6 FIRST PERSON
Authentic or Forged? What to Do When Experts Disagree
24 BIBLICAL VIEWS
God Save the Queen: The Political Origins of Salvation
Henry W. Morisada Rietz
26 ARCHAEOLOGICAL VIEWS
At the Interface of Archaeology and Texts Yonatan Adler
28 The Persisting Uncertainties of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud
Hershel Shanks
“Is it a she or is it a he?” is only one of the tantalizing questions raised by the remarkable finds at this remote site in the Sinai desert. Why was it built? What is it? Why was it abandoned? And why has it taken nearly four decades to publish the final excavation report? One thing is clear, however: Several inscriptions recovered in the excavation mention the Israelite God “Yahweh.”
38 Scribe Links Qumran and Masada
Sidnie White Crawford
In an unprecedented breakthrough, paleographer Ada Yardeni recently identified the handwriting of a single scribe on more than 50 Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran and Masada. What can this tell us about the scribal community at Qumran?
44 Is T1 David’s Tomb?
Jeffrey R. Zorn
Nearly a century ago, French archaeologist Raymond Weill excavated what he identified as tombs in Jerusalem’s City of David-perhaps the royal necropolis of the kings of Judah as located in the Bible. Some scholars have since disputed this claim, but a new examination of more recent archaeological evidence suggests that archaeologist Weill might well have been right.
53 From Jewish to Gentile: How the Jesus Movement Became Christianity
Geza Vermes
A small group of observant Jews were the first followers of Jesus. But Christianity evolved into a largely gentile movement over the next century. When were non-Jews first accepted as Jesus’ followers, and how were they distinguished from the original Jewish Christians?
