Although the Bible gives a detailed description of Solomon’s Temple, we have no physical remains of the building destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. Thanks to the recent excavation of several hitherto-unknown ancient Near Eastern temples, however, archaeologists are shedding new light on similarities and differences between these temples and King Solomon’s structure.

024 “Then Solomon said … ‘I have built thee an exalted house, a place for thee to dwell in forever.’” (1 Kings 8:12–13) A vision of Isaiah, “I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of his robe filled the Temple.” (...

052 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...

016 017 “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...

044 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...

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.

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...

064 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,...

016 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...

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.

Leviticus bans the Israelites from bowing upon a maskit stone. But what is a maskit? A recently deciphered Assyrian inscription may hold the key to identifying this mysterious prohibited object.

040 A spectacular sound and light show greeted the Israelites when the new nation encountered God for the first time at Mt. Sinai.1 The awesome display of divine presence and power so terrified the Children of Israel that they begged God not to...

Reader’s Letter Sparks Article When reading Victor Hurowitz’s “Inside Solomon’s Temple,” BR 10:02, a question suddenly occurred to me that I should have thought of years ago. In the shrine of the temple were “two huge, gold-plated, olive-wood cherubim,” writes...

030 Reading an introduction to biblical criticism, a beginning student might well think he or she is peering into a bowl of alphabet soup—or perhaps perusing a catalogue of foundations and corporations. Letters are all over the place, especially...

028029 While Moses was up on Mt. Sinai receiving the first edition of the Ten Commandments, the people down below grew impatient and asked Aaron, Moses’ brother, to make them another god to...

038 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...

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...

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...

020 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’...

046 046 046 No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context Tryggve N.D....