What are the origins of Christianity? Most people would say it begins with Jesus. But Jesus and at least some of his disciples were influenced by, or followers of, people who called themselves “the ...

As you leave Jerusalem and go to the south and to the east, toward the Dead Sea, the terrain changes rapidly and starkly. You move off gradually from [the] ... rolling hillside, through the ravines, ...

Israeli archaeologist yuval peleg halts his jeep where the jagged Judean hills peter out into a jumble of boulders. Before us, across the flat-calm Dead Sea, the sun rises over the mountains of Jordan ...

One of the less sanitary aspects of life in Jesus' day has come into play in the debate over who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, how they lived and how they died. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get ...

Western biblical scholars have long discussed and debated the work of biblical scholars living in Israel, amid the scorching deserts of the Middle East. Now a prominent expert disputes that one of ...

Those who make a great show of being religiously pure often lead lives that are secretly very dirty -- or at least so it was in biblical times. Recent bioarchaeological findings at the ancient Dead ...

In Luke 1:31-35, an angel tells the Virgin Mary, “And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High, the ...

Early Christianity was extremely diverse and often contradictory in its beliefs and practices. What do we know of the 'Christianities' that fell by the wayside? The once entrenched idea that early ...