Tom Kraabel passed away on November 2, 2016, after a heroic 28-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease.
Tom graduated with a doctor of theology (Th.D.) from Harvard Divinity School in New Testament and Early Christian Literature and Archaeology in 1968. Prior to Harvard, Tom studied for his bachelor’s degree at Luther College, where he majored in Classical languages, an interest and strength that stayed a major part of his academic career for his entire life. After Luther, Tom earned an M.A. in Classics at the University of Iowa on a Danforth Fellowship. He then went on to study for the ministry and theology at Luther Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Tom’s lifelong interest in archaeology began at Harvard, where he met a number of scholars who were involved with the emerging field of the archaeology of early Judaism and Christianity: Helmut Koester, G. Ernest Wright and George M.A. Hanfmann, who was codirector of the excavations at Sardis with Henry Detweiler of Cornell. Among Hanfmann’s special interests was the synagogue at Sardis,016 and Tom joined the Harvard-Cornell expedition to Sardis in 1966 as a field archaeologist. Koester was then beginning to explore the New Testament world outside of Syria-Palestine, assemble images of all the important sites and impress upon his students the relevance of material culture. At the same time, Wright wanted to expand the purview of Biblical archaeology to include more Classical sites, especially those that informed the nature of early Judaism and Christianity.
Wright had already asked me to head up a new expedition in Israel, envisioning that the team would select and study a site or sites that would inform our understanding of the rise of early Christianity in the Holy Land (Israel) and also establish a better ceramic chronology for those periods.
With that in mind, Tom and I discovered each other and became lifelong and best friends. Tom was invited to be Associate Director of the Khirbet Shema’ Expedition, an ASOR-affiliated excavation funded and supported in large part by the Smithsonian Institution as part of the U.S. counterpart funds program and a consortium that included Harvard, Duke, Luther College, Princeton and Dropsie University. Tom was a professor at the University of Minnesota for many years. He later returned to Luther College, where he ultimately served as Dean and Vice President.
Tom was a devoted teacher, family man and meticulous scholar. But most of all Tom Kraabel was one of the nicest people one could ever have the privilege of meeting. Always a voice of reason and directness, his scholarly work had the stamp of clarity. All of us who knew Tom are richer for it. May his name be for a blessing.
Tom Kraabel passed away on November 2, 2016, after a heroic 28-year struggle with Parkinson’s disease.
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