Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1995

In 966, the English scholar Derwas J. Chitty located 25 monasteries in the Judean desert east of Jerusalem, many known only from then-recent explorations.1 Today the number exceeds 60.2 The past decade has witnessed a veritable revolution in the study of these Judean desert monasteries. This is the result mainly of the work of […]

Four miles east of Jerusalem on a hilltop in the Judean desert on the road to Jericho sits Ma‘ale Adummim, a modern city of over 20 thousand people. In its midst is one of the largest, most important and most elaborate ancient monasteries in the Holy Land—the monastery of the fifth-century monk Martyrius.1 We […]

As readers of BAR may know, I have long maintained a principle of not writing articles for the magazine, although I remain good friends with editor Hershel Shanks, and I do assist with slide sets, seminars, tours and the Biblical Archaeology Society’s various educational enterprises. My reluctance to give direct approval to BAR, […]

This article will examine a remarkable but little-known Punic/Phoenician funerary monument from Pozo Moro, Spain. Behind it lie complex cultural influences, including some connections with the Biblical prophet Ezekiel and his vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37). At opposite ends of the Mediterranean Sea, Spain and Canaan lie more than a […]

For more than 50 years, Dumbarton Oaks, the prestigious Byzantine study center in Washington, D.C. run by Harvard University, has held an annual conference of Byzantine scholars from all over the world. This year’s conference,a for the first time in more than a decade, focused primarily on the archaeology of Palestine and Transjordan in […]