The Fertile Crescent and Egypt
Courtesy of Biblical Archaeology Society
Courtesy of Biblical Archaeology Society
In August of 1847, the British Museum mounted the first major display of Assyrian antiquities in England. For a year, the public had pored over sketches from Austen Henry Layard’s Mesopotamian excavations in the Illustrated London News. Now, it was possible to inspect the impassive, chiseled faces of the Assyrian kings during a comfortable excursion to […]
Dead Sea Scroll scholarship is undergoing a virtual revolution. New ideas and perspectives are percolating among the small group of scholars who dedicate themselves to primary research on the content of the scrolls. Recent publications focus on major changes in the way Dead Sea Scroll research affects our understanding of the history of Judaism and […]
A walking tour reveals Jerusalem flourishing, destroyed and splendidly rebuilt. War—or rather two wars—made possible the current golden age of discovery in Jerusalem, at the City of David, at the Temple Mount and in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. In 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, the occupants of the Jewish Quarter surrendered to the […]
It’s time to link the finder with the find In the 1980s Gershon Edelstein, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, was excavating ancient farms at Ein Yael, outside Jerusalem.(a) These were not jazzy sites (except for a villa where the Roman boss once lived, which contained mosaics(b), but there was a lot to learn […]
Articles Mad to See the Monuments, Steven W. Holloway, Bible Review (17:6) Dec. 2001. Keith Whitelam Claims Bible Scholars Suppress Palestinian History in Favor of Israelites, Biblical Archaeology Review Mar/Apr 1996. The Rose of Jericho—Symbol of the Resurrection, Jacob Friedman, Zippora Stein and Amotz Dafni, Biblical Archaeology Review (6:5), Sep/Oct 1980. What Does the Bible […]
Shortly after a raging mob demolished the traditional site of Joseph’s tomb near ancient Shechem, first dismantling it stone by stone and then setting it aflame, a newspaper reporter called me for comment. Like most people, I was sickened by the violence. He wanted to know about endangered archaeological sites. The hate, the fierceness of […]
Large excavations give way to smaller, more focused digs as archaeological parks and displays sprout up all over the city. The magnitude and extent of archaeological activity in Jerusalem since the city was reunited in 1967 are unparalleled in the city’s long history of research. Since then, we have seen two major waves of excavations. […]
An Archaeological Romance, Part 1 An interview with Moshe and Trude Dothan They are the first family of Israeli archeology. Trude and Moshe Dothan each have more than four decades of experience in the field, having excavated such major sites as Hazor, Hammath Tiberius, Nahariya, Deir el-Balah, Akko, Ashdid and Ekron. In this first installment […]
There are some who claim that the Bible contains little or no historical information about ancient Israel. I want to combat these “minimalist” or “revisionist” views of the history of ancient Israel by showing how archaeology can and does illuminate a historical Israel in the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (roughly 1200–600 B.C.E.). I will, […]