The article on the incised handle was eventually published in the Israel Exploration Journal. Hershel also wrote a short guidebook on the City of David. Most important, he developed the idea for contributing a column on Biblical archaeology to a magazine in the U.S. The column was to be his reason for returning to Jerusalem and maintaining a relationship with the archaeological community there.
The column proposal was rejected. Never one to take rejection, Hershel morphed his archaeology column concept into an archaeological newsletter, and then into an archaeology magazine, before pen ever hit paper. Hershel had originally planned to call his publication Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. But one evening in the living room of scholars Carol and Eric Meyers, Carol objected to the negative acronym—BAN—created by Biblical Archaeology Newsletter. She countered that because Hershel was a lawyer, there was obviously only one choice for the title—Biblical Archaeology Review, or BAR. Just like that, a magazine was born!
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