Biblical Archaeology Review

There are some much smaller, 4 to 5 mm, and some considerably larger, 2 to 4 cm.

The church is still entrusted to the care of a small community of Benedictine monks.

In each of the Gospels, the story is told that Jesus blessed five loaves of bread and two fish and gave them to his disciples to feed a multitude of more than 5,000 people who sat before Jesus on the grass.

The Arabic name Tabgha comes from the older Greek name of the site, Heptapegon, which means seven springs—a reference to the springs found near the church site. The pilgrim Egeria mentions the Heptapegon church in her travel journal written at the end of the fourth century. See Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land, translated and annotated by John Wilkinson, rev. ed. (Ariel Publishing House, Jerusalem, with Aris and Phillips, Warminster, England 1981), p. 196.

Professor Callaway is president of the William F. Albright School of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.

A bulla (plural bullae) is a small piece of clay pressed onto the rope binding an official papyrus or parchment document. A seal was impressed in the wet clay to assure the recipient of the sender’s identity and that the document had not been opened.

“The Lachish Letters—Originals or Copies and Drafts?” Recent Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Biblical Archaeology Society: Washington, D.C., 1984), pp. 179–186.

This should be distinguished from the attack of the Assyrian king Sennacherib a little more than 100 years earlier, in 701 B.C., described in “Destruction of Judean Fortress Portrayed in Dramatic Eighth-Century B.C. Pictures” and “News from the Field: Defensive Judean Counter-Ramp Found at Lachish in 1983 Season.”

The Amarna letters are 14th-century B.C. missives written in Akkadian cuneiform by feudal princes of Canaan to their Egyptian overlords. The clay tablets were discovered in the diplomatic archive of two 18th-dynasty Pharaohs at Tell el-Amarna near Cairo.

The ramp inside Dura-Europos buried the walls of the synagogue, thus protecting its magnificent wall paintings.