Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1987
Special Section
Three New Views
On June 8, 1967, the Six Day War was at full tilt. The Israel army had taken East Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Within hours, Yigael Yadin, Military Advisor to the Prime Minister and world-famous archaeologist, dispatched an Israeli army officer to the East Jerusalem shop of an Arab...Read more ›
Intrigue and the Scroll—Behind the Scenes of Israel’s Acquisition of the Temple Scroll
Were it not for the efforts of the man who got Jerry Falwell started in television, the famous Dead Sea Scroll known as the “Temple Scroll” might never have come to light. At least that is the story according to Reverend Joe Uhrig, now semiretired and living...Read more ›
Is the Temple Scroll a Sixth Book of the Torah—Lost for 2,500 Years?
The Temple Scroll is the longest and, in my view, clearly the most important of the preserved Dead Sea Scrolls. It was composed, I believe, as an addition or, still better, a supplement to the Pentateuch, as a sixth book of the Torah, on the same level...Read more ›
The Gigantic Dimensions of the Visionary Temple in the Temple Scroll
The Temple Scroll and its contents have already been described at some length for BAR readers by the scroll’s editor, the late Yigael Yadin. Until his untimely death in 1984, Professor Yadin was Israel’s most famous archaeologist.a The Temple Scroll is the longest of all the Dead...Read more ›
Features
The Mysterious Silver Hoard from Eshtemoa
Twelve miles south of Hebron (the city associated with the patriarch Abraham) lies an Arab village named es-Samoa. As is well known, modern Arab place names often preserve in a variant form an ancient place name that attached to the same spot thousands of years earlier. Es-Samoa...Read more ›
Ancient Records and the Exodus Plagues
Twentieth-century Americans find it difficult to comprehend the notion of plagues. Plagues border on the realm of the unreal; they are the stuff of tall tales, myths and legends. But in the Biblical world, plagues were very real, even ever-present. The plagues of pestilence...Read more ›
Learning Biblical Languages
You say you would like to learn Hebrew or Greek to help your study of the Bible, but you just can’t memorize thousands of words? Take heart! The necessary vocabulary is smaller than you might imagine. A student who knows the 1,000 most frequently used words in...Read more ›
Radical Exodus Redating Fatally Flawed
In the September/October BAR, John Bimson and David Livingston wrote an article entitled “Redating the Exodus,” BAR 13:05, in which they radically revise a number of generally accepted dates and conclude that the Exodus occurred in the latter half of the 15th century B.C. instead of in...Read more ›