Overview

This personal and professional memoir recounts the author's formative years and the family influences that propelled him forward. The experience of anti-Semitism in grammar school and college played a major role. The centrality of music and family were especially influential. His partnership with Carol Meyers allowed him to have a successful career in academic archaeology and in teaching at Duke University. Other endeavors, however, kept him grounded and focused on everyday matters: singing, golf, social activism, teaching, and writing. But it was teaching most of all that imbued his life with special meaning as both student and teacher confronted the riches of the past in a search for a better future.

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9781666743524

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This is an engrossing memoir by one of the greats in the archaeology of Israel-Palestine. In the Accidental Archaeologist, Eric Meyers writes with honesty and wit about topics such as the anti-Semitism he experienced as a young man in New England and the challenges he and Carol Meyers faced as they led pioneering expeditions in Galilee. An inspiring book by a scholar I am extremely lucky to have had as a teacher and mentor. --Benjamin Gordon, University of Pittsburgh Eric Meyers calls himself 'an accidental archaeologist, ' and then proceeds to describe the career of one of the most influential scholars of ancient Judaism of the twentieth century. Meyers narrates his life from child of Holocaust survivors to 'biblical archaeologist' par excellence with vivre and excitement. This volume is a tribute to a long and fruitful life and career of meaning and conscience. --Steven Fine, Yeshiva University An engaging account of the remarkably rich and full life of an important American archaeologist, noteworthy especially for the perspectives Meyers brings to bear not only on his signature archaeological fieldwork--excavations in Israel of Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine synagogue sites--but also on key aspects of the history and character of the modern Israeli state and of modern American Jewry. --Susan Ackerman, Dartmouth College A whole life dedicated to exploring the Hebrew Bible and the land and culture to which it is connected--how 'accidental' can that be? Who and what formed an archaeologist who authored scores of publications, taught a worldwide public, and inspired generations of scholars to become leaders in their own fields? Curious, humble, and honest, Eric Meyers turns out a true witness of our times--and above all a real Mensch. What a blessing for us all! --Jurgen K. Zangenberg, Leiden University

Author Information

Eric M. Meyers is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor Emeritus of Religious and Jewish Studies at Duke University. He founded the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke in 1972. He co-authored with his wife, Carol Meyers, commentaries on Haggai and Zechariah in the Anchor Bible, and he served as editor in chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. His excavations at Sepphoris were fully published in 2018. He also served three terms as president of the American Schools/Society of Overseas Research.

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