Dr. John J. Pilch was born in Brooklyn, New York and educated in the mid-West (Wisconsin and Illinois)earning his PhD from Marquette University in 1972. Leading study tours to the Middle East provided first hand experience of that culture and its values. He was assistant clinical professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin for fourteen years(1974-1988)focusing on medical anthropology as it helps to appreciate healing in the modern and ancient world. He then taught the Cultural World of the Bible for eighteen years at Georgetown University, Washington DC (1993-2011). He currently lectures in the Odyssey Program at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. All his audiences have appreciated the fresh light that Middle Eastern culture and values shed on ancient literature from that part of the world. His publications on the Middle Eastern cultural world of the Bible and on healing in the ancient world are well known in the US and abroad.