Elihu Grant

Who was Elihu Grant?

Elihu Grant was an American scholar and writer on Palestine.

Grant was ordained Methodist minister in 1900, and between 1901 and 1904 he was superintendent of the American Friends Schools in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Returning to the US he was a Professor of Biblical literature at Smith College from 1907 to 1917, and thereafter at Haverford College until his retirement in 1938.

Between 1928 and 1933 he directed four campaigns of excavations at Ain Shems, and Time Magazine reported that he found jugs and vases which represented a bronze age culture.

One of his lifelong interest was the life of the Palestinian fellahin, an interest which started when he first worked for the American Friends School, and which resulted in three books., where the 1907 book The Peasantry of Palestine: The Life, Manners, and Customs of the Village is described as "a vividly accurate portrait of rural life in Palestine."