Biblical Archaeology Review

Move over Webster’s! There’s a new dictionary in town—that is, if you want to learn Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language that was the lingua franca in the ancient Near East for around two millennia.

Sean Freyne, one of Ireland’s most respected theologians, died on August 5, 2013, at age 78.

What do we really know about the magi, those gift-bearing wise men from the east who are so central to the traditional telling of the Christmas story?

How many books of the Hebrew Bible have not been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Answer: 1

How many Old Hebrew inscriptions from the Iron Age mention YHWH (sometimes spelled “Yahweh”), the personal name of the Israelite God?

Answer: More than 40

The divine name YHWH, or “Yahweh,” occurs about 40 times in the corpus of provenanced Iron Age Old Hebrew inscriptions (almost 20 of those occurrences are at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud; see article in this issue).

The Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review, has awarded the following prizes with stipends as indicated:

Joseph Aviram Fellowship

to support travel from Israel to the United States to present papers at scholarly conferences in the United States

Winner: Shlomit Bechar, doctoral student, Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Tel Hazor Excavation team, $2,500