Biblical archaeologist Richard Freund just doesn’t feel right without a pick in hand. Place him at a dig somewhere in the Holy Land, and he’ll tap his way through history.
As an author, director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford in Connecticut and a regular on TV specials about biblical history, Freund is also something of a celebrity archaeologist.
He will share his enthusiasm when he delivers the keynote address at Bible by the Bay, a daylong series of workshops sponsored by Lehrhaus Judaica and held Sunday, Nov. 14 at Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah.
Freund says his lecture will focus on topics he writes about in his newest book, “Digging Through the Bible: Ancient Archaeology and the Modern Bible.”
Kind of a flip of adjectives there, but he did so deliberately. That’s because his research has often made the people of the Bible seem to come alive.
Take, for example, a recent excavation in Israel. There he found intact artifacts from a Jewish woman who lived in the era of King David — including her pocketbook, which contained receipts for recent purchases. “These things tell us so much more about what we know of ancient women then whole slews of other excavations,” Freund says.
One of his other exciting projects was Har Karkom, the site now generally thought to be the most likely location of Mount Sinai. Yes, that Mount Sinai, as in Moses and the tablets. “It has evidence from the right time period,” Freund says.
While a scientist through and through, Freund is an ordained rabbi with a Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has also written two volumes on Jewish ethics. So for him, Judaism and Jewish tradition hold equally important status with science.
“The most important part of the discipline of biblical archaeology is we take the Bible seriously,” he says. “We don’t read it like a newspaper, but like an ancient serious text. A lot of people weigh the archaeology as if it’s more important than [the Bible], and that is a formula for failure.”
Among his other career highlights, Freund has directed six archaeological projects in Israel on behalf of his university, including digs at Qumran, Nazareth and Yavne, as well as projects in Burgos and Cadiz, Spain.
He has also appeared in television documentaries, including the History Channel’s “God vs. Satan: The Final Battle,” CNN’s “After Jesus: The First Christians” and NOVA’s “Ancient Refuge in the Holy Land,” based on his book “Secrets of the Cave of Letters.”
He doesn’t only work on ancient sites. Freund also has led a dig at the notorious Nazi concentration camp of Sobibor, in Poland, where approximately 250,000 Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.
Doing such a dig with respect requires heart and, in Freund’s case, modern technology that scans objects below the surface of the ground.
“We pioneered noninvasive [digging],” he says. “We map the subsurface first, and then we can tell where bodies are buried, and where artifacts are. You don’t have to dig up the dead. The dignity of the dead, which is so important to Jewish tradition, is maintained.”
Freund hopes his work will not only advance the science of biblical archeology, but change perceptions about the Torah and its significance.
Says Freund: “If we could invigorate people to not become jaded about the Bible, they would see there are things we can discover that greatly illuminate what’s written in the Bible.”
Richard Freund speaks 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 14 at Bible by the Bay, held at Temple Isaiah, 3800 Mount Diablo Blvd., Lafayette. Tickets: $15-$25. Information: (510) 845-6420 or www.lehrhaus.org.