Breaking New Ground: Celebrating 50 Years of Biblical Archaeology

Editor’s Note: This article contains images of human skeletal remains.

For 50 years, BAR has reported on some amazing discoveries from the lands of the Bible. Presented by authors who are the leading scholars in the field, these captivating sites and finds connected our readers to key stories, peoples, and events from the biblical text. Showcased here are eight such discoveries from the pages of BAR that transformed our understanding of ancient Israel, Second Temple and rabbinic Judaism, and early Christianity.

CLARA AMIT, COURTESY YOSEF GARFINKEL

The Khirbet Qeiyafa Fortress

Khirbet Qeiyafa, identified by some as biblical Shaaraim, was a small fortified outpost in the Judean foothills during the late 11th and early tenth centuries BCE. Yet its archaeology has dramatically transformed our understanding of the period of the United Monarchy, providing invaluable insights into state formation and literacy during the time of the first biblical kings.

YOSEF GARFINKEL / SKYVIEW

Qeiyafa sits on a hilltop some 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem. Positioned strategically on the main road from Philistia to the Judean hill country, it overlooks the Elah Valley, where David killed Goliath (1 Samuel 17). Qeiyafa is largely an early Iron Age site with a clear destruction layer, dated confidently through radiocarbon analysis to around 1000 BCE. Excavator Yosef Garfinkel believes Qeiyafa was an early Judahite fortress, destroyed soon after its construction, probably by the neighboring Philistine kingdom of Gath. Other scholars are less certain and think it could have been a Canaanite or even Philistine stronghold.

Between 2007 and 2013, excavations revealed a fortified settlement with a large administrative building, two city gates, and possibly the oldest known Hebrew inscription. Located at the summit of the site and covering more than 10,000 square feet, the multistory administrative building may have served the needs of David’s early kingdom centered in Jerusalem. The city wall is of casemate construction, measuring 2,200 feet long and 13 feet thick. And the city had two four-chambered gates built with massive ashlar stones. Cultic activity is attested by portable shrine models (which feature elements from Solomon’s Temple as described in the Bible), basalt altars, libation vessels, and standing stones (massebot).

In 2008, a small inscribed pottery sherd (ostracon) was found next to the western gate that bears five lines of text. Penned in black ink using early alphabetic (proto-Canaanite) script, this 6-by-6-inch potsherd appears to be an administrative account, perhaps even announcing to frontier administrators at Qeiyafa the installation of a new king. According to this interpretation, the Qeiyafa ostracon is the earliest non-biblical confirmation of the establishment of the Israelite monarchy. Whether composed in Hebrew or Canaanite (as some argue), the Qeiyafa ostracon is proof of early literacy in Judah.

Khirbet Qeiyafa provided unique material evidence for a critical juncture in ancient Israel’s history, when the decentralized “period of the Judges” gave way to an emerging polity governed by a king. The existence of fortified cities and scribal elites outside of Jerusalem already in the early tenth century bolsters the traditional “high” chronology, which identifies these economic and cultural advances with Israel’s first kings, namely Saul and David.

READ MORE

“Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time” by Hershel Shanks (BAR, January/February 2009)
“Ancient Inscription Refers to Birth of Israelite Monarchy” by Gerard Leval (BAR, May/June 2012)
“An Ending and a Beginning” by Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel, and Martin G. Klingbeil (BAR, November/December 2013)
“Rejected! Qeiyafa’s Unlikely Second Gate” by Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor, and Joseph Baruch Silver (BAR, January/February 2017)

© MELISSA AJA / LEON LEVY EXPEDITION

Ashkelon’s Philistine Burials

Known from the Hebrew bible as one of the great nemeses of ancient Israel, the Philistines emerged on the southern Levantine coastal plain in the early 12th century BCE. Their arrival at the end of the Late Bronze Age was part of the mass migration of Aegean and Mediterranean groups known as the Sea Peoples, whose initial incursions into the Nile Delta and Levantine coast were well documented in contemporary Egyptian reliefs.

Archaeological work over the past several decades has unlocked a wealth of information about the Philistines, their origins, their settlements along the Mediterranean coast, and their complex interactions with neighboring cultures. Of the cities that make up the Philistine Pentapolis—Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza—all but Gaza have been excavated, revealing key clues to the nature of Philistine life.

Perhaps the most exciting discovery from the world of the Philistines comes from the Philistine burials found at Ashkelon. Excavations revealed hundreds of burials from different phases of the city’s life, including an entire Iron Age cemetery. In conducting DNA analysis on the human remains, archaeologists found evidence that shed new light on the origins and ethnic makeup of the Philistines. In particular, DNA evidence confirmed the presence of a non-local population, most likely from the central Mediterranean, in the early 12th century—precisely the period in which both written sources and archaeology indicate the Philistines were first establishing themselves in the region. Interestingly, however, the evidence also showed that within just a few generations, the Philistines had intermarried with the local population to such a degree that their genetic makeup lost much of its immigrant distinctiveness.

Across decades of research on the Philistines, much of which has been published in BAR, the overall picture of their culture has become increasingly clear. This group—which originated partially in the Aegean but also included elements from Anatolia and other areas of the eastern Mediterranean—did not arrive all at once, as might be suggested by historical and biblical texts, but rather built up gradually over time. And though they were at first foreigners seeking out new lands and opportunities, they quickly developed relationships with their new neighbors, as attested not only in their burials and customs, but also in their adaptation of local technologies, styles, and even language. These adaptations notwith-standing, the Philistines’ archaeological legacy reveals a people who retained their distinct identity throughout the Iron Age, up until their final demise at the hands of the Babylonians at the end of the seventh century BCE.
One of the many Philistine burials excavated at Ashkelon.

READ MORE

“When Canaanites and Philistines Ruled Ashkelon” by Lawrence E. Stager (BAR, March/April 1991)
“The Fury of Babylon: Ashkelon and the Archaeology of Destruction” by Lawrence E. Stager (BAR, January/February 1996)
“Piece by Piece: Exploring the Origins of the Philistines” by Daniel M. Master (BAR, Spring 2022)

ZEV RADOVAN / BIBLELANDPICTURES.COM

The Tel Dan Stele

At the northern extreme of Israel is the site of Tel Dan. According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Dan conquered the city of Laish, renaming it Dan (Judges 18:29) and establishing what would become an important religious center for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, home to one of the two major cultic sites established by King Jeroboam I at the end of the tenth century BCE. Archaeological efforts at the site began in the late 1960s and have revealed major building projects, including fortifications dating to several different periods.

By far the most significant discovery from the site, however, is the Tel Dan Stele. Three fragments of this basalt monument were discovered between 1993 and 1995 in secondary use among the ruins of a wall. The stela bears an extensive inscription in Old Aramaic detailing the victories of an Aramean king—most likely Hazael of Damascus (r. 842–796 BCE)—over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The king, scholars claim, boasts of killing King Joram of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and King Ahaziah of the “house of David” (bytdwd, highlighted in white on the stone).

This makes the Tel Dan Stele the earliest extrabiblical evidence for a historical King David, who was identified already in the ninth century BCE as the eponymous founder of the ruling dynasty (or “house”) of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Additional historical references to the Davidic dynasty appear only centuries later, after Judah had been conquered by the Babylonians and the dynastic line had ended.

Several challenges were brought against its proposed reading and interpretation. Philip Davies even took to the pages of BAR to argue that reading the phrase bytdwd as “house of David” was implausible and constituted merely the latest attempt of “biblical maximalists” to prove the historical veracity of the biblical account. He argued that the phrase should be read as a place name, akin, for instance, to Bethlehem (bytlḥm). Davies’s proposal was promptly refuted in a follow-up article in BAR, however, and it has never enjoyed wide support.

Although questions still remain about the nature and extent of David’s rule, the discovery of the Tel Dan Stele continues to reverberate in both biblical scholarship and archaeology. In its wake, for instance, some scholars have restored the phrase “house of David” in the text of the famous Mesha Stele, which dates to the same period, though others warn such a reading remains far from certain. The inscription from Tel Dan will doubtless continue to carry tremendous significance in the field for generations to come.

READ MORE

“‘David’ Found at Dan” by Avraham Biran (BAR, March/April 1994)
“‘House of David’ Built on Sand: The Sins of the Biblical Maximizers” by Philip R. Davies (BAR, July/August 1994)
“‘House of David’ Is There!” by David Noel Freedman and Geoffrey C. Geoghegan (BAR, March/April 1995)

CLARA AMIT, COURTESY ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

The Moza Temple

Ahead of the construction of a major highway near Jerusalem, archaeological excavations exposed a settlement at Tel Moza, with remains dating from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (eighth and seventh millennia BCE) through modern times. The most stunning discovery came in 2012, when archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority uncovered an Iron Age temple that fundamentally changed the way we understand religion and cult in ancient Judah.

COURTESY DAVID RAFAEL MOULIS

Located on a slope overlooking a fertile valley fewer than 4 miles northwest of Jerusalem, the site of Moza became a central granary as early as the 11th century BCE. Given its economic prosperity and strategic importance, Moza was also a significant cultic site, which operated throughout most of the Iron Age II, from the early tenth until the early sixth century. This is surprising, as the Hebrew Bible claims that the only temple in Judah during this period was the Jerusalem Temple. Similarly, biblical authors famously credit kings Hezekiah and Josiah (late eighth and late seventh century, respectively) with consolidating Yahweh’s worship to Jerusalem and eliminating cultic activities at all other sites across Judah (2 Kings 18, 23; 2 Chronicles 29–31, 34–35).

P. PARTOUCHE, SKYVIEW

The earliest cultic structure at Moza dates to the tenth century. By the early ninth century, this became a monumental temple complex consisting of a courtyard and a large rectangular temple building. Oriented east to west, the temple measured 82 by 45 feet and had a Syrian-style three-room (or “long-room”) plan, which was typical of temples in the southern Levant as early as the second millennium BCE and was also adopted by Solomon for his temple. As such, it featured a portico with two columns flanking the entrance into a long hall, after which was the innermost chamber, the holy of holies. At the center of the courtyard, directly in front of the temple’s entrance, stood an altar built of roughly hewn fieldstones. A nearby refuse pit contained pottery sherds, ashes, and lots of sheep and goat bones—testament to ceremonial feasting and rituals that accompanied the refurbishment of the temple. The courtyard also produced cultic artifacts, such as clay figurines, fragments of chalices, stands, and pendants. These were intentionally broken and buried.

Clearly, despite biblical claims to the contrary, there were sanctioned temples in Judah in addition to the official temple in Jerusalem. In fact, scholars now posit that temples like the one at Moza must have existed throughout most of the First Temple period and that they were built and maintained as part of routine, state-supported religious practice across the kingdom.

READ MORE

“Another Temple in Judah! The Tale of Tel Moẓa” by Shua Kisilevitz and Oded Lipschits (BAR, January/February 2020)
“The Face of Yahweh?” by Yosef Garfinkel (BAR, Fall 2020)
“Facing the Facts About the ‘Face of God’: A Critical Response to Yosef Garfinkel” by Shua Kisilevitz, Ido Koch, Oded Lipschits, and David S. Vanderhooft (BAR, Winter 2020)

DUBY TAL/ALBATROSS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls

Perhaps no discovery has occupied more pages in BAR’s 50-year run than the Dead Sea Scrolls and the site of Qumran with which they are associated. Although the scrolls’ initial discovery took place in 1947, decades before BAR began, both the scrolls and the site have enjoyed sustained and robust scholarly interest up to the present day.

EYAL BARTOV/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

The scrolls, which were recovered from a total of 11 caves around the remote site of Qumran at the northwestern corner of the Dead Sea, attest at least one copy of every book of the Hebrew Bible except Esther. These precious documents, mostly preserved in thousands of tiny fragments, are the oldest known biblical manuscripts in the original Hebrew language. Remarkably, despite important differences between these texts and later manuscripts, the Dead Sea Scrolls reveal that the biblical textual tradition was preserved with tremendous consistency over the centuries.

In addition to the biblical manuscripts, there are a wealth of nonbiblical scrolls, traditionally interpreted as the product of the early Jewish community that occupied Qumran between the second or first century BCE and the first century CE. Over the years, there has been abundant debate—reflected in the pages of BAR—about how to understand these sectarian texts. Virtually every aspect of their historical significance has been interrogated: whether the scrolls represent a single cohesive collection; whether their authors and the cryptic individuals they mention, such as the “Teacher of Righteousness” and the “Wicked Priest,” can be identified with specific historical individuals; whether the communal framework described in the scrolls was reflected in the lived reality of the authors; and so on.

In the same vein, the past several decades have seen vigorous debate about the nature of the Qumran settlement and the identity of the people who lived there. Some have theorized that the site bears no connection to the caches of documents secreted away in the surrounding caves, proposing instead that it was either a military fortress or a villa used in the wintertime by residents of Jerusalem or elsewhere. But the prevailing opinion, advanced early on by the scholars who first studied the scrolls and the site, is that its occupants were a reclusive Jewish sect, sometimes associated with the Essenes, who produced the texts for their own use.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of these finds for our understanding of the Bible and its world. In addition to their import for the study of the biblical text, both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the site of Qumran offer an unparalleled window into the world of Second Temple Judaism in the centuries before and after the turn of the Common Era.

READ MORE

“The Qumran Settlement—Monastery, Villa or Fortress?” by Hershel Shanks (BAR, May/June 1993)
“What Was Qumran? Not a Country Villa” by Jodi Magness (BAR, November/December 1996)
“A View from the Caves: Who Put the Scrolls in There?” by Sidnie White Crawford (BAR, September/October 2011)
“A Short History of the Dead Sea Scrolls and What They Tell Us” by Lawrence H. Schiffman (BAR, May/June 2015)

JANE TAYLOR COLLECTION, 2004; COURTESY ACOR, AMMAN

The Palace Fortress of Machaerus

The Fortress of Machaerus, located on the eastern side of the Dead Sea in modern Jordan, has links to several major figures we know from the Gospels and the writings of Josephus. Perched precariously on an isolated mountain spur, it was built by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus and later rebuilt by Herod the Great, who transformed it into a royal palace. Although the hilltop residence was one of the most fortified places in Judea, it was eventually captured and destroyed by the Romans in 72 CE.

COURTESY OF THE HUNGARIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL MISSION TO MACHAERUS

According to Josephus, who reports extensively on Machaerus, the local ruler (tetrarch) Herod Antipas (r. 4 BCE–39 CE) held John the Baptist captive in the site’s fortified lower city and put him to death (Jewish Antiquities 18.116–119). The brutal execution of Jesus’s relative and forerunner (Matthew 14; Mark 6) is the only gospel event for which there is contemporary confirmation in a non-Christian source. The Gospels provide further details of John’s confinement and execution, saying that during Antipas’s birthday banquet, the king swore he would grant his stepdaughter Salome any wish if she danced for him. When she requested that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter, Antipas had John beheaded.

Over the past six decades, archaeologists have completely uncovered the Herodian palace and excavated a 50-foot-deep Hasmonean cistern. They also exposed remains of a fortification wall, the lower city, several mikva’ot (Jewish ritual baths), and Roman military camps around the site as well as an unfinished Roman siege ramp. Most tantalizing of all, Győző Vörös and his team have identified in the remains of the palace the very location of that fateful birthday party. They were even able to determine that a semicircular apse located in the axial center of this peristyle court-yard—enclosed on all four sides by porticoes resting on Doric columns—marks the space for Antipas’s throne, from which he would have watched Salome’s dance.

A royal residence where five biblical figures once dwelled (Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Princess Herodias, Princess Salome, and John the Baptist), Machaerus is a fascinating archaeological site redolent with biblical narratives and a place of pilgrimage for Christians and Muslims. This genuine gospel setting has been brought to life through recent architectural reconstructions, making Machaerus one of the rare places in the Holy Land where archaeological remains survive to bear witness to well-known New Testament narratives.

READ MORE

“Machaerus: Where Salome Danced and John the Baptist Was Beheaded” by Győző Vörös (BAR, September/October 2012)
“Anastylosis at Machaerus” by Győző Vörös (BAR, January/February 2015)
“Machaerus: A Palace-Fortress with Multiple Mikva’ot” by Győző Vörös (BAR, July/August 2017)
“Restoring Herod’s Throne Niche at Machaerus” by Győző Vörös (BAR, Winter 2020)

COURTESY THE ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

The Magdala Synagogue

Since at least the sixth century, Magdala on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee has been a prominent site of Christian pilgrimage tied to Jesus’s ministry and one of his most recognizable disciples—Mary Magdalene. The meaning of her epithet is a matter of debate, but tradition took it to mean “from Magdala,” a place that by the fourth century early Christians identified with the ancient port city of Taricheae just north of Tiberias. Owing its name to a profitable fish salting industry, Taricheae (later Magdala) was home to about 30,000 inhabitants prior to its destruction by the Romans in 67 CE. Adding to the written sources, archaeology over the past 50 years has unveiled a prosperous first-century Galilean city.

COURTESY ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

In 2009, archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority unearthed one of Magdala’s most exciting discoveries—a synagogue dating to the time of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. It featured a stone bench running around the main room and six columns supporting the ceiling. Surrounding the main room was a raised platform paved with mosaics, and the walls were plastered and painted with colored frescoes. In addition to being a rare example of a first-century synagogue, it featured a beautiful and unparalleled find—the so-called Magdala Stone.

This massive piece of decorated limestone, which measures about 1.8 feet wide and 2 feet long, was discovered resting on four short legs in the center of the synagogue’s main room, where it was possibly used as a base or table for Torah reading. All four sides and the top are decorated with reliefs that seem to give different perspectives on various features of the Jerusalem Temple. One of the short sides features a seven-branched menorah standing on a square podium and flanked on either side by a large ritual cup. It is the earliest representation of a seven-branched menorah outside Jerusalem. Its other sides show palm trees, ivy leaves, pillared archways with hanging lamps or censers, as well as rosettes and perhaps even the shewbread table and the wheels of a divine chariot symbolizing God’s throne. Some scholars believe this unique imagery not only evoked, but also materialized the Jerusalem Temple in this Galilean city, in effect transforming the local synagogue into a “minor temple” where locals may have practiced a form of spiritual worship in lieu of a ritual sacrifice offered in the Temple.

Although there is only one possible reference to Magdala in the Gospels (Matthew 15:39), Jesus likely would have stopped at such a prominent place when he “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom” (Matthew 9:35). During his visit, he would have certainly visited the town’s main synagogue, perhaps even hearing the Torah read aloud by someone standing over the Magdala Stone.

READ MORE

“Excavating Mary Magdalene’s Hometown,” by Marcela Zapata-Meza and Rosaura Sanz-Rincón (BAR, May/June 2017)
“Magdala’s Mistaken Identity” by Joan E. Taylor (BAR, Fall 2022)
“Jesus in the Synagogue” by Jordan J. Ryan (BAR, Spring 2023)

The Huqoq Synagogue Mosaics

Just 4 miles northwest of the Sea of Galilee sit the remains of the once-prosperous village of Huqoq, an important Jewish enclave during the Roman and Byzantine periods. Excavations at the site began in 2011, centering primarily on the early fifth-century CE synagogue—and for good reason, as its extensive mosaic floors are perhaps the most impressive in the region. Within the synagogue building, which is roughly 65 feet long and 50 feet wide, the floors of the nave and the surrounding aisles are covered in beautiful mosaics arranged in panels. The subject matter of some of the figural scenes is nonbiblical; one of the most striking depicts two leaders—possibly the Jewish high priest and Alexander the Great—confronting each other, one with a group of sword-wielding young men and the other with an army of soldiers and elephants.

Many of the mosaics, however, depict familiar biblical stories. One panel shows Jonah being cast into the sea and swallowed by a fish; the ship is surrounded by various real and mythical sea creatures. Elsewhere, a flood scene portrays Noah’s Ark as a rectangular box on four legs, a stylized presentation known from elsewhere. And the mosaics feature several scenes from the Book of Judges: Samson is shown carrying the gate of Gaza on his shoulders, and another panel captures the episode in which he ties torches to foxes’ tails to burn the Philistines’ crops (Judges 15:4–5); elsewhere, three successive registers depict the women heroes Deborah and Yael, who led the Israelites to victory over the Canaanite commander Sisera and his chariots in Judges 4–5.

Part of the significance of these beautiful mosaics is that they constitute some of the oldest known images that draw directly from the Bible. Remarkably, however, they also offer important clues about this Jewish community’s relationship with the biblical text. In the case of Deborah and Yael, for example, the three registers begin and end with elements known specifically from Judges 4: In the top register, Deborah sits under a date palm; in the bottom register, Yael kills Sisera by pounding a tent peg into his temple as he lies on the ground (not upright, as described in the poetic version of the story in Judges 5). Elsewhere, certain biblical stories are expanded fancifully: In Jonah’s scene, for instance, the fish that swallows him is also being swallowed by an even larger fish, which in turn is being swallowed by one larger still.

The Huqoq synagogue mosaics provide a rare glimpse into how Galilean Jews of late antiquity imagined the celebrated stories they knew from the Bible and other revered traditions. These remarkable artistic treasures speak to the vibrant life of the early Jewish community at Huqoq and remind us of the ongoing interplay between a religious community and its sacred texts.

READ MORE

“Samson in the Synagogue” by Jodi Magness (BAR, January/February 2013)
“Inside the Huqoq Synagogue” by Jodi Magness et al. (BAR, May/June 2019)
“Warrior Women: Deborah and Yael Found at Huqoq” by Karen Britt and Ra‘anan Boustan (BAR, Winter 2023)