Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2001
Features
Three of the five cities of the famous Philistine Pentapolis have long been known—Ashkelon, Ashdod and Gaza. A fourth, Ekron, has recently been confirmed by an inscription, locating it at modern Tel Miqne. Gath, the fifth, remains somewhat of a mystery. We believe we have found it—at Tell es-Safi, where we have been […]
Many years ago, before I had married and gone to work as an archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, I lived for five years in the Monastery of the Cross as a Greek Orthodox monk. So I know the complex well. According to legend, the tree that furnished the wood for the cross of […]
Genesis 14, one of the most puzzling episodes in the Bible, tells of a strange and unlikely war: Five petty kings, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, rebel against an overlord king, Chedorlaomer, and his three allies. The battlefield is described both as a valley and a sea (Genesis 14:3). It is somehow […]
Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer claims he has found the oldest synagogue building in the Biblical Land of Israel, near Jericho. Not everyone agrees that it’s a synagogue, however. Meanwhile, Italian excavators Virgilio Corbo and Stanislao Loffreda say they have found a synagogue about as old near the Sea of Galilee, at Migdal (sometimes called […]