Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 2006
Features
Did Theseus Slay the Minotaur?
How Myth and Archaeology Inform Each Other
In 1876, Heinrich Schliemann completed a season’s excavation at Mycenae, where his faith in Homer’s text was repaid with spectacular success. Having excavated one of the shafts in grave circle A, close by the Lion Gate, Schliemann had come down on a burial containing the remains of...Read more ›
Where Mary Rested
Rediscovering the Kathisma
For many centuries the Protoevangelium of James was an enormously popular and influential apocryphal gospel. Written in the latter half of the second century, purportedly by Jesus’ brother James, it tells the story of the birth of Mary and, later, of Jesus. It is charming and moving...Read more ›
Hadrian’s Legion
Encamped on the Temple Mount
After the Romans destroyed the Temple and burned Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the Xth Legion (Fretensis) of the Roman army camped on the southwestern hill of the city, in the area known today as the Citadel, by Jaffa Gate.1 This was not, however, enough to stifle the...Read more ›
The Volcano Explains Everything—Or Does It?
Does this crater from an ancient volcanic eruption hold the answer to the mysteries of the Exodus?
Canadian documentarian Simcha Jacobovici, in cooperation with James Cameron, director of Titanic, has master-minded a two-hour TV special dealing with the oft-treated—and oft-mistreated—Exodus narrative. The Biblical account provides the principal pillar of the script. Every sentence of the Biblical text is taken literally in quite a fundamentalist...Read more ›