Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2015
Features
The Puzzling Doorways of Solomon’s Temple
The Bible tells us that the doors of the inner shrine of Solomon’s Temple had five mezuzot (singular mezuzah) (1 Kings 6:31). Whatever they were, the Bible is not referring to the little parchment texts in a case posted on the doorposts of Jewish...Read more ›
Did Akhenaten’s Monotheism Influence Moses?
In late spring, 1349 B.C., the chariot of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten drew up in an open space before a dazzling white inscription on a cliff face overlooking the Nile. There Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti made lavish offerings to the solar god Aten. Then the pharaoh...Read more ›
The Gospel of Thomas: Jesus Said What?
Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion which the man eats, and the lion becomes man.” Jesus said, “Be passers-by!” Jesus said, “For every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.” This hardly sounds like the Jesus familiar to us from the New Testament...Read more ›
The Mystery of the Missing Pages of the Aleppo Codex
The world’s oldest and most authoritative copy of the Hebrew Bible reposed for more than half a millennium in a synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, before it was desecrated in riots that followed the United Nations vote in 1947 calling for a Jewish state and an Arab state...Read more ›