William Foxwell Albright

William Foxwell Albright

William Foxwell Albright was born in 1891 and died eighty years later in 1971 . He was born in Chile , where his parents were missionaries . Poor eye sight as a child meant he did not often join other children in play Instead he turned to his father 's library . The family returned to the United State of America in 1903 . Always a scholar , his skills meant that he obtained his doctorate in Semitic languages at the very early age of 22 in 1913 . From 1929 - 1958 he taught at John Hopkins

br University in Baltimore , Maryland , where he was the professor of Semitic Languages , while , for much of that time , also being director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem , now re-named as The W . F . Albright Institute of Archaeological Research . He held the latter post from 1921 to 29 and again from 1933-6 . He was also the senior editor of the Anchor Bible series for the fifteen years from 1956 until he died in 1971 as well as making contributions to important definitive reference books such as the Cambridge University Press , `The Cambridge Ancient History . According to his sentry in the New World Encyclopedia he was concerned with :-

The social and political structure , the religious concepts and practices and

other human activities and relationships that are found in the Bible or pertain

to peoples mentioned in the Bible

Following the example of Sir William Flinders Petrie , who worked in Southern Israel from 1890 onwards , Albright...