Thomas W. Davis is director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. With more than 25 years of archaeological experience, he has excavated in Cyprus, Jordan, Egypt and the United States. The following excerpt was taken from his book Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), in which he discusses the history and future of Biblical archaeology: [Classical] Biblical archaeology was, in simplest terms, a search for realia. It was an attempt to ground the historical witness of the Bible in demonstrable historical reality. Throughout its history, it was linked to this aim. […]
