Our 35th Anniversary

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With this issue we begin our year-long celebration of our 35th anniversary.

When we realized that our 35th anniversary would be coming hot on the heels of BAR’s 200th issue, our staff began discussing how to recognize these two milestones differently. We decided that while the 200th issue would focus on the major finds, photos and stories that had filled the magazine over the years, the 35th anniversary would be an opportunity to look beyond the pages of BAR at the many ways the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) has developed and expanded our mission to bring the latest in Biblical and archaeological research to the general public, and to see how the field has changed in the decades since we published that first issue in March 1975.

One of the biggest outgrowths of our mission has been to provide educational resource materials for teachers, institutions and interested individuals. This includes books that have been used as textbooks in numerous colleges and universities, such as our Ancient Israel and Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism—both of which are in the process of being revised and expanded once again to keep them current—as well as more popular books. We’ve produced an 032ever-expanding collection of lecture series and documentary videos on VHS and DVD that are popular for classroom use and for watching at home, including Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down and the five-part An Archaeological Search for Jesus. Our slide sets, now digitally available on CD-ROMs as the BAS Photo Archive, contain more than 1,675 images of sites and artifacts from throughout the Holy Land and Ancient Near East.

We’ve enjoyed the lighter side of our field by offering various T-shirts, ties, umbrellas, tote bags featuring the Madaba map, games and puzzles for children, as well as the controversial idol sets advertised in the magazine.^a For a time, BAR editor Hershel Shanks and publisher Susan Laden would travel the world looking for exotic products to sell. Their voyages stocked our store with hand-painted scarves from Turkey, brass samovars (teapots) from Morocco, Yemenite glass jewelry and Arab ceramics. We even had replicas of the famous Siloam Inscription made from a rubber mold of the real deal. We discontinued that project because, as Hershel likes to say, we brought in three-quarters of a million dollars and it only cost us $750,000.

We’ve also made a few important contributions to serious scholarly literature through the groundbreaking publication of A Facsimile Edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls and The City of David: Revisiting Early Excavations and copublishing with the Israel 033Exploration Society Volume 5 of The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land.

Our biennial BAS Publication Awards (made possible by a grant from the Leopold and Clara M. Fellner Charitable Foundation, through its trustee Frederick L. Simmons) honor the best scholarly and popular publications in the fields of Biblical archaeology and Biblical studies.

The BAS travel/study program, now beginning its 34th year, has created a network of participants from far and wide who have developed close friendships and who return again and again to experience the special opportunity to learn from the world’s best scholars in a friendly environment. The program offers study tours to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Greece and a mid-winter Caribbean cruise, as well as popular seminars around the U.S. and at Oxford University.

Not all of our experiments over the years have worked. Our well-received “Backward Subscription” program promised to provide back issues of BAR to subscribers on odd months when they weren’t receiving new issues, but it turned out to be a fulfillment nightmare, so we ultimately ended it. (Back issues can now be purchased upon request, but some of our early issues are unavailable in print). We also had a short-lived column in the early 1980s called “BAR Jr.” for younger readers and a technical column, “Scholars’ Corner” for more advanced readers. We even supported the founding of several local chapters of the Biblical Archaeology Society around the country to bring together Biblical archaeology enthusiasts for discussion and to hear speakers. Only a few of these chapters, now independent entities, are still active.

But a few setbacks didn’t slow us down. We’ve been instrumental in bringing important artifacts to the U.S. and Canada for exhibit to the 034public, including the ossuary of Caiaphas and the ivory pomegranate inscribed “Holy to the priests, [belonging] to the Temple of Yahweh” for exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., as well as the controversial ossuary inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus” for a special exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. The inscriptions on the ivory pomegranate and the James ossuary have since been declared forgeries by the Israel Antiquities Authority, but scholars are divided, and BAR continues to defend their authenticity. This story is not yet over.

With each major advancement in technology, BAS has worked to stay current with the products we offer and the media in which they’re delivered. For more than a decade, our Web site has provided yet another accessible outlet for offering our information and resources to the public. The recent redesign of our site brings together exclusive E-Features, News, Debates, Multimedia and Reviews—more material than we could ever fit into the pages of the print magazine—with the full BAS Library, our online store and information about our Travel/Study programs, not to mention our comprehensive Digs site that connects volunteers with excavations in the Holy Land looking for workers. We offer free e-mail newsletters and have even branched out to Facebook and Twitter so our online fans and followers can get the latest updates on our programs, products and breaking news in between issues of BAR.

Is there more you’d like to see us do to expand our coverage of Biblical archaeology? Drop us a note. We welcome your suggestions for how we can continue to develop and grow in the coming years. In the meantime, thanks for being with us.

With this issue we begin our year-long celebration of our 35th anniversary.