Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2011
Features
A View from the Caves
Who put the scrolls in there?
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 11 caves in the Judean Desert near a site known as Khirbet Qumran, or the ruins of Qumran. Père Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, who excavated the site in the 1950s, concluded that Qumran was...Read more ›
The Puzzling Pool of Bethesda
Where Jesus cured the crippled man
The Gospel of John recounts two healing miracles Jesus performed in Jerusalem. In one, Jesus cured a man who had been blind from birth. Jesus mixed his saliva with mud, applied the mixture to the blind man’s eyes and told him to bathe in the Pool of...Read more ›
Crossing the Holy Land
New church discoveries from the Biblical world
A few years ago the archaeological world, not to mention the popular press, was abuzz with news that an early Christian church had been discovered on the grounds of an Israeli prison at Megiddo. As BAR reported in an article by archaeologist Vassilios Tzaferis, the structure featured...Read more ›
Tainted Stone Oil Lamp Authenticated
In 2001 or early 2002, we were asked, but declined, to publish an article about an unusual ancient oil lamp. The lamp has surfaced once again in the archaeological world. So I now describe it in the present tense: The lamp is unusual in several respects. First...Read more ›