First Person: Introducing the New BAR

With this issue, we are excited to present to you, our loyal readers, the new, enlarged, enriched BAR.

For many readers of our sister magazines, Bible Review and Archaeology Odyssey, who are not regular readers of BAR, this will be their first issue. We have consolidated all three magazines into BAR, as it was 20 years ago. And our design director of almost 30 years, Rob Sugar, has presented us with a new, updated design to celebrate the new BAR.

But a new design isn’t the only change in BAR. We’ve added the popular columnists that used to appear in Bible Review—Ben Witherington, Mary Joan Leith and Ron Hendel. One of them will now appear in each issue of BAR. In addition, we are adding to each issue of BAR a guest columnist on archaeological matters. The first guest columnist, in this issue, is my old friend Bill Dever.