Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1992
Features
A Thousand Years of History in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter
A walking tour reveals Jerusalem flourishing, destroyed and splendidly rebuilt.
War—or rather two wars—made possible the current golden age of discovery in Jerusalem, at the City of David, at the Temple Mount and in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter. In 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, the occupants of the Jewish Quarter surrendered to...Read more ›
The Pomegranate Scepter Head—From the Temple of the Lord or from a Temple of Asherah?
In 1988 the Israel Museum paid $550,000 for a small ivory pomegranate in the belief that it was once the head of a scepter that had been used by the priests in Solomon’s Temple.a In so doing, the museum relied heavily on the authentication and judgment of...Read more ›
Nahman Avigad: In Memoriam
Nahman Avigad was born in the Galician town of Zawalow (then in Austria, now in the Ukraine), on September 25, 1905, the son of Isak and Perl Reiss. He died at age 86 in Jerusalem on January 28, 1992. His childhood and schooling took place in Brno,...Read more ›
Nahman Avigad, 1905–1992
Nahman Avigad is dead. He died of cancer on January 28, 1992, at age 86. For much of his professional life he lived in the shadow of E. L. Sukenik, Yigael Yadin’s father, whom he served as assistant in such excavations as Beth Alpha and Hammat Gader...Read more ›
Sepphoris—An Urban Portrait of Jesus
Only an hour’s walk from Nazareth, this ancient capital of Galilee may have influenced Jesus’ life and teachings
“A city set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14). Words spoken by Jesus almost 2,000 years ago spring to mind as I stand on a ridge at the edge of modern Nazareth. The hill, three miles north and 700...Read more ›
Another View of the “Dead Sea Scrolls Scandal”
Pondering the events and images surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls in the past year, one cannot help but marvel at the rapidity of change and the degree of public interest in the usually sleepy hollow of the academic study of ancient texts. The “scandal of the scrolls”...Read more ›