A Tale of Two Tombs

A Tale of Two Tombs

Our tour group gathered beneath a canopy at the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, listening to our guide on a beautiful, shirt-sleeve day. To one side, we could hear the singing of another church group gathered near the tomb, and to the other side was the cacophony of the...

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The Jerusalem Model: Legoland for Bible Geeks

The Jerusalem Model: Legoland for Bible Geeks

  “It’s even better than Legoland,” said actor Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame in the PBS show, Jesus: Countdown to Calvary. Bonneville made the comment while viewing a massive model depicting what the city of Jerusalem looked like in the first...

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The Jesus Boat

The Jesus Boat

Two fishermen, brothers Moshe and Yuval Lufan, trudged along the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee in Israel—the same body of water where Jesus’s disciples cast their nets. Moshe and Yuval kept their heads down, their eyes fixed on the muddy ground, searching...

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At the Gates of Hades

At the Gates of Hades

We had just stepped off of the bus at the Dan archaeological site in northern Israel when our guide told us to quickly turn around. So our tour group hustled back onto the bus because there had been an incident very close to this site at the border between Israel and...

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From God’s Restaurant to Mars Hill

From God’s Restaurant to Mars Hill

The sky was as blue as the Aegean Sea when my wife and I left our hotel and hiked off to visit the Parthenon, the ancient ruins of a temple that has stood at the heart of Athens for about 2,500 years. Before we climbed the winding slope leading up to the Acropolis,...

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VeggieTales, the Bunny Song, and King Nebuchadnezzar

VeggieTales, the Bunny Song, and King Nebuchadnezzar

You may recall the classic VeggieTales video, Rack, Shack, and Benny, where the scheming zucchini, Nezzer, sings the infamous “Bunny Song.” Who can forget the lyrics, which talked about not wanting healthy food and loving the bunny, but not their dads or moms? In...

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The Cauldron and the Chalice

The Cauldron and the Chalice

Two Irish lads, Jim Quinn and Paddy Flanagan, were digging around in a potato field in 1878 when they struck silver. They dug up a hoard of stunning metalwork dating back to the 7th or 8th centuries—a treasure trove that included the famous Chalice of Ardagh. My...

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The Philistines! A Major New Find Announced

The Philistines! A Major New Find Announced

I like the way that NPR begins its report on a major new archaeological discovery: "There's no denying the Philistines have taken some guff over the past, well, thousands of years. After all, they're one of the Hebrew Bible's most infamous villains, seed of both...

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History by the Slice