Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1993

Your editorial headed “Why Professor Qimron’s Lawsuit Is a Threat to Intellectual Freedom,” BAR 18:05, ends with an invitation to me to explain why I think that the arguments in that editorial are wrong. I should like to take up that invitation. 1. The editorial is based on a completely false assumption. It states […]

As a result of an initiative by a BAR reader, new carbon-14 tests will be performed on selected Dead Sea Scrolls in an effort to determine their dates with greater confidence.

Copper Scroll Coming to U.S. In “Bits & Pieces,” BAR 18:06, we announced that some fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls from Israel are to be exhibited at the Library of Congress, starting April 29. Not to be outdone, Jordan will allow the famous Copper Scroll to be brought to this country perhaps as early as this summer.

018 Tel Dor, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, is the site of one of the most conquered cities in the Levant. Although practically every major people of the region occupied or ruled the site at one time or another—leaving behind an accumulation of debris 45 feet high—it was the Phoenician culture that dominated Dor […]

It’s not every day that you dig up a dead woman. And in archaeology, the most dramatic discoveries always seem to come at the most awkward times; this one, true to form, appeared less than 36 hours before we were due to leave the excavation at Tel Dor. It was 7 a.m. on Thursday, […]

After King Solomon constructed the Jerusalem Temple and his adjacent royal palace, he made a gift to Hiram, the Phoenician king who had supplied him not only with craftsmen for the project, but also with much timber and gold. Solomon’s gift: 20 towns in Galilee. But when Hiram inspected the towns, he didn’t like […]

I wasn’t really kicked out. I was just asked to leave—very politely. Still, it was a little embarrassing. I was at a joint meeting of CAP—ASOR’sa Committee on Archaeological Policy—and AMC—its Ancient Manuscript Committee, having just come from a separate meeting of the Ancient Manuscript Committee, chaired by Notre Dame’s James VanderKam. The AMC […]

In a letter to the editor in Queries & Comments, BAR 18:06, Jerusalem guide Walter Zanger questions whether the installations found in the Jewish Quarter excavations directed by the late Nahman Avigad were really mikva’ot (ritual purification baths, singular mikveh), as they were denominated in an article on those excavations.a According to Zanger, only […]

“Can archaeology prove the Bible true?” is no longer a question field archaeologists in the ancient Near East even ask. Instead they ask sociological questions, economic questions, anthropological questions about ancient societies. In the end, the data they unearth may illuminate our understanding of the Bible, but this is not the archaeologist’s primary focus. […]