For a quarter of a century, Dr. Gary Arthur Thomson has taught popular courses in Ancient Near Eastern History at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has used traditio-historical criticism and archaeology to look at the Sumerians, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, the Celts as well as the rise of earliest Israel in Palestine. Based on student evaluations, Dr. Thomson received the Teacher of Th e Year Award at McGill University. Gary Arthur Thomson is a Nebraskan by birth. He was a community organizer in Hastings, Nebraska during the Johnson War on Poverty. Educated in the Humanities at Nebraska Wesleyan University (B.

A.), he studied at San Francisco, Dubuque, and Edinburgh to become a teacher and minister in the Presbyterian Church USA. He completed the Economics course of study of the US College of The Armed Forces. During his graduate studies, he worked as an archaeologist in Israel with Hebrew Union College. His Ph.D. dissertation analyzed cuneiform economic clay tablets from Sumer-the world's ?rst civilization. He and his wife, Jeanette Kroese Thomson, have taken their McGill students on archaeological study-tours worldwide.

The Thomson's have four daughters: Kim- director of experimental aeronautical engineering with Bombardier, Shannon- music professor at Concordia University, Jill-professional artist in Edmonton, and Dawn-professional musician in Rochester NY. Jeanette and Gary live in an environmentally-designed house on Ile Verte near Montreal.