Biblical Archaeology Review, 2004
Features
On August 17, 2004, the New York Times devoted an entire column in its A section to the discovery of a cave with a pool near Jerusalem that, it said, John the Baptist may have used to baptize early converts to what later became known as Christianity. The following day, Doubleday released a nearly […]
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) last summer declared the inscription on the James ossuary—which reads, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”—to be a fake.a Since then, however, both the reasoning and the conclusion of the IAA report have been widely attacked by experts.b And the members of the committee have not responded to […]
024 025 What city was the official residence of the Roman prefect after Judea came under direct rule by Rome beginning in 6 C.E.? What city was designated as capital of the Roman province of Judea after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E? What city was the political and economic capital of […]
Intense scholarly disagreements are common in archaeology. Cases of deliberate lying, however, are rare. Is this such a case? If so, what is the motive? When I returned from the Annual Meetingsa in Atlanta last November, I penned my customary report for publication in the March/April issue.b (I have been doing this in […]
Many people may be turning their attention to the classical world of ancient Greece this August, when the Olympic Games convene in Athens, but those of you who sign on this summer as dig volunteers in Israel or Jordan may well find yourselves handling artifacts that 044were already ancient when the first Olympics were […]
Some of the most famous hot-spring spas in the ancient world lie along the Syrian-African rift. This great gash in the Earth’s mantle extends from Asia Minor in the north to east Africa in the south, with the Jordan Valley in between. The hot springs are a byproduct of the volcanic activity and earthquakes […]
Among the most controversial issues in both Biblical archaeology and Biblical studies is the nature of Jerusalem in the tenth century B.C.E. Why the tenth century? Because in the Bible that is the time of Israel’s glory, the time of King David and King Solomon, the time of the United Kingdom of Judah and […]
038 In 44 C.E., the Jewish king Agrippa, king of Judea, stood in the theater of Caesarea, clothed in a garment woven of silver threads that glittered in the first rays of sunlight. To those who looked upon him, he seemed awesome and terrible. The spectators were the leading men of the kingdom. […]
Just over a hundred years ago, an American archaeologist discovered a series of spectacular tomb paintings dating from about 200 B.C.E. at a site in the foothills of the Judean mountains. Yet, within a few years, these precious works of art had faded into oblivion, and since then they have been known to the […]
028 Hershel Shanks: I have known each of you for many years. And I know that the Bible has been a central influence in your lives—but in a very different way. In truth, you inhabit very different Biblical worlds. Both of you are giants, dare I say nephilim [giants; see Genesis 6:4; Numbers […]
The scholarly world is abuzz. During at least the past 20 years, and more likely during the last 33 years, more than a thousand potsherds inscribed in Aramaic have come onto the antiquities market. About 800 of these have now been published.1 They are richly informative—one inscribed sherd even refers to a previously unknown […]
This is the imaginary trial of Oded Golan, the Tel Aviv antiquities collector who owns the ossuary, or bone box, inscribed “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” He is charged with forging the inscription. You be the judge (there are no juries in Israel): Don’t assume that the Judge’s courtroom rulings on objections […]
For ten years, between 1968 and 1978, the area south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was intensively excavated by archaeologist Benjamin Mazar.1 His many spectacular discoveries included the remains of a monumental staircase that led up to the southern enclosure wall of the massive platform built by Herod to support the gleaming […]
Sorbonne paleographer André Lemaire recently analyzed in these pages the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) report that declared the James ossuary inscription (“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus”) to be a modern forgery.a Lemaire considered various aspects of the IAA report, such as paleography and orthography, and convincingly found the report deeply flawed. As […]
The decision was unanimous: Antiquities collectors are criminals, responsible for the worldwide scourge of looting.
Think small. No, think minute! Think something seemingly unimportant, but invaluable. Think seeds and weeds and grains—grown over 2,500 years ago. Our story takes place in the late seventh century B.C.E. in the thriving Philistine city of Ashkelon, on what is now the Mediterranean coast of Israel. In 604 B.C.E., Ashkelon was utterly […]
BAR’s reports on the so-called Jehoash inscription—which describes repairs to the Solomonic Temple by King Jehoash in the ninth century B.C.E.—are unhesitatingly condemnatory: It is a fake. A piece by the BAR editor on the 15-line inscription is headed “Demonstrably a Forgery.”a My long-time friend Frank Cross (we wrote two joint doctoral dissertations […]
Perched precariously on a steep, barren slope overlooking the southeastern shore of the Dead Sea, I found the remains of what had once been elegant stone buildings—walls, pieces of metal and glass, tiny mosaic cubes and pottery sherds. It was 1986 and I was conducting a survey with Canadian excavator Burton MacDonald. The […]
I study names. We can learn an enormous amount from names and their etymology. Since one of the issues raised in BAR recently has been the historicity of early sections of the Bible, I wondered whether names could make a small contribution to that discussion. Let’s look at the personal names in a famous […]
We are what the outside world calls “settlers.” We live in the West Bank, but refer to it by its Biblical names, Judea and Samaria. I (Yoel) live in Ophrah, about 10 miles from the ancient site of Shiloh. Ophrah was established in 1975, the first Jewish settlement after the Six-Day War. Doron is […]
I have often lamented that, although there are thousands of museums in the United States devoted to every conceivable topic, there is not a single museum here devoted to Biblical archaeology. I have recently been challenged on this assertion—and from a most unlikely source. I am wrong, I am told. There is a Biblical […]
So often it seems that pottery is boring. But the little bits of sherds that are ubiquitous on excavations tell us a lot. Thanks to pottery we can date structures such as buildings and the contents within them.
Scholars have been cautious about drawing a direct line between Jesus and the Dead Sea Scroll sectarians. Indeed, perhaps the most criticized sentence in the vast literature about the Dead Sea Scrolls is one penned by the great American literary critic Edmund Wilson. Based on the conclusions of the French Dead Sea Scroll scholar […]