"No One Puts a Lamp Under a Basket"

James Strange is the Charles Jackson Granade and Elizabeth Donald Granade Chair in New Testament in the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies at Samford University in Birmingham, AL. He is the director of the Shikhin Excavation Project in Israel, author of Excavating the Land of Jesus (Eerdmans, 2023), and co-editor (with David Fiensy) of the two-volume set, Galilee in the Late Second Temple, and Mishnaic Periods (Fortress, 2014–2015). 

Tom McCollough is the Nelson and Mary McDowell Rodes Professor of Religion Emeritus  at Centre College and Teaching Associate in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Coastal Carolina University. He is the director of the archaeological excavations at Khirbet Qana (Cana of Galilee) and the associate director of the Shikhin Excavation Project. His books include Archaeology and the Galilee: Text and Context in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods (with D. Edwards) and The Archaeology of Difference: Gender, Ethnicity, Class and The Other in Antiquity (with D. Edwards). His most recent publications are “The Synagogue at Khirbet Qana in Its Village Context” in R. Bonnie, R. Hakola and U. Tervahaunta (eds.), The Synagogue in Ancient Palestine: Current Issues and Emerging Trends ( Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021) and “The Economic Transformation of an Early Roman Galilean Village: A Keynesian Approach.” in Taxation, Economy and Revolt in Ancient Rome, Galilee and Egypt. Eds, A. Choi, T. Blanton, J. Liu (Routledge, 2022).

Professor Dr. Mordechai Aviam is a professor of archaeology in the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee in the Land of Israel Studies Department, as well as the founder and director of the Kinneret Institute for Galilean Archaeology. He specialized in classical archaeology and has focused on research in the Galilee area since 1977. From 1990 to 2001, he was the district archaeologist of Western Galilee in the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Professor Aviam has years of experience accomplishing field surveys. His main excavations were: seven seasons at ancient Yodefat (Jotapata); two ancient synagogues at Baram; a Hellenistic-Roman fortress at Keren Naftali; and 10 Byzantine churches and monasteries. In the last two years, together with Samford University, Alabama, excavations at the ancient Jewish village at Shikhin; co-director of the excavations of the Roman period farmstead at Tel Rekhesh, where a first-second centuries synagogue was discovered, working together with Japanese universities. He is currently the director of the excavations at el-Araj (Bethsaida), on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.