Dig Scholarship: Bethsaida

Dan McLerran studied archaeology and anthropology while in college during the mid-1970s; he is also an artist, specializing in highly detailed pen-and-ink drawings. Neither his educational background nor his artistic talents seemed likely to put food on the table after he married and started a family, so McLerran earned a master’s degree in public administration and landed a job with the government. Today he lives in the Washington, D.C., area and works for the U.S. Farm Credit Administration.

But McLerran never lost his interest in archaeology. “Since childhood I have dreamed of being part of an important mission of exploration and discovery, to be on the cutting edge of new research,” he wrote us. McLerran wished to join the Bethsaida excavation, just north of the Sea of Galilee. He was intrigued in equal measure by the site’s significance in the New Testament and by the promise it held for illuminating the Iron Age, the period of the Israelite settlement and of the United Monarchy. “I also feel that I can make a contribution through drawing/drafting, applying my talent to support important research and reporting,” he added. McLerran’s drawing of a massebah (standing stone) in the high place beside Bethsaida’s Iron Age city gate (also shown in the photo above) appears below.