Dr. James Fleming

James W. “Jim” Fleming, Ed. D., is a fountain of knowledge, flowing as sure and steady as the Jordan River. Unbridled passion for his work is evident in all he says and in all he does, as he leads visitors through ancient scenes recreated at the Explorations in Antiquity Center. West central Georgia may bear little resemblance to ancient Israel, but the meaning of biblical antiquity comes to life here, under the watchful eye of Dr. Fleming.

At 64, the founder of Explorations in Antiquity has spent half his life living, learning and teaching in Israel. To call him a “walking encyclopedia” is not a cliché; it is fact. He churns out tidbits of information and nuggets of knowledge as effortlessly and as gently as a summer breeze.

Dr. Fleming's credentials could fill a notebook: he is the director of the Biblical Resources Study Center, an ecumenical organization, with offices in Israel and in the United States. He founded the Biblical Resources Study Center in 1980 “for people who wanted more than a Holy Land tour,” he says, “something for those who wanted a teacher, notebooks and lectures.”

He was also founder of the World of the Bible Archaeological Museum and Pilgrim Center which operated at Ein Karem, Jerusalem, until the spring of 2006. The Explorations in Antiquity Center is patterned after that museum which featured the World of the Bible Gardens. Dr. Fleming’s original museum of daily life in the biblical world attracted masses of international tourists until increasing violence along the Gaza Strip and West Bank led to the museum’s relocation to the U.S.

Through the years, Dr. Fleming has led various archaeological digs and made thrilling discoveries which he has chronicled in the Biblical Archaeology Review. He joined the magazine in 1976, shortly after it was first published, as the Jerusalem correspondent and has served on its Editorial Advisory Board since 1980.

Born in Portland, Oregon, Dr. Fleming earned a doctor of education degree at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1970. He taught at the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem for ten years and currently teaches at the School for Overseas Students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He also teaches courses in Christianity to Jewish and Arab tour guides for the Israeli Ministry of Tourism.

In Israel from 1980-87, Dr. Fleming served as director and academic dean of the Jerusalem Center for Biblical Studies. As a cartography consultant with the Curriculum Department of the Israeli Ministry of Education, he illustrated government textbooks with maps and photos to teach biblical history. He has designed special courses using relief maps and models for teaching biblical history and geography to the blind; replicas of these maps and models have been reproduced by his company, Relief Maps of Israel, and distributed to academic institutions around the world.

Living and working in Israel from 1973 until he moved to Georgia in 2006, Dr. Fleming has developed dozens of courses of study in historical geography and biblical history, tying the studies to biblical texts to emphasize the unity of theological/faith relationships. He uses an ecumenical approach while combining archaeology, history, geography and theology to suggest implications of old and recent archaeological discoveries within the biblical context.

“Biblical traditions are easily misunderstood,” says Dr. Fleming. “If we’re going to be serious about the biblical tradition, we need to ask what these words meant when they were written, what was the context in terms of the culture then?”

What keeps this biblical scholar/author/archaeologist motivated is his love of scripture combined with the thrill of witnessing what he calls the “aha” moments.

“The real thing that keeps you going is seeing the sparkle in someone’s eye when they get it, when you see that ‘aha’ moment,” he says. In all his endeavors, the purpose is the same: “to help the scriptures become alive and refreshing.”

Today, Dr. Fleming divides his time among teaching, lecturing and running the new Explorations in Antiquity Center. He lectures around the world— mainly in the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South America and South Africa—and directs the ministries of Biblical Resources both in Israel and the United States. He leads study tours of the Holy Land and the Mediterranean world and, when he is not traveling those roads of ancient history, he leads visitors through his re-creation of those travels at the Explorations in Antiquity Center in LaGrange, Georgia.