Bible, Map, and Spade.

• Position: Book review

Bible, Map, and Spade: The American Palestine Exploration Society, Frederick Jones Bliss, and the Forgotten Story of Early American Biblical Archaeology. By RACHEL HALLOTE. Piscataway, New Jersey: GORGIAS PRESS, 2006. Pp. xiv + 220. $99.

Today, when events in the Middle East are constantly in the headlines, and the presence of Americans on the ground in the region is commonplace, the activities of our compatriots in Israel/ Palestine during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have largely been forgotten. This book presents a lively account of the work of American diplomats, soldiers, missionaries, writers, and particularly archaeologists in the Holy Land from the Lynch Expedition to the Dead Sea in 1847 to around 1920.

Hallote begins by sketching the background of Protestant--largely millennialist--belief against which American involvement manifested itself in such activities as the founding of the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut) and the establishment of the Spaffords' American Colony in Jerusalem. After a brief discussion of the visits of American travelers (including Mark Twain), she proceeds with an institutional history of the unsuccessful American Palestine Exploration Society, founded 1870 (chapter six).

The author devotes most of her pages to the life and archaeological career of Frederick Jones Bliss (1859-1937), son of the founding president of the Syrian Protestant College and--although an American citizen--the first professional archaeologist employed by the British Palestine Exploration Fund, if we discount the brief stint of Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie in their employ. In her review of Bliss's life, she has the advantage of access to a collection of Bliss family letters housed at Amherst College, a source neglected by previous biographers of this scholar.

From 1891 to his ignominious dismissal in 1899, Bliss excavated on behalf of the PEF at Tell el-Hesy, in Jerusalem, and in the southern Shephelah. Hallote credits him with refining the stratigraphic methodology initiated by Flinders Petrie (pp. 108, 116) and with producing what for his time were exemplary site reports. Nonetheless, after his firing by the British organization, he would never again lead an excavation. Later, in the aftermath of the First World War, Bliss became involved in the controversy over Jewish settlement in Palestine promised in the Balfour Declaration when he published an interview with Faisal, then King of...