Bargil Pixner

Infobox Person
name = Bargil Pixner


caption =
birth_date = birth date|1921|3|23|mf=y
birth_place =
death_date = death date|2002|5|5|mf=y
death_place =

Bargil Pixner (March 23, 1921—April 5, 2002) was an Italian Benedictine monk, Biblical scholar and archaeologist, and Benedictine authority on the Dead Sea scrolls. [Laub, Karin. 1999, September 27. " [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990927/aponline195514_000.htm Scroll Said Resembles Sea Scrolls] ." "Associated Press".]

Biography

Pixner was born in 1921, the first of eight children, in Untermais, South Tyrol, which had become part of Italy during World War I. He started his study of theology in 1940 in Brixen and joined the Mill Hill Missionary Fathers' Tyrolean branch in 1941.

During World War II, Pixner was sent to the Eastern Front in 1944 after refusing to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler, but he escaped from Silesia in May 1945.

Pixner was ordained priest in 1946 in Brixen, immediately prior to leaving for missionary work in the Philippines, where he headed a leprosy center in Santa Barbara, Iloilo for the next eight years. He later worked in France, Italy, and the United States, becoming a US citizen.

In May 1969, Pixner moved to Israel, co-founding Neve Shalom, a peace village, located near the biblical Emmaus, and entered the Order of Saint Benedict in 1972, taking his final vows at the Hagia Maria Sion Abbey in Jerusalem in 1974. Pixner spent the next twelve years organizing the construction of an affiliated abbey at Tabgha before returning to Hagia Maria Sion Abbey in 1994 and then serving as a prior. Pixner gave tours of the Holy Land to famous pilgrims such as Jimmy Carter and Helmut Kohl.Corley, Felix. 2002, May 17. " [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020517/ai_n12617586 Obituary: Fr Bargil Pixner] ." "The Independent".]

Theories

Pixner's theories, linking archaeological sites to events and figures in the Bible, have been met with mixed acceptance by scholars. In particular, he argued for a connection between Jesus and the Essenes and for the identification of the "Essene Gateway" (excavated beginning in 1977) on Mount Zion, [Pixner, Bargil. 1997, May/June. " [http://www.centuryone.org/essene.html Jerusalem's Essene Gateway: Where the Community Lived in Jesus' Time] ." "Biblical Archaeological Review" 23 (3): 22-31.] and the dating of the crucifixion to Friday April 11 30.

Pixner also identified a site on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee as the site of Bethsaida in a 1985 article, [Pixner, Bargil 1985, December. "The Miracle Church at Tabgha on the Sea of Galilee." "Biblical Archaeologist" 48 (4): 196-206] an identification which the State of Israel made official in 1989 after excavations in 1987. Pixner showed the site to Pope John Paul II in March 2000, declaring a key excavated from the site to be the "key to the first Vatican." The tell had previously been dismissed by William F. Albright in the 1930s as a potential site for Bethsaida, but Pixner discovered Hellenistic and Roman artifacts while walking through Syrian trenches after the Six-Day War. [Shapiro, Haim. 1998, May 14. "Where 'he walked upon the water.'" "The Jerusalem Post".]

Works

*1992. "With Jesus Through Galilee: According to the Fifth Gospel". Corazin Publishing. ISBN 0814624278.
*1996. "With Jesus In Jerusalem: His First and Last Days in Judea". Corazin Publishing. ISBN 9654340046.

References