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What was officially our February meeting was actually held on Tuesday, March 2nd. MBAS President Jeff Blakely assessed "The Development and Future of Biblical Archaeology." The talk went back to the Biblical research of Edward Robinson, covered the Puritans arrival in the New World and their theological development, and then brought in geographical perspectives (especially those of Alexander von Humboldt), 20th century archaeological and geographical thought, and finally evidence showing how these two disciplines still relate and how together they may help define the future of Biblical Archaeology. "It boils down to how one looks at Biblical Archaeology as a discipline, is it Biblical study or geographical study, or both?"
...President Blakely delivered this same talk the previous week in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, as a presenter of the Wake Forest University Albritton Lecture for 2003/2004.

Our first 2004 lecture, on January 20th, featured Zvika Gal of the Israel Antiquities Authority speaking on, "Peqi`in - Ancestor Worship in Galilee 6000 Years Ago." This talk was arranged through Dan Schowalter at Carthage College in Kenosha. Although it focused on an era that's earlier than what's thought of as the typical Biblical chronology, it nonetheless presented a fascinating perspective on important finds about the early inhabitants of this area. It also offered a good case study of how the Israel Antiquities Authority quickly responds to the accidental discovery of important remains in a previously unknown cave.

2003 MEETINGS

Our first lecture of the new school year came from Professor James W. Hardin of Mississippi State University, who spoke on "An Archaeology of Destruction: Iron Age Households in Ancient Judah." He discussed the archaeological excavations of 4-room houses at Tel Halif in southern Israel and what their findings have to tell us about Judah's struggles with Assyrian hegemony in the 8th century B.C.

We also heard a lecture on "New Studies in Geology and Geoarchaeology at Tell el-Hesi" featuring Christin Engstrom, a UW graduate and protege of Jeff Blakely, on November 4th

UW-Madison graduate Sam Wolff of the Israel Antiquities Authority presented a lecture on materials that he has been working up for publication. The lecture was entitled, "Tel Megadim--The Site That Got No Respect." This lecture was held on Tuesday May 20th at Edgewood College.

The 47th Annual Dinner and Lecture was held Wednesday May 7th. Professor K. Lawson Younger, Jr., of Trinity International University presented a public lecture, "Finding the Lost Tribes: Traces of Israelite Exiles in Mesopotamia."

K. Lawson Younger, Jr. is a professor of Old Testament, Semitic Languages and Ancient Near Eastern History at Trinity International University. He received his Ph.D. from Sheffield University and has been a fellow at Hebrew University and Cambridge Univesity. His field is the history of Mesopotamia and the Bible. he was the co-editor of the three volume Context of Scripture and co-author of Mesopotamia and the Bible, with Mark Chivalas, of UW-LaCrosse.

On Wednesday, April 9, 2003 -- a combined lecture and business meeting was held.
Officers were re-elected and there was a short discussion on the future of the organization. With the demise of the Milwaukee society, some of the "cost sharing" that we have enjoyed for many years has come to an end. At the same time the University of Wisconsin now charges more to have meetings on campus. Nonetheless, the decision was made to stay the course and seek new ideas to reinvigorate the chapter.

Our president, Jeff Blakely, then talked on "Identifying the Davidic and Solomonic Borders of Israel and Judah." This was a reworked and expanded version of a paper that was passed out earlier in the fall.

On Tuesday, January 21st, Professor Matthew Water of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, spoke on the Persians during the time of Cyrus and Darius. This was early in the empire period as they began to assert control of Palestine.

2002 MEETINGS

On November 13, 2002, Former MBAS member Angela Roskop, now at Hebrew Union College, spoke on Iron Age "votive" rattles.

On Tuesday October 22nd, Professor Mark Chavalas from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse made a return visit to Madison and presented new research on the Hurrians. His talk was entitled "Urkesh: An Ancient Hurrian City in Third Millennium B.C. Syria."
...Professor Chavalas' talk surveyed the recent excavations at Urkesh, an ancient Hurrian city in northern Syria, in the third millennium B.C. Along with the Sumerians and Akkadians, the Hurrians were participants in the rise of urbanization in West Asia in the third millennium B.C. The Hurrian myths had a marked influence on the Hittites, and Hurrian personal names are found in Palestine in the Late Bronze Age.

The 2002 (46th) Annual Dinner, presented by the Madison Biblical Archaeology Society and the Department of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, was held Wednesday, May 1, 2002. Professor Frederick Dobbs-Allsopp, spoke "Recently Discovered Ancient West Semitic Inscriptions from Egypt and the Origins of the Alphabet."

Professor Frederick Dobbs-Allsopp is an Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and a Visiting Professor of Ugaritic at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the official epigrapher of the archaeological expedition to Wadi El-Hol in Egypt. He thus has the responsibility for deciphering and publishing the newly discovered Old Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions from Wadi El-Hol.

The alphabetic inscriptions from Wadi El-Hol are extremely important, providing some of the earliest evidence for the development of the Canaanite alphabet. They date to 1800 B.C., several hundred years older than the Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions, that were discovered about 100 years ago, have been dated. The fact that this evidence comes from Egypt rather than Canaan or Phoenicia presents a fascinating mystery. These inscriptions provide new information for our understanding of the origins of alphabetic writing in the Middle East and ultimately the origins of the Greek and later Latin alphabets.

Professor Frederick Dobbs-Allsopp is a colleague of Yale University professor John Darnell, who was featured in articles in THE NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY. Darnell's work seems to be forcing scholars to acknowledge that writing developed not in Sumerian Mesopotamia, as had been thought, but in Egypt instead.

On Wednesday February 20th we heard from Andrew G. Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. His topic was Hezekiah, Sennacherib, and Archaeology: Where the Spade and the Bible Meet.

Andrew Vaughn has excavated at numerous sites in Israel including Ashkelon, Megiddo, Ekron, and Beth Shemesh. He is currently publishing the Iron Age materials from Ramat Rahel with Gabriel Barkay. An expert on Judah in the eighth and seventh centuries, he is the author of Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler's Account of Hezekiah (Atlanta: SBL, 1999).

Vaughn is currently writing a history of ancient Israel textbook for Abingdon Press. His other research includes the decipherment of ancient Hebrew and Northwest Semitic inscriptions – most recently a new reading of the silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom.

Wednesday January 23rd, president Jeff Blakely presented a tribute to our founder, Professor Menahem Mansoor. His lecture was entitled, "Teaching the Biblical Landscape." "In this lecture I describe the various methods through which the biblical landscape has been taught. In the end... the most powerful method (is) educational tours of the Holy Land, a method that so many shared with Professor Mansoor."

Our MBAS History Page also has more information on Professor Mansoor's wide ranging legacy.

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2001 MEETINGS

In our first meeting of the 2001-2002 season, Israeli archaeologist Gaby Mazor spoke to us on November 11th. His lecture was entitled "Nysa Scythopolis -- A Greek City of the Decapolis". He described the restoration work that is reconstructing the city center of this fascinating Hellenistic city. It's one of the largest and longest ongoing archaeological projects in Israel. The city is known today by its name in Old Testament times, Beitshean.

At the 2001 (45th) Annual Dinner Lecture was Wednesday May 2nd. Prof. Mark Chavalas from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, spoke on "Babel and Bible: What Does Assyriology Say About the Bible?"

On Wednesday April 4th, Professor Sidnie White Crawford of the University of Nebraska was here to discuss her work on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The lecture was entitled "Not According to Rule: Women, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran." Professor White is also president of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem.

On Wednesday February 21st, our president Jeff Blakely presented a lecture entitled "Judah and Assyria: Evidence for Late 8^th Century Border Conflicts".

MBAS was on the road January 13th for the exhibit on "Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur" at the Oriental Institute in Chicago.

2000 MEETINGS

On Tuesday evening, October 24th, Daniel Master, spoke to us about PHOENICIAN COMMERCE IN THE MEDITERRANEANat Edgewood College.

Daniel's lecture summary:
...In the summer of 1999, an expedition was assembled to go look for something no one had ever found before, a shipwreck of the ancient Phoenicians.
... The Phoenicians were famous mariners of the ancient world, traveling from Lebanon to the Straits of Gibraltar. Some ancient sources even claim that they were the first to circumnavigate Africa.
... But these were not just empty voyages of exploration; the Phoenicians established a trading empire across the Mediterranean, an empire which allowed for the movement of goods and ideas. The Phoenician goods included staples such as wine and olive oil as well as luxuries such as ivory and silver. Perhaps their most famous export was one which took no cargo space at all, for the Phoenicians spread knowledge of the alphabet to almost everyone they met.
... The maritime world of the Phoenicians has long been hidden beneath hundreds of meters of seawater. Historians and archaeologist have been unable to brave the great depths and view the ships that didn't finish their journey, the monuments of the Phoenicians.
... But recently, with the advent of nuclear submarines and advanced robotics, scientists have begun to open up the secrets of the deep. In a 1997 expedition the US Navy, searching off the ancient port of Ashkelon, thought they might have found a pile of storage jars, something old, something which might help us understand the ancient Phoenicians.
... So in 1999 Robert Ballard, discoverer of HMS Titanic, and Lawrence E. Stager, a Harvard archaeologist digging at the nearby port of Ashkelon, gathered a team of archaeologists, engineers, and scientists to probe the deep ocean.
...This expedition uncovered the largest pre-classical ships ever found, the oldest ships ever found in the deep water. Using "Jason," a robot from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, they found two Phoenician wrecks from the eighth century BCE, the time of the biblical prophets, the time when Homer was writing the Illiad.
... These two wrecks were surveyed using various electronic sensors mounted on "Jason," and objects were recovered for further study. These two ships are revealing monuments to the long lost Phoenicians and are continuing to provide the information that archaeologists and historians need to reconstruct the history of this critical time in our past.

The MBAS 2000-2001 season kicked off September 25th, with a lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls by Michael Wise, Professor of Bible and History and scholar in residence at Northwestern College, St. Paul MN.
... Dr. Wise discussed the evidence for historical references in the scrolls and what that evidence indicates about the dating of the scrolls. He said the references indicate the scrolls were written in the early to middle part of the first century B.C.

The 44th Annual Lecture
...Professor Edward L. Greenstein of Tel Aviv University spoke May 3rd on "Divine Images in the Bible and the Ancient Near East."
...Professor Greenstein is professor of Bible at Tel Aviv University, formerly professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is noted for his numerous studies that apply contemporary linguistic theory to biblical literature. He is currently writing commentaries on Job, Ruth and Lamentations.

On Tuesday, April 11th, Professor Lawrence J. Mykytiuk of Purdue University presented a lecture entitled: "Evaluating Potential Identifications of Biblical Persons in Northwest-Semitic Inscriptions." Dr. Mykytiuk is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin Hebrew Department and a former student of Dr. Keith Schoville.

The highlight of our year may well have been the MBAS field trip to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. We ventured out in our chartered bus on a snowy March 19th Sunday morning. (Lowell Ferris & Jeff Blakely, shown.)
...On display were over a dozen of the magnicent 2,000 year old scrolls as well as some of the artifacts from Qumran. In addition to the exhibit we attended a symposium entitled “The Site of Khirbet Qumran: Problems and Solutions.” The speakers were archaeologists Yitzhar Hirschfeld, James Strange, Jodi Magness, and James Phillips.

... Wednesday February 16th we heard a lecture by our former President Keith Schoville on “The Rosetta Stone in Historical Perspective.” We tend to forget the vast growth of knowledge regarding the past between 1799 and today.

...President Jeff Blakely was in Washington April 13-16 as the American Schools of Oriental Research met for a special Centennial celebration. Major symposia on archaeology and the Bible were featured, both retrospectives and more forward looking sessions.

1997-1999 Meetings