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Biran at Ninety

The excavator of Dan recalls growing up in pre-state Israel, great archaeologists he’s known and why he’s a Biblical archaeologist

By Hershel Shanks

On October 23, 1999, Avraham Biran, director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, will celebrate his 90th birthday. He will also have completed his 34th season at Tel Dan, the longest-running archaeological excavation in Israel. He has led an extraordinary life—as a student, a government official, a diplomat, a dedicated Zionist and, not least, a Bible scholar and archaeologist. His life has stretched over most of the history of modern archaeology in the Holy Land, and he has known and worked with the leading men and women who participated in […]

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Footnotes

1.

The location of Ezion-Geber remains a matter of dispute. See Gary Pratico, “Where Is Ezion-Geber?” BAR 12:05; Alexander Flinder, “Is This Solomon’s Seaport?” BAR 15:04.

2.

The Cairo Genizah is a trove of about 140,000 medieval manuscripts recovered from a Cairo synagogue. See S.D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1967).

3.

See Ze’ev Herzog, Miriam Aharoni and Anson F. Rainey, “Arad—An Ancient Israelite Fortress with a Temple of Yahweh,” BAR 13:02; Ruth Amiran, Rolf Goethert and Ornit Olan, “The Well of Arad,” BAR 13:02.

4.

Emmanuel Anati, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” BAR 11:04; Israel Finkelstein, “Raider of the Lost Mountain—An Israeli Archaeologist Looks at the Most Recent Attempt to Locate Mt. Sinai,” BAR 14:04.

5.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Biblical Minimalists: Expunging Ancient Israel’s Past,” Bible Review, June 1997; “Scholar Claims Bible Scholars Suppress Palestinian History in Favor of Israelites,” BAR 22:02.

6.

“‘David’ Found at Dan,” BAR 20:02; David Noel Freedman and Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, “‘House of David’ Is There!” BAR 21:02.

7.

See Philip R. Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20:04.