Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1998
Features
How to Tell a Samaritan Synagogue from a Jewish Synagogue
For most Christians, the term “Samaritan” evokes a compassionate people who help others in need, especially when nobody else is willing to do so. In fact, today “Samaritans” is the name of an organization that attends to the emotionally distressed. The name derives from the New Testament...Read more ›
The Egyptianizing of Canaan
How iron-fisted was pharaonic rule in the city-states of Syria-Palestine?
In the centuries before Israel emerged in the highlands of Canaan, first as a people and then as a nation, the region was essentially ruled by Egypt. But how are we to understand this hegemony? Until a little more than a century ago, about the only source...Read more ›
Breaking the Missing Link
Cross and Eshel misread the Qumran ostracon relating the settlement to the Dead Sea Scrolls
With all due respect to my distinguished colleagues Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University and Esther Eshel of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, their reading of the recently excavated and already famous ostracon from Qumran is, in a word, impossible. If their reading were correct (see “The Missing...Read more ›
Israel in Exile
Deserted Galilee testifies to Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom
Between 734 and 732 B.C.E., the Assyrian monarch Tiglath-pileser III campaigned to the west, from the Assyrian capital at Nineveh, cutting a swath into the northern kingdom of Israel as well as the southern kingdom of Judah. We know this from the Bible and from Assyrian records...Read more ›
First Impression: What We Learn from King Ahaz’s Seal
It is time to give BAR readers a look at the first seal impression of a Hebrew king ever found. BAR editor Hershel Shanks knew of its existence before I showed it at the Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November 1996, so before the meeting he...Read more ›