Walter Kaiser, a distinguished expert on the Old Testament and the General Editor of Zondervan’s NIV Archaeological Study Bible, will return to Madison for a lecture on the Archaeology of the Bible next Sunday, March 1, 2009. Dr. Walter Kaiser is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Old Testament and Ethics at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He lectures all of the world and has just returned to his home in eastern Wisconsin after a lecture series in Israel.
Dr. Kaiser has spoken in Madison in the past; he made an annual trip to Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church for a December lecture for several years but that series ended about ten years ago. His lecture next Sunday is sponsored by the Madison Biblical Archaeology Society and madisonchristians.com.
As an author, Dr. Kaiser has written or contributed to more than 50 books. The topic of his lecture is based on his book, The Old Testament Documents: Are they Reliable and Relevant? published by InterVarsity Press. But his biggest book project was The Archaeological Study Bible, published by Zondervan in 2005.
In an interview with The Book & The Spade radio program in 2005, Dr. Kaiser said that he studied archaeology at Wheaton College under archaeologist Joseph Free. His first class was in 1952. "That’s right after Noah got off of the ark," he chuckled. One of the assignments in the class was to keep their own archaeological study Bible. "Any time we had an archaeological discovery, we would put a note in our Bibles and keep a separate notebook keyed with that verse."
That notebook got lost in the many moves Dr. Kaiser made over the years, as he left Wheaton for a teaching position at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and then moved on to teach at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. But now that Zondervan has published the Archaeological Study Bible, that type of resource is available to anyone.
The Archaeological Study Bible stands out from the many other Bible versions available today, even other study Bibles. It has 500 color photos and 750 major articles, along with footnotes, charts and graphs.
"You have some minimalists who say it’s not so important that we know that these Biblical events happened or took place," he said. "But this is no myth, this is reality. It has real relation to space and time."
Dr. Kaiser is pleased that The Archaeological Study Bible has sold well and has been well accepted. "I don’t think the publisher expected it to be so popular," he said. "The whole issue of archaeology, the historicity and the truthfulness of the Bible is of great interest to the evangelical and also the non-evangelical audience."
Next Sunday’s lecture begins at 3pm, and will be held in the Anderson Auditorium at Edgewood College. For more information on the lecture, and for an Edgewood campus map, got to madisonchristians.com/Kaiser. The lecture is free and the public is invited. Copies of The Archaeological Study Bible and The Old Testament Documents: Are they Reliable and Relevant? will be available for sale at a discounted price after the lecture.