Digging Archeology and the Bible

Sandra Richter, Westmont’s Robert H. Gundry professor of biblical studies, examines the intersection between the Bible and archaeology in a lecture, “Digging Up the Bible: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Bible,” for the Friends of the Goleta Valley Library at youtu.be/4LpNinvUQc8.

Richter says documentaries at Christmas, Passover, and Easter every year claim to “have unearthed evidence never seen before that the Bible is true” or that “new scientific data demonstrates the Jews were never in Egypt and Jesus never existed.” “This, of course, leaves the lay person wondering about the reliability of the data – and their Bibles,” she says. “So what exactly can archaeology tell us about the Bible? And what would be a reasonable posture regarding all this evidence never seen before?’”

Richter graduated from Valley Forge University, earned a Master of Arts at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a doctorate in Near Eastern languages and civilizations and Hebrew Bible at Harvard University. She joined the Westmont faculty in 2017 and recently published a book, Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About the Environment and Why It Matters.