Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the fastest, most enjoyable way to get up to speed on a fascinating area, August 18, 2006
I once asked the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge how he stays abreast of fast-moving developments in biblical archaeology, a field of investigation that is related but decidely peripheral to his own work.
'I mostly read BAR ... ', he said, in an unexpectedly low-brow response for the hallowed halls of the Great University. 'Then if I want to know more about a topic, I move on to more scholarly publications.'
It was a vote of confidence in a magazine (*not* an academic journal!) that I've read for years and found equally useful in maintaining a generalist knowledge in an area of investigation that - let's address the elephant in the room - most of us come to out of religious interests.
BAR effectively combines the well-edited prose of leading scholars with due general-interest attention to color photos and complementary resources like slides (in a past era) and phenomenally well-produced videos and dvds.
An issue pulled at random from my shelves (November/December 2001) contains articles entitled:
-Excavating Philistine Gath. Have we found Goliath's hometown
-The Monastery of the Cross. Where heaven and earth meet
-The Rise and Fall of the Dead Sea
-Is It or Isn't It - a Synagogue?
In addition, the usual suspects appear issue by issue in interesting columns that add color commentary to a polemical field where personalities as well as artefacts and theories loom large.
You'll want to ignore the over-heated reader responses on one brand of disillusionment or another. But you'd be wrong to heed some reviewers' critiques of the political headbashing that goes on among archaeologists. When elephants of this kind collide, it's usually over an ideological argument that matters. It does us no good to deride such battles as mere politics. BAR has had the good sense to play both a spectator's and a provocateur's role in such infighting over the complaints of readers who wish things were more placid around here.
They are not. And the things we continue to dig up from the rocky ground of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and other locations continue to insure that we never fall prey to boring consensus regarding the history of these great lands and the faiths they engendered.
Read BAR if this sounds remotely interesting and decide for yourself.
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38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
When they drop the anti-Semitism bickering, it excels, February 8, 2005
A Kid's Review
I had a subscription to BAR previously and I absolutely LOVED the articles when they presented excellent photos, interesting finds and deep discussion. My interest started to wane when it seemed that a fair number of discussions turned to how "Dr. X is/was an anti-Semite and therefore his discoveries/theories should be invalidated/discredited/etc.", also implying that Jewish archaeologists' work should be magnified over anyone else's.
I'm not Jewish. I'm also not a racist. The reason why I (or anyone else, I'd presume) would take interest in the magazine was for the aforementioned photos, discoveries, and so forth, not so I can put my money down to read people's discourses on finger-pointing about anti-Semitism.
Yes, racism is bad. Yes, Judaism plays an important part in understanding Biblical archaeology (but not to the point of excluding Christian researchers or thinking anyone outside of Judaism can't be a decent scholar). Even if accusations of anti-Semitism are true about Dr. X, Y, or Z, if their research is scientifically sound, get over it and go argue with Dr. X, Y, or Z on his own turf, not in the magazine, because frankly, I as a reader just don't care about your beef.
I am in agreement with other reviewers who say the magazine excels when it sticks to facts, and is tedious when it goes off on finger-pointing. If you can handle both, buy the magazine. It put me off years ago, but I might consider going back if the quality remains.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BAR Succeeds Where Boring Professional Journals Fail!!!, August 2, 2004
BAR presents an overall terrific introduction to the world of Biblical artifacts! Professional archaeologists & world-renowned scholars distill their dry, black-and-white academic publications into a language ordinary, non-technical people can understand & put to use when they study the Bible. What I like in particular is their presentation of vivid color photos that bring the artifacts & excavation sites to life! I appreciate BAR for introducing me to material I never knew existed that complements the Biblical record & helps demonstrate its reliability (such as the mysterious LMLK seal impressions made during the lifetimes of King Hezekiah & the great prophet Isaiah, which inspired me to write my own book on the subject--also available here at Amazon). My only complaint is that the editor occasionally publishes statements by archaeologists/scholars as facts when they actually represent atheistic/theistic biases in disguise. Fortunately, a "Letters to the Editor" section provides a forum for readers to challenge the experts, which makes for some interesting, often entertaining reading!
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by James K. Hoffmeier
