Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1999

The fiery destruction of Hazor, the Book of Joshua recounts, was the final episode in the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Once Joshua burned down this key city—“the head of all those kingdoms,” as Joshua 11:10 puts it—the land of Canaan was open to Israelite settlement. Over the centuries, a new city rose from […]

Query: Why is Disney World like Kansas City? Answer: Both proved hopelessly inept and inadequate in hosting the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Academy of Religion (AAR).a It will be a long time before the Annual Meeting returns to Orlando. It started early. With hundreds of people […]

Not long ago, a clay impression of the seal of a Hebrew king came to light for the first time: The seal of ’Ahaz, king of Judah from about 734 to 715 B.C.E., had been pressed into a small bit of clay (called a bulla) that once sealed a papyrus roll.a On the […]

Just as archaeological finds flesh out Israelite history, so they also tell us about Israel’s neighbors and sometime enemies. Such is the case with the Ammonites, a people who lived east of the Jordan and fought in league with the Philistines against the emerging Israelites (Judges 10:7–9). Both Saul and David engaged the Ammonites […]

The mystery deepens. As if the perplexing graves at Qumran were not enough, the same unusual type of tomb has now been discovered in southern Jerusalem. None of these tombs looks remotely like the typical Jerusalem tomb from the same period, called the Second Temple period (first century B.C.E. to first century C.E.). More […]