Dr. Robert Raymond Cargill is Roger A. Hornsby Associate Professor in the Classics at The University of Iowa. He is a biblical studies scholar, classicist, archaeologist, author, and digital humanist. His research includes literary criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and New Testament, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha, and the archaeology of Southwest Asia. He teaches courses in biblical studies, Second Temple Judaism, archaeology, and ancient languages including Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. His recent books include Melchizedek, King of Sodom: How Scribes Invented the Biblical Priest-King (Oxford University Press, 2019) and The Cities That Built the Bible (HarperOne, 2016). A specialist in public-facing scholarship, you can see him regularly on CNN, History, Discovery, and Nat Geo, where he contributes and consults on shows like Nat Geo’s “Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls,” CNN’s “Finding Jesus” and "Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury," History’s “Bible Secrets Revealed,” "Jesus: His Life," and "Colosseum," and most recently History's "Ancient Empires." He has excavated at Banias, Omrit, Haẓor, and at Azekah with TAU.

Boaz Gross is the vice president of Israeli Institute of Archaeology, a non-profit organization which conducts salvage and community excavations across Israel, and provides logistic and financial and professional services to numerous expeditions from most archaeological institutes in the country, alongside foreign expeditions. Gross is writing his PhD dissertation on the development of archaeological policy in Israel at Tel Aviv University.