Exploring the Bible

In July 2025, the Temple Mount Sifting Project in Jerusalem announced a discovery that offered a literal, physical touch from the biblical past: a 2,600-year-old clay seal impression bearing the name of a royal family connected to King Josiah, complete with the ancient official's fingerprint pressed into its edge. The Artifact and the Fingerprint The artifact is a bulla —a small, stamped lump of clay used to secure commercial and legal goods in antiquity. An official would press their personalized signet ring into wet clay over the string binding a document or container to ensure it was not opened by unauthorized personnel. Based on paleographic dating (the shape of the letters), the bulla dates to the late 7th or early 6th century BC, placing it squarely in the final years of the First Temple period. The ancient Hebrew script on the seal reads: "Belonging to Yed[a‛]yah, (son of) Asayahu" . When researchers examined the reverse side of the clay, they found marking...

Matthias holds a unique and somewhat paradoxical place in Christian history. As the replacement for Judas Iscariot, he is the only apostle not directly called by Jesus during his earthly ministry, and the only one chosen by a human administrative process (the casting of lots). Yet, the moment he is elected in the first chapter of Acts, he vanishes entirely from the biblical narrative. To understand Matthias, we have to look at the strict criteria for his election, the fragmented traditions of his missionary work, and the surprising archaeological legacy he left in Western Europe. The Apostolic Criteria and the Election (Acts 1) Following the defection and death of Judas, Peter addressed the early Christian community (numbering about 120 people) in Jerusalem to fill the vacancy. Maintaining the number twelve was highly symbolic, representing the twelve tribes of Israel and signaling the restoration of God’s covenant people. Peter established a strict prerequisite for the candida...

If you have ever stood in Jerusalem and gazed up at the massive southern wall of the Temple Mount, it is easy to let your imagination drift back 2,000 years. You can almost picture the bustling crowds of ancient Jewish pilgrims—carrying their basket offerings, singing the Psalms of Ascent, and making their final approach to the holy site during the major festivals of Passover, Shavuot, or Sukkot. Now, a stunning new archaeological discovery has brought the physical reality of those ancient crowds into breathtaking focus. Following five seasons of intensive excavations at the Ophel archaeological site just south of the Temple Mount, a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has uncovered a monumental, highly sophisticated complex of ancient ritual purification baths—known as mikvaot . And this find isn't just another scattered collection of stone basins. It is a masterclass in ancient engineering that directly illuminates what the final days of the Second Temple period ac...

  If you close your eyes and imagine the ancient Galilee region during the first century, what comes to mind? For generations, the popular narrative—often repeated in historical textbooks, documentaries, and Sunday school classrooms—painted a very specific picture. It was supposedly a dusty, isolated, and impoverished backwater. The people who lived there were thought to be uneducated peasants and dirt-poor subsistence fishermen, cut off from the bustling intellectual, economic, and religious hub of Jerusalem to the south. It makes for a compelling underdog story. But there is a massive problem with this narrative: the dirt simply doesn't back it up. Recent archaeological discoveries on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee are completely rewriting our understanding of this region. At a site called el-Araj, which is now widely believed to be the true location of the biblical fishing village of Bethsaida, excavators are finding hard evidence that the Galileans were highly con...

When you picture the biblical story of David and Goliath, what comes to mind? For most of us, the imagery was set during childhood Sunday school lessons or from vivid illustrations in storybooks. We imagine a young boy armed with a simple sling facing off against a monstrous, towering behemoth—a literal giant scraping the sky at nearly ten feet tall. It is the ultimate underdog story, a narrative that has transcended its religious origins to become a universal metaphor for overcoming insurmountable odds. But what if the towering height of Goliath is actually a historical misunderstanding? What if the Philistine champion wasn’t a ten-foot mythological monster, but rather a very real, incredibly large human warrior? To understand the true height of Goliath, we have to put away our storybooks and dive into the fascinating world of ancient manuscripts, biblical translation, and historical archaeology. When we do, we discover that the truth about Goliath’s height doesn't diminish th...

It’s Passover week. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, is standing before a chaotic crowd in Jerusalem. In a desperate bid to keep the peace and avoid executing Jesus of Nazareth, Pilate invokes a customary holiday pardon. He offers the crowd a choice between two prisoners: Jesus, or a man named Barabbas. The crowd shouts for Barabbas. He is unchained, he walks away into the crowded streets of Jerusalem, and he completely vanishes from the historical record. Who exactly was this man? Did he ever realize the magnitude of what happened that day? And has archaeology turned up a single shred of evidence about his life? Let's separate the hard facts from the legends. The Surprising Truth About His Name To understand the profound irony of this story, you have to look at the man’s name. "Barabbas" isn't actually a first name; it’s an Aramaic patronymic (a name derived from a father). Bar means "son of," and Abba means "father". Literally tran...