Apr 9
By: BAS Staff
Do insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls add to the Masoretic text, and if so, should the original Hebrew Bible text be modified based this information? Scholars from both sides of the divide weigh in on this issue.
Mar 29
By: Marek Dospěl
One of the most treasured artifacts in the collections of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, the so-called Pillow Psalter, is back on display. Dating to […]
Mar 12
By: BAS Staff
A newly published inscription from Tel Lachish in southern Israel is the earliest alphabetic writing discovered in the southern Levant. The fragmentary inscription features a mere handful of letters inscribed on a tiny pottery sherd, measuring just 4 by 3.5 cm. The sherd is dated by radiocarbon to the 15th century B.C.E., or the first part of the Late Bronze Age.
Mar 7
By: Biblical Archaeology Society 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.
Mar 5
By: Jonathan Klawans
Followers of this blog may have heard that the 19th-century Shapira Affair[1] has resurfaced again. In March, 2021, a biblical scholar at the University of […]
Mar 3
By: Robin Ngo
For the first time, the royal seal of King Hezekiah in the Bible has been found in an archaeological excavation.
Feb 22
By: Robin Ngo
In 1979, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay discovered two miniature silver scrolls from a late Iron Age (seventh century B.C.E.) tomb in Ketef Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. When unrolled, the scrolls had tiny texts written on them—similar to the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24–26.
Feb 15
By: Noah Wiener
A recently translated Old Babylonian flood tablet describes how to build a circular ark.
Feb 14
By: John Drummond
“The Woman at the Window” is an intriguing artistic motif that was popular among the elite of the ancient Near East during the Iron Age […]
Feb 4
By: BAS Staff
A recent computer analysis of handwriting from the Great Isaiah Scroll—one of the longest and best preserved of the Dead Sea Scrolls—found the 54-column text was produced by two different scribes who apparently worked in shifts to complete the task.
