William F. Albright

William Foxwell Albright ( born May 24, 1891 in Coquimbo, Chile, † September 19, 1971 in Baltimore, United States) was an American Biblical archaeologist.

From 1929 to 1958 he was professor of Semitic languages ​​at Johns Hopkins University.

Albright led expeditions to the biblical sites in Palestine, southern Arabia and in the neighboring regions. After the First World War, the scientists launched a new phase of Biblical archeology and developed - together with his colleagues - the archeology, which had previously only had a largely intuitive scientific basis to a strictly scientific discipline. He was to be determined by the identification of biblical cities and by a method, the age of a culture based on ceramic finds are known.

After Albright's research, the statements of the Bible can be used as historical sources. He was thus in opposition to many Bible critics, especially for the Wellhausen school in Germany, which completely rejected the historicity of the Bible, and the Alt- Noth - school, which is influenced by Wellhausen. However, Albright did not go so far as Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963), who blindly gave even the smallest details of the biblical tradition, faith.