History of Biblical Archaeology

Lachish, located in the Judean foothills, was the second largest city in the Biblical kingdom of Judah, after Jerusalem. It has already been excavated by three different expeditions, but could there still be answers in the ground waiting? In this lecture, Yosef Garfinkel discusses the finds at Lachish and why there should be a fourth […]

Biblical archaeology is now in the second decade of the 21st century. Many things have changed within this field, and with the very definition of its scholarship. This presentation surveys the different goals of Biblical archaeology since its infancy in the early 19th century, when the demand from Biblical archaeology was to prove the Bible […]

What is “archaeology?” It’s the study of the human past through the excavation of its physical remains, right? Does this adequately describe what archaeologists do? BAR readers will probably find this common definition woefully lacking, as, especially in Biblical archaeology researchers often make use of textual sources as well as material remains. But the archaeologist […]

Explore the history of Biblical archaeology, how it came to be and the archaeologists who made it happen. Examine the reasons why “Biblical archaeology” became a controversial phrase and the motives behind changing the discipline’s name. This was part of the Elusive Biblical Archaeology DVD.

In this wide-ranging interview, Hershel Shanks sits down with 90-year-old priest and New Testament scholar Joseph Fitzmyer to reflect on Fitzmyer’s work with the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem in 1957 and 1958. The still-lively Fitzmyer recalls those years and more while relating anecdotes about the creation of a concordance from the scroll fragments and […]

In this lively interview, BAR editor Hershel Shanks engages James Charlesworth and Sidnie White Crawford in a conversation about John Strugnell, a linguistics genius and editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project who was ousted as the project’s head in 1990 (as well as from his post at Harvard University) following alleged anti-Semitic remarks. Charlesworth and Crawford […]

Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, hosts this series of informal interviews with five prominent Dead Sea Scrolls scholars. As only he can, Shanks discusses the intriguing personalities behind early scroll scholarship, many of whom were controversial. Listen as Weston Fields, George Brooke, James Charlesworth, Sidnie White Crawford and Joseph Fitzmyer share their stories […]

This video features Hershel Shanks’s engaging interview with Dead Sea Scrolls experts Weston Fields and George Brooke, who present key findings about the scrolls and the fascinating story behind their study and interpretation. Shanks focuses on British scholar John Marco Allegro, a maverick and self-proclaimed publicist who contended the scrolls could relate to early doctrines […]