Features

Did Theseus Slay the Minotaur?
How Myth and Archaeology Inform Each Other By Jeremy McInerney

In 876, Heinrich Schliemann completed a season’s excavation at Mycenae, where his faith in Homer’s text was repaid with spectacular success. Having excavated one of the shafts in grave circle A, close by the Lion Gate, Schliemann had come down on a burial containing the remains of a man whose face in death had […]

Where Mary Rested
Rediscovering the Kathisma By Hershel Shanks

For many centuries the Protoevangelium of James was an enormously popular and influential apocryphal gospel. Written in the latter half of the second century, purportedly by Jesus’ brother James, it tells the story of the birth of Mary and, later, of Jesus. It is charming and moving and in the best gospel tradition. In […]

Hadrian’s Legion
Encamped on the Temple Mount By Eilat Mazar

After the Romans destroyed the Temple and burned Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Xth Legion (Fretensis) of the Roman army camped on the southwestern hill of the city, in the area known today as the Citadel, by Jaffa Gate.1 This was not, however, enough to stifle the resurgence of Jewish nationalism. In 132 C.E. […]

The Volcano Explains Everything—Or Does It?
Does this crater from an ancient volcanic eruption hold the answer to the mysteries of the Exodus? By Manfred Bietak

Canadian documentarian Simcha Jacobovici, in cooperation with James Cameron, director of Titanic, has master-minded a two-hour TV special dealing with the oft-treated—and oft-mistreated—Exodus narrative. The Biblical account provides the principal pillar of the script. Every sentence of the Biblical text is taken literally in quite a fundamentalist fashion. Until now, Biblical scholars have not […]

First Person: Indictments Can Kill
Conspiracy of five that became conspiracy of four now becomes conspiracy of two By Hershel Shanks
ReViews: King Jesus?
The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity By James F. Strange
ReViews: Chicken Feet in Clay
Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Sources from the Land of Israel in Ancient Times By Hershel Shanks
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