One thing that seems to be common in the world is that we often associates names with certain things. Whether we are speaking of academics, sports, business, politics, religion, science, history, or the arts, specific names will often pop up in your head. If someone were to ask you who comes to mind when you think of someone famous in biology, you may think of think Watson and Crick who discovered the double helix of DNA. In business it may be Warren Buffett, in sports it could be Tiger Woods. The point is that there are people who leave a lasting mark in all fields.
A Biographical Research Paper On The Biblical Archaeologist William F. Albright
By Matthew Corbi
March 4, 2020
Liberty University
In the field of archaeology, if you were asked to name a few of the greatest and respected individuals in this field, your list would not be complete without mentioning Dr. William Foxwell Albright. I love talking about Indiana Jones, even though it is just fiction. In the movies, Indiana Jones is presented as the eminent archaeologist alongside with his colleagues such as Ravenwood. While they are fictional characters, in reality you could substitute the names William F. Albright or Lawrence of Arabia. However, it should be pointed out that these men more than likely didn’t experience as much drama, adventure, romance and even villains who were bent on seeing their demise and failures as we see in the movie. While they probably wore hats during their excavations, they didn’t carry whips. The focus here will be on William Foxwell Albright who was no doubt one of the most respected and well known archaeologists of all the time.
William F. Albright was born on May 24, 1891 in Chile and died Sept 19, 1971 in Baltimore Maryland. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Semitic languages. His reputation was being [ a leading theorist in archaeology, in which his major works and contributions include being the founder and dean of the Biblical Archaeology movement and author of Yahweh and The Gods of Canan, The Archaeology of Palestine: From the Stone Age to Christianity and The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra. ] William F. Albright is pictured below.
In an article entitled The Great Authenticator, Dale Keiger gives a great overview of 2azquotes.com 1 wikepedia.com William F. Albright for those who may not know much about him. [ He was born in Chile to methodist missionaries and as a child he didn’t like playing with the other kids because he couldn’t see that well enough to hit the ball. It is pretty ironic that even with his poor vision, he became one of the greatest authenticators of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His subjects of choice were history and theology, especially R.W. Rogers History of Babylonia and Assyria. He came to Hopkins in 1913 and studied under Paul Haupt. He earned his Ph.D and set out to work in a career that would encompass semetic languages, archaeology and ancient languages. In 1928 he came back to Johns Hopkins and accordingly to a legend, as a teacher he would walk into a classroom, what the class is and then begin to teach accordingly.] 3
Dr. William F. Albright was known as The “ Great Authenticator “ and published 800 books, pamphlets and articles. His greatest contribution was to authenticating the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were thousand year old copies older than any other previous Hebrew text. A probing question to his work is while he authenticated these texts which are in fact the word of God. ( All scripture is God breathed) What did he really believe? The chief end of man is to 4 glorify God in all he does. The point is that all the research that man contributes to society while i am very good and give us much knowledge, apart from God it is all meaningless. While I have much respect for William F. Albright, it is my hope that he finished the race strong and true to the word of God and knew Jesus as his Lord and savior.
In an article by Christianity Today, we see that he takes a position which is broadly liberal, but he has a strong conservative orientation on many issues. The the espousal of conservative views as well as his rejection of extreme liberal views creates wide evangelical interest in his convictions. The reason this is of utmost importance is that the work of Dr. William F. Albright 5 is in no question profound and respected. He is seen as renowned professor with the ability to influence many people intellectually. His work on The Dead Sea Scrolls and their reliability can help people believe that God’s word is true. He stated that “ my position remains in the middle, equally far from extreme conservatives and far from extreme liberals. I am still growing More conservative on questions of authorship, historical background, and so forth, having moved considerably to the right, but I am even more strongly liberal on the general problems of the history of theology. Graves notes the same thing that he was more liberal in his theology. His 6 7 work in Palestine greatly changed his views of Biblical history. At first he was very skeptical of Israelite history, but with discovery after discovery, he became more open minded
This leads to an important part of his work in archaeology. Was he more of a minimalist or a maximalist? A minimalist is one who finds “ that the Bible contributes little or not at all to the history of Israel, while a maximalist is one who accepts the Biblical text as historically accurate and sees a significance between the Bible and Archaeological data. From that information 8 presented thus far about Albright, especially from his work in authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls and even one of his most famous quotes ( see his picture) we can likely conclude he is a maximalist. In fact, in his book Israel in Egypt: The evidence for the authentication of the exodus 8David E. Graves. Biblical Archaeology: An Introduction with Recent Discoveries That Support Reliability. 7 David E. Graves. Biblical Archaeology: An Introduction with Recent Discoveries That Support Reliability, 6 Christianity Today, William F. Albright: Towards a More Conservative View 5 Christianty Today William F. Albright: Towards a More Conservative View, Jan 18, 1963 tradition, James K. Hoffmeier places Albright in the category of historical maximalist alongside
such names as John Bright.9
Up to this point there has been a general overview of who Dr. William Albright is and some of his background. The remainder of the report will focus on his contributions to the field of archaeology primarily, but he crossed over in semitic languages and near eastern studies. It has been stated that he is most known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that is not all.
Two areas of study common to archaeology are stratigraphy and paleography. Stratigraphy is the study of rock or layers in the ground to be specific and paleography is the study of old-handwriting. Petrie was a well known expert in stratigraphy and William Albight[ further 10 developed and refined his methods of stratigraphy while working at Tell Beit MIrsim ( 1926- 1932), where he focuses on sequencing the dates of pottery in which corresponded with their location in the strata] . Aside from archaeology, he was also an expert in semitic languages, 11 which a knowledge of his essential in many studies and artifacts of Biblical Archaeology. The Bible’s first three languages were Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Hebrew and Aramaic, along with phonecian, Moabite, Sumerian, Babylonian and Ethiopic are all semetic languages.12 Albright was the great authenticator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and he could not have done so without being fluent in Hebrew.
According to his friend and colleague, Siegried H. Horn ( Professor Emeritus of Andrews University in Michigan) stated that he laid the foundations for paleography, especially with the Dead Sea Scrolls. In addition to this, he became the greatest pottery expert of his time. Pottery (12 David E. Graves. Biblical Archaeology. An Introduction with Recent Discoveries that Support Reliability 11 David E. Graves. Biblical Archaeology. An Introduction with Recent Discoveries that Support Reliability 10 The National Archives. (nationalarchives.gov.uk) 9 David E. Graves. Biblical Archaeology. An Introduction with Recent Discoveries That Support Reliability sherds) are one of the most commonly found archaeological pieces because of durability and ability to withstand time. While pottery to some may seem rather dull, it is indispensable to archaeology. In addition to this, professor Horn noted that Albright worked on [ Egyptology in which he published a book on Ancient Eyptian vocabulary. He was also the first to identify the location of Tell Harii on the Euphrates, and in Sinai he studied proto- Sinartic inscriptions.13
His contribution as stated several times that has been most influential is his work on The Dead Sea Scrolls. [ The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of some 1100 biblical texts, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Most were written on parchment and papyrus. More than 230 of the manuscript copies were from the Old Testament] . The scrolls were found in various caves 14 in Khirbet Qumran. One of the greatest scrolls found was The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa4), which was an entire copy of the book.
[ Is the dating of Isaiah’s manuscript correct? Could it be a forgery? Several photographs comprising Isaiah 61:4- 65:4 were sent to Dr. W. F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University, the scholar who established the date of the Nash Papyrus. I learn that the script is beautifully clear and cannot have been forged, and that in Dr. Albright’s opinion is to be dated in the 2nd century B.C.]17
[ The Dead Sea Scroll of Manual of Discipline is one of the most important documents produced by the Essene community of Jews, who settled at Qumran in the Judean desert in the early 2nd BC. The major portions of the scroll was found in Cave 1 in 1947] The Dead Sea 18 Manual of Discipline has already been judged by W. F. Albright as being “ unquestionably the most valuable of all scrolls, yet known from the standpoint of history19
While the Dead Sea Scrolls were not his only contribution to Biblical Archeology. One of his most noted works is the Conquest of Canaan.[ The 13th century exodus-conquest theory was 19 G.Ernest Wright and William F. Albright. The Biblical Archaeologist. Vol 30. No 3(sept 1977) www.jstor.org 18 G. Ernest Wright and William F. Albright. The Biblical Archaeologist. Vol 30, no. 3(sept 1977) www.jstor.org 17 William H Brownlee and William F. Albright. The Dead Sea Scroll of Manuel Discipline . no 10/12 9 1951) p 1-60. www.jstor.org 16 The Holy Bible formulated largely on the Palestine archaeological evidence, and promoted him throughout his career. In the following years following his death, evidence for the proposal decimated and most palestine archaeologists abandoned his theory.] One of the sites he proposed for the conquest of 20 Canaan was Tell Beit Mirsim.
William F. Albright was also no stranger to the location of Sodom and Gomorrah. While there are two theories floating out there, The Northern Theory is more in line with the Bible. [ In 1924 William F. Albright ( a proponent of the southern theory) led an archaeological expedition to locate the cities of the plain, but after an investigation of the area, could not locate any suitable sites. It was suggested that it was swallowed up by the Dead Sea. Albright concluded that this was not one of the Cities of the Plain but a place of pilgrimage]21
Dr. William F. Albright has proven to be one of the most experienced and well diversed men in his profession. While many researchers are focused on just areas of studies, Albright has been able to cross many disciplines such as languages also. Without his contributions to the Dead Sea Scrolls, we would not have been able to justify the most important discovery of all time in terms of Bible Archaeology.
