People & Cultures in the Bible

By: Megan Sauter

Ancient interpreters frequently painted Lot as greedy and unscrupulous—a foil to Abraham’s righteousness.

By: Vanessa Linares

For centuries, the earliest documented exploitation of domesticated vanilla was known from the Aztecs, who cultivated the flat-leafed species (Vanilla planifolia) in central Mexico around […]

By: Lee M. Jefferson

Whenever visitors arrive at the Church of St. Peter-in-Chains in Rome, they are struck with the grandeur of Michelangelo’s sculpture of Moses but ultimately are […]

By: Mark Wilson

How did the Jewish name Ya’akov, properly translated as Jacob, become James in English versions of the Bible?

By: Lauren K. McCormick

In biblical memory, Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE) looms large as an agent of catastrophe. He appears across multiple biblical books—2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah, […]

By: Joan E. Taylor

Scholar Joan E. Taylor says that it’s worth remembering that Jesus’ earliest years were, according to the Gospel of Matthew, spent as a refugee in a foreign land.

By: Marek Dospěl

The Nimrud Letters are cuneiform tablets from the Assyrian royal city of Kalhu (present-day Nimrud). Their contents shed light on the history of the ancient […]

By: Megan Sauter

Who were the Maccabees, what did they do? From priests to kings, the Maccabees created an independent Jewish kingdom in the second century BCE. Their […]

By: Lawrence Mykytiuk

See a visualization of the Herodian family tree and key events in the New Testament related to members of the Herodian family.

By: BAS Staff

Read the 114 sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas as translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson.