The Bible Unearthed
LC Class BS621 .F56 2001 | | |
Website | Simon and Schuster website |
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The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, a book by
Finkelstein and Silberman contend that the composition of the Bible began in the
Methodology
The methodology applied by the authors is historical criticism with an emphasis on archaeology. Writing on the website of "The Bible and Interpretation" in March 2001, the authors describe their approach as one "in which the Bible is one of the most important artifacts and cultural achievements [but] not the unquestioned narrative framework into which every archaeological find must be fit." Their main contention is that:[4]
...an archaeological analysis of the
United Monarchynarratives [shows] that while there is no compelling archaeological evidence for any of them, there is clear archaeological evidence that places the stories themselves in a late 7th-century BCE context.
On the basis of this evidence they propose
... an archaeological reconstruction of the distinct histories of the kingdoms of
Omride Dynasty and attempting to show how the influence of Assyrianimperialism in the region set in motion a chain of events that would eventually make the poorer, more remote, and more religiously conservative kingdom of Judah the belated center of the cultic and national hopes of all Israel.
As noted by a reviewer on Salon.com[5] the approach and conclusions of The Bible Unearthed are not particularly new. Ze'ev Herzog, professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, wrote a cover story for Haaretz in 1999 in which he reached similar conclusions following the same methodology; Herzog noted also that some of these findings have been accepted by the majority of biblical scholars and archaeologists for years and even decades, even though they have only recently begun to make a dent in the awareness of the general public.[5]
Content
Early biblical archaeology was conducted with the presumption that the Bible must be true, finds only being considered as illustrations for the biblical narrative, and interpreting evidence to fit the Bible. Some archaeologists such as
Ancestors and anachronisms
The Bible Unearthed begins by considering what it terms the 'preamble' of the Bible—the Book of Genesis—and its relationship to archaeological evidence for the context in which its narratives are set. Archaeological discoveries about society and culture in the ancient Near East lead the authors to point out a number of anachronisms, suggestive that the narratives were actually set down in the 9th–7th centuries BCE:[9]
- Aramaeans are frequently mentioned, but no ancient text mentions them until around 1100 BCE, and they only begin to dominate Israel's northern borders after the 9th century BCE.[10]
- The text describes the early origin of the neighbouring kingdom of Edom, but Assyrian records show that Edom only came into existence after the conquest of the region by Assyria in the late 8th century BCE; before then it was without functioning kings, was not a distinct state, and archaeological evidence shows that the territory was only sparsely populated.[11]
- The
- The land of Goshen has a name that comes from an Arabic group who dominated the Nile Delta only in the 6th and 5th centuries,[15] given as the place and period of the Exodus in Genesis 45:9–10, placing the Exodus incongruently nearly a millennium after its biblical timeline.
- The Egyptian Pharaoh is portrayed as fearing invasion from the east, even though Egypt's territory stretched to the northern parts of Canaan, with its main threat consequently being from the north, until the 7th century[16]
The book comments that this corresponds with the
Origin of the Israelites
The book remarks that, despite modern archaeological investigations and the meticulous ancient Egyptian records from the period of Ramesses II, also known as Ozymandias (13th century B.C.), there is an obvious lack of any archaeological evidence for the migration of a band of Semitic people across the Sinai Peninsula,[19] except for the Hyksos. Although the Hyksos are in some ways a good match, their main centre being at Avaris (later renamed 'Pi-Ramesses'), in the heart of the region corresponding to the 'land of Goshen', and Manetho later wrote that the Hyksos eventually founded the Temple in Jerusalem,[20] it throws up other problems, as the Hyksos became not slaves but rulers, and they were chased away rather than chased to bring them back.[20] Nevertheless, the book posits that the exodus narrative perhaps evolved from vague memories of the Hyksos expulsion, spun to encourage resistance to the 7th century domination of Judah by Egypt.[21]
Finkelstein and Silberman argue that instead of the Israelites conquering Canaan after the Exodus (as suggested by the
The authors take issue with the
David and Solomon or the Omrides?
Although the
There are remains of once grand cities at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer, with archeological evidence showing that they suffered violent destruction.[34] This destruction once was attributed to the 10th century BCE campaigns by Shishak, these cities therefore being ascribed to David and Solomon as proof of the Bible's account of them,[35] but the destruction layers have since been redated to the late 9th century BCE campaign of Hazael, and the cities to the time of the Omride kings.[35]
The
Hezekiah and monolatry
The Book of Kings, as it stands today, seems to suggest that the religion of Israel and Judah was primarily monotheistic, with one or two wayward kings (such as the Omrides) who tried to introduce Canaanite polytheism, the people occasionally joining in this 'apostasy' from monotheism, but a close reading and the archaeological record reveals that the opposite was true.
The world changed for Judah when the kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 720 BCE. Judah was flooded with refugees; the population of Israel had been nine times larger than that of Judah, so many small Judean villages suddenly became cities,[42] archaeology evidencing that the population of Jerusalem itself expanded by about 15-fold, turning it from a small hilltown into a large city.[43] The social and religious struggles, which obviously would occur with such a large influx of population, are not mentioned by the Bible. Finkelstein and Silberman argue that the priests of Jerusalem began to promote Yahweh-based monolatry,[44] aligning themselves with king Hezekiah's anti-Assyrian views, perhaps because they believed that Assyrian domination of Israel had caused social injustice, or perhaps because they just wanted to gain economic and/or political control over the newly wealthy countryside;[45] Hezekiah advanced their agenda, banning the worship of deities other than Yahweh, destroying the hilltop shrines, actions which The Bible Unearthed views as preparation for rebelling against Assyria.
By 701 BCE, the Assyrians had captured most of Judah, and
The Bible claims that nearly 200,000 men in the army besieging Jerusalem were slaughtered one night by an
Hezekiah predeceased Sennacherib, dying just a couple of years after the siege. His successor (and son), Manasseh, reversed the religious changes, re-introducing religious pluralism; Finkelstein and Silberman suggest that this may have been an attempt to gain co-operation from village elders and clans, so that he would not need so much centralised administration, and could therefore allow the countryside to return to economic autonomy.[50] According to the archaeology there must have been a deliberate expansion of agriculture into the Judean desert,[51] and the rich finds from this period suggest that much profit was gained from Judah's now peaceful position in the middle of many of the caravan routes between Assyria's allies;[51] the state certainly increased its administration of trade to levels that far exceed those before.[52]
Hezekiah's actions had given away the gold and silver from the Jerusalem Temple,[53] impoverished his state, lost him his own daughters and concubines,[49] and reduced his territory to a small region around Jerusalem, most of the people elsewhere in Judah being deported; Manasseh had brought peace and prosperity back to the country,[54] but because the Book of Kings bases its narrative on theological prejudice, it condemns him as the most sinful monarch ever to rule Judah and hails instead Hezekiah as the great king.[55] The Bible Unearthed suggests that the priesthood and populace outside Jerusalem may well have held the opposite opinion—that Hezekiah's imposition of monolatry was blasphemous, and the disasters that befell the country during his reign had been punishment from the gods.[56]
Josiah and the birth of the Bible
As recorded in the Book of Kings, Manasseh's grandson,
The sudden collapse of the Assyrian Empire in the last decades of the 7th century BCE offered an opportunity for Josiah to expand Judah's territory into the former kingdom of Israel, abandoned by the Assyrians.[58] It was now that the author of Deuteronomy, working in Josiah's court, reworked older legends, texts, and histories into a single national history;[59] with the message that it had been the non-Deuteronomic practices of the Israelites that had led to their downfalls, and implied that Joshua, as well as David in some respects, was a foreshadowing of what Josiah could achieve.[60]
Archaeology suggests that Josiah was initially successful, extending his territory northwards towards
With Josiah's death Egypt became suzerain over Judah. The new king, Egypt's vassal ruler, undid Josiah's changes, restoring the former shrines and returning the country once again to religious pluralism. But when the Babylonian faction eventually won the Assyrian civil war, they set out to forcibly retake the former Assyrian tributaries. Judah, as a loyal Egyptian vassal-state, resisted, with disastrous consequences: the Babylonians plundered Jerusalem in 597 BCE and imposed their own vassal king; these events are described in the Bible and confirmed, with variations, in the Babylonian Chronicle.[64] A few years later, the king of Judah rebelled against his Babylonian masters, and the Babylonians returned to destroy all the cities in Judah, burning Jerusalem to the ground in 587 BCE.[65]
In 539 BCE, the
The conflict between the returnees and those who had always been in Judah evidently required resolution; the two groups had to be reintegrated. Finkelstein and Silberman argue that the Deuteronomic law advanced by parts of the deported elite (the ancestors of the returnees),
Reception
The Bible Unearthed was well received by some biblical scholars and archaeologists and critically by others. Baruch Halpern, professor of Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University and leader of the archaeological digs at Megiddo for many years, called it "the boldest and most exhilarating synthesis of Bible and archaeology in fifty years", despite disagreeing with Finkelstein on the historicity of the United Monarchy.[73] Jonathan Kirsch, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called it "a brutally honest assessment of what archeology can and cannot tell us about the historical accuracy of the Bible", which embraces the spirit of modern archaeology by approaching the Bible "as an artifact to be studied and evaluated rather than a work of divine inspiration that must be embraced as a matter of true belief".[74] Phyllis Trible, professor of biblical studies at Wake Forest University, concluded her review in The New York Times as follows:
Finkelstein and Silberman have themselves written a provocative book that bears the marks of a detective story. In juxtaposing the biblical record and archaeological data, they work with tantalizing fragments of a distant past. Assembling clues to argue their thesis requires bold imagination and disciplined research. The Bible Unearthed exhibits both in abundance. Imagination invariably exceeds the evidence; research makes plausible the reconstruction. Fortunately, the book does not achieve its goal: "to attempt to separate history from legend." It is better than that, for it shows how intertwined they are. What actually happened and what a people thought happened belong to a single historical process. That understanding leads to a sobering thought. Stories of exodus from oppression and conquest of land, stories of exile and return and stories of triumphal vision are eerily contemporary. If history is written for the present, are we doomed to repeat the past?[75]
A review of the book by fellow archaeologist William G. Dever was published in the Biblical Archaeology Review and subsequently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. At the outset of the review, Dever described the book as a "convoluted story", writing that "This clever, trendy work may deceive lay readers".[76] What proceeded was heated exchanges between Dever and Finkelstein. Dever's review noted that the book had many strengths, notably archaeology's potential for re-writing the history of "Ancient Israel", but complained that it misrepresented his own views and concluded by characterizing Finkelstein as "idiosyncratic and doctrinaire". Finkelstein's reaction was to call Dever a "jealous academic parasite," and the debate quickly degenerated from that point.[77]
Evangelical Christian biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen was critical, writing that "[A] careful critical perusal of this work—which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings—reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of the subject", and "Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read."[78] Another evangelical, Richard Hess, also being critical, wrote that "The authors always present their interpretation of the archaeological data but do not mention or interact with contemporary alternative approaches. Thus the book is ideologically driven and controlled."[79]
The book became a bestseller within its field. In February 2009,
Several books were published in response to The Bible Unearthed:
- Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? by William G. Dever;
- David's Secrets Demons (2004) by Baruch Halpern;
- On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2006) by Kenneth Kitchen.
See also
References
- .
- ^ a b Goodreads. "Editions of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts". Goodreads. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
- ISBN 978-0-684-86912-4. Retrieved January 8, 2024 – via Internet Archive. Publishers Weekly review on Internet Archive's description page)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: postscript (link - ^ Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher. "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts". The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved October 5, 2023.
- ^ a b Miller, Laura (7 February 2001). "King David was a nebbish". Salon.com. Archived from the original on 10 October 2008.
- ^ a b On the Reliability of the Old Testament, by Kenneth Kitchen
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 22.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, Section "History or Not History" of the Introduction
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 38.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 39.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 40.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 37.
- ^ Hasson, Nir (Jan 17, 2014). "Hump stump solved: Camels arrived in region much later than biblical reference". Haaretz. Retrieved 30 January 2014.
- S2CID 44282748. Retrieved 16 February 2014.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 66–67.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 67.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 36.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 45.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 62–63.
- ^ a b The Bible Unearthed, p. 55.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 69.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 118.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 107.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 111–113.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 91.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 81–82.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 82.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 134.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 176.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 133.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 142.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 230.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 129.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 135–139
- ^ a b The Bible Unearthed, p. 141–142
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 178–180.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 182.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 194.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 194–195.
- ^ a b The Bible Unearthed, p. 241–242.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 242.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 245.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 243.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 247.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 248.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 257.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 260–262.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 259.
- ^ a b "Taylor Prism", column 3, rows 37–49.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 265.
- ^ a b The Bible Unearthed, p. 266.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 269–270.
- ^ 2 Kings 18:15–16
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 271.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 270.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 264.
- ^ a b The Bible Unearthed, p. 281.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 282–283.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 283–284.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 284.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 288–289.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 290.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 291.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 293.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 294.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 305.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 299.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 308.
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 313.
- ^ Ezra 7:25
- ^ The Bible Unearthed, p. 310.
- ^ Ezra 7:12
- ^ "Icarus Films: The Bible Unearthed".
- ^ Kirsch, Jonathan. "Digging for the Historical Truths of the Bible", Los Angeles Times, 6 January 2001.
- ^ Trible, Phyllis. "God's Ghostwriters", The New York Times, 4 February 2001.
- ^ W.G. Dever, "Excavating the Hebrew Bible, or Buying it Again?", BASOR (2001), pp. 67-77.
- ^ Shanks, Hershel. "In This Corner: William Dever and Israel Finkelstein Debate the Early History of Israel", Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec 2004.
- ^ Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. On the reliability of the Old Testament, p. 464-465. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003.
- ^ Hess, Richard. Review of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of It’s Sacred Text, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman.
- ^ Ranking, Amazon.com, as of 28 February 2009.
- ^ "Icarus Films".
Bibliography
- ISBN 0-684-86912-8 at Internet Archive