Biblical Sites & Places

By: BAS Staff

“So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.” This is how the Book of 2 Kings summarizes the Assyrian conquest […]

By: Megan Sauter

Were there synagogues before the Romans destroyed the Temple, or did they develop only afterward? Communal structures from the Second Temple period have been discovered, but should they be considered synagogues even though they don’t share the major architectural feature common to post-destruction synagogues?

By: Jennifer Drummond

Fifty years ago, leading Israeli scholar Michael Avi-Yonah constructed a now-iconic model of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. How accurate is it?

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

How old is Christianity? Churches are among Biblical archaeology findings that hold the answer.

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

Building and furnishing the Herodian Temple involved more than stone quarrying and laying, but the stones and foundations of Herod’s Temple can give us clues to Temple Mount history.

By: Samuel DeWitt Pfister

The ancient village of Bethsaida frequently mentioned in the Gospels is believed to be located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, but where precisely the abandoned city lies remains a fiercely-debated question among scholars.

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

Some of the most famous churches in Jerusalem were built during the Christian Crusades by Crusaders wishing to memorialize sites they believed to have great Christian significance.

By: Marek Dospěl

There is little doubt that the Temple Menorah was taken to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem. However, Rome was sacked, and the Temple Menorah was looted. After disaster befell the cities that housed it as a spoil of war, was it returned to Jerusalem?

By: Biblical Archaeology Society Staff

The Hebrew Bible makes it clear that King David and his successors were buried somewhere on the narrow ridge of the City of David near the Gihon Spring where the earliest city of Jerusalem was located. But where exactly? In an early-20th-century excavation, Raymond Weill believed he had discovered the royal necropolis, but many have challenged the identification. Was Weill right?

By: Robin Ngo

What do we know about the Roman siege of Masada? We must consider both the account given by Josephus and the surviving archaeological evidence in order to reconstruct what happened.