Biblical Archaeology Review, March 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 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.

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.

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 […]

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.

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.

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.