Shimon Gibson is a British-born archaeologist living in North Carolina, where he is a professor of practice in the Department of History at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. [1]
Gibson was the lead archaeologist excavating a wilderness cave he associated with John the Baptist in 2000 and later wrote The Cave of John the Baptist. [2] Such claim has been criticized by other scholars and, according to Hershel Shanks, "few, if any, scholars in Israel think this cave has anything to do with John the Baptist". [3] [4] [5] He later led a team that found a 10-line ritual cup at Mount Zion. [6] [7]
He is the editor of The Illustrated Dictionary & Concordance of the Bible [8] and was co-editor with Avraham Negev of the Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land. [9] In his The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence (2009) [10] he advanced the theory that Jesus was killed for acts of healing. [11]
Gibson has appeared in a number of biblical archaeology documentaries. [12]