The Society of Biblical Literature was founded in 1880 and is the pre-eminent academic organization for promoting biblical scholarship. The society has an annual meeting (usually in conjunction with the American Academy of Religion), and its website offers a range of valuable resources.

ASOR, or the American Schools of Oriental Research, is an association founded in 1900 and dedicated to promoting archaeology in the Near East and a better public understanding of the field. ASOR is overseen by some of the top archaeologists in the field.

Hershel Shanks is the founder of the Biblical Archaeology Society, based in Washington, D.C., and editor of the society’s publication, the Biblical Archaeology Review. Shanks and the BAR are alternately praised and pilloried for efforts to “popularize” biblical archaeology. They were a driving force behind efforts to promote the so-called James ossuary in 2003.

Eric M. Meyers is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Professor of Judaic Studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and a widely published author on biblical archaeology.

Jodi Magness is a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an expert in the archaeology of early Judaism, especially the excavations at Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Rev. Daniel Harrington is a Jesuit priest and a prominent biblical scholar at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Richard A. Freund is a professor of history and director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford. He is a field archaeologist and has written extensively on biblical archaeology, from the Exodus story to the origins of Christianity.

Philip K. Goff is an associate professor of religious studies at Indiana University in Indianapolis, where he directs the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. He co-edited (with Paul Harvey) Themes in Religion and American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2004) and (also with Harvey) The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America Since […]

Ruth A. Tucker is an independent scholar of religion based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has taught courses on world religions, cults and New Age for 30 years, most recently at Calvin Theological Seminary. Tucker wrote Another Gospel: Cults, Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement.