Biblical Archaeology Today

Biblical Archaeology has unlocked the mysteries within God’s Holy Scriptures. It is the scientific study of historical remains and records related to the Jewish and Christian religions, and specifically to the Holy Scriptures. Accounts of Christian pilgrimages dating from about the 4th century provided the only information about biblical sites until the 19th century, when modern exploration of Palestine began.

Work In Palestine

  
The American scholar Edward Robinson gained the title father of Palestinian archaeology through the publication of his book Biblical Researches in Palestine. During succeeding decades the mapping of the Holy Land and the identification of biblical sites progressed rapidly under the auspices of such societies as the Palestine Exploration Fund, the Deutscher Palästina-Verein, the École Biblique, the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. In Palestine, however, the deliberate excavation of specific biblical sites, as distinguished from geographical study, did not commence until the 1890s, when the British archaeologist and Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie intuitively developed what were to become the principles of systematic excavation for all later archaeologists: stratigraphy, or the art of untangling the debris layers in a mound; and ceramic typology, the study of changes in pottery styles for clues to chronology. Early Palestinian excavation work, before The First World War, focused on such major biblical sites as Jerusalem, Gezer, Megiddo, Jericho, and Samaria.

After the First World War a second stage in biblical archaeology was led by the American scholar William Foxwell Albright, who, with his colleagues, transformed archaeology from a largely intuitive affair into a scientific discipline. Fieldwork moved from treasure hunting to the dating of pottery, architecture, and artifacts. A political history of Palestine began to emerge, complementing the biblical accounts. In the late 1920s and 1930s excavations continued at Megiddo, Jericho, and Samaria and were begun at Tell Beit Mirsim and Bethel. Further advances in fieldwork were made after The Second World War, when the British scholar Dame Kathleen M. Kenyon introduced a new methodology at Jericho and Jerusalem. She dug in smaller squares of 5 m by 5 m leaving intervening vertical walls, or balks, in which debris can be seen in section. The digging proceeded by natural stratification, separating soil layers. This new excavation procedure made it possible to separate debris layers and the objects they contained with greater precision. In the late 1950s and 1960s G. Ernest Wright, David Noel Freedman, and other Americans, along with such Israelis as Yigael Yadin, Moshe Dothan, Benjamin Mazar, and Nah-man Avigad, excavated at new and old sites, such as Hazor, Shechem, Ashdod, Taanach, Gezer, and again Jerusalem, using this approach.