Current Biblical Archaeology

[Minimalist]

Just finished watching an episode of "Science of the Bible" on National Geographic dealing with the Exodus.

After their usual screwing around looking for scientific answers about how these things might have happened they concluded with a realistic summary of current science.

" There is not a single artifact or shred of evidence that the Exodus ever happened.

[archteryx]

there is evidence saying that the egyptians never needed slaves as they had more than enough workers to build what they needed built, thusly no israelites as slaves. So i can see why they have not found any proof of the exodus.

[Minimalist]

Thank you for pointing that out.

Egypt had always used a system of corvee labor for public works projects as a way to keep the population busy while the Nile was flooding and the farmers could not work in the fields.

Unlike the Romans who used proceeds from the sale of slaves to cover the costs of their wars the Egyptians utilized the far more ancient system for dealing with captives...they murdered them and cut off their hands to keep count of casualties. The Egyptians were industrious bureaucrats!

In fact, in Finklestein's first book he pointed out that some of the later Israelite memories of "bondage" in Egypt probably resulted from the habit of Canaanites moving to the Delta during times of famine in Canaan which was rainfall dependent for its water as opposed to Egypt.

[Minimalist]

Dever, far more interested in religion than Finkelstein (due, doubtless to his early theological career) nonetheless takes issue with the idea that the Hebrews were "monotheistic" from the beginning. In his view, the reliance on Yahweh alone is a much later adaptation, after the Babylonian exile.

Religious beliefs can only be inferred from material culture remains, but cultic practices are often clear. I have mentioned above the only indisputable early Israelite cult installation that we know, Mazar's "Bull Site" in the tribal territory of Manasseh, the bronze bull obviously an El icon. Beginning with the Monarchy, however, we have relatively numerous private and public shrines and even local temples (not to mention the Jerusalem Temple, for which there is ample indirect evidence from archaeology)

(But no "direct evidence!...my note.)

Today we also have a whole range of cultic paraphernalia attested by archaeology--altars, offering stands, and vessels, model temples, female (Asherah) fertility figurines, texts with blessing formulae, and so on--as well as evidence for an established priestly class. Yet, despite the development of religion, and no doubt about the existence of a state cult, there are strong continuities going back to Iron I and even to the Canaanite era.

The old male gods El and Ba'al, along with Asherah the mother Goddess, live on in Monarchial Israel, attested not only as shadowy figures in biblical texts but also as vibrant deities witnessed in abundant archaeological remains. The name "El" and several El-epithets occur significantly in some of the oldest textual traditions in the Hebrew Bible, as scholars have long known.

So, it would appear that even during their alleged United Monarchy the Israelites were far from being monotheistic. In fact, in arguing cultural "continuity" from the collapsed Canaanite cultures of the Late Bronze Age, Dever asserts that the people continued to do what they had always done and worshipped the gods they had always worshipped.

Here's a story you won't hear in Sunday School!

[Minimalist]

Dever works towards his conclusion:

The miraculous, larger-than-life story of the Exodus as it now stands in the bibile cannot be corroborated as factual history. Nor do we even need to presume such a series of events in a far off foreign land, given archaeology's recent documentation of the rise of early Israel within Canaan. To put it simply, there is no longer a place or a need for the Exodus as a historical explanation for the origins of Israel. The story, however dramatic, however central to the self-identification of later biblical Israel - or even our own identity in the West - is best regarded as a myth. In this case, it is just the sort of origin myth that has characterized many other peoples past and present.

As a sop to the fundamentalists (remember, he was once a preacher himself) he throws out the possibility that there was some small group which may have trekked across the desert and become part of the southern nomadic tribes which were later scooped up into Judah and had their folktales magnified and exaggerated by later writers.

Dever should know that such a view will never satisfy them.

[Minimalist]

Looks like the only person who thinks Exodus was real is arch. Even the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. doesn't buy the story.



http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShAr ... mNo=703675

Could it be that there was no mass migration then? That hired workers, or slaves, simply revolted against their Egyptian owners and, led by a charismatic local figure, escaped from the labor farm? Maybe the owners summoned the police and they chased after the fugitives in a few chariots drawn by horses, the runaways crossed a dry riverbed on foot, and luckily enough a flash flood - such things happen in deserts - drowned their pursuers?

Maybe the fugitives knew that the route along the coast was patrolled by Egyptian troops, and they proceeded into the desert. Most probably they lost their way. The leader who incited them to the uprising had to provide food and shelter, and in particular, an aim for their wanderings. Hungry and thirsty himself, he succumbed to a vision. When he awakes, he has a solution: He tells them a story about an invisible god, who forbids worshiping of his image, and about a promised land that is waiting for them somewhere. To cement his authority he produces a spectacle on a mountain, descending with tablets inscribed (remember the alphabet!) with the words of God. He smashes the tablets to smithereens, but produces a copy. Now we will never know what the origin is of the original tablets.

[Guest]

there is evidence saying that the egyptians never needed slaves as they had more than enough workers to build what they needed built, thusly no israelites as slaves

that is like saying the south never needed slaves as they ad enough workers to do the work themselves. thus no black personwas ever a slave.

what a illogical leap to a conclusion that is just out to lunch.

just because people deny something, doesn't mean it didn't happen. i don't care how scholarly they are, if one does not accept the evidence at hand then they will come to the wrong conclusion every time.

if they do not accept the truth, then there is nothing anyone can do as the disbeliever continues to disbelieve. case in point:

Oh, horseshit. You're getting desperate in your futile efforts to protect any shred of historical reliability that your precious bible may have had but no longer does.

just because minimalist doesn't believe it, does it mean that it isn't true. just because minimalist doesn't accept facts and evidence does it mean that those items are false.

[Minimalist]

that is like saying the south never needed slaves as they ad enough workers to do the work themselves. thus no black personwas ever a slave.

As a matter of fact, the South had no where near sufficient labor to operate the plantation system on a profitable level. Had the Civil War been postponed for another generation the Industrial Revolution would most likely have solved the slavery question without fighting and the 100 years of racial animosity which followed. Alas, such was not to be but don't go inventing non-existent Southerners.

just because minimalist doesn't believe it, does it mean that it isn't true. just because minimalist doesn't accept facts and evidence does it mean that those items are false.

It's starting to look like the only one who hasn't gotten the message yet is you.

[Guest]

"william f. albright once defined Biblical archaeology as covering all the lands mentioned inthe Bible, from india to spain and from southern russia to south arabia and...the whole history of those lands from about 10,000 years ago,or even earlier, to the present time." from 'the Old Testament and the Archaeologist' by H. Darrel Lance, pg.94.

it really must be a lonely existence for minimalist or i have pointed out too many truths, for him to sit at his computer and wait till i post just so he can cover my name from appearing on the list.

it is also kind of sad that this one person gets to dominate the board so much without reproving. i see his name in almost every topic that isplaced on this website and no man can be an expert in all things, so he really must be putting up jibberish all the time.

[Minimalist]

Pretty much everything else that Albright once said has been discounted by modern archaeology. Why not this?

He's kind of like reading something that your great-grandfather wrote. You respect him because he was your great grandfather even though you know he was full of shit about almost everything!

[Guest]

i think i would take albright and his open mind over dever and finkelstein's bias and closed minds any day of the week.

[Minimalist]

Of course YOU would....

William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891–September 19/September 20, 1971) was an American Orientalist, pioneer archaeologist, biblical scholar, linguist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement. His student, George Ernest Wright, followed in his footsteps as the leader of that movement. Others among his students, notably Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, became international leaders in the study of the Bible and the ancient Near East, including Northwest Semitic epigraphy and paleography. Albright's religious background was evangelical American Methodist.

Albright was a complete bible-thumping phony, just like you. He was one of the worst purveyors of idea that everything that came out of the ground had to be linked to the friggin' bible. Fortunately, modern scholars have overcome that tendency and we are getting closer to the truth.

[Minimalist]

Time to move on to the book which started to deconstruct the bible as any sort of inherently reliable historical text and to put such evidence out there for the layman....Israel Finkelstein's The Bible Unearthed, from 2001.

In the prologue he lays out the goal:

This book aims to tell the story of ancient Israel and the birth of its sacred scriptures from a new, archaeological perspective. Our goal will be to attempt to separate history from legend. Through the evidence of recent discoveries, we will construct a new history of ancient Israel in which some of the the most famous events and personalities mentioned in the bible play unexpectedly different roles. Yet our purpose, ultimately, is not mere deconstruction. It is to share the most recent archaeological insights--still largely unknown outside scholarly circles--not only on when but also why the bible was written, and why it remains so powerful today.

Archaeology has made great strides since its humble beginnings. The bible-thumpers were delighted with their efforts in the early 20th century when divinity students masquerading as archaeologists dutifully proclaimed every rock they found as something that Moses or David or whoever had pissed on. Science progresses, however, to the discomfiture of those people who like things to be neat, tidy and wrong.

As the author says:

Not since ancient times has the world of the bible been so accessible and so thoroughly explored. Through archaeological excavations we now know what crops the Israelites and their neighbors grew, what they ate, how they built their cities and with whom they traded. Dozens of cities and towns mentioned in the bible have been identified and uncovered. Modern excavation methods and a wide range of laboratory tests have been used to date and analyze the civilizations of the ancient Israelites and their neighbors the Philistines, Phoenecians, Arameans, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. In a few cases, inscriptions and signet seals have been discovered that can be directly connected with individuals mentioned in the biblical text. But that is not to say that archaeology has proved the biblical narrative to be true in all of its details. Far from it: it is now evident that many events of biblical history did not take place in either the particular era or the manner described. Some of the most famous events in the bible clearly never happened at all.

Archaeology has helped us to reconstruct the history behind the bible, both on the level of great kings and kingdoms and in the modes of everyday life. And as we will explain in the following chapters, we now know that the early books of the bible and their famous stories of early Israelite history were first codified (and in key respects composed) at an identifiable place and time: Jerusalem in the seventh century BC.

[Guest]

ho hum finkelstein again... i don't take his word for anything though i would agree that many christians messed up their discoveries as they sought to prove their point without research and knowledge.

but i woulodn't agree with dever or finkelstein as their conclusions come from their unbelief not from their evidence.

[Minimalist]

Fortunately, a lot of people around here are more open-minded than you.