Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. The earliest surveys and excavations in Jerusalem were conducted in the 19th century, mainly by European Christians such as the French scholars Louis Félicien de Saulcy and Charles Clermont-Ganneau and the Englishman Sir Charles Warren, who were inspired by the wish to identify locations mentioned in the Bible. The Palestine Exploration Fund, founded in 1865, sponsored a number of excavations and topographic su... {open}

 

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Melchizedek, also spelled Melchisedech, in the Old Testament, a figure of importance in biblical tradition because he was both king and priest, was connected with Jerusalem, and was revered by Abraham, who paid a tithe to him. He appears as a person only in an interpolated vignette (Gen. 14:18–20) of the story of Abraham rescuing his kidnapped nephew, Lot, by defeating a coalition of Mesopotamian kings under C... {open}

 

Emil Schürer writes: "The third chief group of Philo's works on the Pentateuch is a Delineation of the Mosaic Legislation for non-Jews. In this whole group indeed, the allegorical explanation is still occasionally employed. In the main however we have here actual historical delineations, a systematic statement of the great legislative work of Moses, the contents, excellence and importance of which, the author desires to make evident to non-Jewish readers, and indeed to as ... {open}