Profile: Professor outside journalism

Profile: Scott Langston, Ph. D., Religion/Archaeology professor
Hometown: Conroe, TX.

Most people wouldn't light up like five-year-old walking into a toy store at the mention of biblical archaeology or the highly debated historical accuracy of the Bible, but most people aren't Scott Langston.
Langston, with his thick glasses, tucked-in, striped Polo shirt (collar bent awkwardly), pressed jeans and scuffed leather Sperry's looks more like a friendly high school friend's dad than a man who has journeyed to ancient biblical sites wielding a flashlight and map, Indiana Jones-style.
"I've always had a keen fascination in archaeology," Langston said, "It's always been something I wanted to pursue and make a part of my career, versus simply being a hobby."
Langston started out as an associate professor of biblical studies at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. He spent three years as assistant dean of the college of theology before resigning in 2004 due to an unhappy work environment and relocated with his wife and three children back to his home state of Texas.
Currently, Langston works in what he calls the often underappreciated and misunderstood position of an adjunct professor.
“I feel a lot of the time there’s a certain stigma with being labeled an adjunct, but the bottom line is I’m happy, I like the freedom I have as an adjunct and I’m still getting paid to do what I love – teach.”
And Langston loves what he teaches, as well. For spring 2010, Langston is teaching a biblical archaeology class focusing on the historical accuracy of the Bible, ancient biblical sites and the various archaeological finds discovered therein. He himself has been to three different sites in present-day Israel; Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer.
Langston recalls an entertaining time when he brought he brand new wife on a dig to Megiddo.
“Here I am, a professor and semi-expert on this stuff and I’m finding tiny shards of pottery, mud bricks and the like, and I’ve been doing these digs for 20 some-odd years. What does my wife find the second day of her first dig? Coins and precious jewelry! It was just too funny; my family still laughs about that to this day.”
Langston says he is allotted a special place to keep some of the treasured artifacts he occasionally has gotten to keep on digs: the shed.
“Well, I have one or two waist-high collar-rimmed store jars and boxes of pottery shards from everywhere. I’ve got some religious deity figurines in there too, some coins and more boxes with mysterious contents. My wife just doesn’t understand, or maybe she does, you know and just doesn’t want all stuff littering the house,” Langston laughs.
He is very close to his family and proud of it. His daughter was just accepted to the University of Oklahoma and Langston doesn’t know what he’s going to do. He playfully shields his eyes with hands and mimes crying.
“Anywhere but OU, I told her, and what does she do? Pick OU!”
He laughs, professing an “unbiased” lifelong hatred for the Sooners.
“You know, I’ve gone my whole life despising that school, making fun of dang Sooners every chance I get and now, where am I going to be making checks out to? Ugh, if she wasn’t my only daughter," he says with a smile.