About Oded Lipschits

Oded Lipschits

Oded Lipschits is Professor of Jewish History in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East Cultures at the Tel-Aviv University, where he also serves as the Director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology and the head of the international MA and Ph.D. program in Ancient Israel Studies. For many years, Professor Lipschits directed the excavations at Ramat Raḥel and he is currently the Co-Director of the Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition, digging at the site every summer since 2012. He has supervised more than 50 MA students and 20 Ph.D. students, created an on-line Coursera course (The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: The History of Judah under Babylonian Rule) after his 2005 book of the same title (published by Eisenbrauns). Dr. Lipschits has published numerous books and more than 100 scientific papers, including Yehud Stamp Impressions: A Corpus of Inscribed Stamp Impressions from the Persian and Hellenistic Periods in Judah (together with David S. Vanderhooft, Eisenbrauns 2011), What the Stones Are Whispering? 3000 Years of Forgotten History at Ramat Rahel (together with Yuval Gadot, Manfred Oeming and Benjamin Arubas, Eisenbrauns 2017). He is currently at work on his forthcoming book The Age of Empires: History and Administration in Judah in Light of the Stamped Jar Handles (between the 8th and the 2nd Centuries BCE).


Presenter at

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.