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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 results
Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built
“In the fourth year of his reign over Israel, Solomon began to build the House of the Lord” (1 Kings 6:1). Bible scholars call this the First Temple. King Solomon built this Temple on...
Bible Review, October 1988
Old, New Banquet Hall by the Temple Mount
A banqueting complex was recently identified just beside the Temple Mount. Dating to the time of King Herod, it projects the splendor and comfort enjoyed by royal guests. With its two dining halls and a fountain room in between, this composite triclinium is probably the most splendid Herodian building that has survived the 70 C.E. Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2017
Prize Find: An Incense Shovel from Bethsaida
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1997
Searching for Bethsaida: The Case for Et-Tell
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.
Biblical Archaeology Review, Spring 2020
The Origin of Israelite Sacrifice
Sacrificing animals to God—a major activity in the Temple—must certainly seem odd to us in the 21st century. Where did the practice come from? The Israelites didn’t invent it. Scholars have hypothesized its origin in prehistoric times, not...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2011
The Fluid Bible
The blurry line between biblical and nonbiblical texts
We like to think of Holy Writ as unchanging, but the ancients didn’t. A study of the Dead Sea Scrolls reveals that texts could exist in different forms—even be consciously modified—without losing their sanctity.
Bible Review, June 1999
Return to the Cave of Letters: What Still Lies Buried?
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2001
Were There Women at Qumran?
Qumran is widely believed to have been an Essene settlement. But how does this identification square with the role of women in the Jewish sect as described in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which likely originated in this supposedly celibate community?
Biblical Archaeology Review, Spring 2020
Bethsaida Rediscovered
Long-lost city found north of Galilee shore
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2000
A View from the Caves
Who put the scrolls in there?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 11 caves in the Judean Desert near a site known as Khirbet Qumran, or the ruins of Qumran. Père Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, who excavated the site in the 1950s,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2011
Why Paul Went West
The differences between the Jewish diasporas
The Jewish diaspora in Roman times and Late Antiquity was not just a scattering of people from the Land of Israel. Geographical, cultural, religious and language differences resulted in two distinct diasporas—western and eastern—which helps explain why Paul went west from Jerusalem.
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2011
Esther Not Judith
Why one made it and the other didn’t
Brave, wise and stunningly beautiful, Esther and Judith have much in common. Both Jewish heroines live under foreign domination. Both risk their lives to save their people from...
Bible Review, February 2002
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
Hideouts in the Judean Wilderness
Jewish revolutionaries and Christian ascetics sought shelter and protection in cliffside caves
More than three decades have passed since archaeologists and Bedouin prowled the caves of the Judean wilderness in search of ancient manuscripts and other remains. What occasioned this frenzied search was the stunning but accidental finding...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1989
The Dead Sea Scrolls: How They Changed My Life
In this issue four prominent scholars tell BAR readers how the scrolls changed their lives. Harvard’s Frank Cross is the doyen of Dead Sea Scroll scholars; his views come in an interview with BAR editor Hershel Shanks. In the pages that...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2007
Has Every Book of the Bible Been Found Among the Dead Sea Scrolls?
It is a commonplace that every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Actually, this is true only if you count Ezra-Nehemiah as one book—as,...
Bible Review, October 1996
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
Excarnation: Food For Vultures
Unlocking the mysteries of Chalcolithic ossuaries
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...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2011
“As The Seal Upon Thy Heart”
Glyptic roles in the biblical world
Over 50 years ago, Robert Hatch Kennett described Ancient Hebrew Social Life and Custom as Indicated in Law, Narrative, and Metaphor1 in one of the celebrated Schweich Lectures, a series dedicated to illuminating biblical issues in...
Bible Review, Spring 1985