“Site from the Bible Discovered!”

This headline, or one like it, has often been the public face of biblical archaeology. Archaeological discovery is often more nuanced, frequently more convoluted, and almost always more interesting than a straightforward confirmation of biblical truth.

Forgeries and frauds pose an even greater danger to true understanding than sensationalism. Discerning true artifact from clever fake is of crucial importance; several potential frauds have been at the center of longterm disagreements within the field.

Join us at Fakes, Mistakes, and Media Misrepresentations in Biblical Archaeology to get expert insight on frauds, media sensationalism, and earnest errors.

You’ll come away with insight into what archaeology can, and cannot yet, tell us about biblical history.

Lectures

Eric Cline's lectures

1. Revisiting the Arks: Noah’s and the Covenant

2. Still searching for Sodom and Gomorrah

3. On the hunt for the Ten Lost Tribes

Click here for Eric Cline's bio

Jennie Ebeling's lectures

1. Orientalism and Ancient Israel: Reconstructions of Life in Biblical Times in Early Biblical Archaeology

Since early exploration of the “Holy Land” by European scholars in the years after Napoleon’s campaigns, explorers, artists, photographers, pilgrims, and other western travelers sought to document traditional life in Ottoman Palestine. The intent for many of them was to animate and supplement understandings of life in biblical times as known then only through the biblical text, and many westerners at that time believed that the lifeways of the local population had remained virtually unchanged for some three millennia. Western archaeologists working in the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century adopted this unsophisticated ethnographic approach in their interpretations of ancient material culture, which resulted in simplified understandings of ancient daily life and the denigration of the local inhabitants with whom they worked and lived during their excavation seasons. In this presentation, I will examine how early biblical archaeologists, steeped in the construct of “biblical Israel” created in the nineteenth century, reconstructed life in biblical times and show how these ideas persist in scholarly and popular understandings of life in ancient Israel.

2. Naboth’s Vineyard Found! Spinning the Discovery of a Winery at Jezreel

The recent discovery of an ancient winery complex at Jezreel offers important insights into the technology and scale of wine production in the northern kingdom of Israel during the Iron Age. While it provides context for the story of Naboth’s Vineyard in 1 Kings 21 and shows that the biblical writers were familiar with wine production in the Jezreel Valley, the winery cannot be identified with certainty as the setting for the dramatic events described in the text. This has not stopped some from claiming that Naboth’s vineyard has been found, however! In this presentation, I will give an overview of the discovery and its aftermath and examine how some Christian media outlets have interpreted the winery for audiences looking for archaeological evidence of biblical “truth.”

3. Drunken Louts or Craft Brewers? Beer-Drinking in Canaan, Philistia, and Ancient Israel

Archaeological evidence suggests that alcoholic beverages have been produced in the Near East for many thousands of years and it has long been known that beer was an essential foodstuff in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. Despite evidence to the contrary, early biblical archaeologists believed that wine rather than beer was produced and consumed in ancient Israel. Even the father of biblical archaeology, W.F. Albright, interpreted the specialized strainer jars found at Philistine sites as evidence that the Philistines were “mighty carousers” as compared to wine-drinking Israelites. His assertion has more to do with twentieth century cultural biases about beer consumption than ancient realities, however. In this presentation, I will discuss what we know about beer production and consumption in Canaan, Philistia, and ancient Israel and argue that women, who were responsible for domestic breadmaking in antiquity, were also craft brewers.

Click here for Jennie Ebeling's bio

Elizabeth Schrader Polczer's lectures

1. Trash as Treasure: Introduction to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri

2. A Scandal at Oxford: Hobby Lobby and Dirk Obbink

3. Stranger than Fiction: Karen King and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife

Click here for Elizabeth Schrader Polczer's bio

Christopher Rollston's lectures

1. Sotheby’s and the Samaritan Ten Commandments: A Cautionary Tale

Sotheby’s and the Samaritan Ten Commandments: A Cautionary Tale. During late 2024, the famed auction house announced that it would be selling a stone inscription which was allegedly found in 1913 during the excavation of a railroad in Israel. It was published in the 1940s, after having ostensibly been used as a paver in someone’s home or courtyard for the preceding thirty years. And then it passed through the hands of various dealers and collectors. Ultimately, it sold for ca. five million dollars. There’s much to learn from this story, especially as a cautionary tale, and that will be the focus of Rollston’s lecture.

2. The Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments: An Autopsy of a Failed Purchase

The Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, opened its doors in 2017, and among the things which the Museum hoped to exhibit were some fragmentary Dead Sea Scrolls. These had allegedly been purchased from the family of the late antiquities dealer known as Kando, who had brokered the sale of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls which were found in 1947. Thus, it looked like these Dead Sea Scrolls fragments might be real Dead Sea Scrolls and also that they had a clean bill of health legally (i.e., in terms of cultural heritage law). But truth is stranger than fiction, and Museum of the Bible soon learned that they had bought a batch of modern forgeries, not ancient scrolls. Rollston’s lecture will focus on the facts and fictions associated with this epic crisis.

3. The Trial of the Century: Rollston’s Twelve Hours of Testifying for the Prosecution in the Jerusalem Forgery Trial

A number of famous inscriptions were on the antiquities market during the final decades of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century. Among them were the James Ossuary, the Jehoash Inscription, and the Moussaieff Ostraca. Rollston had been among those who had contended in print and in lectures that a number of these market inscriptions were modern forgeries, not ancient inscriptions. Some antiquities collectors and dealers were accused of having forged hese inscriptions, and a criminal case was brought against them. During the early part of this trial, the prosecution brought Rollston in as an expert witness against these inscriptions. Rollston got on the stand at 9:15 a.m. one morning, and he got off the stand about 10:00 p.m. that same day. He was the only witness that day. During this lecture, he will recount the dramatic events of his time on the stand.

Click here for Christopher Rollston's bio

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