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Biblical archeologist Hershel Shanks dies at 90

He was not a household name, but in the sometimes arcane world of biblical archaeology, Hershel Shanks was a star—and often a rabble-rouser.

Shanks, the founder and longtime editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, died February 5 at the age of 90.

In 1975, he founded the magazine as a way to bridge academic scholarship with the lay public’s appetite for answers to questions about key archaeological and historical events from the Bible: Was the Jews’ exodus from Egypt a historic event? Which parts of Jesus’ life as recounted in the Gospels are historical and which parts apocryphal?