On Easter Sunday, April 1, “Faced with Drought, the Pharaohs Tried (and Failed) to Adapt” appeared in the news section of the New York Times (the online version was posted March 30). According to the article, the famine among the Hittites in modern Turkey was so bad, the Queen was forced to reach out to […]
Biblical Archaeology and Literature
Massacre Survivor David Hogg and the Origin of Biblical Prose Narrative Writing
Massacre survivor David Hogg, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior in Parkland, Florida, offers a different model or paradigm for the understanding of the origin of biblical prose narrative writing than customarily used today. Typically biblical scholars retroject themselves to the presumed biblical writers of millennia ago. Biblical scholars attend graduate schools. Biblical writers attended […]
Were the Levites Hyksos? – No! That Would Mean Having to Take the Exodus Seriously as a Secular Event in History
Were the Levites Hyksos? Both the Levites and the Hyksos garner their fair share of attention in their respective disciplines, biblical scholarship for the former and Egyptology for the latter, but never the twain shall met. The association with the Hyksos, the West Semitic warriors from across the river with a 400-year tradition of being […]
Jerusalem Throne Games Public Lecture
Jerusalem Throne Games Interview
Jerusalem Throne Games
I interrupt the normal flow of history and political blogs for an announcement of great importance. My new book Jerusalem Throne Games: Bible Story Battles after the Death of David (Oxbow Books) has been published. The book is a relentlessly political approach to the battle for power after the death of David as fought through […]
When Israel and the Arabs Were Allies
Over 2700 years ago, an Assyrian ruler named Sargon II from what is today northern Iraq, ended more than a century of conflict between Israel and Assyria with the conquest of the kingdom. Many people are familiar with the legacy of the Ten Lost Tribes, but very few are aware of what actually happened to […]