Milestone: Philip J. King

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A funeral Mass was celebrated Saturday, December 14, 2019, at St. Joseph’s Church in Boston for Fr. Philip J. King, renowned Old Testament scholar, who died December 7. He was 94.

Fr. King, who taught at St. John’s Seminary from 1958 to 1974, and then at Boston College from 1974 until his retirement in 2001, was a respected scholar of the Hebrew Bible and archaeology of the ancient Near East. King received his A.B. from St. John’s College (Boston) in 1945, was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston in 1949, earned his S.T.L. from Catholic University of America in 1954, S.S.L. from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 1957, and, finally, S.T.D. from the Pontifical Lateran University in 1959.

In his scholarship, King adopted a historical-critical and contextual analysis of the Bible. And no subject allowed more opportunity to illumine the historical context of the Bible than archaeology.

King excavated at several sites, including Tell es-Sa‘idiyeh (1967) and Tell er-Rumeith (1967) in Jordan, Tell Ta’anach (1968) in the West Bank, Tel Gezer (1968–1969) and Tel el-Hesi (1970–1973) in Israel, and Wadi el-Jubah (1984) in Yemen. Later, he served in advisory roles for the excavations at Tel Miqne/Ekron and Ashkelon in Israel.

He published widely in these fields, including books illuminating prophecy from an archaeological perspective. Among his many publications, however, probably none produced as much satisfaction as the volume he co-authored with Larry Stager (late Dorot Professor of the Archaeology of Israel, Harvard University), titled Life in Biblical Israel (Westminster John Knox, 2001).

During the years when King and Stager worked on the volume, I was King’s junior colleague at Boston College. He would routinely discuss his latest triumphs of library sleuthing, trumpet solutions to old philological problems, and bemoan the difficulties of obtaining high-quality photographs. Whenever Stager would send him on a “library mission,” King would falsely (and humorously) complain of the burden, secretly thrilled to descend into the bowels of Harvard’s Widener Library.

On those days when it was necessary to read sections of Gustaf Dalman’s Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina, King would sigh and sit for hours at his desk, stoic as the sphinx. “Wissenschaft,” he often told me, “is what this is all about.” And for King, “Wissenschaft,” was another name for the careful application of archaeological methods to illumine the lives of the people who ultimately produced and found meaning in his beloved Hebrew Bible.

Beyond his scholarship, King possessed a political acumen second to none. He had a sense for how to put the right people in touch with each other, to nurture relationships, and to facilitate productive interactions between scholars and institutions. Perhaps this is why he was entrusted with the presidencies of The W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, Jerusalem (1972–1976), the American Schools of Oriental Research (1976–1982), the Catholic Biblical Association (1981–1982), and the Society of Biblical Literature (1988). Not one given to boasting of his achievements, King nevertheless took pride in being the only person to have served in all of these roles.

Among those relationships that King nurtured and cherished until his death were those with his students and with Shelby White and the late Leon Levy. King always claimed that he was the spiritual father of the Ashkelon Excavations, directed by Larry Stager, precisely because he introduced Larry to Leon and Shelby. In 2006, the Leon Levy Foundation established the Philip J. King Chair at Harvard University.

Throughout his career, Phil always displayed in his life the principles he derived from the Bible. In his final monograph, The Bible Is for Living, published by the Biblical Archaeology Society in 2008, these principles receive illumination. For him, the “love of Scripture” sustained him “along the tumultuous journey through life.” If that might sound sentimental, I think for Phil it was not. For him, the Bible, archaeology, teaching, and ministry formed a seamless garment, one that he shared graciously with everyone he encountered.

A funeral Mass was celebrated Saturday, December 14, 2019, at St. Joseph’s Church in Boston for Fr. Philip J. King, renowned Old Testament scholar, who died December 7. He was 94.