William Foxwell Albright

Acclaimed as American's foremost Near Eastern archaeologist, Dr. William Foxwell Albright spoke in March, 1946, in lower chapel. His address was titled "Archaeology and Biblical Criticism." Albright was professor of Semetic langauges at Johns Hopkins University, but also instructed as visiting professor at the University of Chicago. At one time he served as director of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Palestine. In this capacity he conducted many excavations in the Near East with Gibeah, the home of Saul, and Kirjath Sepher, one of the cities captured by the Israelites in the period of the judges. He told his Wheaton College audience that he held a position of exteme radicalism in 1919, but due to archaeological evidence he came to reject several of the main tenets of higher criticism and now holds a position that his neither radical nor conservative, in the usual sense of the terms. The Wheaton College Department of Bible Archaeology presented the lecture under the direction of Dr. Joseph P. Free, associate professor of Bible and archaeology.