Ben Spackman is a PhD candidate in American Religious History at Claremont, specializing in how understanding of the Bible— especially Genesis— changed in the 20th century due to archaeological, textual, and scientific discoveries.  His dissertation explores the history of Latter-day Saints, biological evolution, and scriptural interpretation in the 20th century. He received a MA and completed PhD work in Old Testament languages (Comparative Semitics) at the University of Chicago, after graduating from BYU in Near Eastern Studies. His first exposure to the Holy Land was an undergrad semester at the BYU Jerusalem Center; where in 2014, he served as a tour guide for three weeks. And as part of his PhD breadth credits, Ben dug for a month in 2017 at the archaeological site of Akko/Acre. Ben taught volunteer Institute courses for a dozen years, as well as Biblical Hebrew, New Testament, and Book of Mormon at BYU. Ben has produced numerous articles, blogposts, podcasts, conference talks, and firesides on interpreting scripture, Bible translations, the nature of creation accounts and Genesis, science and scripture, and the twentieth century history of Genesis and biological evolution. He writes at http://BenSpackman.com