Oded Lipschits
Oded Lipschits is a Professor of Jewish History in the Biblical Period in the Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures of Tel Aviv University. Laureate of the EMET Prize in Archaeology (considered "the Israeli Nobel Prize"), he has authored many books and hundreds of articles in archaeology, history and biblical studies. Prof. Lipschits was the director of the excavations at Ramat Raḥel (2004–2010) and now directs the excavations at Tel Azekah (since 2010) and the temple at Tel Moza (since 2018).
Presenter at
Spring Bible & Archaeology Fest 2025, April 5-6, 2025
Judah under the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Empires – New Insights from Archaeology on “The Age of Empires”
In this lecture, I will examine the influence of the Assyrian rule over the kingship, the administration and the economy of Judah, and will demonstrate the different changes that occurred in this tiny and peripheral kingdom in the 100 years between 732 and the early 630’s, when the Assyrian empire withdrew from all its holdings across the Euphrates. I will emphasize the gap between the dramatic changes in economy, administration, kingship and the built area around Jerusalem and between the total silence on all that in the Biblical historiography, reflecting, on the one hand, on the problematic nature of the biblical descriptions as a historical source, and on the other hand on the importance of the archaeological research as an independent source for our understanding of the history of Judah during the First Temple period. Using new fascinating discoveries from the last years, I will show that all the characteristics of the material culture of Judah under Assyrian rule continued to exist for 600 years – during all the periods that Judah was under the rule of the great Empires and until the Hasmonaean revolt in the middle of the second century BCE.
Bible & Archaeology Fest XXI, November 16-18, 2018
The Untold Story of the Kingdom of Judah
The Biblical story of the history of Israel and Judah, as can be read in the Biblical books from Genesis to Samuel and Kings, represents the story as told by the Jerusalemite elite: what they knew, what they wanted to say, and what served their religious, cultic, political and economic interests. However, a geographical-archaeological research of the land, together with other historical sources and a critical reading of the Biblical material, can expose a different story that was not told by the elites in Jerusalem. This untold story stands at the center of this presentation.
Selected Books by Oded Lipschits
- The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah under Babylonian Rule
- The Shephelah during the Iron Age: Recent Archaeological Studies
- Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period: Negotiating Identity in an International Context
- Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein
- Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period
- Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
