NEWSWEEK has a number of Bible-related articles in its current online issue, some of which are of interest. First:

Raiders of the Lost Tomb
A book and movie allege the final resting place of Mary, Joseph and the King of Kings has been found. Controversy to follow.
By Lisa Miller and Joanna Chen | Newsweek Web Exclusive

In Jerusalem, that ancient and holy city, people's houses are built on bones. For thousands of years, hundreds of generations of Jews, Muslims and Christians have been laid to rest in its rocky soil. Tova Bracha has always known that the tiny, rose-bordered concrete plot next to her apartment building covers an ancient Jewish burial tomb, but she never thought much about it. "It just didn't seem important when there are so many tombs anyway that have been found around Jerusalem," she says. Rushing home for the Sabbath, her arms full of groceries, Bracha laughs at the suggestion that the tomb might be of considerable religious interest. Maybe she can make a fortune selling trinkets to tourists, she jokes. Maybe the value of her home will soar.

This week the Discovery Channel, together with HarperSanFrancisco, announces the release of "The Jesus Family Tomb," a television documentary and a book that aim to show that the tomb next door to Tova Bracha's apartment, located in a nondescript suburb called East Talpiot, is, well, the family plot of Jesus Christ. Spearheaded by a well-known TV director named Simcha Jacobovici, and produced by "Titanic" director James Cameron, "The Jesus Family Tomb" is—both in book and movie form—a slick and suspenseful narrative about the 1980 discovery of a first-century Jewish burial cave and the 10 bone boxes, or ossuaries, found therein.

[...]

Most specialists are skeptical. Background here and follow the many links back.

Second this:

But Did It Happen?
Like Any Good Mythic Narrative, Genesis Gets The Customs And Culture Of Its Setting Right
By Sharon Begley | NEWSWEEK
Oct 21, 1996 Issue

Tower of Babel

But starting with chapter 12, which introduces Abraham, Genesis starts reading like good historical fiction, reflecting the places, culture and customs of the second millennium B.C., says archeologist Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. (Genesis was compiled much later, however--between the 10th and fifth centuries B.C.) In chapter 13, for instance, when Lot, son of Abraham's dead brother, parts company with his uncle and strikes out for ""the whole plain of the Jordan,'' he saw ""that all of it was well-watered.'' Archeologists, notes Robert Alter in his new translation of and commentary on Genesis,* ""have in fact discovered traces of an ancient irrigation system in the plain of the Jordan.'' When Lot sits ""in the gate of Sodom'' in chapter 19, the reference is to a large chamber in the gateway of Canaanite cities, where residents would gossip, transact business and settle legal matters. And Egyptian records show that peasants paid a 20 percent tax on crops; Joseph, in chapter 47, orders that ""when the harvests come, you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh.''

Something seems to be missing at the beginning of the article. This piece is disappointing. It relies to a large degree on old scholarship. It quotes authors in a way that gives the impression they were being interviewed, although this is unlikely in at least one case, given that Nahum Sarna died in 2005. I haven't followed this area for some time, but even back in the 1980s this position was being challenged by people like Thomas Thompson and John Van Seters, neither of whom are mentioned. The bottom line is that a lot of the supposed parallels between Genesis and Middle Bronze Age culture are poorly formulated and are not comparing like with like (I call this the fallacy of the middle term). And other more defensible parallels have equally good parallels later in the first millennium BCE.

Third, a piece on the Sacred exhibition:

The Sacred History
An exhibit of religious manuscripts serves as a timely reminder of the teachings the three major faiths share.
By Carla Power | Newsweek Web Exclusive

September 11 made Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis a fashionable map for the 21st century. Right-wing pundits and religious zealots alike used it to argue that Islamic and Western societies have always been incompatible. Now "Sacred," on view at London's British Library (through Sept. 23), provides an elegant riposte to clash-mongers. The collection of manuscripts from Christianity, Islam and Judaism underscores that the traditions of the three religions bear striking similarities. Their emphasis on scriptural truth is the same, their cultures are intertwined and their followers lived—usually peacefully—in multicultural societies for centuries.

[...]

Background here.

UPDATE: Reader Adam Peiper e-mails:

The article "But Did It Happen" was written in 1996 so it obviously couldn't quote any scholarship from after 1996. The date "October 21, 1996 issue" is written below the author's name Sharon Begley.

I was snookered too when I was searching the Google News search and I noticed other old articles from Newsweek that appeared; some from 2006. I suspect that Newsweek recently placed many of their old articles recently on-line and the "Google News" feature returns them as "new articles" even though they may have been published over a decade ago and only now appear online.

My bad for not noticing the date, and Professor Sarna was alive at the time after all. Still, Newsweek isn't entirely off the hook, since they were ignoring even 1980s scholarship.