Displaying 1 - 20 of 98 results
The Gospel of Thomas
Does it contain authentic sayings of Jesus?
Scholars have long theorized that collections of Jesus’ sayings circulated in the decades following his death and that therefore they would be among the earliest witnesses to his message. Modern critical scholars have even been able to...
Bible Review, April 1990
Q
The lost gospel
The Lost Gospel. The very concept provokes a flood of questions. If it is lost, how do we know it ever existed? How do we know what was in it? Who lost it? And how was it lost? Perhaps most intriguing of all: Will it ever be found? A new book...
Bible Review, October 1993
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Q
Eta Linnemann’s article on the Q hypothesisa takes Burton Mack and me to task not only for our scholarship, but also for what she takes to be our attack on traditional Christian beliefs. It’s a clever exercise in apologetics. However, this...
Bible Review, October 1995
Now Playing: The Gospel of Thomas
One Sunday morning several years ago, a most astonishing thing happened to me. I was attending services at a local church in Claremont, California, where I was a graduate student working on a (then) relatively obscure text known as the Gospel...
Bible Review, December 2000
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
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
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
BAR Jr.: How to Tell a Tell
When you look at a map of the Near East, you notice many place names that include as their element the word “tell.” You can find names beginning with “tell” in Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Arabic and Hebrew the word “...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1981
BAR Jr.: Young Archaeologist Strikes Pay Dirt
The first time I took my children on a dig, they were 13 and 11. Usually, you don’t find many children on a dig because there are no facilities for them and they might be out-of-place. Nevertheless, I thought they might be old enough to enjoy...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1981
BAR Jr.: Not All That Glitters Is Gold—But Sometimes It Is
Some people think of archaeology—incorrectly—as a treasure hunt. Not many archaeologists are as lucky as Howard Carter, who discovered the tomb of King Tut with all its glorious treasures. More often than not, archaeologists find neither gold...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1981
BAR Jr.: Digging, Dug, Gone
Many people do not realize that archaeology is destructive. Unlike experiments in physics or chemistry, which can be repeated in the lab, once a site has been excavated it cannot be re-excavated. The archaeological remains are gone forever...
Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 1982
BAR Jr.: Sherds, Sherds, Sherds
“The remains of the city were found buried under a heavy layer of ash and destruction debris … ” “ … ovens and grinding installations were found in many of the rooms … ” “ … a large cemetery was discovered on a hill facing the tell on the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1982
BAR Jr.: Five Ways to Defend an Ancient City
“Walk about Zion … number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels … ” (Psalms 48:12–13) What distinguished an ancient village or town from a city? One thing, perhaps the most important, was fortifications. Fortifying a...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1983
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
Masada: Arms and the Man
Sometimes we make discoveries not by digging in the ground, but by digging in the records of past excavations. So it is with Masada, Herod’s nearly impregnable palace-fortress in the Judean wilderness, occupied and defended by Jewish Zealots...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1992
Martyrius: Lavish Living for Monks
Four miles east of Jerusalem on a hilltop in the Judean desert on the road to Jericho sits Ma‘ale Adummim, a modern city of over 20 thousand people. In its midst is one of the largest, most important and most elaborate ancient monasteries in...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1995
Not a Country Villa
Everyone wants to know who lived at Qumran, the settlement adjacent to the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. And sometimes it seems that everyone has a different opinion. With hopes of helping to solve the riddle, I’d like to...
Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1996
Illuminating Byzantine Jerusalem
Oil lamps shed light on early Christian worship
This is the story of how the puzzling inscriptions on some ancient oil lamps illuminate an entire era. These modest artifacts offer us a vivid picture of the spiritual life of the...
Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1998
Ancient Israel’s Stone Age
Purity in Second Temple times
In the decades before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 70 C.E., Jews gave a new and heightened emphasis to ritual purity. In fact, purity laws may have been interpreted more strictly at this time than at any point before—...
Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1998
Surprises at Yattir: Unexpected Evidence of Early Christianity
Archaeology is full of surprises. Sometimes we don’t find what we had expected to find. Or we find something we never expected to find. Either way, the experience is always exciting—and...
Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2001