Strata: In Their Own Words

All of the quotations in this regular BAR feature are unusual, but this one is especially so. It is a quotation from an unpublished book manuscript by William Foxwell Albright, the acknowledged dean of an earlier generation of Biblical archaeologists. Albright died in 1971; in a 2008 memoir Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman wrote that “most Levantine archaeologists, Biblical scholars and other Near Eastern researchers of the world of the Bible … still regard [Albright] as a genius ... Albright’s establishment of a new scholarly paradigm—Biblical archaeology—continues to have ... a revolutionary impact … on Levantine archaeology.”¹

Recently a copy of this 600-page unpublished and uncompleted book manuscript by Professor Albright resurfaced in BAR’s files, where it had rested for decades. BAR’s editor has no memory of where he got it. BAR decided to donate the manuscript to the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, where it would be preserved and available for scholarly study.

Before doing so, however, we extracted the following quotation for this issue commemorating BAR’s 40th anniversary: