Sep 17
By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff
In a BAR article, epigraphy scholar Christopher Rollston asks a seemingly straightforward question: What is the oldest Hebrew inscription?
Aug 29
A First Temple cheating weight was found at City of David, dating from Iron Age Jerusalem. The 2,700-year-old stone is four times as heavy as its markings indicate. There were several admonitions against cheating in this manner, in the Bible.
Aug 27
By: Mark Wilson
The ubiquity of hoards in antiquity, both in time and region, suggests that the phenomenon was so well known that Paul could reasonably use it as an analogy. These treasures—the coin hoards mentioned in of 2 Corinthians 4:7—were never placed in clay lamps but rather in clay jars.
Aug 22
By: Marek Dospěl
Did Jesus use a magic wand when performing his miracles? It seems so—if we are to judge by some of the earliest depictions of Jesus […]
Jul 14
By: Robin Ngo
Alan Millard examines the Proto-Canaanite script of the earliest alphabetic text ever found in Jerusalem. What can it tell us about literacy during the time of David and Solomon?
Jul 11
Archaeologists officially announced the discovery of a 3,100-year-old inscription from the site of Khirbet al-Ra‘i that may be evidence of Gideon the Judge. Khirbet al-Ra‘i, […]
Jul 2
By: Marek Dospěl
Just like their pagan neighbors, Jesus’s followers of the first Christian centuries would commonly resort to protection amulets to guard themselves from illness and any kind of harm.
Jun 30
By: Robin Ngo
Researchers recently deciphered one of the last two remaining Dead Sea Scrolls. Written in code, the scroll describes a 364-day calendar used by the Qumran community that lived in the Judean Desert.
Jun 25
By: BAS Staff
“Yahweh and his Asherah” is written across the top of this eighth-century B.C. drawing on a ceramic pithos from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the eastern Sinai. Some scholars have theorized that these figures resembling the Egyptian god Bes are in fact a drawing of God and his consort.
Jun 18
By: Megan Sauter
What do the Dead Sea Scrolls say about Jesus? What do they say about the world in which Jesus lived? In BAR, James C. VanderKam examines the overlap between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.
