He battled top scholars to make the Dead Sea Scrolls available to the public.
Hershel Shanks, the founder and longtime editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, died on Friday at the age of 90.
With his popular quarterly magazine, Shanks trumpeted the latest discoveries at digs across the Holy Land, promoted (and sometimes prompted) fierce archaeological controversies, and tirelessly advocated for public access to the latest scholarship.
Shanks had no credentials in archaeology, Biblical studies, or the ancient Near East. He was a lawyer. He nonetheless did more than anyone in recent memory to stimulate biblical archaeology.
“He has a gift—a journalist’s eye, as it were—of spotting hidden nuggets within the world of arcane academic scholarship,” said Eric H. Cline, professor of classical and ancient Near Eastern studies at the George Washington University. “He winnowed wheat from chaff and brought topics, ideas, and new discoveries to a much larger audience of interested readers.”
In scholarly terms, Shanks made the technical research “accessible” to an educated public. But Shanks’s core insight was that the main obstacle between an eager public and academic scholarship was the scholars themselves. The insight was not always appreciated by professional archaeologists.
“His tactic was always to overdramatize the topic and try to marshal public attention to pressure scholars (which usually worked),” wrote William G. Dever, archaeology professor at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, in a special edition of the Review honoring Shanks in 2018. “Then he would turn to a new, perhaps even more sensational issue.”
Dever served on the editorial board for the Review, but noted he had to resign in protest several times.
“I recall ...
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