Archaeologica.org

Minimalist wrote:
Fish would have been a delicacy in land-locked Jerusalem and then, as now, the upper classes liked to flaunt their wealth!

In the absence of refrigeration I doubt land-locked Jewrusalites – wealthy or otherwise – ever ate fresh sea fish!
Dried sea fish is about the only kind of sea fish that would reach Jewrusalem, imo.

Agreed. I doubt there is any way for archaeologists to tell the difference between fresh and dried fish bones 3 millenia later.

One of the best and most comprehensive discussions of how modern archaeology has dismissed the bible as any sort of history.

http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Referen ... rpers).htm

Thus there was no migration from Mesopotamia, no sojourn in Egypt, and no exodus. There was no conquest upon the Israelites' return and, for that matter, no peaceful infiltration such as the one advanced by Yohanan Aharoni. Rather than conquerors, the Hebrews were a native people who had never left in the first place.

What do you think Devers would say about this article Min? Some he may agree with but when he spends four chapters of his book criticizing these revisionist histories, it reminds me that are many ways to interpret evidence.

One of Dever's biggest complaints and I read through all 90 pages of his rant, was their refusal to rely on archaeology and he has a point on that...to a point. Part of the problem is that Dever is replying to Davies, "In Search of Ancient Israel" which was written before the Tel Dan Stele was found. There are questions about the translation of Tel Dan but for now the general consensus is that it says House of David.

But Dever agrees with Finkelstein on the major questions such as the fact that the patriarchal age never happened, nor the Exodus, nor the Conquest. But, why should I paraphrase him. In an article in BAR Dever states....

Then, about 15 years ago, in my archaeological work I began to write about ancient Israel. Originally I wrote to frustrate the Biblical minimalists; then I became one of them, more or less. The call of Abraham, the Promise of the Land, the migration to Canaan, the descent into Egypt, the Exodus, Moses and monotheism, the Law at Sinai, divine kingship—archaeology throws all of these into great doubt. My long experience in Israel and my growing uncertainty about the historicity of the Bible meant that was the end for me.

Shanks: Well, then your scholarship did destroy your faith?

Dever: Absolutely.

Unfortunately for Dever, books he wrote a while back remain in print.

http://www.biblereview.org/bswb_BAR/bswbba3302f3.html

Even when Dever wrote his 'rant' against revisionists and minimalists ("What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It", 2001), he was already leaning toward the idea, the exodus and patriarchs were fictionalized accounts and was holding out little hope they would be found in the archaeological record, but he did believe in the united kingdom whatever scope it maintained.

My conjecture is and always has been, they were looking for Moses and the conquest in the wrong time period, but I base that contention only on the textual evidence. I can not prove it apart from the Biblical texts themselves.

Precisely. In his latest work, Did God Have A Wife, 2005, he writes:

..... These texts simply cannot be picked up and read in a straightforward manner as though they constitute objective factual history in the modern sense, based on contemporary eyewitness reports. The former books (at least Genesis through Numbers) are by late, anonymous, composite "authors" and editors, produced at least 500 years after a Moses would have lived. And the Book of Deuteronomy, all about Moses, is almost certainly a late monarchial theological homily put into the mouth of a Moses and then attached to both the Pentateuch (making it five books) and the other "historical" works.

This article

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/jewsinegypt.htm

deals with Jews in Egypt throughout history and, except for one glaring mistake about the archaeology, is fairly presented.

Although Jewish refugees probably fled to Egypt after the Babylonian conquest of Palestine (Jer 42:14–22) by Nebuchadnezzar when they were dispersed throughout the known world, we really have no good evidence of such from archaeology in Egypt.

Archaeologists have found evidence of a Jewish Temple near Aswan on the Island of Elephantine which precedes the Babylonian conquest.

The Elephantine Papyri is a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts dating from the fifth century BCE. They come from a Jewish community at Elephantine, the island in the Nile at the border of Nubia, which was probably founded as a military installation in about 650 BCE during Manasseh's reign to assist Pharaoh Psammetichus I in his Nubian campaign. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Syene (Aswan). Hundreds of these Elephantine papyri, written in hieratic and Demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Coptic, span a period of 2000 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine_papyri

Not to get too technical but 650 BC is roughly when Dever and Finkelstein propose the bible to have been first composed. Davies and Thompson, among others, hold out for a much later date, after the return from the Exile in Babylon but even I can see a basic logical inconsistency in the argument in Davies' position on the matter.

So, yeah, as I've told Arch many times, Archaeology has rendered its verdict and if he wants to overturn it he should get off his ass and go help the bible-thumpers dig for new artifacts.

Masada under attack....again.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/06/ ... isited.php

Along with other bodies found at Masada, the three were recognized as Jewish heroes by Israel's government in 1969 and given a state burial, complete with Israeli soldiers carrying flag-draped coffins.

But Israel might have mistakenly bestowed that posthumous honor on three Romans, according to a paper in the June issue of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology by anthropologist Joe Zias and forensics expert Azriel Gorski.

The remains of the three became a key part of the site's story when Masada was excavated in the 1960s. Yigael Yadin, the renowned Israeli archeologist in charge of the dig, thought they illustrated the historical account of Zealot men killing their wives and children and then themselves before the Roman legionnaires breached Masada's defenses.

The kind of misleading headline which will send the Archies of the world into fits of rapturous joy!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 03,00.html

Tablet aids Old Testament's credibility

However, the story merely points out that....

The cuneiform inscription in a tablet dating from 595BC has been deciphered for the first time - revealing a reference to an official at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, that proves the historical existence of a figure mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.

Which is from a well-documented portion of history, after literacy had developed.

Nonetheless, the Archie-types will promptly pronounce "Noah" 'real,' without reading the punch line for the story....

On hearing of the discovery yesterday (Tuesday), Geza Vermes, the eminent emeritus professor of Jewish studies at the University of Oxford, said that such a discovery revealed that "the Biblical story is not altogether invented".

Thus there was no migration from Mesopotamia, no sojourn in Egypt, and no exodus. There was no conquest upon the Israelites' return and, for that matter, no peaceful infiltration such as the one advanced by Yohanan Aharoni. Rather than conquerors, the Hebrews were a native people who had never left in the first place.[quote]

Wanna try telling that to the Palastinians?[/u][/code][/list][/url][/quote]

As an Israeli contributor on another board pointed out, all of these people derive from the same basic stock: Canaanite. Various cultures were overlaid onto those people; Jewish, Hellenistic, Roman, Christian, Muslim, etc. but aside from the Assyrian relocation in the Northern Kingdom in the 8th century BC, there was never a mass genocide (until the Great Revolt in 66 and the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135.) and even those was aimed at the Jews, not the rest of the population. The tendency for conquerors was to remove the ruling class and replace it with themselves. Even in the Assyrian case it is not likely that they bothered removing the peasants who were working the land. What would be the point in that? Farms had to be tended.

What about the exile of 587 b.c.? Some years before Nebuchedezzar came and exiled a large number of the Hewbrew "elite" and took them back to Babylon. He forced a huge tribute on the King (I believe it was Hezekiah). After his death, the tribute stopped and Nebuchedezzar returned, only this time Jerusalem was destroyed and those people of the land who did not die were carried into a forced slavery. Certainly not everyone was removed, but the area quickly lost its Jewish identity. Either those who remained renounced Judaism or they were quickly replaced by other local peoples.

Cyrus the Great of Persia allowed them to return (and not all did). Unlike the exiles from the Northern Kingdom who were replaced by people from other parts of the Assyrian empire.

I did not know until only recently that it was not until 104 BC, under the Hasmonean king, John Hyrcanus, that Jerusalem finally conquered Galilee and Idumaea and forcibly converted the inhabitants to Judaism. So the "Jews" of those other regions (throw in Samaria, for good measure) were sword-point conversions and this accounts for a lot of the animosity between them and the Jerusalem Jews.

Oh, and the last king of Jerusalem before the Babylonian attack was Jehoiachin (or something like that.) Hezekiah was the one who built the city up into something of a regional commmercial power in the 8th century and also greatly expanded the city.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/sep/13/4


Interesting idea....if it works.

Powerful x-ray to unravel fragile Dead Sea scrolls