Interpreters of the New Testament should strive to present the fuller and more complex picture of cultic activities that occurred within the cities and provinces of the Roman world, which included not only imperial and but also traditional divine honors.

In 1 Samuel 15, when the prophet Samuel tells Saul that God has rejected him, Saul grasps at the edge of his robe, tearing it. Samuel responds: ‘The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you’. In chapter 108 of the saga of Olaf Tryggvason, when King Olaf is fighting a losing battle, the bow of the archer standing next to him snaps in two. Hearing the noise, he asks, ‘What snapped?’, to which the reply is: ‘Norway from your hand, O King.

When English translations smooth over the objectifying language or the action verbs that imply force and coercion are involved in biblical “marriage” relationships, we have been misled. As much as I wish to support loving couples choosing to marry today, I also wish to be clear about how differently these ancient people wrote and thought about the dynamic between paired-up people in their day.

  272 BCE is the first an until now only indisputable terminus a quo for the emergence of Old Testament literature. In 272 the Greek general Pyrrhus was killed during a street battle in the city of Argos, when a woman threw a tile from the roof of a house and hid Pyrrhus immobilizing him. Pyrrhus was eliminated by a bystander.

Prompted by his recent book on the Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth, the author explores a historically plausible example of the long-term preservation of topographical knowledge from 19th century Nazareth, and its context in recent research on the archaeology and anthropology of memory.

There is a built-in tension between religious studies and academic ones in the humanities, including archaeology. The students in the yeshivas see themselves as protected within “the tent of the Torah” and any egress to the academic world opens one up to the dangers involved in exposure to opinions and worldviews that are contrary to the religious world.

When people today talk about wanting to take biblical content on the subject of marriage seriously, including questions about marriage equality, however well intended this orientation is, the typical application of it overlooks passages related to key figures in the Christian Bible, and applies a highly “cherry-picked” interpretation of the four passages that ground “biblical marriage” for Christians.

It is not enough to simply unearth an artifact, compare it to a textual description, and arrive at a date. Nor is it acceptable to use archaeological evidence to uncritically confirm the historicity of a text. Excavating a text – much like excavating a tell – requires additional controls.

The NT evidence is clear that the earliest Christians owned, bought and sold slaves, and the NT writings overwhelmingly uphold the rights and privileges of slaveholders. Nonetheless, enslaved believers belonged to early Christian congregations, which they joined for both this-worldly and spiritual reasons.

This is not the decipherment of an ancient text written by a scribe, but the creation of a new, artificial text by Galil. It is a purely academic (though very imaginative) exercise. Galil and his coauthors believe in this experiment: they spent much time and resources, and the results confirm their underlying ideological convictions. But this does not change the conclusion that this experiment has no historical value for the ancient world.