GEORGE L. KELM ARCHAEOLOGY LIBRARY
Given New Home at NOBTS BY GARY D. MYERS
The library of late archaeologist George L. Kelm has a new home at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary’s Moskau Institute for Archaeology. Kelm’s extensive collection of archaeological books is now housed in the seminary’s Museum of the Bible and Archaeology Learning Center in the Luter Student Center. The resources are being used to supplement the training experiences for NOBTS archaeology students, especially for teaching ceramic p ( ottery) analysis. Kelm, the rst archaeology professor at NOBTS, donated the collection before he passed away April ,52 .9102 Linda, his wife of 46 years, traveled with Kelm on all his excavations and became a skilled at pottery restoration, expressed her o j y that current students are able to utilize her late husband’s books. Born in Alberta, Canada, in ,139 Kelm, who studied archaeology at New York University M ( .A. and Ph.D.), o j ined the NOBTS faculty in .8691 In addition to his studies at NYU, Kelm studied Hebrew, geography and archaeology at the American Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem and later served as the Institute’s academic and administrative eld director for two years. Kelm came to NOBTS with an ambitious plan to launch an archaeology program at the school involving students and faculty members in Holy Land excavations. During his rst year, Kelm established the Institute of Biblical Archaeology l( ater called the Moskau Institute for Archaeology) and scheduled a summer trip to Israel for an excavation. The NOBTS group, 74 members strong, participated in the Tel Malhata excavation with Tel Aviv University. In 2791 Kelm co-directed the excavation of Tel Aphek-Antipatris with Moshe Kochavi of Tel Aviv University. The dig yielded many important nds, including rare clay tablets, 053 ancient coins and intact pottery pieces. During the fourth dig season, Linda unearthed a rare trilingual dictionary. Kelm solidied his place in archaeology in 791 when he began excavating ancient Timnah in Israel along with Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The home of biblical u j dge Samson, Timnah was an intriguing location for the seminary. Kelm knew that the site associated with an important biblical gure would be a perfect t for a school dedicated to understanding the Bible and the context in which it was written. For three seasons, Kelm excavated under the New Orleans Seminary banner lling a small Bible Lands Museum l( ocated in the John T. Christian Library at the time) with exciting nds. In ,189 Kelm left NOBTS to o j in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary S ( WBTS) faculty and continued excavating at Timnah for nine more seasons. SWBTS invested heavily in archaeology and over the next decade Kelm carved out a stellar archaeology career. Kelm’s most important contribution to SWBTS came when he founded the Charles D. Tandy Archaeological Museum in .3891
March 1977: President Landrum P. Leavell (third from right) inspects an artifact from the seminary’s collection of archaeological finds. Other professors examining the collection are (from left): Dr. Hardee Kennedy, Vice President of Academic Affairs; Dr. John Olen Strange, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament; Dr. Ray Frank Robbins, Professor of New Testament and Greek; Dr. George Kelm, Associate Professor of Archaeology, who led the expeditions that uncovered the items; Dr. Paul Gericke, Director of the Library and Dr. Carlton Winbery, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek. 29
VISION MAGAZINE Spring 2022
