Recently we received a letter from Ralph Hawkins, a visiting professor of Bible at Bethel College in Indiana
(in photo with Adam Zertal), telling us how BAR changed his life. Here is what
he said:
In 1987 I went to a small Bible college in Tennessee, where I began to study to become a pastor. One of my professors had earned his Ph.D. in ancient Near Eastern studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and he would regularly give us handouts that he had photocopied from BAR. I had never been exposed to archaeology before, and my plans lay solely in the pastorate. However, I soon became fascinated by the ancient Biblical world to which I was being exposed through BAR, so I switched my major to Biblical languages. In the early 1990s, again through the influence of BAR, I wrote a Master’s thesis on the Moabite Stone and the Dan stele.
In the summer of 1995, I took a post in a small mission church in the mountains of east Tennessee and began a doctorate in ministry (which I completed in 1999). Earlier that same year, however, I had read BAR’s January dig issue, in which I found Adam Zertal’s call for volunteers to work at el-Ahwat. I remembered the article that the professor I mentioned before had given me—almost ten years earlier—which told of Zertal’s discovery of a structure on Mt. Ebal that may have been the altar mentioned in Joshua 8:30–35. While my wife unpacked our belongings at the parsonage, I headed over to Israel to work for Adam at el-Ahwat. I fell in love with archaeology, and I went back to work for Adam for a total of four seasons.
In 2002 we finally took the plunge. We moved to Michigan, and I began to work on a Ph.D. in Biblical archaeology at Andrews University. My program has focused on the study of Israel’s central hill country and the origins of ancient Israel. I am halfway through writing my dissertation, which will be an analysis of the Mt. Ebal site.
Another season of fieldwork was required in order to complete the coursework, however. Since my wife and I were pouring all our resources into paying for my Ph.D. program, we did not have the finances to pay for the trip. The BAR dig scholarship, however, came to the rescue with a grant of $1,000, which allowed me to work in the field in 2004. So ultimately, not only did BAR inspire my pursuit of the Ph.D., but it has also helped me to pay for it!
Has BAR affected your life? Let us hear from you.
Recently we received a letter from Ralph Hawkins, a visiting professor of Bible at Bethel College in Indiana
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
