter Authors: Lawrence E. Stager
- (-) Remove Authors: André Lemaire filter Authors: André Lemaire
Displaying 1 - 20 of 29 results
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
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
The Case of the Gilded Staircase
Did the Dead Sea Scroll sect worship the sun?
Yigael Yadin’s magnificent edition of the Temple Scroll1—the latest-to-be-published and the longest of all the Dead Sea Scrolls—has been available to scholars in Hebrew for over four years and last year became available in a three-volume...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1984
In Search of Solomon’s Lost Treasures
On the morning of April 19, 1911, a crowd of angry Moslems, outraged at what they considered to be a desecration of the holy Mosque of Omar or the Dome of the Rock, rampaged through the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1980
The Universal God
How the God of Israel Became a God for All
Israel not only survived but thrived in exile. Indeed, Israelite Yahwisma became universal monotheism in the Babylonian Exile. In the preceding article, Professor Seymour Gitin explains why the Philistines, unlike the Israelites, did not...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2005
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
Israel Antiquities Authority’s Report Deeply Flawed
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) recently formed a committee to decide whether the James ossuary inscription and the Yehoash (or Jehoash) inscription are authentic or forgeries. I...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2003
Are We Prepared to Raze the Edifice?
The dating of the Siloam Inscription proposed by Rogerson and Davies would not only change the interpretation of one of the most famous monuments of ancient Jerusalem. It would also change the dating of other Hebrew inscriptions of the First...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1997
The Differences Between Israelite Culture and the Other Major Cultures of the Ancient Near East
The easiest and most common approach to the question of the relation between the culture of the Israelites as compared with other peoples of the Near East is to point out particular similarities between details of the Old Testament and of...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September 1976
In the Path of Sennacherib
“I laid waste the large district of Judah and made the overbearing and proud Hezekiah, its king, bow in submission,” boasts Sennacherib, monarch of Assyria, in a preserved cuneiform inscription.1 “I laid siege to 46 of his strong cities: .....
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2005
Scholars’ Corner: Yadin Presents New Interpretation of the Famous Lachish Letters
On January 29, 1935, during the third season of excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, a site thought to be Biblical Lachish, archaeologists discovered a collection of 18 ostraca, or inscribed potsherds. The ostraca had been covered by a thick layer...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1984
Eroticism and Infanticide at Ashkelon
This is part III of a three-part article. Part II appeared in the last issue (“Why Were Hundreds of Dogs Buried at Ashkelon?” BAR 17:03). Throughout most of its 5,000-year history,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1991
Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?
Archaeological evidence provides basis for a new analysis
“Tophet” is a Biblical word. It is the name of a place that was on the south side of ancient Jerusalem in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, where the Israelites sacrificed their children by...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1984
Restoring the Reputation of Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope
A little-known episode in the beginnings of archaeology in the Holy Land
Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope, granddaughter of William Pitt and daughter of the third Earl of Stanhope, was the first person who ever intentionally excavated an ancient artifact in the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1984
Royal Signature: Name of Israel’s Last King Surfaces in a Private Collection
The name of the northern kingdom of Israel’s last king has turned up on a beautiful seal from the eighth century B.C.E.! Although the seal did not belong to the king himself, it was the property of one of his high-ranking ministers. The king...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1995
Engraved in Memory
Diaspora Jews Find Eternal Rest in Jerusalem
When Oded Golan first invited me to his home in April 2002, it was to examine an inscription on a bone box—but not the one bearing the now-famous inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” That one was not even in Golan’s...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2006
Burial Box of James the Brother of Jesus
Earliest archaeological evidence of Jesus found in Jerusalem
Amazing as it may sound, a limestone bone box (called an “ossuary”) has surfaced in Israel that may once have contained the bones of James, the brother of Jesus. We know this because an extraordinary inscription incised on one side of the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2002
Who or What Was Yahweh’s Asherah?
Startling new inscriptions from two different sites reopen the debate about the meaning of asherah
New inscriptions from two different sites have reopened the debate about the meaning of asherah, a term often used in the Bible. Is it—or she—a goddess? Is it a holy place? Or perhaps a sacred tree? Or a pole? Or possibly a grove of trees?...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1984
Sumptuous Roman Baths Uncovered Near Sea of Galilee
Hot springs drew the afflicted from around the world
According to the Greek biographer Eunapius, the second most beautiful bath complex in the entire Roman Empire during the fourth century A.D. was located in, of all places, Palestine—at a site known as Hammat Gader.1 Hammat Gader lies just...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1984
Fragments from the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla
Text foretells cosmic disaster
The date was March 17, 1967, a Friday. A Dutch expedition led by Professor Henk J. Franken of the University of Leiden was excavating a mound named Tell Deir Alla in the middle Jordan...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1985