Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1993
Special Section
American Professors Seek to Block Qimron’s Control of MMT
Two American scholars have filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia against Professor Elisha Qimron of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, asking the court to break Qimron’s stranglehold on one of the most important still-unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, known as MMT. A Jerusalem court recently...Read more ›
BAR Decides to Appeal Qimron Decision, After All
In our BAR 19:04 issue, we announced that we would not appeal the Jerusalem court’s decision that Professor Elisha Qimron owns the copyright on the reconstructed text of the Dead Sea Scroll known as MMT. “Now the scholarly community,” we said, “will have to live with that...Read more ›
Scholars Ask for Cave 7 Re-excavation
Scholars attending a Dead Sea Scroll conference at the University of Eichstaett in Germany recently addressed a letter to the Israel Antiquities Authority calling for a renewed investigation of Qumran Cave 7, where several fragmentary Greek texts were uncovered in the 1950s. According to two scholars in...Read more ›
Dorner’s Decision Criticized
An editorial entitled “A Miscarriage of Justice in Jerusalem,” appearing in the June 1993 issue of The Qumran Chronicle, a scholarly journal published in Poland and devoted to research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, states that “scholars all over the world should be alarmed by the decision”...Read more ›
Qumran—the Evidence of the Inkwells
The nature of the settlement at Qumran, adjacent to the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, continues to be a hotly debated topic among scholars and the educated public alike. The entrants in the debate are (1) a military fortress, a contention supported by Norman...Read more ›
Qumran Chronicle Resumes Regular Publication
The Polish scholarly journal The Qumran Chronicle, which temporarily suspended publication, is once again on schedule. The February and June 1993 issues have already appeared. Editor Z. J. Kapera says he is confident that the journal will henceforth maintain its publication schedule. The Qumran Chronicle is published...Read more ›
Features
What Ever Happened to the Ammonites?
To the Bible writers, they were the bad guys. But they were nevertheless important. The Ammonites emerged east of the Jordan at about the same time as the Israelites appeared as a people west of the Jordan. Together with their neighbors—the Moabites, the Edomites and the Amorites...Read more ›
The Search for Biblical Heshbon
In 1968 Siegfried Horn of Andrews University began large-scale excavations at a site everyone thought was Biblical Heshbon. This was Tell Hesban (or Hisban). Horn, his chief archaeologist, Roger Boraas of Upsala College, and other staff members had participated in the influential Shechem excavations led by the...Read more ›
Where the Temple Tax Was Buried
The key to understanding the Copper Scroll
One Dead Sea Scroll stands out as unique—in many ways. First, of course, is the material it is written on. It is the only one of the more than 800 scrolls in the collection that is written, or rather scratched, on copper—thin copper sheets. Obviously, it must...Read more ›
26 Tons of Gold and 65 Tons of Silver: Too Much To Believe?
The Copper Scroll is one piece that doesn’t fit the Dead Sea Scroll puzzle. Inscribed on metal and consisting simply of a list of 64 locations where huge amounts of treasure are said to be buried, the Copper Scroll has divided scholarly opinion for decades: Is it...Read more ›
Cast Your Net Upon the Waters: Fish and Fishermen in Jesus’ Time
For more than 50 years, I have lived at Kibbutz Ein Gev on the shore of the Kinileret, the Sea of Galilee. For much of that time, I have been a fisherman. The Hebrew letter nun (N) means fish in Aramaic. My former name—I was born in...Read more ›
Archaeological Encyclopedia for the 90s
The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land Ephraim Stern, editor (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta; New York: Simon and Schuster. 1993) 4 vols, 1,552 pp., $355 This is one of those monumental publications that will make history. It is...Read more ›