Biblical Archaeology Review, June 1976

A recent Readers’ Digest article which suggests that the remains of Noah’s Ark may yet be found atop Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey has rekindled enormous interest in the quest.1

In Genesis 24:2–9 Abraham has his servant Eliezer put his hand under the Patriarch’s thigh to swear “by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth” that the servant will not arrange a marriage for Abraham’s son Isaac with a Canaanite woman. Similarly, in Genesis 47:29–31 the dying Patriarch Jacob has his son Joseph […]

A picture of the kernos found at Kibbutz Sasa and briefly described in our December, 1975 issue (“Two Cases of Discrimination,” BAR 01:04) has now been released to The Biblical Archaeology Review by the Israel Antiquities Department. A kernos (plural: kernoi) is a hollow pottery ring usually about 12 inches in diameter with various […]

King Saul had his problems with young David, but this did not prevent an unusually close relationship from developing between David and Saul’s son Jonathan. Indeed, the Bible reports that Jonathan “made a covenant with David, because he loved him as dearly as himself. Jonathan stripped off the cloak that he was wearing and […]

A tunnel 1750 feet long constructed by King Hezekiah to protect the water supply of Jerusalem from the Assyrians during Sennacherib’s siege of 701 B.C. has recently re-opened.

Leona Running has written an adoring biography of the dean of Biblical archaeologists, William Foxwell Albright.a Now Professor of Biblical Languages at Andrews University, Dr. Running served as secretary and assistant to the great American archaeologist during the last years of his life. The book, as she says in the preface, is “a labor […]

Archaeology is a love affair between an archaeologist and an ancient ruin. The ruin heap may be a shipwrecked galleon, an isolated stone circle in a vast desert, or the fallen walls of a fortress still uncovered by the sands of time. There are some 5,000 ruin heaps in ancient Palestine, within the modern […]

A newly discovered ancient library which scholars say will rival the famous collections from Mari, Nuzi and Amarna has been found in northern Syria at the site of Tell Mardikh (modern Ebla). More than 15,000 clay tablets written about 4500 years ago in cuneiform characters were excavated in two small rooms which apparently served as the King’s palace library.

Hassan el Sayyid Ragab, an electrical engineer and former diplomat, is one of the world’s more exotic entrepreneurs. His factory is a houseboat on the Nile in the shadow of the Cairo Sheraton Hotel.

In a fascinating article, Pere Pierre Benoit of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem, raises anew the question whether the Septuagint translation of the Bible is divinely inspired. Whether or not one agrees with Pere Benoit that it is, his careful discussion of some differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text is illuminating and instructive.

In the fall of 1962, 22-year-old Jesse Salsberg was honeymooning in Israel with his 19-year-old bride. An observant Jew and a graduate of New York’s Yeshiva University, Salsberg was thinking of settling permanently in Israel.

Cyrus Gordon—the brilliant, maverick scholar—has spent a significant part of his professional life searching for connections between the early Greeks and Hebrews. His most popular effort in this area is a book entitled The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (New York: Norton, 1966).