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Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered evidence of early cereal cultivation at a 23,000-year-old site in Galilee, effectively doubling the timespan humans are believed to have practiced farming.

Israeli strikes on Syria left up to six people died on Friday as Israel escalated its military response to four rockets landing on its territory a day earlier. Up to five men were killed in a car after it was struck while travelling near the frontier of the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, the Syrian army said, in what appeared to be a second wave of Israeli retaliatory action following a series of late night raids on Thursday. Syrian state television said the strike had killed "five unarmed civilians", but hte UK-based Syrian Conservatory for Human Rights said the...

The four rockets fired on Galilee came from the new Iranian terror front on the Golan "Israel’s top government and military went on a high level of preparedness Tuesday, Aug. 18 in expectation of the first terrorist attack to be orchestrated by Iran from Syrian or Lebanese borders. ... Iranian Al Qods and Hizballah officers were building a new terrorist network raising Israeli suspicions that one of their plans was to seize an Israeli location or part of one and try and hold out against an Israeli counter-offensive of tanks and assault helicopters. .. three radical terrorist movements staff the...

Over the last several seasons of excavation in a fifth-century C.E. synagogue in the Lower Galilee, archaeologists have uncovered stunning mosaics depicting two scenes from the Samson cycle, human and animal figures, a Hebrew dedicatory inscription and a meeting between what may be Alexander the Great and a Jewish high priest. Led by Jodi Magness, the Kenan Distinguished Professor for Teaching Excellence in Early Judaism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the excavation at the ancient Jewish village in Huqoq, Israel, has continued to yield exciting finds that fascinate scholars and laypersons alike. During the 2015 field...

(CNN) -- Archaeologists are reveling in the discovery of an ancient synagogue in northern Israel, a "monumental" structure with a mosaic floor depicting the biblical figure of Samson and a Hebrew inscription. The synagogue -- dating to the fourth and fifth centuries in both the Talmudic and late Roman periods -- is in Huqoq, an ancient Jewish village in the country's Galilee region, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said. Jodi Magness, a professor of early Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the building was found in a recent excavation. She...

Israeli archaeologists have uncovered dramatic evidence of what they believe are the earliest known attempts at agriculture, 11,000 years before the generally recognised advent of organised cultivation. The study examined more than 150,000 examples of plant remains recovered from an unusually well preserved hunter-gatherer settlement on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel. Previously, scientists had believed that organised agriculture in the Middle East, including animal husbandry and crop cultivation, had begun in the late Holocene period – around 12,000 BC – and later spread west through Europe.

In a place called Magdala, along the sea of Galilee, something amazing has been going on for the past nine years.  The story begins in 2004 when Rev. Juan M. Solana, director of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, a guest house for Christian pilgrims, was inspired to build a retreat center in the Galilee region where much of Jesus’ ministry took place.   Four plots of land were acquired on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee near the small Israeli town of Migdal and the destroyed Arab village of Al-Majdal—both named for the ancient town...

The remains of an imperial Roman legionary camp -- the only one of its kind ever to be excavated in Israel or in the entirety of the Eastern Empire from the second and third centuries CE -- have come to light at a dig near Megiddo, archaeologists said this week. Legio, a Roman site situated next to Tel Megiddo in northern Israel, served as the headquarters of the Sixth Legion Ferrata -- the Ironclad -- in the years following the Jewish Revolt, and would have helped keep order in the Galilee during the Bar Kochba Revolt in 132-135 CE... In...

Arsonists in northern Israel torched two storerooms filled with artifacts found at a nearby salvage excavation at Tel Kishon on Monday. Some of the antiquities were over 4,000 years old. The blaze inflicted irreparable damage to the antiquities, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement Tuesday morning. The authority lodged a report with the police, who opened an investigation into the incident. The excavations at Tel Kishon were being conducted to prevent damage to artifacts during roadwork on Route 65, near Mount Tabor in the Galilee. Among the antiquities found, and damaged in the blaze, were Bronze Age pottery...

The archaeological sites of the ancient Roman Empire constitute without rival the most prolific array of ancient architecture and artifacts that can be attributed to any single civilization or culture. Its remains pockmark the Old World landscape from North Africa and Egypt to Hadrian’s Wall in Britain. The artifacts populate museums the world over. But comparatively rarely does one find the preserved footprint of an ancient Roman citizen. That is why excavators and archaeologists got excited when, while digging at the site of Hippos-Sussita (an ancient Hellenistic-Roman site just east of the Sea of Galilee in Israel), they came across...

An ancient rock inscription of the word "Shabbat" was uncovered near Lake Kinneret this week -- the first and only discovery of a stone Shabbat boundary in Hebrew. The etching in the Lower Galilee community of Timrat appears to date from the Roman or Byzantine period. News of the inscription, discovered by chance Sunday by a visitor strolling the community grounds, quickly reached Mordechai Aviam, head of the Institute for Galilean Archeology at Kinneret College. "This is the first time we've found a Shabbat boundary inscription in Hebrew," he said. "The letters are so clear that there is no doubt...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Abu Imad Al-Rifai, Palestinian Islamic Jihad Representative in Lebanon, which aired on Al-Jadeed/New TV on January 19, 2015: Abu Imad Al-Rifai: When the Syrians see that there is a war between Israel and the [Syrian] regime, a large part of the opposition will stand alongside the regime, and fight the Israeli enemy. […] We are part of the resistance, and we will be at the middle of the fighting with the Israeli enemy if it breaks out. Within 72 hours, half of the Galilee will have fallen into the hands of the resistance,...

d Hezbollah figures killed in an airstrike in Syria this weekend were likely planning an 'imminent' attack on Israel, security sources have claimed. Six Iranian army chiefs died alongside five Hezbollah militants after an Israeli helicopter fired rockets at a convoy in the Golan Heights region on Sunday. Among those killed was Iranian General Mohammed Allahdadi, as well as commander Abu Ali Tabatabai, who is known to have worked with both Hezbollah and Iran. Today Major General Eyal Ben Reuven, a former deputy head in the Israeli Defense Forces, accused the senior military figures of meeting to plot an attack...

Since 2009, archaeologists have been slowly excavating the ancient town of Magdala—thought to be the home of Mary Magdalene—near the Sea of Galilee. Among their finds has been a first-century synagogue where, experts say, Jesus likely preached. Image: Israel Antiquities Authority Although Jerusalem and Bethlehem are the sites most commonly associated with Jesus, Father Eamon Kelly—vice president of Israel's Magdala Center and vice chargé of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center—points out that Jesus spent almost his entire life in what is now northern Israel. "Eighty percent of Jesus' public life was here," he tells the Israeli...

The New Testament says Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, but one rogue Israeli archaeologist says it is far more likely the Christian savior was born in Bethlehem of the Galilee, more than 60 miles from Jerusalem. Aviram Oshri spent nearly eleven years excavating artifacts in Bethlehem of the Galilee — an ancient biblical village near Nazareth that was later settled by German Templers — which he believes show that the traditional account of Jesus’s birthplace may be wrong. But when he produced his findings for his employer, the Israel Antiquities Authority, he found his proposal dismissed and called...

The earliest evidence of the use of olive oil in the country, and possibly the entire Middle East, was unearthed at an excavation site in the Lower Galilee, the Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday. The discovery was made after Dr. Ianir Milevski and Nimrod Getzov directed an archeological salvage excavation at Ein Tzipori between 2011 and 2013. The excavation led to research that indicated that olive oil was already being used in the country 8,000 years ago, during the 6th millennium BCE... These tests revealed that the pottery, dating to the Early Chalcolithic period, contained olive oil, the researchers concluded... Of...

The school in the Western Galilee village of Abu Snan will be closed Sunday for fears of renewed sectarian violence following a brawl that erupted late Friday night between some three dozen youths from the village’s Muslim and Druze communities, in which at least 26 people were injured. The announcement was made by the two communities’ leaders in the Muslim-majority mixed town, as efforts to calm tensions between the sides were underway Saturday. At least eight people were hospitalized in Nahariya with moderate to serious injuries after a grenade was thrown during the Friday night scuffle. Some of the injured...

Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino held a meeting Saturday to assess the security situation following the death of Hir Alhamdan, 22, and the ensuing riots and rock-throwing attacks in the Galilee, Samaria and Jerusalem, that broke out. The conclusion of those attending the meeting was to to raise the alert level in the country to Gimmel (C). This means that police forces will increase their presence at specific points of friction as well as the cities beleaguered by violence. Hir Alhamdan, a resident of Kafr Kana in the Galilee, was shot and killed by police on Friday night. Alhamdan reportedly lunged...

Sirens sounded throughout the Upper Galilee close to 10:15 pm Monday night, just before a series of explosions were heard near Kiryat Shmona. The IDF confirmed at 10:35 pm that one rocket, fired from Lebanon, struck the Upper Galilee area. No injuries or damage were reported. […] The Lebanese Army arrested several terrorists involved in at least one salvo on the Galilee, but also complained to mediating body UNIFIL after the IAF responded to the attacks. …

A town dating back more than 2,000 years has been discovered on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee, in Israel's Ginosar valley. The ancient town may be Dalmanutha (also spelled Dalmanoutha), described in the Gospel of Mark as the place Jesus sailed to after miraculously feeding 4,000 people by multiplying a few fish and loaves of bread, said Ken Dark, of the University of Reading in the U.K., whose team discovered the town during a field survey.