ABSTRACT
William Foxwell Albright saw himself as a scientist, and he saw the role of scientist as one who produced objectively verifiable facts that were not dependent on the subjectivity of the individual observing them. This chapter discusses the way he used this view to combat higher critics, including his graduate adviser, Paul Haupt. Some scholars consider Albright a major advance over the archaeologists he joined in Jerusalem, such as the prolific author Melvin Grove Kyle, who wrote about archaeology for The Fundamentals series. Albright spent most of the 1920s in Jerusalem, where he quickly rose to the position of director of ASOR’s Jerusalem school. Albright considered archaeology scientific because it provided the tangible realia of the human past, which were the facts he identified as lacking from higher critics’ work. The chapter concludes with consideration of another influence Albright encountered in Jerusalem but ultimately rejected, that of Palestinian folklore studies.
