Inside BAR

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“The city of Corinth was always great and wealthy, and it was well equipped with men skilled both in the affairs of state and in the craftsman’s art.” So wrote Roman historian and geographer Strabo about 7 B.C. About 50 A.D., when the apostle Paul arrived in Corinth on the isthmus connecting mainland Greece with the Peloponnese, he found a prosperous commercial city undergoing major remodeling by expert architects, builders and artisans. The elaborate, elegant remains of Roman Corinth and of the Greek city that preceded it have been revealed by nearly 100 years of careful excavation. In “Corinth in Paul’s Time—What Can Archaeology Tell Us?” Victor Paul Furnish displays the roads, shops, temples and artifacts that Paul saw and explains how they help us to understand better what Paul said and how he lived.

Furnish is University Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology. An authority on the apostle who took his preaching to Corinth, Furnish has written The Moral Teaching of Paul: Selected Issues (Abingdon, 1985), The Pauline Letters (with L. Keck, Abingdon, 1984) (see the review in the April issue of our sister publication, Bible Review) and II Corinthians (Doubleday, 1984), which won the BAS 1986 Publication Award for Best Commentary on a Book of the New Testament.

Scholars generally agree on where the Israelites’ journey through Sinai began—Raamses, in the eastern Nile Delta—and where it ended—Kadesh-Barnea, identified with Ein el-Qudeirat. Tracing the journey between, however, has long been a controversial undertaking full of a multitude of pitfalls. Scholars have spanned the Sinai with their proposals, from the Via Maris in the north to the southern route past Jebel Musa. Now Israeli archaeologist Itzhaq Beit-Arieh reviews the alternatives and presents ecological arguments to support “The Route Through Sinai—Why the Israelites Fleeing Egypt Went South.”

Beit-Arieh has been excavating in the deserts of Sinai and Israel since 1969. He directed the Ophir Expedition to Sinai and digs at Tel Ira, Horvat Uza and Horvat Qitmit in the Negev. His numerous articles detailing the finds at these and other sites include “New Light on the Edomites,” BAR 14:02, and “Fifteen Years in Sinai,” BAR 10:04. Beit-Arieh is a principal research associate and lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University.

“BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts, Part II” completes a dialogue between the Jerusalem excavator and BAR editor Hershel Shanks that took place shortly before Shiloh’s death from cancer in November 1987. The first part of the interview appeared in “BAR Interview: Yigal Shiloh—Last Thoughts,” BAR 14:02. In the sequel in this issue Shiloh recounts his sometimes violent confrontations with ultra-Orthodox extremists who protested the City of David excavations because, they contended, the ruins were the site of a medieval Jewish cemetery. Other highlights include Shiloh’s reminiscences about his colleagues—Benjamin Mazar, Yigael Yadin and Yohanan Aharoni—and discussions of the Israelite four-room house and the term “Biblical archaeology.”

Secret rooms are found not only in the pages of Gothic mysteries, but sometimes in archaeological excavations. Although hints of the presence of a Roman gateway hidden beneath Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate date back to the 1930s, the thorough excavation of the older structure took place only within the last decade. In “Recovering Roman Jerusalem—The Entryway Beneath Damascus Gate,” Menahem Magen recounts the history of the Roman gateway and conducts a tour of its long-forgotten rooms, now restored as a museum.

An archaeology graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Magen has participated in major Israeli excavations, including Ramat Rahel, Ashdod, Masada, Caesarea and Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. As archaeological advisor to the East Jerusalem Development Company, a position he has held for the last ten years, he has directed excavations at Lion’s Gate and the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City, in addition to the Damascus Gate Project. A licensed guide for nearly 30 years, Magen specializes in archaeological tours.

“The city of Corinth was always great and wealthy, and it was well equipped with men skilled both in the affairs of state and in the craftsman’s art.” So wrote Roman historian and geographer Strabo about 7 B.C. About 50 A.D., when the apostle Paul arrived in Corinth on the isthmus connecting mainland Greece with the Peloponnese, he found a prosperous commercial city undergoing major remodeling by expert architects, builders and artisans. The elaborate, elegant remains of Roman Corinth and of the Greek city that preceded it have been revealed by nearly 100 years of careful excavation. In “Corinth […]