The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide

Jerome Murphy-O'Connor was a biblical scholar and archaeologist based in Jerusalem for decades, and this guide works from direct, sustained engagement with the excavated remains at each site it covers across Israel, Palestine and the Sinai from earliest times through the Crusades, giving each site's own excavated evidence and historical context rather than a devotional or purely textual account. That direct archaeological grounding is the guide's real evidentiary basis. Use it for established archaeological facts about the physical remains and history of a specific holy site; it is a guide to excavated remains, not a theological or scriptural commentary, so a claim about a site's religious meaning needs a source addressing that separately.