Robert G. Hoyland is Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. His books inclide Arabia and the Arabs (Routledge, 2001) and In God's Path (OUP, 2015). He has embarked upon the excavation of the city of Partavi/Barda'a in modern Azerbaijan.


H. G. M. Williamson was until recently Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University. His expertise in the texts of the Old Testament is complemented by his active participation in the archaeology of the Biblical period in the Holy Land.