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Dec 2 Blog

First Person: Did the Kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon Actually Exist?

In BAR, Hershel Shanks examines a recent article published by archaeologist Amihai Mazar. Mazar contends that while the Biblical narratives were written hundreds of years after the reigns of Saul, David and Solomon, they “retain memories of reality.”

Sep 18 Blog

How Bad Was Jezebel?

By: Janet Howe Gaines

For more than two thousand years, Jezebel has been saddled with a reputation as the bad girl of the Bible, the wickedest of women. But just how depraved was she?

Sep 11 Blog

The Binding or Sacrifice of Isaac

By: Robin M. Jensen

The story of the offering of Isaac is one of the most powerful narratives in the Hebrew Bible. But each tradition has understood and used the story differently and for varying purposes.

Jul 11 Blog

What Is the Jezreel Valley?

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

A natural route connecting the Coastal Plain to the Jordan Valley and beyond, the Jezreel Valley is the site of numerous biblical events, including the […]

Jul 1 Blog

Jewish Worship, Pagan Symbols

By: Walter Zanger

What are zodiac mosaics doing in ancient synagogues in Israel?

A rock-hewn altar carved out of limestone located about a mile from Shiloh. The four corners point to the four directions on a compass (Exodus 27:1-2). Photo: Yoel Elitzur

Jun 12 Blog

High Places, Altars and the Bamah

By: Ellen White

The open-air altar shrine, called a bamah (plural bamot), is known through several books of the Biblical canon. Often referred to as “high places” in translations of the Bible, bamot were worship sites that usually contained an altar.

Furniture plaque carved in relief with a “woman at the window.” Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Feb 14 Blog

Women, Windows, and Death

By: John Drummond

“The Woman at the Window” is an intriguing artistic motif that was popular among the elite of the ancient Near East during the Iron Age […]

Mar 19 Blog

The Palace of the Kings of Israel—in the Bible and Archaeology

By: Megan Sauter

King Omri of Israel selected Samaria as his capital and built an elaborate palace there in the ninth century B.C.E. What did this palace look like, and was it destroyed when the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel in 721 B.C.E.?

Aug 21 Blog

A Canaanite Corbelled Vault

By: Nathan Steinmeyer

During excavations at the site of Tel Shimron in northern Israel, archaeologists were shocked to discover the earliest example of a corbelled vault ever discovered […]

Nov 14 Blog

Early Bronze Age: Megiddo’s Great Temple and the Birth of Urban Culture in the Levant

By: Noah Wiener

Megiddo’s Great Temple is a structure that, according to its excavators, “has proven to be the most monumental single edifice so far uncovered in the EB I Levant and ranks among the largest structures of its time in the Near East.”

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