Bargil Pixner (March 23, 1921 – April 5, 2002) was an ethnically German Italian-American monk of the Order of Saint Benedict, Biblical scholar and archaeologist, and commentator on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
[2] He started his study of theology in 1940 in Brixen and joined the Saint Joseph's Missionary Society of Mill Hill's Tyrolean branch in 1941.
[2] Pixner was ordained a priest in 1946 in Brixen immediately prior to leaving for missionary work in the Philippines, where he headed a leprosy centre in Santa Barbara, Iloilo for the next eight years.
[2] In May 1969, Pixner moved to Israel, co-founding Neve Shalom, a peace village, located near the biblical Emmaus, and entered the Order of Saint Benedict in 1972, taking his final vows at the Abbey of the Dormition in Jerusalem in 1974.
"[2] The tell had previously been dismissed by William F. Albright in the 1930s as a potential site for Bethsaida, but Pixner discovered Hellenistic and Roman artefacts while walking through Syrian trenches after the Six-Day War.