Scholarship Winners

Edgar Hardesty

Edgar Hardesty is pastor of a small nondenominational church near Baltimore and an adjunct professor of the Bible and doctrine at Philadelphia College of Bible. He was educated at Philadelphia College of Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary and is completing his master’s degree in Jewish studies at Baltimore Hebrew University. Hardesty received a BAS dig scholarship to join the excavation at Beth-Shemesh.

What was it like to be in Beth-Shemesh during Sennacherib’s siege? That is what I wondered as I dug down to the layer that dated to the fiery destruction of the city in 701 B.C.

The excavation square to which I and three others were assigned lay next to a square that had reached the Sennacherib destruction layer during the previous season. Between the two squares stood a balk—an unexcavated wall of earth left in place to preserve the strata of occupation—that contained a cluster of storage jars embedded in a layer of ash.