It was at a party sponsored by the University of Paris in June 1984. We were chatting about nothing in particular when a friend of my husband’s mentioned that he had recently seen some Phoenician antiquities at the home of a Paris collector, more specifically a beautiful ring containing a seal that appeared to have […]
Seldom does archaeology come face to face with people actually mentioned in the Bible. When that happens, the discovery takes on a unique immediacy, touched with awe. When a hoard of inscribed Hebrew bullae surfaced on the antiques market and was found to contain a bulla impressed with the name of Baruch, son of Neriah, […]
2 Kings 24-15 15 And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon; and the king’s mother, and the king’s wives, and his officers, and the chief men of the land, carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 Kings 25-27–30 27 And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year of the captivity […]
Exod. 22-25–26 25 If thou at all take thy neighbour’s garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him by that the sun goeth down; 26 for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin; wherein shall he sleep? and it shall come to pass, when he crieth unto Me, that […]
One day in 1989 rumor reached me that monumental Israelite architecture had accidentally been uncovered at Tel Jezreel in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. I was then, as now, a professional archaeologist who studies the Biblical period. I have always been inspired by the Bible and the historical events described in it, as well […]
Shaye J.D. Cohen. “Judaism to the Mishnah: 135-220 C.E.” Part II Greco-Roman Period Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism- a Parallel History of their Origins and Early Development. Ed. Hershal Shanks. Washington D.C.- Biblical Archaeology Society, 1993. The organization of the Mishnah The Mishnah is a large work, some 800 to 1,000 pages in English translation. 68 […]
Shortly after major pieces of an extraordinary bronze statue had been dug up illegally by an American tourist, Gideon Foerster of the Israel Department of Antiquities received an urgent call from a former student describing the find. The tourist, an American named Morton Leventhal, had been wandering around with a metal detector looking for ancient […]
July 12th 1920 The Palestine Mandate Sir Arthur Balfour So far as the Arabs are a great, interesting, and attractive race I hope they will remember that . . . the great powers, and among all the great powers most especially Great Britain, has freed them, the Arab race, from the tyranny of their brutal […]
Prohibition on Marriage of Christians and Jews “No Jew shall take a Christian woman in marriage, neither shall a Christian marry a Jewess. Indeed, if anyone shall commit something of the kind, his crime shall be considered as adultery, with the right to accuse allowed the general public. It is prohibited by this law’s severity […]
A synagogue was burned by Christians in Kallinikon on the Euphrates. Source: Stemberger, Günter. Jews and Christians in the Holy Land (p193-194)