Review Article
Excavating the Hebrew Bible,
or Burying It Again?
WILLIAM G. DEVER
Department of Near Eastern Studies
503 Franklin Building
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision
of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts, by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher
Silberman. New York: Free Press, 2001. xii + 385
pp., 29 ˜gures, 7 tables. Cloth. $26.00.
Everything in this convoluted story of a real “an-
cient Israel” that the authors claim to have unearthed
from their rereading of the Hebrew Bible in the light
of archaeology can be reduced to three propositions,
which I would formulate as follows. (1) The story
of “Biblical Israel” found in the Deuteronomistic
history—the books of Joshua through Kings—is
“survival” literature, produced by orthodox, nation-
alist reform parties during the Assyrian crisis in the
brief reign of Josiah, late in Judah’s history. The
entire biblical tradition of ancient Israel, from the
so-called Patriarchal era to the fall of Jerusalem, is
thus more myth than history. (2) Recent archaeolog-
ical discoveries, however, have dispelled this myth,
revealing an Israel dramatically at odds with the
tendentious biblical portrait, especially a dominant
northern kingdom, obscured by the biblical biases,
the real “Israel.” (3) Tiny Judah’s version of the lit-
erary tradition in the Hebrew Bible and of “ancient
Israel,” while neither representative nor historically
reliable, nevertheless came to constitute a Scripture
that is still viable since actual events do not matter
all that much. All three propositions are dubious, if
not actually mistaken.
Nevertheless, The Bible Unearthed ’s opening
blurb hails it triumphantly as providing “for the ˜rst
time the true history of ancient Israel as revealed
through recent archaeological discoveries.” But what
we actually have in Finkelstein and Silberman’s new
67
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book is not all that revolutionary, even when it is
correct. This clever, trendy work may deceive lay
readers, and even some professional biblical schol-
ars, who do not happen to know the crucial archae-
ological data upon which the authors’ sweeping
arguments ultimately rest. Nor will they necessarily
see through the authors’ ideological agenda. The lat-
ter is what is really “unearthed” here, even though it
is not easily visible.
ON THE POSITIVE SIDE
Let me begin, however, with a few words of
appreciation for the positive contributions of the
authors. (1) This is without doubt a timely and po-
tentially signi˜cant book, appearing as it does at a
time when the essential historicity of the Hebrew Bi-
ble is being widely questioned by “revisionist” bibli-
cal scholars, and lay people are being bombarded by
stories in the media reporting that the very notion of
an “ancient Israel” is only a late, literary construct.1
Bible-bashing is much in vogue at the moment (most
of it, however, pseudo-sophisticated), and extremists
threaten to prevail. Finkelstein and Silberman, to
their credit, are willing to tackle the big issue: is there
any history in the Hebrew Bible?
1 The revisionist literature has burgeoned in the last
decade, but orientation and full references will be found
in Dever 1995a; 1998a; 1999; 2000; 2001. For recent
media coverage, see the sensationalist story in The New
York Times, “The Bible, as History, Flunks New Archaeo-
logical Tests” (Niebuhr 2000); and compare that with the
sober, carefully documented account in Science magazine
(Balter 2000).
68 WILLIAM G. DEVER
(2) The authors have an ambitious and admira-
ble goal, that of producing a revised but modest,
middle-of-the-road history of ancient Israel and its
religions, based on what are now the primary data,
recent archaeological discoveries. Here, too, their
eˆorts are salutary. Indeed, theirs is the ˜rst serious
eˆort of archaeologists to produce an archaeologi-
cally based “history of ancient Israel.”2
(3) The authors, unlike the biblical revisionists,
actually approach the biblical text with respect, and
they make an earnest eˆort to salvage some of its
meaning for the sensitive modern reader, religious
or secular.
(4) The authors correctly recognize that the task
of rewriting Israel’s history has become so formida-
ble that it now requires teamwork.
(5) The book is cleverly structured, contrasting
the conventional biblical portrait of “ancient Israel”
at every point with the picture now derived from the
archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Ages. And it is
exceptionally well written, re˘ecting, no doubt, the
complementary skills of its authors.
(6) Finally the authors’ reconstruction of the so-
called Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Conquest horizons
(or Israel’s prehistory), while somewhat minimalist
by conventional standards, is in line with the best of
today’s scholarship.
SOME GENERAL MISGIVINGS
Having said all this, I am disappointed with the
authors’ overall results; and, more importantly, I
have serious doubts about some of their methods.
(1) The authors’ conception of archaeology as a
discipline seems inchoate, even though they assume
throughout that it is the archaeological data that are
now de˜nitive. This may be in part because they
never explain what archaeology is, or how it can
contribute to history writing in general and to his-
torically based biblical studies in particular. No-
where is the fundamental historiographical issue
confronted, except obliquely. How do “primary”
and “secondary” sources complement each other?
Above all, what is “history”; what do we want; and
what is possible? Without ever saying why or how,
the authors simply assume that archaeology contrib-
utes to a diˆerent and superior (i.e., more “factual”)
2 I do not consider such works as Lemche 1998 or
Thompson 1999 real “histories,” but as little more than
tendentious prolegomena.
BASOR 322
understanding of the biblical texts and history. But
does it? And if so, how? In particular, the authors’
statement that “archaeological insights” can answer
the question of “not only when, but also why the
Bible was written” (p. 3; italics theirs) seems theo-
logically naive to me. The “why?” of Scripture is
precisely the question that archaeology cannot an-
swer and should not even attempt to address.3 Else-
where, Finkelstein (1998) has complained about
“Bible archaeologists” (although they have been
extinct for a generation). Is he now becoming one?
(2) Next, there is the issue of academic balance.
Interdisciplinary cooperation in scholarship is laud-
able, and all too rare. But the participants must have
a home academic discipline; and they should repre-
sent the mainstream there if there is to be any pro-
ductive dialogue. The pertinent facts here are these.
Finkelstein, though a prominent archaeologist and
proli˜c author, is idiosyncratic, representing neither
the mainstream of Israeli nor American archaeo-
logical scholarship. On many of the crucial issues
discussed in the present work (such as chronology;
below), he stands virtually alone.4 Finkelstein’s
work re˘ects his lack of formal training in biblical
studies.
Silberman is likewise a professional, someone
with considerable archaeological experience in Is-
rael; an intellectual historian with several provoca-
tive publications on Levantine archaeology to his
credit (1982; 1993; 1995; 1997; 1999); and an artic-
ulate and successful popular writer. Yet Silberman is
obviously not a practicing academic archaeologist,
much less a biblical scholar. In short, this is an in-
teresting team; but somehow it doesn’t quite add up.
(3) The authors’ approach to what are universally
recognized as thorny issues is often distressingly
simplistic. On the one hand, they assay to overturn
2,000 years of traditional biblical interpretation in
Synagogue and Church; to completely rewrite the
history of ancient Israel and its religions; and to
“salvage” the biblical world view and its fundamen-
tal contribution to the Western cultural tradition. Yet
on the other hand, if the authors are correct in their
evaluation of the literary traditions in the Hebrew
3 This is a point that I have argued for 30 years, most
recently in Dever 1997a; 1997b.
4 For an exposition of Finkelstein’s views, see 1996b;
1998. For thorough refutations of his “low chronology,”
however, see for instance Dever 1997c; Mazar 1997; 1999;
Zarzeki-Peleg 1997; and Ben-Tor and Ben-Ami 1998.
2001 EXCAVATING THE HEBREW BIBLE
Bible, the Bible is largely ˜ctitious—in eˆect a lit-
erary hoax that has fooled nearly everyone.5 The
theological implications of this presumption (for
that is what it is) are enormous; but the authors seem
unaware of them. Even secularists need to be sensi-
tive to theological issues, especially when it is they
who precipitate the controversy.
(4) Fundamentally, this work reads more like an
ideological manifesto than a work of sober, sus-
tained assessment of current scholarship on the
critical issues at stake. Finkelstein represents the
newly fashionable “post-Zionist” historiographical
school in Israel. This is an intellectual position that
is not necessarily objectionable per se, but certainly
one that is up for critical evaluation, and pertinent
to the discussion here.6 For him and a few other ar-
chaeological revisionists, the popular concept of
“ancient Israel” is anachronistic, no longer essential
or even helpful in de˜ning modern Israeli identity,
or in legitimizing Israel’s claims to the land. I agree;
but that is politics, not history. As for Silberman,
his published works have consistently been marked
by the typical postmodernist notion that all claims
to knowledge are simply “social constructs”; that
every reading of the traditional “meta-narrative” (in
the case of this book, the Hebrew Bible) is all about
politics.7 Archaeologists, biblical scholars, and their
5 I have made this observation before, which the revi-
sionists vehemently reject, but which I still think true. If
the biblical stories about “ancient Israel” were all deliber-
ately made up by pious Jews living in the Hellenistic era,
as the revisionists insist, is the Hebrew Bible not a fraud,
or, as Whitelam (1996) puts it, an “invention”? The most
recent example of “Bible-bashing” is Aichele and Pippin
1997. See further below.
6 On post-Zionism and the younger “new historians” in
Israel today, see Shavit 1997; Rubinstein 2000. As a sec-
ular historian, one who has sought for years to separate
archaeology and theology (Dever 1997a), I ˜nd myself in
broad agreement. But then I was never a Zionist historian
in the ˜rst place, contra Lemche 1997.
7 See several of Silberman’s books, such as 1982; 1993;
and cf. his more programmatic essays (1995; 1997). See
the exposure of Lemche and Thompson’s ideology in Pro-
van 1995; and cf. Thompson’s very revealing response
(1995). An even more damaging critique (cf. Thompson
1999) comes from his own European colleague Lester
Grabbe (2000b; again with a reply by Thompson 2000).
For postmodernism as the source of revisionism’s social-
constructivist ideology, see Dever 1998a; 2000; 2001. Fi-
nally, see the devastating critiques of postmodernism
generally in Gress 1998; Windschuttle 1997.
69
disciplines are thus now subject to “deconstruction,”
which basically means invalidating their positivist
claims to knowing “what it really was like in the
past.” In this view, as with Nietzsche a century or
more ago, “there are no facts, only interpretations.”
But everything is not “ideology.” As the British so-
cial philosopher Eric Hobsbawm has insisted, there
are facts; facts matter; and some facts matter a great
deal. Ancient Israel, despite the idealistic portrait in
the Hebrew Bible, is such a fact.
It is not necessarily that I am unsympathetic with
the authors’ minimalist ideological stance, for I have
produced a few such revisionist works of my own.8
But stating their ideological position up front would
have enhanced the authors’ potential contribution to
current scholarship by situating their own com-
mendable middle-of-the-road formulation within the
context of the raging debate over revisionism in
both biblical and archaeological circles. They miss
a great opportunity in not using the archaeological
data to address the historiographical challenge posed
by the Copenhagen and She¯eld schools. Today the
extremist and even nihilist views of these schools
constitute the major epistemological dilemma in
biblical interpretation, not the traditional schools
that the authors are so determined to attack. Often
Finkelstein and Silberman are beating a dead horse.
Their own agenda is indeed clever, but in my judg-
ment it distracts them from the larger issue that we
now confront. That is a pity, for whether they like
it or not, the publication of this provocative book
will propel its authors right into the thick of the
battle. (I predict that, although Finkelstein and Sil-
berman are moderates, the biblical revisionists will
try to coopt them and will then try to use their
archaeological exposition to vindicate their own
extremist positions.)
(5) Then there is the matter of sources, since that
is where all eˆorts at history writing stand or fall.
Once again, the authors never engage this issue di-
rectly. As their principal, almost exclusive textual
source for the settlement period and the monarchy,
they select the Deuteronomistic history. They date
the composition of Dtr. to the brief reign of Josiah
(639–609 B.C.) and see its epic history of Israel
8 Thus my minimalist treatment of the Patriarchal and
Mosaic eras in Dever 1977; 1997d; of the settlement
horizon in 1997e; 1998a; and of so-called early Israelite
monotheism in 1997f. Davies (2000: 118) even regards
me as one of the original minimalists.
 70 WILLIAM G. DEVER
entirely in the light of Josiah’s presumed ambition of
reconquering and reuniting the whole of Israel.9 In
fact, that is the leitmotif of their entire reconstruc-
tion. The Bible’s “history of Israel” is nearly all late,
pious propaganda (although not as late as the revi-
sionists would place it, in the Hellenistic era).10
That, of course, is where “Archaeology’s new vision
of ancient Israel” comes in.
There is nothing exceptional in this view of Dtr.
or of what I would call the “corrective factor” sup-
plied by archaeology. But Finkelstein and Silber-
man never seem to allow for any pre-Josianic strands
in the literary tradition (including the J strand of the
Pentateuch), that is, older sources both oral and writ-
ten. Theirs is a ˘at, static, lifeless portrait of what
must have been a long, dynamic, and extraordinarily
complex development of the literary traditions now
enshrined in the Hebrew Bible. The ˜nal editing
may have been quite late (certainly partly post-
exilic). But the point is that the compilers and edi-
tors of the Hebrew Bible often had earlier sources,
such as court records, annals, and even contempo-
rary eyewitness accounts.11 That point is essential,
for otherwise the ˜nal redactors would indeed have
simply “invented ancient Israel,” as Whitelam and
other revisionists charge.12 Finkelstein and Silber-
man go too far in compressing all of the Bible’s
epic history of Israel into a single, pivotal epoch.
9 See pp. 13, 14, 22, 23, 142– 44, 162–68, 175–95.
The authors also date the early formulation of the J and
P schools to the seventh century B.C. (p. 45), in line with
much current scholarship. The authors’ view here is not so
much wrong as it is overstated, i.e., it denies earlier
sources; see further below. The literature on the Deuteron-
omistic school is too extensive to cite, but see con-
veniently the essays in Knoppers and McConville 2000.
10 See, for example, Lemche 1993; Thompson 1999: 9,
34, 293–301; and especially the essays in Grabbe (ed.)
2001. Nevertheless the revisionists have never oˆered any
convincing evidence for their supposed Hellenistic date;
and their assertions have been decisively refuted by lead-
ing Hebraists such as Hurvitz (see 1997; 1999; 2000 and
references there) as well as by most mainstream biblical
scholars (cf. Halpern 1995; 1996; 2000).
11 This point has been made by many biblical scholars,
including even those usually considered minimalists; see
the essays by Barstad, Becking, Grabbe, and Niehr in
Grabbe (ed.) 1997. See further Halpern 1995; 1996; 2000;
Naåaman 1996; Japhet 1998; Williamson 1998.
12 Cf. Whitelam 1996; Lemche 1998; Thompson 1999.
For my own refutation of these extreme views, see Dever
1998a; 2000; and especially 2001.
long
BASOR 322
Their portrait of the Deuteronomistic school is too
simplistic. Yet if they are wrong in excluding the
possibility of any earlier sources, as I believe they
are, then much of their elaborate reconstruction of
Israel’s long history and religious experience, while
imaginative, is wrong.
(6) Finally, many of the shortcomings noted
above stem from the book’s principal fault: there is
little or no documentation for any of the authors’
sweeping claims. There are a few explanatory notes
at the bottom of some pages; but there is not a single
footnote, nor is there any citation of published data.
Very few other scholars are even mentioned by
name, and when they are, the reader has no way of
knowing whether the brief résumé of their views
does them justice (often it does not).13 However
fashionable nowadays (there are no facts), this is
simply not scholarship. Sound scholarship proceeds
on the basis of established and well-documented
facts, as well as honest and open dialogue, confront-
ing all sides of the issues. Even a “popular” book
owes its readers more documentation than The Bible
Unearthed provides. In this regard, the book bears
an uncanny resemblance to Thompson’s recent The
Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth
of Israel, which also has no documentation whatso-
ever.14 Yet Finkelstein and Silberman have evi-
dence, whereas Thompson does not. If they wish to
distance themselves from the more extreme biblical
13 There is an extensive list of recommended works, by
general subject matter, under the bibliography (pp. 356–
72). But even the most determined reader is not likely to
˜nd any of the direct evidence that the authors have uti-
lized for their arguments. Simply listing general works is
not proper documentation. There is a disturbing trend
among revisionists and various postmodern historiogra-
phers (if one can speak of such) to substitute assertions
and slogans for documented facts. Interestingly enough,
Lester Grabbe, often associated with the European biblical
revisionists, has written a scathing review (2000a) of
Thompson 1999, sharply criticizing him for his lack of
documentation. He charges that Thompson “has no con-
sistent method” (2000a: 127); and “has not oˆered one
shred of evidence” in arguing that Yehudim is a religious
designation (2000a: 130); and that his introduction is “a
piece of ideology and not history” (2000a: 136); precisely
as I have also argued in Dever 1998a. As for speci˜c mis-
representations, I have never espoused Gottwald’s “peas-
ant revolt” model (p. 337), as Finkelstein has charged
previously, and I have corrected him on this several times,
obviously to no avail.
14 See n. 13 above.
2001 EXCAVATING THE HEBREW BIBLE
revisionists, they must present that evidence, not
simply indulge themselves in the rhetoric that is all
too typical of revisionist discourse.
A FEW “CASE-STUDIES”
From the foregoing observations, it will be clear
where Finkelstein and Silberman’s “new vision of
Biblical history” (p. 22) is going. Chapters 1– 4
(pp. 27–122) typify the current skepticism about
the historicity of the biblical stories of the “Patri-
archs,” “Exodus,” and “Conquest.” This overview of
Israel’s prehistory may be disturbing to some lay
people; but in broad outline there is nothing radi-
cal about it or, for that matter, very new. Here we
are all minimalists.15 Yet however correct the au-
thors may be in their overall portrait of Israel’s
indigenous origins in Canaan, they gloss over sev-
eral crucial issues.
(1) Finkelstein rehashes here his now-familiar
notion that the majority of the Iron I hill country col-
onists were former local nomads, now in process of
becoming sedentary. That is, early Israel was not, as
I and others have maintained, a mixture of various
groups, including long-settled agriculturalists and
stock breeders, as well as perhaps urban refugees
from the lowland towns and cities at the end of the
Bronze Age.16 Yet what is Finkelstein’s evidence?
He presents none. By his own estimate elsewhere,
the 13th century B.C. population of the central hill
country numbered around 12,000, which by the 12th
century B.C., however, swelled to around 21,000.
Finkelstein’s own ˜gures refute him, since he ac-
cepts the usual estimate that approximately 10% of
ancient Palestine’s population had always been pas-
toral nomads. Using that same ˜gure, I have pointed
out elsewhere (Dever 1998) that if every single
nomadic family—some 1,200 individuals—settled
down in the late 13th/early 12th century B.C., and
they produced dozens of surviving children each,
there is still no way to account for the sudden pop-
ulation explosion in the hill country. There must
15 See n. 8 above. I surveyed the lack of any archaeo-
logical evidence to support a historical “Patriarchal era”
long ago (Dever 1977). Here Finkelstein and Silberman
are not really innovative—simply popularizing long-held
scholarly views—although they do that skillfully for the
most part. For a more authoritative treatment, however,
see Hendel and McCarter 1999.
16 See Finkelstein 1991; 1995; 1996a; and cf. Dever
1995b; 1997c; 1998a. Similar to my positivist reconstruc-
tions of early Israel is Stager 1998, also with references.
71
have been many other elements in the mix of “early
Israel.” Here Finkelstein’s explanation of Israelite
origins, crucial to his subsequent reconstruction, is
manifestly impossible.17 Yet the reader would never
know that, because there is no evidence presented,
on either side.
(2) The second problem involves a contradiction,
not just an omission. Of the 12th-century villages,
which he himself did so much to put on the map,
Finkelstein states: “In fact, dozens of settlements
that were linked with the early Israelites appeared in
the hillcountry around that time” (p. 57). Yet else-
where, especially since 1991, Finkelstein has vigor-
ously denied that we can identify the early highland
settlers as “Israelites,” reversing his original opinion
in The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement
(1988; cf. 1991; 1996a; 1996b). Has he changed his
mind again?
(3) Then there is the related and currently much-
debated question of recognizing “ethnic identity” in
general in material culture remains. Finkelstein has
vigorously attacked my generally positivist view,
even rejecting my cautious term “Proto-Israelite” for
the hill country settlers.18 In the present work, he
maintains that around 1200 B.C. “there was no sign
of . . . even the in˜ltration of a clearly de˜ned ethnic
group. Instead, it seemed to be a revolution in ‘life-
style’ ” (p. 107). But “lifestyle” is what ethnicity is
all about! We do have a new ethnic group in Iron I;
and we know that they were already styling them-
selves “Israelites” as shown by the well-known ref-
erence to “the Israelite peoples” on Merneptah’s
Victory Stele of ca. 1210 B.C.19 Finkelstein is simply
not consistent.
Chapter 5 and appendix D categorically deny that
the biblical portrait of a “united monarchy” under
Saul, David, and Solomon, followed by the division
of the kingdom, is historical. The biblical story is a
17 Finkelstein 1988: 332–35; elsewhere, however, Fin-
kelstein arrives at somewhat higher ˜gures, as much as
45,000 for the 12th century B.C. (p. 115).
18 See Finkelstein 1991; 1996a; and cf. Dever 1992;
1995b; 1998a; 1998b.
19 The biblical revisionists, as well as Finkelstein now
(p. 101), consistently minimize or even deny the signi˜-
cance of the Merneptah datum; cf. Lemche 1998: 35–38;
Thompson 1999: 79. But the simple facts are these: (1) the
stele is closely dated to ca. 1210 B.C.; (2) the Egyptian
text indisputably mentions an “Israel,” with the plural
gentilic determinative, i.e., the “Israelite peoples”; and
(3) this cannot be a coincidence, nor can it refer to an-
other, nonbiblical “Israel.”
 72 WILLIAM G. DEVER
“mythical memory of a Golden Age,” one that has
fooled nearly all scholars until now. Finkelstein as-
serts once again that most of the monumental ar-
chitecture attributed to the reigns of these kings—
such as the city walls and gates of Hazor, Megiddo,
and Gezer (cf. 1 Kgs 9:15–17)—must be removed
from evidence, since they allegedly postdate the 10th
century B.C.20
This argument, although completely undocu-
mented here, is crucial, because it is used to buttress
one of the major thrusts of the biblical revisionists,
their assertion that there was no true state in the
northern kingdom (Israel) until the ninth century
B.C., and none in Judah with Jerusalem as its capital
until the seventh century B.C.21 Although some of
his statements elsewhere are ambivalent, Finkelstein
basically agrees with the revisionists, indeed fuels
their arguments, even if inadvertently. Yet not only
does he give the reader no clue here that his idio-
syncratic “low chronology” (pp. 141– 45; appendix
D) is not supported by any other archaeologist in
print, but again he contradicts himself.22 He admits
that the biblical David and Solomon were historical
˜gures, indeed kings; but according to him, they
had no capital, indeed no kingdom, just a “chief-
dom” of a few villages in the Judaean hills, with a
total population of no more than 5,000 (cf. pp. 132–
34, 142– 43).
Elsewhere, the authors take up this theme again,
which is so essential to their reconstruction—Judah’s
small size and insigni˜cance until after the Assyrian
destructions of 701 B.C., then its sudden rise, which
sets the scene for the creation of Dtr.’s epic “story”
(pp. 243– 46). As they put it, until then “Judah was
little more than Israel’s rural hinterland” (p. 159). It
was the Assyrian threat that precipitated the national
“identity-crisis” in the south that was the source of
the Hebrew Bible’s memorable but largely ˜ctitious
20 Sincethe authors give no documentation whatso-
ever, I must supply some. Full references will be found
most conveniently in Dever 1997c; add now the refer-
ences in n. 4 above. Convenient state-of-the-art discus-
sions are Knoppers 1997; and Grabbe 2000b.
21 Cf. Lemche and Thompson 1994; Whitelam 1996:
137–69; Lemche 1998: 78–85, 155–60; Thompson 1999:
161–68. Elsewhere, in a paper read at the 1996 meetings
of the Society of Biblcal Literature, Thompson stated, “It
is undoubtedly in this Persian period that Jerusalem ˜rst
became identi˜ed as the city of the Jews.” See the rebuttal
of these views of Israelite and Judaean statehood in Dever
1997c; and add Meyers 1998.
22 See references in n. 4 above.
long
BASOR 322
stories of an “ancient Israel,” an eternal Kingdom of
David. While the supposed context here is earlier,
in the Iron Age, not the Hellenistic era, there is
little to distinguish Finkelstein and Silberman’s sce-
nario from that of biblical revisionists like Lemche,
for whom the Hebrew Bible is essentially the origi-
nal Zionist myth.23
The whole of the authors’ Part III is given over to
an expansion of this theme: “Judah and the Making
of the Hebrew Bible” (pp. 229–318). But here it is
clearer than ever that they often go well beyond the
evidence in order to set up their “pan-Josianic” sce-
nario. For instance, they claim that while the so-
called Solomonic monumental architecture of the
north did not appear until the ninth century B.C.
(above), such trappings of the state are not known in
Judah before the seventh century B.C. Urban plan-
ning was rudimentary in the ninth to eighth century
B.C., and Proto-Aeolic capitals do not antedate the
seventh century B.C.; and there were no regional ad-
ministrative centers at all, except possibly Lachish.
Furthermore, “widespread evidence of literacy is ut-
terly lacking during the time of the divided monar-
chy.” There is no evidence for mass production of
pottery in centralized workshops until the seventh
century B.C. In the eighth century B.C. the popula-
tion of Judah was only one-tenth that of Israel, the
latter being “the most densely settled region in the
entire Levant” (pp. 235–38).
There is an element of truth in all these state-
ments, but in their present form as undocumented
assertions, they are not only misleading, they are
often wrong. For instance, what about the ninth to
eighth century B.C. levels at Tell en-Nasbeh, Bethel,
Gibeon, Beth-shemesh IIb, en-Gedi, Tell Beit Mir-
sim A2, Halif VIB, Beersheva IV–III, Arad XI–VIII,
and, of course, Lachish IV? This is an impressive
list of urban sites, some very well planned and
defended—especially when compared with the rel-
atively few sites in the south that have been exca-
vated. Finkelstein and Silberman’s argument, here
and elsewhere, is largely one from silence.24
23 Lemche 1998: 120, 165, 166; and cf. now Lemche
1997. This, of course, is the entire thrust of Whitelam
1996; cf. the reviews in Dever 1998a; 1999.
24 Here, as previously, Finkelstein has consistently
minimized the size and importance of Judah in the ninth
and eighth centuries B.C. For much better balanced—and
well documented—surveys, see Mazar 1990: 415–62;
Coogan 1998; Horn and McCarter 2000. Just to take a few
of Finkelstein’s misrepresentations: (1) Beersheva IV–III
(ninth and eighth centuries B.C.) is not only a well-planned
2001 EXCAVATING THE HEBREW BIBLE
Finally, on the matter of comparative demogra-
phy, hardly a science, we must ask: How do the
authors know that Judah was so small? And in any
case, their own ˜gures prove them wrong. They state
elsewhere (pp. 115, 145) that Judah in the eighth
century B.C. had a population of at least 160,000
which, using their Judah–Israel ratio of 1:10, would
yield a total population of more than 1.5 million for
Iron Age Israel—far above the widely accepted es-
timate of about 150,000 (e.g., Shiloh 1980: 32).
On the matter of ceramics, pottery making was
never a function of state-sponsored, mass produc-
tion workshops, but remained a cottage industry in
all periods.
Regarding literacy, Finkelstein and Silberman
themselves discuss some of the abundant evidence
for literacy, such as seals, inscribed weights, ostraca,
and even a few probable royal inscriptions (such as
the Siloam Tunnel inscription, ca. 701 B.C.).
Once again the authors make a good point, i.e.,
the relative isolation and poverty of Judah in the
tenth–eighth century B.C. But then they exaggerate
it in order to enhance their own overriding theory.
Not by chance(?), this is a favorite device of the
biblical revisionist method as well as of the post-
modern rhetoric from which it derives.25 Here the
exaggeration is unnecessary, and it weakens a case
that otherwise might be persuasive.
Related to Finkelstein and Silberman’s purported
dichotomy between Israel and Judah in the period of
the divided monarchy, there is a basic inconsistency.
They portray the north at some length as “Israel’s
Forgotten First Kingdom” (chap. 7), denigrated in
city, but it is clearly a royal administrative center; (2) La-
chish IV, a massively forti˜ed regional center, dates to the
ninth century B.C., not the eighth as Finkelstein claims;
(3) Beth-shemesh, certainly in Judah, was a walled town
with an elaborate water system and a palatial building al-
ready in the 10th century B.C. (Bunimovitz and Lederman
1997); and (4) ashlar masonry is well attested in the “royal
palace” at Ramat Rahel in the eighth century B.C. Finkel-
stein and Silberman’s treatment of the archaeological data
elsewhere is often similarly cavalier. For example, to sup-
port their “Aramaizing” of the north in the ninth century
B.C., they claim that “in almost every major Iron II site in
the region, excavations yielded ostraca written in Ara-
maic” (p. 205). I do not know of any such Aramaic ostraca,
nor did the authorities I consulted. Where is the evidence?
25 Again, Grabbe (2000a: 134) has noted this in his cri-
tique of Thompson (1999), accusing him of “playing with
words.” For a masterful expose of revisionism as ideolog-
ical rhetoric, see Windschuttle 1997.
73
the Hebrew Bible by the editors’ southern biases, but
at last resurrected in its true glory by archaeology.
Yet it was “poor little Judah,” about to end in total
disaster, that wrote the historical core of the Hebrew
Bible, an unparalleled saga that is the “timeless ex-
pression of what a people’s divine destiny might be”
(p. 317). Do they mean to be ironic; or has their
rhetoric run away with them?
CONCLUSION
In sum, it is the current historiographical crisis
that no doubt provided the impetus for The Bible
Unearthed; but its authors jump on the revisionist
bandwagon a bit late, and seemingly not fully pre-
pared for where this will ultimately lead them. De-
spite a few allusions to the abiding religious value
of many texts in the Hebrew Bible, and the crucial
signi˜cance of the biblical world view for the much-
beleaguered “Western cultural tradition,” the authors
never penetrate below the surface. There is nothing
compelling about their “new vision of Ancient
Israel,” or their reading of its “sacred texts” (their
terminology). Like many modern, skeptical com-
mentators who subjugate “history” to “literature,”
they have a tin ear. Nowhere, for instance, do they
deal with the Hebrew prophets, whom the revision-
ists dismiss as late literary inventions, but whom
most would regard as actual historical ˜gures of
the crisis years in the eighth through sixth centuries
B.C. It is they, and not the annalists (and yes, propa-
gandists) who produced the Deuteronomistic his-
tory, who have left us ancient Israel’s most enduring
moral and ethical heritage. Should Finkelstein and
Silberman’s “new vision” of ancient Israel not em-
brace the prophets and their vision?
Finally, if the core history adumbrated by the
Deuteronomistic school is largely late, theologically
driven propaganda, then the Hebrew Bible is, as I
noted above, little more than pious ˜ction, indeed
the greatest literary hoax of all time. How, then, can
this literature commend itself to anyone as a secure
basis for religious belief, or even for moral and
ethical values?
If the writers and editors of the Hebrew Bible
exaggerated, or embellished their stories with mirac-
ulous accounts, or were wrong in details here or
there, or characteristically set their narratives within
an overriding ideological and theological frame-
work, that is one thing. All ancient historians did
that. But if those who created the biblical tradition
invented their so-called history of Israel (which is
 74 WILLIAM G. DEVER
precisely what the biblical revisionists claim), they
lose all their credibility. If a minimal and reliable
history of events did not actually happen in the Iron
Age of ancient Palestine, then the biblical writers’
interpretation of the meaning of these events—
which is what the biblical vision is all about—is
itself meaningless. Finkelstein and Silberman seem
to be aware of the philosophical and theological
contradiction here, since they concede that the writ-
ers and editors of the Hebrew Bible aim “to pro-
vide a theological explanation for a history probably
already well known, at least in the broad details”
(p. 222; italics theirs). Yet on the next page, they
state categorically that in the end, biblical history
was “fashioned exclusively according to the late
Judahite Deuteronomistic beliefs.” One cannot have
it both ways.
In a few words at the very end, Finkelstein and
Silberman try valiantly to restore some of the credi-
bility that they have stripped from the Hebrew
Bible, but in my opinion they fail. They argue that
archaeology’s greatest contribution to our under-
standing of the Bible may be the realization that
such small, relatively poor, and remote societies as
late monarchic Judah and post-exilic Yehud could
have produced the main outlines of this enduring
epic (i.e., the Hebrew Bible) in such a short period
of time. (p. 318)
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78 WILLIAM G. DEVER BASOR 322
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