In America, Biblical Archaeology Was—And Still Is—Largely a Protestant Affair

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“American archaeological efforts in the Holy Land have been dominated by Protestants,” according to a prominent American Protestant archaeologist, Gus Van Beek. Van Beek is curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. and for many years was director of excavations at Tell Jemmeh in southern Israel.

Van Beek said that since World War I, the Protestant dominance of American archaeological efforts in the Holy Land has been reflected in the participation both of Protestant clergy and of the Protestant laity. It is a dominance which continues today, he said “and the prospects are that it will continue for some time to come.”

Van Beek made his remarks at a colloquium on the archaeological aspect of American-Holy Land Relations. The colloquium was sponsored by The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the American Jewish Historical Society at Brandeis University. Dr. Gershon Greenberg, Chairman of American University’s Jewish Studies Program, chaired the program held at AU’s Pollin Center for the Study of American Judaism.

Van Beek’s Jewish and Catholic colleagues on the panel agreed with him.

Professor Eric Meyers, head of Duke University’s Jewish Studies Program, Vice-President for Publications of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and one of the few American Jewish archaeologists working in Israel, told of his initial reaction when he was assigned the task of dealing with the topic from the Jewish perspective: “My goodness, there’s nothing to say about American Jewish archaeologists in the Holy Land. There aren’t any.”

Dr. Eugene Fisher of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops characterized the American Catholic participation in Holy Land archaeology as “so little, so late.”

Van Beek said that “until this topic came up in preparation for the colloquium, I had never really thought about how significant the American Protestant presence in the Holy Land had been.” Van Beek buttressed his judgment with the names of a host of American Protestant archaeologists, both clergymen and dedicated laymen, who conducted important excavations in the Holy Land.

Leading the list was, of course, William Foxwell Albright of The Johns Hopkins University. “It was Albright, more than any other scholar, who brought order out of the chaos in archaeological scholarship that existed at the end of World War I,” Van Beek said. “Albright was not a clergyman,” Van Beek added, “but he was a very devout Methodist layman.”

Others who followed in Albright’s footsteps between the World Wars were, according to Van Beek, Ovid Sellers, a Presbyterian from McCormick Theological Seminary, who excavated at Beth-Zur; William F. Badè, a Methodist from the Pacific School of Religion, who dug at Tell en-Nasbeh (probably Biblical Mizpah); James Kelso, a Presbyterian from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who excavated at Bethel; and Herbert Gordon May of the Oberlin School of Theology who participated in the University of Chicago excavations at Megiddo. Finally, G. Ernest Wright, who was then at McCormick Theological Seminary and was later to go to Harvard, did important work at Beth Shemesh.

“The basic American thrust between the wars,” Van Beek affirmed, “was an outgrowth of Protestant concern and scholarly interest in this country.” This situation continued even after the Second World War, according to Van Beek. “Since World War II, the Protestant effort has proliferated greatly so that today it dominates the American archaeological effort in Israel.”

In addition to G. Ernest Wright who “trained a whole generation of archaeologists” and who dug after World War II both at Shechem and Gezer, Van Beek mentioned William Dever who also led excavations at Gezer and “who started out as a clergyman”; Robert Bull (Drew Theological Seminary) at Caesarea; John Worrell (Holy Cross College), Glenn Rose (Phillips University) and James Ross (Virginia Theological Seminary) at Tell el-Hesi; Van Beek (a former clergyman) at Tell Jemmeh; Joe Seger at Gezer and more recently at Lahav; Paul Lapp (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) at Bab edh-Dhra, Tel el-Ful and 055Taanach; Albert Glock at Taanach; Joseph Callaway (southern Baptist Theological Seminary) at Ai; William Reed (Texas Christian University) at Dibon; and Joseph Free (Wheaton College) at Tell Dothan.

“This is by no means a complete list,” Van Beek said, “but it is indicative of the Protestant presence in the Holy Land since World War II.”

At the present time, according to Van Beek, “the major cadre of American archaeologists working in Israel remains Protestant. They came out of this group. Many are still clergymen or were once clergymen or are laymen. This is a dominant American force in Israel today and will probably continue through their students for several decades to come at least.”

By contrast, Professor Meyers referred to the “meager number and modest interest in the archaeology of Israel in American Jewish scholarship.”

Meyers spoke of “three major Jewish figures in Biblical scholarship who are tied into the Biblical archaeological world: Cyrus Gordon, Ephraim A. Speiser and Rabbi Nelson Glueck.”

Speiser, best known for his commentary on Genesis in the Anchor Bible series, was primarily a philologist. Gordon deciphered Ugaritic and wrote the first Ugaritic handbook. Both Speiser and Gordon “were oriented toward the eastern Semitic World, to the archaeology of Mesopotamia and the Mesopotamian influence on the Patriarchal narratives. Neither of them,” said Meyers, “has made a mark on Palestinian or Holy Land archaeology.”

Nelson Glueck, on the other hand, did. But Nelson Glueck “didn’t leave a single disciple,” Meyers said. “Despite the admonitions in the Ethics of the Fathers and the command of rabbinic Judaism to raise up many disciples, Nelson Glueck failed to do this. He didn’t have a single follower, in stunning contrast to Albright who had hundreds of disciples; or Frank Cross of Harvard who is just 60 years old and also has hundreds of disciples, or Ernest Wright who has left two generations of scholars behind him.”

According to Meyers, Glueck’s “rabbinic leadership and his Jewish communal work kept him from having students, kept him from raising up disciples, and that is most unfortunate.”

Meyers, who digs in the Galilee at sites with remains principally from the third through the seventh centuries A.D., recounted how he came to archaeology. Nahum Glatzer of Brandeis forced him to explore the subject so Meyers spent a summer in Israel. There he came under the spell of Frank Cross, Ernest Wright and Nelson Glueck. At the end of the summer Wright and Glueck told him “they had to have a Jewish archaeologist and you’re going to be it—you and your wife.” Speaking of his wife Carol, Meyers added, “and she is too.”

Eric and Carol led their first excavation at a Galilee site known as Khirbet Shema, a Jewish city of the Byzantine Period containing an unusual and previously unexcavated synagogue. The dig was sponsored by the American Schools of Oriental Research, but, lamented Meyers, the project was undertaken “without the participation of a single Jewish organization or institution.” Meyers told the group, “It still remains a fairly shocking reality, which characterizes American Jewish scholarship, that so few Jewish institutions of learning take archaeology seriously.”

Dr. Fisher, as the Catholic participant, did not name a single American Catholic archaeologist working in the Holy Land.

Each of the panelists offered explanations for the participation or lack of participation of the major religious groups they represented.

According to Van Beek, the reason for the Protestant domination of American archaeology in the Holy Land lay “chiefly in the nature of Protestantism itself; it is Bible-centered and has been Bible-centered since the Reformation.” Van Beek recognized the great differences between conservative fundamentalist Protestants, on the one hand, and liberal Protestants, on the other, who more readily accept the insights of modern scholarly analysis of the Bible. For both groups, however, the Bible “is the primary document, the basis of Protestant theology and Protestant worship; Protestant concern with the Bible has been paramount,” Van Beek said. “This great concern with the Bible among Protestants and in Protestant theological faculties resulted in many men being drawn into archaeology and into becoming professional archaeologists,” said the Smithsonian scholar.

Van Beek concluded by saying that anyone digging in Israel would find a “remarkable nonsectarian spirit. When we’re in Israel we don’t even think of ourselves as Protestant American archaeologists. We may think of ourselves as American archaeologists simply because we can’t always get all the nuances of our Israeli colleagues’ jokes, but the fact remains that we regard ourselves primarily as archaeologists.”

Fisher sought to explain why so few American Catholics have thus far participated in Holy Land archaeology. Because there are large Catholic communities in the Middle East, Fisher said, American Catholic-resources have been devoted to maintaining and building up these communities. By contrast, there were very few Protestant communities in the Middle East that required attention.

Even more important than this, however, in Fisher’s view, was the fact that “until about the 1940’s those involved in Biblical scholarship were mainly Protestants. There was very little Catholic [Biblical] scholarship 056because it was looked down upon.”

On the other hand, Fisher recognized that French Catholics, through the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, had a major involvement in Holy Land archaeology. The Pontifical Biblical Institute, a Jesuit institution, was also active, although it did not utilize Americans.

Another reason for the lack of American Catholic involvement in Holy Land archaeology, said Fisher, is that American Catholic immigrants came to America several generations after the Protestants. “For the first couple of generations, they were very poor and did not have access in large numbers to major academic institutions. This is the first generation of Catholics that has been present in large numbers in the kind of institutions Albright would have been in,” Fisher added. “That’s not a complaint. It’s just when we hit the shores and how it works.”

Professor Meyers explained why American Jewish scholarship has exhibited so little interest in Holy Land archaeology: “First and foremost is the fact that Jewish scholarship has always been text-oriented. Talmudic learning, Mishnah, Gemara, the Commentaries, and codes have always constituted the basic core of Jewish learning through the ages.” The Jewish scholar has not wanted to get involved with works of art and stones, Meyers said. When Jewish Biblical scholars tied into Biblical archaeology, as in the case of Speiser and Gordon, it was through an interest in philosophy, not archaeological monuments.

“American Jewish scholars were not emotionally attuned or able to involve themselves in the task of the recovery of the material culture of the world of the Bible because they were intellectually, spiritually and religiously removed from it,” Meyers stated. “Jewish scholarship is still not at home in the artifactual world,” the Duke professor added.

The moderator of the panel was BAR editor Hershel Shanks who introduced each of the speakers.

Shanks later gave some interesting statistics indicating that the attitude of the scholars among the three religious groups may have “trickled down” to the lay membership. A subscription to BAR and membership in the Biblical Archaeology Society presumably reflects a lay interest in Biblical archaeology. “Almost 70% of our members are Protestant, 15% Catholic and only 10% Jewish, according to a recent survey,” Shanks said. “Most people are surprised to learn what a small percentage of our readers are Jewish,” the BAR editor remarked. “Probably fewer than 20% of synagogue libraries subscribe to BAR,” Shanks added.

Shanks invited laypeople of all denominations to contribute BAR subscriptions to their church and synagogue libraries.

“American archaeological efforts in the Holy Land have been dominated by Protestants,” according to a prominent American Protestant archaeologist, Gus Van Beek. Van Beek is curator of Old World archaeology at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. and for many years was director of excavations at Tell Jemmeh in southern Israel. Van Beek said that since World War I, the Protestant dominance of American archaeological efforts in the Holy Land has been reflected in the participation both of Protestant clergy and of the Protestant laity. It is a dominance which continues today, he said “and the prospects are that it […]