yigael yadin

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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

Feb 22 Blog

High Places, Altars and the Bamah

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.

Feb 9 Blog

30 People in the New Testament Confirmed

By: Lawrence Mykytiuk

Archaeology has confirmed 53 people from the Hebrew Bible. What about the New Testament? In BAR, Lawrence Mykytiuk examines the political figures in the New Testament who can be identified in the archaeological record and by extra-Biblical writings.

Nov 5 Blog

Love Your Neighbor: Only Israelites or Everyone?

By: Richard Elliott Friedman

The Book of Leviticus tells us to love our neighbors, but who are our neighbors? Does the command mean to just love fellow Israelites—or everyone?

Yigael Yadin, the father of Israeli archaeology, giving a tour of Hazor to Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, 1958. Photo by Moshe Pridan, courtesy the Government Press Office

Oct 23 Blog

From National Hobby to Scientific Profession

By: BAS Staff

Archaeological remains, brought back to the light of day, serve as tangible evidence of the past. As such, they are capable of connecting people to […]

Oct 22 Blog

The Masada Siege

By: Robin Ngo

What do we know about the Roman siege of Masada? We must consider both the account given by Josephus and the surviving archaeological evidence in order to reconstruct what happened.

Aug 6 Blog

A Tomb in Jerusalem Reveals the History of Crucifixion and Roman Crucifixion Methods

By: BAS Staff

In the history of crucifixion, the death of Jesus of Nazareth stands out as the best-known example by far. Crucifixion in antiquity was actually a fairly common punishment, but there were no known physical remains from a crucifixion. Then, in 1968, archaeologist Vassilios Tzaferis excavated a Jerusalem tomb that contained the bones of a crucified man named Yehohanan. As Tzaferis reported in BAR, the discovery demonstrated the brutal reality of Roman crucifixion methods in a way that written accounts never had before.

Aug 25 Blog

More Queries & Comments Fall 2023

By: BAS Staff

Don’t Diminish the Bible IN QUERIES AND COMMENTS of your Spring 2023 issue, I noticed what appears to be a growing concern for the intent […]

Apr 5 Blog

Review: My Nine Lives

By: Thomas E. Levy

Review: My Nine Lives—Sixty Years in Israeli and Biblical Archaeology By William G. Dever (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2020), pp. 233, 57 figures Reviewed by Thomas […]

Mar 25 Blog

The Other Upper Room

By: Jonathan Klawans

The traditional location of the Last Supper—the Crusader era “Upper Room,” known also as the Cenacle—has one thing going for it: height. The only location-specific […]

Aug 6 Blog

Canaanite Palace Staircase

By: Jonathan Laden

A massive staircase made of basalt plates 4.5 meters wide has been discovered at Tell Hazor, an ongoing excavation by Hebrew University, a part of the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in memory of Yigael Yadin. The lead archaeologists are Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor and Dr. Shlomit Bechar.

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