Biblical Archaeology Review, 1975

In 935, Nelson Glueck of Hebrew Union College conducted a survey of the Negev which astounded a generation of Bible students at what could be learned from surface finds alone. Among these finds in the Aravah rift (also found a year earlier by a German scholar Fritz Frank) were a large number of copper […]

The most sensational archaeological discovery of the last half century was made entirely by accident. On a morning in the winter of 1946–1947 three shepherds of the Ta’amireh tribe of Bedouin watched their nimble-footed goats skip across the cliffs just north of an old ruin on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea The […]

William Foxwell Albright, who died almost four years ago, left a major manuscript tentatively entitled The History of the Religion of Israel which has yet to be published.

Popular accounts of archaeological excavations serve a double purpose: For the non-professional, they provide readable and comprehensive summaries; for the scholar, they serve as a temporary substitute for the excavator’s final report which, unfortunately, is often long delayed. Thus, for example, both layman and scholar can be grateful for Kathleen Kenyon’s Digging Up Jericho, […]

It’s hard to believe that with this issue the BAR has completed its first year of publication. For those who have been intimately involved in its creation, probably no other year will be as challenging as this one has been. Now we’ve made it. The potential has been made actual. In short, we’re a success.

A unique Philistine temple has recently been discovered and excavated within the city limits of Tel Aviv.

The first horned animal altar ever unearthed in ancient Israel was recently excavated by Professor Yohanan Aharoni at Tell Beer-Sheva. The exacavator dates the altar from the 8th century B.C. and possibly earlier.

Despite heightened tensions, an expectation that sooner or later there will be another war, and a near-universal dislike of Secretary Kissinger, archaeology continues in Israel, if anything on an even larger scale, as if the Israelis were saying “Despite it all, we shall continue with the things that are really important; we shall not let matters of war and peace over which we have so little control deter us from pursuing a way of life that we can control and create.”

The article on Hazor in the March 1975 issue of the BAR (“Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01) appears to endorse Yadin’s conclusion that the references to Hazor and its king Jabin in Judges 4 constitute “a late and inaccurate gloss.” Don’t reject the historicity of the Biblical […]

One of the things that must be done in starting a magazine is to decide how to spell. This is especially difficult with a magazine about archeology—oops, archaeology.

The aim of The Biblical Archaeology Review is to make available in understandable language the current insights of professional archaeology as they relate to the Bible. No other publication is presently devoted to this task. While on occasion we may make an original contribution to knowledge, that will be unusual. Our primary function will be reportorial. However, we hope that we will often say things better and more understandably than they have been said before. And that in itself is a contribution.

What is not in doubt is that Kathleen Kenyon is virulently anti-Zionist. The more subtle question is whether this affects her work as an archaeologist. It is not hard to find Israelis who think it does. Others suggest it is only a professional cantankerousness that so often sets her against Israeli archaeologists. In any […]

Yigael Yadin’s popular volume on Hazor has now been published by Random House. Titled Hazor, The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible, the book is priced at $20.00. In format and style, it follows the author’s highly successful accounts of his excavations at Masada and in the so-called Bar-Kokhba caves on the […]

The shoals in the sea of archaeology are treacherous indeed. Take the case of Marie-Louise Buhl.

The site of Hazor, located in upper Galilee, consists of a 30-acre upper tell, plus an adjacent plateau at a lower level of over 175 acres. The tell, unlike the plateau, was occupied almost continuously from the 27th century B.C. to the 2nd century B.C. By contrast, the plateau, or lower city, was a […]

Scholars will recall that several years ago a shepherd, wandering in the Gulf of Aquaba, stumbled upon a cave containing several large clay jars and also two tickets to the ice show. Inside the jars were discovered six parchment scrolls with ancient incomprehensible writing which the shepherd, in his ignorance, sold to the museum for $750,000 apiece. Two years later the jars turned up in a pawnshop in Philadelphia. One year later the shepherd turned up in a pawnshop in Philadelphia and neither was claimed.

Debir, a district capital of the Judean monarchy which figures prominently in Joshua and Judges, was misidentified by the great William F. Albright, according to Professor Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University. Professor Kochavi argues that he, not Albright has excavated the true site of Debir—at Khirbet Rabud, in the Judean hill country, twelve miles southwest of Hebron.

In the late eighth century B.C., when Sennacherib, King of Assyria, sent messengers to Hezekiah, King of Judah, to demand the surrender of Jerusalem, Hezekiah dispatched three senior officials to negotiate with the Assyrian messengers. When the negotiations proved unsuccessful, Hezekiah sent these Judean officials to the prophet Isaiah to seek the prophet’s advice. […]

One of the best known insights in E. A. Speiser’s Genesis (the Anchor Bible series) is wrong, according to independent studies by Professor R. David Freedman of the University of California, Davis and Professor Samuel Greengus of Hebrew Union College. Speiser, they say, misunderstood the Hurrian material from Nuzi on which he relied.

Opportunities for archaeological investigation appear to be opening up in the Arabian peninsula for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, according to reports from Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Recently returned from a four-month visit to Yemen, Father Albert Jamme of Catholic University visited 70 sites, copied over 300 formal South Arabian inscriptions and over 900 graffiti. Father Jamme is generally recognized as the world’s leading South Arabian epigrapher.

G. Ernest Wright, one of the last of a passing generation of great archaeologists, died on August 29, 1974. He was 64 years old. A student of W. F. Albright, Wright was, since Albright’s death in 1971, America’s leading Biblical archaeologist. As a teacher, first at McCormick Theological Seminary and then at Harvard, Professor Wright trained a generation of American Biblical archaeologists.

The past two and a half decades have witnessed a proliferation of publications in the field of Biblical archaeology designed for the interested layman or student. While some of these works cater to sensation and exaggerated claims, and others are little more than huge and expensive volumes of glossy photos, many others offer solid […]

“Dust” and “ashes” are referred to frequently in the same Biblical contexts, so much so that some scholars have suggested that the two words are synonymous and interchangeable.

Part of the so-called lost tribes of Israel appear to have been located. In 721 B.C., the northern Kingdom of Israel, composed of ten of the ancient Israelite tribes descended from the sons of Jacob, was conquered and destroyed by Assyria.

Avi Eitan, the new Director of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, is only the third person to hold the position in the history of the 27-year old state. (The other two incumbents were Avraham Biran, the most recent director, and Samuel Yeivin.) A youthful 40-year-old, Eitan is likely to be in this important position for years to come.

Everyone knows that King Solomon was a great builder. What we learn from the Bible (see 1 Kings 9:15–20) has been confirmed by the archaeologists’ spade—especially at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer (three sites specifically mentioned in the passage in Kings), each with its distinctive Solomonic gate.

Archaeology can be one of the most effective ways to interest teenagers in Biblical studies. That is why Treasures from the Dusta by Azriel Eisenberg and Dov Peretz Elkins is particularly welcome. Written for high school readers, this book invites the student to “join the adventurous groups of archaeologists who dig the ancient mounds, […]

The climate of the Near East has not changed since Biblical times, according to most scientists, a view shared by climatologists, as well as by geologists and dendrochronologists (experts in dating tree rings).

This is an important, original article, which we print despite the fact that it is somewhat more technical than our usual fare. A word of introduction may be helpful to the non-professional.

Last summer, a kernos was found in a field of an Israeli kibbutz. A kernos is a hollow pottery ring about 12 inches in diameter with various hollow pottery objects sitting on the ring and attached to it. Six objects originally perched on the ring of the kernos which turned up last summer, of […]