What Archaeology Tells Us About Ancient Israel

At Columbia University.

New York - The Columbia University chapter of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East in an effort to educate both the university community and the interested public about the archaeological grounding of scholarly understanding of the bible lands in antiquity will bring three of the world’s leading archaeologists of ancient Israel to speak at Columbia this year.

The series was led off by Barnard College Professsor, Alan F. Segal, Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies, who spoke on September 17 on: What Biblical Archaeology Tells Us About the First Temple Period.

This Monday, October 15, at 7:00 pm in 717 Hamilton Hall, Professor William Dever will address the topic: Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel.

William G. Dever is Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. He has served as director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology in Jerusalem, as director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. He spent thirty years conducting archaeological excavations in the Near East. He directed the digs at Gezer, Shechem, Jebel Qa’aqir, and Be’er Resisim and is the author of 27 books and over 350 articles on the archaeology of the Holy Land.

Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan Univeristy will speak Nov. 19 on: The Archaeology of the Philistines: Findings Relevant to Ancient Israel and the Development of Biblical Text.

Professor Jodi Magness of Duke University will speak Feb. 4 on: Jerusalem in the Time of Herod.

Each of the talks will be followed by an ample question period.