James B. Pritchard
American archeologist (1909–1997)
James Bennett Pritchard (October 4, 1909 – January 1, 1997) was an American archeologist whose work explicated the interrelationships of the religions of ancient Palestine, Israel, Canaan, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon. Pritchard was honored with the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement in 1983 from the Archaeological Institute of America.
He had a long association with the University of Pennsylvania, where he was professor of religious thought and the first curator of Biblical archaeology at the University Museum. Pritchard's strength lay in setting the Bible within its broader cultural contexts in the Ancient Near East. Pritchard was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1973. In 1977 Pritchard received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of
Theology at Uppsala University, Sweden.
Pritchard authored the book Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, which was released in three editions (1950, 1955, 1969), universally referred to as ANET, which provided reliable translations of texts that threw light on the context of Ancient Near Eastern history and the Hebrew Bible.
Early life and education
Pritchard was born in Louisville, Kentucky; he graduated from Asbury College in 1930, and earned his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania (1942).
Career
Pritchard's archaeological reputation began to be established by his excavations at a site called el-Jib (1956–1962). He identified it as Gibeon by inscriptions on the Al Jib jar handles.
“James B. Pritchard” enters the record as american archeologist (1909–1997). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Pritchard and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “James B. Pritchard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.