Shabbat Service and Speaker Dr. Patrick Hunt

Shir Hadash is pleased to invite anyone interested in archaeology, Israel and the Bible for this special Shabbat Service. Dr. Hunt is an entertaining speaker and this lecture is aimed at a general audience.

Ever wonder if a particular Biblical narrative is historical or if there is actual archaeological support for the story? Did the Exodus actually happen? Can archaeology substantiate the battle of Jericho and narrative about the walls tumbling down? Is there evidence of the conquests when the Judges judged or when David faced the Philistines?

Correlations between archaeology and the Bible may be obscure at times – but there is no question that a historical relationship exists between archaeology and the Hebrew Scriptures.
Archeological evidence is also part of contemporary disputes about the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel. Some archaeologists are minimalists who hold that the relationship between biblical texts and material is only coincidental. Others are maximalists who hold that the relationship is intimate.

This talk explores these questions with evidence from ancient sources including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Megiddo radiocarbon date debates, and the David-Dan inscription.

About the speaker: Dr. Patrick Hunt is a global archaeologist who teaches on the faculty of Classics and Archaeology at Stanford University and has been the Director of the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project since 1994. He also directs the National Geographic Society’s Hannibal Expedition as the recipient of an Expedition Council Grant for 2007-2008. Dr. Hunt has been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London since 1989, and earned his PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London in 1991.

He is the author of nine books, most recently, Ten Discoveries that Rewrote History and is a very entertaining speaker.

Free and open to the public.