Biblical Archaeology Society’s
Top 10 Bible History Daily Posts in 2018

Ring in the new year by looking back
Robin Ngo • 12/31/2018

#10. 6,500-Year-Old DNA Points to Ancient Migration
By Robin Ngo
According to a recent DNA study, around 6,500 years ago, humans migrated from modern-day Turkey and the Zagros mountains of Iran to Israel’s Upper Galilee region, helping to introduce cultural changes in the southern Levant during the Late Chalcolithic period.

#9. Video Lecture: The Origin of Heaven and Hell
By Robert R. Cargill
Because there was no concept of an afterlife in early Israelite religion, there was no concept of a heaven or hell. But following the exile and return from Babylon and the coming of the Greeks, Jewish literature suddenly began to contain references to heaven and hell.

#8. A Subterranean Surprise in the Roman Catacombs
By Sarah K. Yeomans
In 2002, a burst pipe caused a sinkhole to form in the basement of Rome’s Istituto Sacra Famiglia, revealing several hundred burials. What were these evidently non-Christian burials dating to the second century C.E. doing in the middle of one of Rome’s most important Christian catacombs?

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