Biblical archaeology school

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about biblical archaeology as an academic movement. For major excavations and artifacts relating to biblical archaeology, see
List of artifacts in biblical archaeology. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see Historicity of the Bible
.

Biblical archaeology, occasionally known as Palestinology,[1][2] is the school of archaeology which concerns itself with the biblical world. In the academic setting it serves as an adjunct to biblical studies, providing the historical, cultural, and linguistic context to scripture.[3]

If the modern discipline had a founder, it would be William F. Albright, an American with roots in the Evangelical tradition. By the 1950s, Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck, E. A. Speiser, G. Ernest Wright, and Cyrus Gordon, claimed to have found physical evidence for the historical events behind many Old Testament narratives.

18th to early 20th century

cartographer[6] and published the first modern work of biblical archaeology, Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, a detailed geographical survey of Palestine in 1696 written in Latin
and published by Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, in 1714.

The foundations of biblical archaeology were laid in the 19th century with the work of antiquarians such as

Sir Flinders Petrie introduced the basic principles of scientific excavation, including stratigraphy and ceramic typology to Palestinian archaeology.[8]

William F. Albright and the biblical archaeology school

The dominant figure in 20th-century biblical archaeology, defining its scope and shaping the mid-century consensus on the relationship between archaeology, the Bible, and the

historically accurate. Albright saw archaeology as a practical means to test these ideas. Biblical archaeology, for him, therefore embraced all lands and any finds that could "throw some light, directly or indirectly, on the Bible".[10]

Albright and his followers believed that archaeology could and should be used to shed light on the biblical narrative, particularly the Old Testament. The influential academic positions held by Albright and his followers, and their immense output—Albright alone authored over a thousand books and articles—made their work highly influential, especially in America, and especially among ordinary Christians who wished to believe that archaeology had "proved the Bible true". In fact the members of the school were not biblical literalists, and their main concern was to discriminate between those parts of the biblical story that were true and those that were embellishments.

By the middle of the 20th century the work of Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck (1900–1971), E. A. Speiser (1902–1965), G. Ernest Wright (1909–1974) and Cyrus Gordon (1908–2001), had produced a consensus that biblical archaeology had provided physical evidence for the originating historical events behind the Old Testament narratives: in the words of Albright: "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history."[11] The consensus allowed the writing of authoritative textbooks such as John Bright's History of Israel (1959).[12] Bright did not believe that the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph could be regarded as reliable history, or that it was possible to reconstruct the origins of Israel from the biblical text alone, but he did believe that the stories in Genesis reflected the physical reality of the 20th to 17th centuries BC, and that it was therefore possible to write a history of the origins of Israel by comparing the biblical accounts with what was known of the time from other sources.[13]

Biblical archaeology today

Albrightian theories were largely overturned in the second half of the 20th century, especially in regards to suppositions that Albrightians made regarding the pre-monarchic era. Improved archaeological methods, notably

Abraham in History and Tradition reached a similar conclusion about the usefulness of tradition history: "A vague presupposition about the antiquity of the tradition based upon a consensus approval of such arguments should no longer be used as a warrant for proposing a history of the tradition related to early premonarchic times."[15]

At the same time a new generation of archaeologists, notably William G. Dever, criticized biblical archaeology for failing to take note of the revolution in archaeology known as processualism, which saw the discipline as a scientific one allied to anthropology, rather than as a part of the corpus of the humanities linked to history and theology. Biblical archaeology, Dever said, remained "altogether too narrowly within a theological angle of vision,"[16] and should be abandoned and replaced with a regional Syro-Palestinian archaeology operating within a processual framework.[17]

Dever was broadly successful: most archaeologists working in the world of the Bible today do so within a processual or

Syro-Palestinian archaeology as an "independent, secular discipline ... pursued by cultural historians for its own sake."[21]

Evangelical scholar Kenneth Kitchen, despite supporting the historicity of the Bible, has also been critical of biblical archaeology as it was conceived in the first half of the 20th century: in his book On the Reliability of the Old Testament, he dismisses Albright and Gordon as "little local (and very parochial)" representatives of the "long-deceased American Biblical Archaeology/theology school".[22]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.custodia.org/SBF-In-Memoriam-Father-Michele.html?lang=it [dead link]
  2. ^ "Library of Palestinology (in Hebrew)". Israel Exploration Society. 1937. Archived from the original on 4 April 2021. Retrieved 4 February 2011.
  3. ^ College, Wheaton. "Biblical Archaeology". Wheaton College. Retrieved 2022-10-26.
  4. ^ Power And Religion in Baroque Rome: Barberini Cultural Policies, P. J. A. N. Rietbergen, p.321
  5. ^ Adriaan Reland (1676-1718) Archived 2008-04-13 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ Maps by Reland[permanent dead link]
  7. ^ "Palestine Exploration Fund website, Introduction to the PEF". Archived from the original on 2008-10-13. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
  8. ^ "David Noel Freedman and Bruce E. Willoughby, "Biblical Archaeology", MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 2009-10-29.
  9. ^ "J. Maxwell Miller, "History or Legend", The Christian Century, February 24, 2004, p. 42–47. From religion-online.org". Archived from the original on August 23, 2007. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
  10. ^ Peter Moorey, A Century of Biblical Archaeology, p.54ff
  11. ^ W.F.Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, 1954 edition, p. 128, quoted in Walter F. Kaiser, "What Good is Biblical Archaeology to Bible Readers?", Contact magazine, Winter 05/06, at gctuedu.com Archived 2008-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ John Bright, A History of Israel, 4th edition
  13. ^ G. W. Ahlstrom, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1975), review of John Bright's History of Israel (4th edition).
  14. ^ Thomas L. Thompson, "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham", 1974, p.328, quoted in a review by Dennis Pardee, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1977
  15. ISBN 978-1-62654-910-4
    .
  16. ^ Joel Ng, "Introduction to Biblical Archaeology", 2003 (revised 2004), at Edwardtbabinski.com
  17. ^ "Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.16" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  18. ^ "Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.7" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  19. ^ Ziony Zevit, "Three Debates About Bible and Archaeology: The 'Biblical Archaeology' Debate", Biblica 83 (2002) pp.2–9
  20. ^ Specifically this was the view of Albright's student, G. E. Wright, and his "Biblical Theology" school, which became popular in America in the 1950s. See Andrew G. Vaughn, review of William G. Dever, "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel" (2001), RBL 2003
  21. ^ William G. Dever, quoted in Ziony Zevit, "The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions", 2001[permanent dead link]
  22. ISBN 978-0-8028-0396-2
    .
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