People & Cultures in the Bible

By: Jonathan Klawans

Many assume that Jesus' Last Supper was a Seder, the ritual Passover meal. Examine evidence from the synoptic Gospels with scholar Jonathan Klawans.

By: John Drummond

Who was Miriam the prophetess in the Bible? It sounds like a simple question with a simple answer—Miriam was Moses’s sister. But as is often […]

By: Megan Sauter

Who are Rachel and Leah in the Bible? Sisters, rivals, mothers, matriarchs—these two women had a complicated relationship. In the Fall 2022 issue of Biblical Archaeology […]

By: Megan Sauter

The Philistines are best known from the Bible as the Israelites’ enemies, but they were much more than that. Recent archaeological discoveries help inform our […]

By: BAS Staff

Was Joseph Jesus’ biological father? If not, who was Jesus’ biological father? Andrew Lincoln examines what early Christians thought about conception and explains how views about this subject have changed over time.

By: Tony Burke

The modern Christmas nativity scene is drawn from apocryphal texts in addition to the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke.

By: Megan Sauter

If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, why is he called a Nazorean and a Galilean throughout the New Testament? Philip J. King addresses this question in his Biblical Views column.

By: BAS Staff

Reading the story of Noah’s ark today (Genesis 6–9), we naturally imagine that Noah, his family, and the loaded animals of all kinds survived the […]

By: BAS Staff

Bearing gifts for the infant Jesus, the three wise men from the east traversed afar to reach Bethlehem. What do we really know about the magi, who are so central to the traditional telling of the Christmas story?

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 […]