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In the Bible, the inner shrine of Solomon’s Temple is described as having five mezuzot. What are they? The question has puzzled Biblical scholars for centuries. Does a recently discovered shrine model from Khirbet Qeiyafa hold the answer?
The post The Doorways of Solomon’s Temple appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Does our modern conception of Satan have any resemblance to the devil in the Bible? Just who is Satan?
The post Who Is Satan? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
“Jacob the convert swears upon himself that any who open this grave will be cursed.” Thus reads a gravestone discovered in the ancient necropolis of […]
The post Jacob the Convert and an Ancient Curse appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The black basalt ruins of the Iron Age temple discovered at ’Ain Dara in northern Syria offer the closest known parallel to the Temple of King Solomon in the Bible.
The post Searching for the Temple of King Solomon appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Robert Mondavi may have been one of the best-known vineyard operators in recent years, but Noah was the first. This is often overlooked in the shadow of Noah’s deluge-defying ark accomplishment, but the Bible states very clearly in Genesis 9 that, after the ark ran aground in the mountains of Ararat (now identified with Mt. Ararat), “Noah, a man of the soil, was the first to plant a vineyard” (Genesis 9:20).
The post Did This Winery Get Noah Drunk? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Droughts across Iraq have been a major source of humanitarian concern, but they have also provided archaeologists with a rare opportunity to excavate an ancient […]
The post Drought Reveals 3,400-Year-Old Lost City appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Amid the remains of a fourth- or fifth-century church at Hierapolis, one of the most significant Christian sites in Turkey, archaeologist Francesco D’Andria found a first-century Roman tomb that he believes once held the remains of the apostle Philip.
The post Tomb of Apostle Philip Found appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
What did Jesus look like? In “Painting a Portrait of Jesus,” D. Moody Smith examined the difficulties in answering this question.
The post What Did Jesus Really Look Like? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Eleazar, Aaron’s son and successor as high priest, witnessed some of the most dramatic events in Israel’s early history. Mentioned more than 60 times […]
The post Eleazar in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
For the first time, researchers have conducted DNA sequencing on ancient Canaanite skeletons and have determined where the Canaanites’ descendants can be found today.
The post What Happened to the Canaanites? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Few modern Biblical archaeology discoveries have attracted as much attention as the Tel Dan inscription—writing on a ninth-century B.C. stone slab (or stela) that furnished the first historical evidence of King David from the Bible.
The post The Tel Dan Inscription: The First Historical Evidence of King David from the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
For much of the past 2,000 years, the Jerusalem aqueduct has provided water to the ancient city, with portions still used well into the 20th […]
The post Excavating the Jerusalem Aqueduct appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The once great city of Colossae in modern Turkey has never been excavated. To the untrained eye, the site may appear unimpressive, but great archaeological treasures lie beneath its surface.
The post Where Is Biblical Colossae? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Who was the first person to truly recognize Jesus as the messiah and understand the implications? Biblical scholar Ben Witherington III takes a close look at the account given in Luke, and sheds some light on what the Biblical narrative has to say about who was the first to recognize Jesus as the messiah.
The post Mary, Simeon or Anna: Who First Recognized Jesus as Messiah? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Excavations at the site of the ancient Saqqara tombs continue to amaze with the discovery of 250 sarcophagi and 150 statuettes. The discovery was announced […]
The post Hundreds of Egyptian Sarcophagi Uncovered in the Saqqara Tombs appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
A wall painting found in the House of the Physician in Pompeii contains the earliest known depiction of a Biblical scene. Two onlookers in the crowd appear to be the Greek philosophers Socrates and Aristotle, according to author Theodore Feder. What do the onlookers reveal about the place of Biblical culture in the Greco-Roman world?
The post Solomon, Socrates and Aristotle appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Josephus’s commentaries on the laws and characteristics of the Essene community have been invaluable to scholars studying ancient Jewish laws and customs.
The post Josephus on the Essenes appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
According to the Bible, the Israelites stayed at a place called Kadesh-Barnea following their Exodus from Egypt and wanderings through the desert. Where is Kadesh-Barnea?
The post Wilderness Wanderings: Where is Kadesh? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
When seeking “hidden” knowledge, ancient Greeks and Romans visited sacred oracles and consulted necromancers, who communed with the dead. The necromancer’s art often involved strange journeys, sleep-and-dreaming rituals and even blood sacrifices—since the ghostly shades were thought to need a tonic of fresh blood to become reanimated. Our modern fascination with exorcism and vampires suggests that necromancy is hardly dead.
The post Lay That Ghost: Necromancy in Ancient Greece and Rome appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
For more than six centuries, the ancient spice trade route passed through much of the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Centered on the Nabatean city of […]
The post New Insights on Ancient Spice Trade appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The stories of Sodom and its destruction, whether historical or not, were clearly understood to have occurred near the Dead Sea, among the so-called “cities of the plain” mentioned in Genesis 13, verse 12. But where exactly was this plain, and was a particular site associated with Sodom?
The post Where Is Sodom? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The apocryphal Acts of John describe the dance of Jesus and the apostles. How widespread was the ritual of dance in Christian worship?
The post Jesus as Lord of the Dance appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
For almost four decades, the Biblical Archaeology Society has been connecting volunteers with the opportunity to participate in some of the most exciting and groundbreaking […]
The post 2022 Dig Scholarship Winners appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Does this fragmentary hieroglyphic inscription contain the first mention of Israel? According to a recently published article by Manfred Görg, Peter van der Veen and Christoffer Theis, the name-ring on the right may indeed read “Israel,” and they date it almost 200 years earlier than the reference to Israel on the Merneptah Stele.
The post Does the Merneptah Stele Contain the First Mention of Israel? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Was Jesus a Jew? Some people claim that Jesus was a Christian. Some have claimed that he was an Aryan Christian. But in recent decades scholars have been returning to ancient historical settings and discovering the Jewish Jesus.
The post Was Jesus a Jew? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The Cairo Geniza refers to the cache of about 300,000 documents found in the attic storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, located in Fustat (in […]
The post Text Treasures: Cairo Geniza appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Sandwiched between the genealogies of Adam’s descendants and the tale of Noah’s flood are a few enigmatic verses that leave many of us scratching our […]
The post The Nephilim and the Sons of God appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The city of Sidon on the coast of modern Lebanon is mentioned 38 times in the Hebrew Bible. Recent excavations have exposed part of the ancient Canaanite—and later Phoenician—city, including a massive temple and depictions of deities worshiped at Sidon.
The post Biblical Sidon—Jezebel’s Hometown appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
In an exciting discovery, excavators from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) came across an ancient farmstead frozen in time, its remains left largely untouched for […]
The post A Galilean Farm “Frozen in Time” appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The post Preview the Summer 2022 Issue appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Read the article by Nobel Prize recipient Elie Wiesel as it appeared in Bible Review.
The post Jethro in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Gideon Avni, who heads the Archaeological Division of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), began his archaeology career in 1980. Since then, he has conducted extensive […]
The post Salvage Excavation in Israel appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The region of Mt. Nebo and the nearby city of Madaba in Jordan are world famous for their Byzantine mosaics, which date from the fifth […]
The post The Mosaics of Nebo appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Chalk Vessels IN A LETTER TO BAR (Q&C, Fall 2021), Yonatan Adler asks for ideas from BAR readers about how chalk vessels could have been […]
The post More Queries & Comments Summer 2022 appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Through August 8, 2022 The Getty Villa Pacific Palisades, California www.getty.edu For more than a millennium, from around 550 B.C.E. to 650 C.E., ancient Greece […]
The post Persia and the Classical World appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The Samaritans are likely best known in the Western world for one person—the famous “Good Samaritan” of Jesus’s parable found in Luke 10:25–37. This character […]
The post BAR Test Kitchen: Samaritan Hummus appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
And the Winner Is … “Pops, you’re going to love my lamb chowder, or my name isn’t Esau!” —Fenton Groff, Mays Landing, New Jersey Thank […]
The post Winter 2021 Caption Contest Winners appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Voices from the Ruins: Theodicy and the Fall of Jerusalem in the Hebrew Bible By Dalit Rom-Shiloni (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), xviii + 562 […]
The post Review: Voices from the Ruins appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Still another group is looking for Mt. Ararat, where the Bible says Noah landed after the flood. This group is looking to confirm the tradition that nearby Mt. Cudi (Judi Dagh) is really Mt. Ararat, as recorded in the Quran, Sura 11.44.
The post Where Noah Landed? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Brown University Religious Studies professor Nicola Denzey Lewis answers frequently asked questions about the apostle Peter. Denzey Lewis appears in the CNN series Finding Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery, which aims to investigate artifacts that shed light on the world in which Jesus lived.
The post The Apostle Peter in Rome appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Sustainability is something we hear about a lot these days. New items are developed every day to help reduce waste in our daily lives. One […]
The post Israelite Pottery and Household Life appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
A survey of dogs’ portrayals in ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean cultures shows that far from being perceived as “unclean,” dogs served as companions, guard dogs, sheep dogs, hunters, and—surprisingly—physicians.
The post What Does the Bible Say About Dogs? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The Virgin Mary and the prophet Muhammad have a lot in common within their respective Christian and Islamic traditions, according to author Mary Joan Winn Leith.
The post The Virgin Mary and the Prophet Muhammad appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The ancient city of Caesarea Maritima, built during the reign of Herod the Great in the late first century B.C.E., played an important role in […]
The post OnSite: Caesarea Maritima appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The massive stone enclosures of the Göbekli Tepe ruins may be the earliest examples of Neolithic religion.
The post The Göbekli Tepe Ruins and the Origins of Neolithic Religion appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Digging just south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Eilat Mazar uncovered a monumental building from the tenth century B.C.—the right time and the right place for David’s royal residence.
The post Did I Find King David’s Palace? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Evidence of ancient board games in the biblical world dates back millennia. While in some regions these games took on religious significance, they were no […]
The post Ancient Board Games and Daily Life appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
The Hebrew Bible today differs from the Bible manuscripts of the first millennium B.C.E. How do we identify alterations? Learn why critical editions of the Bible are essential.
The post Errors in the Masoretes’ “Original” Hebrew Manuscripts of the Bible? appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
Biblical studies scholar Robin Gallaher Branch explores Luke’s depiction of a woman set on doing good for the poor and serving her friends, the widows, for whom she makes robes and clothing.
The post Tabitha in the Bible appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.
King Herod’s palace may have been found at Caesarea Philippi (modern Banias). Though the site was excavated by famed archaeologist Ehud Netzer more than 40 […]
The post Ruins at Banias – King Herod’s Palace Identified at Caesarea Philippi appeared first on Biblical Archaeology Society.