After a year of travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders, author Amanda Hope Haley’s latest book offers a much-needed chance to travel vicariously and visit the settings where the Bible’s greatest events took place. Join this Harvard-trained biblical archaeologist as she and her family explore the history that brings the Bible to life. The Red-Haired Archaeologist Digs Israel is here to delight and educate anyone longing to experience new places and cultures while gaining a fuller understanding of God’s Word.
Amanda has been fascinated by archaeology since she saw Indiana Jones as a child, but she fell in love with the science in graduate school, when she visited Israel and dug at Ashkelon for the first time. Fifteen years later, she has returned to Israel to record her adventures digging at Tel Shimron while introducing her family to the sites and people she loves in Israel and Palestine.
“We should all be archaeologists, ‘digging’ into history and Scripture and learning about each other’s cultures,” Amanda encourages. Her latest book has given her the opportunity to share both. While the travel adventures she shares—from mishaps with customs agents, to indulgent experiences with international cuisine, to trials-by-fire while driving on the streets of Nazareth—will engage and entertain, The Red-Haired Archaeologist Digs Israel also vividly illustrates the histories of the land and its people. Readers will learn to…
- use archaeological findings to better understand Israel’s past
- shed their Western mindsets and engage with the Bible in its cultural context
- make sense of today’s ongoing religious conflicts in the Holy Land from a historical—rather than political—perspective
Amanda’s heart for The Red-Haired Archaeologist Digs Israel is to encourage readers to seek out the history that illuminates the Bible, while also inspiring them to celebrate the people and places of God’s chosen land. “What begins as a quest to better understand the contexts and meanings of Scripture and better know the One who made them just might end with a better understanding of our neighbors and how Jesus would have us love them today,” she says. Even in this homebound time, Christians can continue to grow in their capacity to love and serve all of God’s people—even those on the other side of the globe.
