The Name(s) of God
The appellation “Jehovah” is an English mispronunciation of a German spelling of a Hebrew word that no one knows how to say out loud.
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The Origins of God
Some scholars see evidence that Jehovah may have started out as a warrior god worshiped in the Land of Midian.
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The codex
An eye for an eye is no shortcut to understanding the magnificent complexity of the Codex Hammurabi.
Israel’s first mention
A new analysis of granite fragments, probably from an ancient Egyptian throne, may push back the first time the place-name “Israel” is mentioned outside of the Bible by centuries.
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Good can come of this conflict. But it’s only as likely as Israel makes it.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisions in the next few weeks will determine whether Israel continues to exist.
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Welcome to “News from the biblical past.”
Debut of a new series of posts – really, a newsletter – about developments in biblical archaeology and writing historical fiction about the ancient past.
Welcome to “News from the biblical past.” Read More »
Urban Civilization Dawned in Ukraine
In what is now western central Ukraine, prehistoric farmers built settlements with enough housing for a modern suburb – and then burned them to the ground only a few generations later. This is only one of the reasons why so little is known about the earliest human culture to construct an urban center.
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Medicine and Monotheism
Many people know about the Jewish practice of circumcision. But in ancient Egypt, pharaohs were circumcised as well. Medical expertise may have been shared by the Israelites and their taskmasters – but what about the belief in a single, unified god?
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Calendars and Culture
Three thousand years ago, Semitic tribes shifted from an agricultural calendar based on the flood and ebb of the Nile in Egypt to periods of rain and intense heat in the Land of Israel. How did they all manage to get on the same page of the calendar? And did the change help them stick together over the millennia?
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Israel in Arabia
The unforgiving desert of Saudi Arabia has had periods of lushness. Did the Israelites flee Pharaoh just as the wilderness was greening? Do we still remember the Exodus because of an extraordinary series of lucky breaks? And how will we remember the extraordinary events we are living through today?