Digging up King Saul
King Saul began a major transition in Israel. He physically established the first Israelite kingdom in the region of Benjamin and spiritually transformed Israel…
ARCHAEOLOGY
Essene or Not Essene?
John the Baptist’s ministry and message bear striking similarities to a sect of Judaism active in the 1st century called the Essenes. Like John, the Essenes lived…
The Lost Kingdom of Israel
The Bible records that Saul, David, and Solomon ruled over the united kingdom of Israel from the Judean capital…
The Tabernacle in Shiloh
In Shiloh, in the hill country of Ephraim, Joshua set up the Tabernacle (Josh. 18:1) and allotted land to the tribes of Israel…
Ancient Evidence for the Book of Ruth
The book of Ruth records the origin of the Davidic dynasty that reigned over Israel for 400 years. As prophesied, the…
Is the Book of Judges Really History? (Conclusion)
The book of Judges’ historicity is crucial in determining the validity of Israel’s…
Is the Book of Judges Really History? (Part 2)
The reluctant judge Gideon is one of the Bible’s most well-known and colorful characters…
Is the Book of Judges Really History? (Part 1)
he book of Judges spans approximately 300 years (ca. 1365–1065 BC) and opens with the Israelites, settled in Canaan…
Discovering the Danite Migration
Apostasy ran rampant within Israel during the difficult days of the judges when “there was no king in Israel…
Judging the Book of Judges
The book of Judges chronicles cycles of Israel’s discipline and deliverance as the Israelites settled in the land of Canaan…
When Joshua Conquered Hazor
Joshua conquered the Canaanite city of Hazor during his northern campaign (Josh. 11:10–11)…
The Witness of Joshua’s Altar
Joshua built an altar to the Lord on Mount Ebal as a place of worship and witness (Josh. 8:30–31). He constructed…
Archaeology and Jericho (Conclusion)
Previously, we looked at two of four issues (the ban and morality) that clarify God’s controversial actions in the…
Archaeology and Jericho (Part 3)
God commanded Joshua to destroy the Canaanites and conquer Jericho. This account has sparked ethical debates…
Archaeology and Jericho (Part 2)
One of the best-known accounts from Scripture is the miracle of the walls that came tumbling down…
The Friends of Israel in Action Sep/Oct 2022
The Australian ministry of The Friends of Israel (FOI) has grown remarkably in recent years. Many of you know Deane Woods…
Archaeology and Jericho (Part 1)
Bible critics love to attack the conquest of Jericho. Disproving or questioning its historicity undermines Israel…
A Reminder to Remember
It has been said, “We are what we remember,” and “What we remember affects who we are and what we experience in life.”…
From Snake to Savior
One of the most dramatic events in the Israelites’ wilderness wandering involved the fiery serpents in Numbers 21. The difficult journey bypassing…
An Ancient Witness to the Messiah
Many people wonder what the ancient Hebrews thought about the coming of the Messiah. Some see the…
Balaam: Fact or Fiction?
As Moses and the Israelites camped on the Plains of Moab, Moabite King Balak devised a plan to defeat them. Knowing he could…
God’s Alarm System
Alarms call us to action. We have fire alarms, weather alarms, alarm clocks, and personal electronic devices with alarms. During biblical times, Israel also sounded an alarm…
Jewish World Update Sep/Oct 2021
Israel has announced that Amazon and Google won the tender to provide cloud services to the government as Israel…
One of the Oldest Blessings in the Bible
In Numbers 6:22–27 the Lord told the high priest how to bless national Israel: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make…
Jewish World Update Jul/Aug 2021
Jewish people the world over are still grieving over the loss of more than 45 people who were crushed to death in a horrific…
The Strange Story of the Scapegoat
A strange ceremony is recorded in Leviticus 16:7–10 as part of the observance of Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)…
Are God’s People Really Distinct?
When I was a child, the most memorable instruction my father gave me was “Don’t do as I do; do as I say do!” After I became…
The Priests: Keeping Israel Holy
Ancient Israel’s three great offices were prophet, priest, and king. Of these, the most enigmatic to people today is that of priest…
The Sanctuary’s Sweet Cover-up
Many people today use diffusers to disperse essential oils into the air to promote physical health and freshen a room…
The Lamp of the Lord
The menorah was an important component of the Tabernacle. It had two purposes: to furnish light and to remind all Israel that God is light…
God’s Home on Earth
When God exiled man from the Garden of Eden, humanity no longer had access to God’s presence. This access was not restored until the Lord prepared a…
All That Glitters Is Not God
The incident of the golden calf looms large in Israel’s history. Moses’ long stay on Mt. Sinai convinced some Israelites that…
Meaningless?
A favorite site on any Holy Land tour is Caesarea Maritima. The views alone from this ancient port city are breathtaking. Situated on the Mediterranean Sea…
Archaeology and the Ark
The Ark of the Covenant was largely introduced to people outside biblical circles through the Hollywood movie…
The Big Ten
Many people are familiar with Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments. In a famous scene, Moses receives the Ten Commandments on stone tablets…
Jewish World Update Sep/Oct 2019
The vast majority of media coverage of anything involving Israel includes false accusations, distortion or omission of facts, or some combination thereof…
Did Moses Write the Torah?
The Bible says explicitly Moses wrote the Torah. Exodus 24:4 states, “Moses wrote all the words of the LORD”…
Jewish World Update Jul/Aug 2019
A 2,600-year-old clay bulla (seal impression) bearing the name of a servant of King Josiah was uncovered inside a public building…
What’s in a Name?
When Moses encountered God for the first time, he asked Him, “When I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you..
Casting Down Serpents
Exodus 7:8–12 records the account of Moses’ and Aaron’s first miracle before Pharaoh: turning Aaron’s staff (a symbol of authority) into a serpent that swallowed those produced by Pharaoh’s magicians…
Why Would God Harden a Heart?
Exodus 4:21 records a statement God made to Moses: “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will…”
Jewish World Update Jan/Feb 2019
Pro-Israel students at Columbia University in New York City recently hosted a protest against the school’s “pervasively hostile environment” toward Zionist students…
How Do We Know the Exodus Happened?
“The actual evidence concerning the Exodus resembles the evidence for the unicorn,” declared Pennsylvania State University Jewish Studies Professor Baruch Halpern.1 The ancient Israelites created…
Joseph in His Egyptian Context
Some Bible critics claim Joseph was the invented hero of an Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) literary drama written years after the purported event. But ancient Egyptian records support the biblical account…
New Film Helps People Advocate for an Israeli Jerusalem
Why is it so important for the United States to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? Why does Jerusalem mean so much to the Jewish people and the Jewish state?
Archaeology on the Back of a Camel
When I was a student at the Hebrew University, Professor Avraham Malamat told our class no camel bones had ever been found from the time of the Patriarchs. The problem, as the professor saw it, was that…
Jewish World Update Jul/Aug 2018
The brutal murder of 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll marks the 11th time in 12 years someone has been viciously killed in France specifically for being Jewish and attests to the alarming rise of…
What If Abraham Had Never Existed
“Abraham never existed, but his cousin did!” said one of my professors during a graduate course on Israel’s early history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He believed Abraham and all the…
United Hearts, Divided Tongues
Some people claim the biblical story of the Tower of Babel is merely a folk tale to explain the formation of different languages. But archaeology supports the Bible. Before the Tower of Babel…
Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2018
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries—the world’s largest manufacturer of generic drugs and one of Israel’s largest employers—has announced its decision to lay off…
The Identity of Nimrod
Archaeological excavations in ancient Mesopotamia reveal striking parallels between the Bible’s King Nimrod and the ancient Semitic ruler Sargon the Great, thus confirming the biblical king’s historicity. The Old Testament mentions Nimrod four times, calling him…
Noah’s Ark—Fact or Fiction?
About 20 years ago, the news media reported on the search for the remains of Noah’s ark. In an interview on the subject, a professor of Old Testament at a liberal Christian university quipped that…
How Long is Wrong?
Secularists and Bible critics often attack the Bible’s credibility due to its record of long lives before the Noahic flood. They claim such life spans are unrealistic and result from the incorporation of mythology into the biblical record.
God’s Guardians
Biblical cherubim are heavenly creatures that act as God’s guardians. Archaeologists have discovered in Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) iconography and architecture cherubim-like figures that mirror their biblical function and help us visualize what they may look like.
Israel in the News Jul/Aug 2017
If you’re a resident or tourist in Israel and have a life-threatening medical emergency, Magen David Adom’s revolutionary smartphone app may save your life. Magen David Adom (MDA), Israel’s national emergency medical service…
The Fall: Mythology or History?
The book of Genesis records the fall of man—the event where humanity rebelled against God and thus exchanged an innocent nature for a sinful nature, immortality for mortality. Archaeology reveals that…
Creation Calling
The people of Israel bequeathed to the world the revelation of God through the Bible. In this revelation, the creation account in Genesis takes center stage and is recorded as a matter of protohistory. It was an accepted fact…
Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2017
Following the UN Security Council’s vote condemning Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed his resolve by going to the Western Wall to light the second candle of…
Worship in the New World
For most people, the world of the Bible is an unfamiliar, alien realm. But for Bible-believing Christians, it is like the pleasant home of well-known friends. Beginning where the Bible begins, with the book of Genesis, I’d like to take you…
Israel in the News Jan/Feb 2017
Donald Trump will be the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States, a Trump advisor told The Jerusalem Post. “The level of friendship between the U.S. and Israel is going to grow like never before…
Faith, Facts, and Grocery Lists
Christianity rests on facts. And because the record of Christianity relies on the accounts of facts set forth in the Bible, that Book is continually at the heart of debates and arguments over the…
Israel in the News Jul/Aug 2016
An online petition has been launched calling on UNESCO to reverse its recent “insulting” resolutions that deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount or Western Wall…
From the Editor May/Jun 2016
One thing I loved about being a newspaper reporter was going where the action was. Although I never went anywhere particularly exciting, it didn’t matter. I was involved with…
The Stones Cry Out
A growth-inspiring experience of a lifetime is to walk among the artifacts of empires, civilizations, and societies that have lived and died and, in many respects, shaped our world. For those of us living in the United States, a relatively young country…
Mount Moriah or the City of David?
For years scholars have argued about the precise location of the first and second Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, almost all archaeologists agree they were…
Footsteps in the Stones
I saw Israel for the first time when I moved my family to Jerusalem in 1979 to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Even though I had a master’s degree in biblical studies, I learned quickly I was not…
The Inquisitors
At the southeastern end of the old city of Jerusalem lies an impressive series of burial caves. Most date to the time of Jesus. Archaeologists recently have taken a closer look at them and have turned up…
The Underlying Proof
Khirbet Qeiyafa is a provincial town located about 19 miles from Jerusalem in the Elah Valley, where a young David slayed the Philistine giant Goliath. Today, 30 centuries later, it is contributing the most to the…
Israel in the News May/Jun 2016
La Plata High School, a public school in Charles County, Maryland, is being sued in federal court for allegedly making students profess the Muslim statement of faith and memorize the Five Pillars of Islam, while a charter-school empire owned by…
Dancing with the Devil
The reality of demonic attack and Jesus’ victory over it is woven throughout the Gospels, and there are 82 references to the word demon or demons in the New King James Bible…
Israel in the News Jan/Feb 2016
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has adopted a resolution declaring the Jewish Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron a Muslim site. It is the Cave of Machpelah that Abraham…
The Roman Effect
It is difficult today to imagine life in the ancient Roman Empire. We are far removed from the first century, and the motion picture industry has molded the way we perceive…
Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2014
Israel hosted more than 3.54 million visitors from around the world in 2013, a new all-time high, according to the Israel Ministry of Tourism. Twenty percent came from…
Israel in the News Sep/Oct 2013
Now even Palestinians are fighting a recent European Union (EU) decision to boycott all Israeli businesses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. A senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official who…
Bulla Lessons From Jeremiah 36
It’s a fact. The deeper archaeologists dig, the more Jewish history they find. With so much physical evidence to support the Bible, it’s amazing so many people remain unresponsive toward…
Discovering Our Biblical Roots in Modern Israel
Israel is a thoroughly modern country with major cities, modern highways, and mass transit. But have the picturesque sites and ancient customs from…
Israel in the News Mar/Apr 2013
A New York Times columnist has come under fire after retweeting a message calling the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the National Rifle Association (NRA)…
Amazing Archaeological Discoveries Affirm Jewish Claim to Land
A 2,000-year-old, second-Temple-era clay seal the size of a coin and a 1,500-year-old stamp, discovered within weeks of each other, have thrilled the Israeli archaeological world and further prove Israel’s historical…
Reich Explains the Clay Seal
Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University, who oversaw excavation of a 2,000-year-old clay seal, spoke to the press, giving more details about the amazing discovery in Israel…
Israel in the News May/Jun 2012
Legal activists gave Delta Airlines a recent lesson in geography—and law—after its frequent-flyer program website referred to Ben Gurion airport in Lod outside Tel Aviv as “Occupied Palestinian Territory…
Ancient Writing Tools
A stylus in Jesus’ day was a writing tool made of metal, ivory, or bone. The writer would press the pointed end of the stylus down on a waxed-surface tablet.
The Plague That Will Not Go Away
A grisly discovery was made in Norwich, England, recently. Seventeen Jewish skeletons, apparently from the same family, were found at the bottom of a medieval well. Archaeologists theorize the Jews were forced down…
Scrolls, Scripture, and the Savior
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me (Jn. 5:39). Housed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem is a curious…
The Jewishness of the Temple Mount
So prolific is Muslim propaganda that many Westerners today question the Temple’s historicity. So it’s time to review the evidence.
The Beginning of PA Denial
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA’s) political denial of the Jewish Temple’s existence first came to international attention at the Camp David II Summit in July 2000. In a final effort to resolve…
Archaeology Backs the Bible
In 2008 building remains from the first Temple period (eighth and ninth centuries B C.) were discovered in the northwest part of the Western Wall plaza that runs adjacent to the Temple…
Silver and Taxes: So What Else Is New?
According to Bible prophecy, an inferior empire (symbolized by silver in Daniel 2:31, 39) would replace the gold kingdom of Babylon. The Medo-Persians conquered Babylon in 539 B.C. According to fifth-century…
The Key of David
The invention of locks and keys is extremely ancient. But it was the Romans, nearly 2,000 years ago, who refined and developed their use. Because togas normally lacked pockets, they created…
The Sound of the Trumpet
The apostle Paul used the Roman military trumpet as a metaphor for spiritual battle. First-century historian Josephus wrote that the Roman army did nothing, except by trumpet signals. He listed…
The IYA Salvage Project
We woke up early Tuesday morning, grabbed our coffees, packed our lunches, boarded the bus, and headed for Tzurim Valley National Park located atop Mount Scopus, northeast of the Old…
Eye on the Middle East Nov/Dec 2008
Reading the dictionary can be an exhilarating experience. Not that an overwhelming number of young people might find it so. Nevertheless, it is an exercise in personal enlightenment that is well worth the time.
A Christian View from the Temple Mount
Muslims now claim the Western Wall was a hitching post for Muhammad’s horse! Their claims are preposterous, but they will stop at nothing to rewrite history. And they have two main reasons for doing so.
Israel in the News Nov/Dec 2007
Intense rocket fire from Palestinian Gaza into Jewish Sderot has led Defense Minister Ehud Barak to declare a state of emergency in the western Negev communities, thereby transferring authority over local councils…
Great Cities of Jesus’ Day
With Christmas around the corner, we invite you to tour four cities in firstcentury Israel that testify to the Savior’s power. Two of them are still there today.
The Politics of Sacred Space
Speaking from firsthand experience, Dr. Price explains why archaeology and the Temple Mount will always take center stage in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Judah’s Inheritance: The Dead Sea, En Gedi, Qumran, Hebron
Many of King David’s words were inspired by the animals at En Gedi. Visit En Gedi, the Dead Sea, Qumran, and Hebron through this excellent article.
Israel in the News May/Jun 2006
The Palestinian Authority’s ruling Hamas terror group has launched a Web site for children, using cartoons and children’s stories to preach the moral desirability of being a suicide terrorist. The Hamas-run Al-Fateh.net…
Scrolls, Souls, and the ‘Da Vinci Effect’
Dan Brown’s novel has been on The New York Times Best Seller list for two years now, contradicting Scripture. Is it accurate? See for yourself.
The Dead Sea Scrolls’ True Treasure
The law of the Lᴏʀᴅ is perfect. More to be desired are they than gold,…and in keeping them there is great reward. The law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands…
Never Miss an Opportunity
Was Gaza enough? Not on your life. Now Abbas is beating the drum for a move on Jerusalem, while archaeologists uncover something wonderful.