Carl H. Kraeling (1897–1966) was an educator, administrator, and archaeologist at various institutions, including the Oriental Institute, Yale University, and the American Schools of Oriental Research. Kraeling hailed from Brooklyn, New York and studied the Old Testament and Early Christianity from the start of his scholarly career, working as a Lutheran minister while and after obtaining his ThD from the University of Heidelberg and his BD from Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

Kraeling was recognized for his administrative talents while serving as secretary-treasurer at the American Oriental Society, whose internal structure he helped to reorganize. Here, he also became more involved in organizing archaeological projects, such as excavations at Jerash, Jordan, an expedition whose major publications he directed and edited. He went on to begin his long-term teaching career at Yale University in the early 1920s, where he would eventually become chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures and also teach in the Divinity School.

In 1950, Kraeling became Director of the Oriental Institute. That same year, the President of American Schools of Oriental Research suddenly resigned, and many of Kraeling’s colleagues convinced him to accept the post. Due to ill health, perhaps because of the exhaustive demands of holding both positions at once, Kraeling stepped down from the presidency four years later, maintaining his directorship at the Institute for a decade.

Kraeling also conducted his scholarship at Dumbarton Oaks, a research library and collection in Georgetown, Washington D.C., beginning in 1946. From 1964 until his death two years later, he held the position of Acting Librarian, and devised simplified shelving and cataloguing methods when the library’s collection was being classified. He also helped to develop the “Brinkler Classification System" with Harvard University librarian Bartol Brinkler.

Kraeling’s scholarly focus broadened from the New Testament to the history of religions and areas of Greco-Roman and mediaeval research; he was a great supporter of the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls upon their discovery. His final and most major work was on the Christian chapel at Dura Europos in Syria, one of the oldest Christian sanctuaries in the world; he compiled this volume during the mid-1960s, though it had been his greatest area of interest throughout his scholarly career. It was published posthumously in 1967.