Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2006
Features
Edom & Copper
The Emergence of Ancient Israel’s Rival
Did King David do battle with the Edomites? The Bible says he did. It would be unlikely, however, if Edom was not yet a sufficiently complex society to organize and field an army, if Edom was just some nomadic Bedouin tribes roaming around looking for pastures and...Read more ›
Islam on the Temple Mount
In Muslim Tradition the Dome of the Rock Restored Solomon’s Temple
In 638 C.E. Christian Jerusalem fell to a minor Arab officer by the name of Khalid ibn Thabit from the clan of Fahm. The patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, had by then lost all hope of relief from Constantinople, since all the major cities of Syria (including Damascus)...Read more ›
Circumcision
Who Did It, Who Didn’t and Why
Pottery is probably the archaeologist’s most important diagnostic tool, not only for dating a stratum of an excavation, but also for determining the culture and ethnicity of the ancient people who lived there at the time. In 1969, however, at the excavation of Tel Gezer, where I...Read more ›
Assessing David & Solomon
From the Hypothetical to the Improbable to the Absurd
David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman (New York: Free Press, 2006), 343 pp. $26.00 David son of Jesse—warrior, king, poet,...Read more ›