Professional Documents
Culture Documents
once settle the pottery of a country and the key is in our hands
for all future explorations.
Is the pottery
intrusive?
2. Carbon 14, Absolute within Range of dates
Optical, Thermo- range
luminescence dating
3. Scarabs Absolute earliest Is it an heirloom?
date of stratum Only for pre-Iron Age
Chronology Absolute and
Relative 2
Method Date Issues
4. Coins Absolute earliest date of Was coin long in circulation
stratum or hoarded?
Hellenistic period and later
7. Biblical Text Texts purport to tell of a range When were they written?
of periods (Documentary Hypothesis)
Did the author know much
about the period purported to
describe?
Is it tendentious?
Chronology Absolute and
Relative
Method Date Issues
1. Pottery assemblages Relative Are the changes in pottery synchronous
in different areas.
4. Coins Absolute earliest date of stratum Was coin long in circulation or hoarded?
Hellenistic period and later
5. Contemporary Inscriptions and other Depends whether contents include Extremely rare in Palestine papyrus,
Documents Contents datable references. DSS do not! ostraca, DSS
6. Contemporary Inscriptions and other Relative Now have good series for most of the
Documents Style of Writing periods starting 9th C. BCE
(Paleography)
7. Biblical Text Texts purport to tell of a range of periods When were they written? (See reading on
Documentary Hypothesis)
Did the author know much about the
period purported to describe?
Is it tendentious?
Biblical Texts (as preserved) Archaeological Artifacts (as
preserved)
Concretize thought and behavior
"Curated artifacts"
Ritual
underlying the rituals, the careful reader will find an intricate web
of values that purports to model how we should relate to God and to
one another.
Anthropology has taught us that when a society wishes to
express and preserve its basic values, it ensconces them in
rituals. (R)ituals endure with repetition. They are visual and
participatory. They embed themselves in memory at a young
age, reinforced with each enactment.
(W)hen rituals fail to concretize our theological commitment they
become physical oddities, superstitions, or small idolatries. Ritual is
the poetry of religion that leads us to a moment of transcendence.
When a ritual fails because it either lacks content or is misleading, it
loses its efficacy and its purpose. A ritual must signify something
beyond itself, whose attainment enhances the meaning and value of
life.
History of Biblical Israel
(1930-1970)
Two choices
1. Literary analysis (including Documentary
Hypothesis) of the Genesis-2 Kings =
archaeology of the biblical text. Key names
J Wellhausen; A Alt; M Noth (Noths The
History of Israel 1958)
2. Biblical archaeology = dirt archaeology in
intimate combination with (often nave)
reading of the biblical text) key names W
F Albright; G E Wright (J Brights A History
of Israel 1959)
Background to Documentary Hypothesis 1
three different versions of how the town of Be'ersheba got its name;
Exodus 38:26 mentions "603,550 men over 20 years old included in the census"
immediately after passage of the Red Sea, while Numbers 1:44-45 cites the precisely
identical count, "The tally of Israelites according to their paternal families, those over 20
years old, all fit for service. The entire tally was 603,550", in a census taken a full year later,
"on the first [day] of the second month in the second year of the Exodus" (Numbers 1:1);
the story of the flood in Genesis appears to claim that two of all kinds of animal went on
the ark, but also that seven of certain kinds went on, and that the flood lasted a year, but
also lasted only 40 days;
the Ten Commandments appear in Exod 20, but in a slightly different wording in Deut 5. A
second, almost completely different set of Ten Commandments appears in Exod 34;
Numbers 25 describes the rebellion at Peor and refers to daughters of Moab, but the same
chapter portrays one woman as a Midianite;
Moses' wife, though often identified as a Midianite (and hence Caucasian), appears in the
tale of Snow-white Miriam as a "Cushite" (Ethiopian), and hence black;
in some locations God appears friendly and capable of errors and regret, and walks the
earth talking to humans, but in others God seems unmerciful and distant;
a number of places or individuals have multiple names. For instance, some passages give
the name of the mountain that Moses climbed to receive the commandments as Horeb and
others as Sinai, Moses' father-in-law has at least three names in the Hebrew original ( ,
, and ) ,
etc.
Documentary Hypothesis 1
Given the fact that the limited evidence of the biblical text has
been closely examined for over 200 years there is no likelihood
that further reliable historical information can be derived from
the text. (Contrast archaeology where data is always
increasing.)
Deuteronomic Reform
An official program of the Judean king Josiah (reigned 639-609
BCE) to reform the cult and effectively to profoundly reform the
theological, and probably also fiscal, underpinnings of the
Kingdom of Judah.
Based on a scroll said to have been found in the Jerusalem
Temple which probably contained the core of the canonical Book of
Deuteronomy. Probably authored in Jerusalem, in 7th century BC,
drawing partly on materials originating in the former Kingdom of
Israel. The newly found (authored?) scroll, like the canonical Book
of Deuteronomy, had 3 characteristics which made it the bedrock of
both Judaism and Samaritanism:
It was theocentric, leaving no room for a concept of
secularity;
It was absolutely unbending in demanding justice and
monotheism and promised that God, who is just, would
reward or punish his people based on how they kept God's
Torah; and,
It demanded a single cultic site for sacrifices. This last
demand is found nowhere else in the Torah
Josiah's Reform 1
From 2 Kings 22-23
'The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the
guardians of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels
made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside
Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. He deposed
the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the
high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who made
offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the
heavens. He brought out the image of Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside
Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust and threw
the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. He broke down the houses of
the male temple prostitutes that were in the house of the LORD, where the women
did weaving for Asherah.
He brought all the priests out of the towns of Judah, and defiled the high places
where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba. The priests
of the high places, however, did not come up to the altar of the LORD in
Jerusalem, but ate unleavened bread among their kindred.
He defiled the Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make
a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech. .. Moreover, Josiah
removed all the shrines of the high places that were in the towns of Samaria, which
kings of Israel had made.. Moreover Josiah put away the mediums, wizards,
teraphim, idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in
Jerusalem, so that he established the words of the law that were written in the book
that the priest Hilkiah had found in the house of the LORD."
Finkelsteins Proposal 1
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman pp. 23 ff
The J and D sources - parts of Genesis and Deuteronomy-2 Kings reflect agenda and
background of Josiahs reign when Josiah aimed at (re)unite all remaining Israelites and
traditional Israelite territories under his rule. This would be underwritten by God as he would
ensure that the written law (core of Deuteronomy) would be scrupulously followed including
making Jerusalem the only sacrificial site.
Although these stories may have been based on certain historical kernels, they primarily
reflect the ideology and world-view of the writers. (including) the story of the
patriarchs, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, and even the saga of the glorious united
monarchy of David and Solomon.
The story of Jacob and Esau 7th c. perceptions in ancient dress serving = divinely
legitimated then existing relationships Edom-Judah
Finkelsteins Proposal 2
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred
Texts Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman pp. 23 ff
Patriarchal family joining northern (Jacob, Joseph) and southern (Abraham) traditions but
with Abraham as the senior.
Joshuas conquests project back Josiahs hopes. King Josiah is behind the mask of
Joshua.
The glorious epic of the united monarchy was like the stories of the patriarchs and the
saga of the Exodus and conquest a brilliant composition that wove together ancient
heroic tales and legends into a coherent and persuasive prophecy for the people of Israel
in the 7th c. BCE.
Josiah is shown as a noble successor to Moses (regives the Torah), Joshua (reconquors
the land) and David (re-establishes the Davidic monarchy over all Israel). Many key
characters the pious Joshua, David, Hezekiah; the apostates Ahaz, Manasseh are
porteayed as positive and negative mirror images of Josiah.
(Josiah) a new David had come to the throne. By cleansing Judah of the abomination of
idolatry first introduced into Jerusalem by Solomon with his harem of foreign wives
Josiah could nullify the transgressions that led to the breakdown of the Davidic empire.
Key Concept 3
Definition Comments
1. The archaeology of any area and period that might An approach to general Syro-Palestinian,
illuminate the Bible. Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Classical Archaeology
that lift them out of their historic context .
2. Archaeology aimed at proving the Bible right = Religious apologetics which tends to bias site
historical selection and, more importantly, the interpretation of
finds (Jericho, Hebron, Sexuality and Canaanite
Religion).
3. An arm-chair discipline of confronting the See Dever What Did the Bible Writers Know
discipline of anthropologically-based archaeology Grabbe Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How
with the discipline of scientific study of the Bible.
This primarily takes place as a dialogue between Do We Know It?
archaeologists and biblical scholars.
4. An arm-chair approach of tasking convenient Religious apologetics which tends to bias the
archaeological findings out of their context within interpretation of finds and to ignore inconvenient
scientific findings to prove the Bible right = ones
historical
Outline of Biblical History as Seen by the 2 Approaches
Literary Analysis Biblical Archaeology
The text reflects its time of writing thus The Patriarchal narratives, exodus and conquest are
Virtually no historical events recoverable from clearly set in periods illuminated by archaeology. We
much before the time of Solomon; cannot prove the existence of an actual Abraham,
Genesis is mythical narrative, including etiological Moses, Joshua but they are likely to have existed. The
stories. It may include some general folk memories essential historicity of the Bible
of earlier cultural periods may be in the text e.g. the
family, priest-less sacrifices in the Abraham stories.
The book of Joshua is completely unhistorical. On the Pan-Israelite invasion based loosely on Joshua.
other hand, Judges does reflect some of the reality of
pre-monarchical Israel. Alts infiltration theory; Noths
amphictionary theory etc.
From David on basically a summary of the biblical text minus the miracles
Collapse of the Albrightian Synthesis
Two major works in the mid-1970s
Camels and Philistines
Abraham and the south
Abraham doesnt fit in any known period
Disjuncture between the archaeological and biblical conquest
narrative - cities destroyed (Jericho; Ai); no mention of
Egyptians when they were garrisoning Canaan in force until
about 1140 BCE; population (approx. 45,000 in hill country c.
1000 BCE vs. Bibles approx. 4 million in wilderness)
Increasing professionalization of archaeology
The collapse of the Albrightian synthesis essentially left most
archaeologists in agreement with Wellhausen that the biblical
texts reflect the culture, issues etc. of their time of authorship or
subsequent editing.
The collapse undermined the Biblical Theology movement.
Two interesting quotes
Inscriptions
Many details of biblical evidence that
agree with what we know of the period
written about but could not have been
known to later writers except through old
documents e.g. the architecture of
Solomons Temple, treaty format etc. etc.
Biblical and Epigraphic Hebrew
Guidance from Sherlock Holmes