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Displaying 1 - 20 of 23 results
Visualizing First Temple Jerusalem
Visitors to Jerusalem understandably are often confused by the jumbled and disconnected layers of the past that exist side by side with the teeming modern city. Jerusalem at the time of the First Temple—the Jerusalem of the Bible, the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1989
Was the Site of the Jerusalem Temple Originally a Cemetery?
Stylistic and architectural similarities between the cave of Machpelah enclosure at Hebron and the Temple Mount enclosure in Jerusalem have been clearly demonstrated by Nancy Miller in “Patriarchal Burial Site Explored for First Time in 700...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1985
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
Volunteers Find Missing Pieces to Looted Inscription
In the November/December 2008 issue of BAR, we reported on an inscribed limestone stela that had been purchased on the antiquities market by Judy and Michael Steinhardt and is on permanent loan to the Israel Museum.a The incomplete stela,...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2010
Keeping Jerusalem’s Past Alive
Jerusalem is not only one of the oldest cities in the world, it is one of the few cities which has been continuously inhabited for more than 40 centuries. From before 1850 B.C., when the first wall surrounded and defended Jerusalem, people...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1981
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
Exploring the Holy Land Close to Home
I have never been to Israel. But after visiting the Explorations in Antiquity Center just an hour outside of Atlanta in LaGrange, Georgia, I have a much better idea of what it was like to live there 2,000 years ago. The center, which opened...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2008
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
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
Reading David in Genesis
How we know the Torah was written in the tenth century B.C.E.
For the last two hundred years, a central question in biblical studies has been the authorship of the Torah (or Pentateuch). The Age of Enlightenment led scholars to realize that the traditional Jewish and Christian belief in Moses’...
Bible Review, February 2001
For the Prosecution
Professor Maier’s extensive rebuttal of my earlier essay is a most welcome engagement from an authority who has written widely on the figure of Pilate.1 I am happy to offer a reply. First, however, a word on name-calling. Professor Maier’s...
Bible Review, June 2004
Crossing the Holy Land
New church discoveries from the Biblical world
A few years ago the archaeological world, not to mention the popular press, was abuzz with news that an early Christian church had been discovered on the grounds of an Israeli prison at Megiddo. As BAR reported in an article by archaeologist...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2011
New Mosaic Art from Sepphoris
BAR readers know Sepphoris well. In the BAR 14:01 issue the mosaic known as the Mona Lisa of the Galilee appeared on the cover and was the prize find of the 1987 season.a More recently, in the BAR 18:03 issue, Sepphoris was the chief exhibit...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1992
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The Remarkable Discovery You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Discovered in the Egyptian desert over a century ago, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have provided invaluable insights into the life and times of an early Roman Christian community of the Nile Valley. As our author explains, these priceless documents, which include everything from little-known gospels to revealing personal letters, intimately portray the beliefs and daily lives of ordinary Romans and Christians, making them one of the greatest archaeological finds ever.
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 2011
Uncovering Herod’s Seaside Palace
The great port city of Caesarea was born out of the genius of one man: Herod the Great (c. 73–4 B.C.E.). This Idumean politician, with the support of the rulers at Rome, rose to become king of Judea. On the site of a dilapidated town, he...
Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1993
All in the Family
We all know the big family names in Biblical archaeology.a Countless BAR articles have been written by or about the Mazars—whether it’s the late great Benjamin Mazar, who excavated at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in the 1960s and...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2010
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
The Dark Side of Pilate
Poor Pilate. If ever a man was caught unwittingly in the net of historical circumstance, it was Pilate. A simple Roman governor just doing his job, he could see that Jesus wasn’t the villain the Jewish crowd thought him to be. In the end, he...
Bible Review, December 2003
Unlikely Heroes
Women as Israel
Open your Bible at random and you will notice something striking: Female characters abound. And it’s not simply a lot of women, it’s a lot of strong women. These women are the antithesis of what we might expect from a patriarchal society...
Bible Review, February 2003
Jesus Lives!
Looking Back on 20 Years of Jesus Scholarship
Thirty years ago, the historical Jesus was dead. By 1975, it was clear that scholars had very little to say about him. If students were assigned anything to read on the subject, it was usually Gunther Bornkamm’s Jesus of Nazareth from...
Bible Review, Summer 2005