Excavations this week have uncovered some potentially dramatic new material at Khirbet Qeiyafa, reports Luke Chandler.  We’ll have to wait for word from the authorities before we know what it is.

At Gath, on the other hand, they keep pulling out great stuff and telling everyone about it.  On Thursday, they not only worked in the field until 8 pm (work usually ends by 2 pm), but Aren Maeir still took time late that evening to report on the discoveries. Arutz-7 also had a story this week on the excavations at Goliath’s hometown.

The Mystery of Bethsaida – if you are hoping that this op-ed at The Bible and Interpretation will deal with the substance of the objections to the identification of et-Tell as Bethsaida, you’ll be disappointed.  Here’s one of the claims: “At Bethsaida in the 1996 season of excavation was uncovered a Roman temple.”  Notley has pretty well demolished this idea, but since it’s the only thing they have, they keep repeating it (see The Sacred Bridge, pp. 356-59).  Only the grammar gets worse.

The Magdala synagogue stone with the menorah inscription is now on display in the (not quite open) Israel Museum.  There’s a photo here.  Expect a lot of stories on the newly renovated museum in the next two weeks.

As a follow-up to last week’s notice on the pre-publication special on the two Talmuds for Logos, see this post that explains some of the advantage of this electronic edition.