Biblical Archaeology Review is the flagship publication of the Biblical Archaeology Society. For more than 40 years it has been making the world of archaeology in the lands of the Bible come alive for the interested layperson. Full of vivid images and articles written by leading scholars, this is a must read for anyone interested in the archaeology of the ancient Near East.
See Hershel Shanks, Judaism in Stone: The Archaeology of Ancient Synagogues (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 41 (mosaics from Jerash), 114 (Hamat Tiberias), 113 (Beth Alpha), 129 (Beth-Shean) as well as 66 (column capital from Capernaum—this synagogue is dated by different scholars to between 250 and 450 C.E.). These images may reflect temple symbolism as well as contemporary customs.
Judith MacKenzie, The Architecture of Petra (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), plates 5–19; Thomas Weber and Robert Wenning, Petra: Antike Felsstadt zwischen arabischer Tradition und griechischer Norm (Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 1997) pp. 87–88; Iain Browning, Petra (London: Chatto & Windus, 1980), pp. 79–88.
The limestone altar, exhibited at the Haifa Museum, is approximately twice as big as the bronze altars and has four horns and four elevations and a zigzag decoration around the body. See Zev Yeivin and G. Finkelstein, Castra, at the Foot of Mount Carmel: The City and its Secrets (Haifa: Haifa Museum/National Maritime Museum, Spring Catalogue, 1999), p. 32.
See John H. Iliffe, “Imperial Art in Transjordan,” The Quarterly of the Department of Antiquities in Palestine 11 (1945), pp. 1–26 and plates I–X (p. 18 and plate VI). Iliffe saw this bronze altar as a model for a similar ceramic altar with eight horns (one damaged and one missing) that was found in an early–second-century C.E. potter’s workshop in Jerash, excavated from 1933 to 1934.
