Re: OT- Grounds For Disbelief
- From: Mark Goldberg <msgoldberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:22:50 -0400
Greendistantstar wrote:
Uh oh.....one of the world's foremost OT Biblical scholars says that many of the central stories of the OT are just that...stories.
Rememberances....Finkelstein is I believe, using terms like 'stories'.. incorrect. There is evidence and he dismisses it.
Finkelstein states, "The exodus of the Israelites from Egypt never happened"
It did, and we have evidence to the contrary.
and "Joshua never attacked Jericho, let along brought its
walls down." "There is no evidence that Jericho even had city walls at that time."
And his evidence is sparse and without much merit.
The article goes on to say, "David and Solomon were not great kings who ruled over the ancient land of Canaan in the 10th century BC from a palace in Jerusalem, as the Bible portrays; at best they were minor chieftains of some small-time tribe in that area. Their memory was later inflated and mythologised in the 7th century BC to serve particular political and military agendas, he [Finkelstein] says."
And he's incorrect here.
Most folk disbelieve what they read in today's newspaper, yet often those same folk will believe stories of miracles etc written thousands of years ago by unknown authors
I disbelieve stories that you can wrap fish in. I posted once a story I read in the papers in Israel, whilst standing on the spot where David met Goliath. If you can find it, maybe repost it, here. I think it's germane to your point here.
How's this work? The fear of death removes critical faculties.
The fear of thinking removes critical faculties.
So when you're at your place of worship this weekend, do try and remember that most of it is myth.
Yes... always think, and don't stop evaluating.
But anyways, just some info... just for the hell of it. And please... you needn't 'believe' any of this. It's part of the process of critical thinking, which I believe Finkelstein lacks in many ways.
Mark
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Biblical Archaeology is often divided into two camps: The "minimalists" tend to downplay the historical accuracy of the Bible, while the "maximalists," who are in the majority and are by and large not religious, tend to suggest that archaeological evidence supports the basic historicity of the Bible text.
As a science, we must understand what archaeology is and what it isn't.
Archaeology consists of two components: the excavation of ancient artifacts, and the interpretation of those artifacts. While the excavation component is more of a mechanical skill, the interpretive component is very subjective. Presented with the same artifact, two world-class archaeologists will often come to different conclusions -- particularly when ego, politics and religious beliefs enter the equation.
In the subjective field of Biblical Archaeology, anyone making a definitive statement like "archaeology has proven..." has probably chosen to take sides and is not presenting the whole picture. When Los Angeles Times reporter Teresa Watanabe writes that "the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade" (emphasis added), she is revealing her anti-Biblical bias.
HISTORY, THEN AND NOW
Admittedly, however, there is a shortage of Egyptian documentation of the Exodus period. Why?
We need to understand how the ancient world viewed the whole idea of recording history. The vast majority of inscriptions found in the ancient world have a specific agenda -- to glorify the deeds of the king and to show his full military power.
The earliest known objective "historian," in our modern definition of the term, was the Greek writer Herodotus. He is generally considered the "father of historians" for his attempt to compile a dispassionate historical record of the war between the Greeks and Persians. Abraham is dated to the 18th century BCE, while the Exodus story is generally dated to the 13th century BCE -- 800 years before Herodotus.
This does not mean that early civilizations did not record events. It's just that their purpose was more propaganda than creating any kind of objective historical record.
The British Museum in London displays inscriptions from the walls of the palace of the Assyrian Emperor, Sancheriv. These show scenes from Sancheriv's military campaigns from the 8th century BCE, including graphic depictions of destroyed enemies (decapitations, impalings, etc.). Sancheriv himself is depicted as larger than life.
But one element is missing from these inscriptions: There are no dead Assyrians! That is consistent with the ancient "historical" style -- negative events, failures and flaws are not depicted at all. When a nation suffers an embarrassing defeat, they usually whitewash the mistakes and destroy the evidence.
This idea has significant ramifications for archeology and the Exodus. The last thing the ancient Egyptians wanted to record is the embarrassment of being completely destroyed by the God of a puny slave nation. Would the Egyptians ever want to preserve details of the destruction of fields, flocks, and first borns -- plus the death of Pharaoh and the entire Egyptian army at the Red Sea?
In other words, we wouldn't expect to find prominent attention to Moses' humiliation of Pharaoh -- even if it occurred.
In one major event, the battle of Kadesh on the Orantes River between the Hitites and the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, both sides record it as a major victory, and is depicted as such.
Interestingly, the Torah is unique among all ancient national literature in that it portrays its people in both victory and defeat. The Jews -- and sometimes their leaders -- are shown as rebels, complainers, idol-builders, and yes, descended from slaves.
This objective portrayal lends the Torah great credibility. As the writer Israel Zangwill said: "The Bible is an anti-Semitic book. Israel is the villain, not the hero, of his own story. Alone among the epics, it is out for truth, not heroics."
INCOMPLETE ARCHEOLOGICAL RECORD
The archeological process is tedious and expensive. To date, only a tiny fraction of archeological sites related to the Bible have been excavated.
This thin archeological record means that any conclusions are based on speculation and projection. Archeology can only prove the existence of artifacts unearthed, not disprove that which hasn't been found. Lack of evidence... is no evidence of lack.
Yet that has not stopped some archeologists from making bold assertions. In the 1950s, world-renowned archeologist Kathleen Kenyon dug in one small section of Jericho, looking for remnants of inhabitation at the time of Joshua's conquest of the land in 1272 BCE. She found no evidence, and concluded on that basis that the Bible was false.
The problem is that Kenyon dug only one small section of Jericho, and based her conclusion on that limited information. Today, though the controversy lingers, many archeologists claim there is indeed clear evidence of inhabitation in Jericho from the time of Joshua.
Archeology is a new science, and the record is far from complete. We have only begun to scratch the surface.
TEXTUAL MISTAKES
The Times writer makes other mistakes, such as reading the Biblical text without the accompanying Talmudic explanation. For example, in trying to demonstrate Biblical inconsistency, the Times writes: "One passage in Exodus says that the bodies of the pharaoh's charioteers were found on the shore, while the next verse says they sank to the bottom of the sea."
The preeminent Biblical commentator, Rashi, explains that after the Egyptians drowned, the sea threw them onto the shore, so that the Jewish people could be relieved at the knowledge that their enemies would no longer be in pursuit. (Exodus 14:30)
The credibility of the Times' article is further eroded by its quoting another Los Angeles rabbi who mistakenly asserts that it does not matter "whether we [Jews] built the pyramids."
But as it says clearly in Exodus 1:11 and in the Passover Haggadah, the Jews "built the store-cities of Pitom and Ramses." Jews never built any pyramids, which were built in 2500 BCE -- about 1200 years before the Exodus.
FOUNDATION OF OUR PEOPLE
The Los Angeles Times asserts: "[M]ost congregants, along with secular Jews and several rabbis interviewed, said that whether the Exodus is historically true or not is almost beside the point."
We would disagree. The truth of the text is precisely the point. By attacking the veracity of the Exodus, and reducing it to mere fable, these rabbis knock out the most basic Jewish principle of the past 3,300 years.
The Ten Commandments declares from the start: "I am the Lord Your God."
But that's only half the story. A reading of the full verse shows how belief in God is predicated on the Exodus experience: "I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2).
The Jewish people have survived for thousands of years, against all odds, because we knew clearly the truth of Torah. When Jews in the Crusades chose to be burned at the stake rather than convert, they were not subscribing to some weak fable. To suggest otherwise is an insult to the millions of Jews who have died for our beliefs.
Whether layperson or rabbi, for those who reject the truth of Torah and the obligatory nature of commandments, rejecting the Torah's historical accounts follows suit.
For over 3,000 years, the Jewish people have faithfully transmitted the Exodus story, unique in the annals of world history. From parent to child, and teacher to student, it is an unbroken chain of transmission. Is it true? Click here for a deeper look at the question.
This is part one of a series. Part two will consider specific claims and counter-claims implicating the historicity of the Bible.
Archaeology and the Bible - Part 2
by Rabbi Dovid Lichtman
Is there archaeological evidence that supports the Bible?
Click here to read: Part One: Archaeology and the Exodus
"Good scholars, honest scholars, will continue to differ about the interpretations of archaeological remains simply because archaeology is not a science, it is an art. And sometimes it is not even a very good art."
- William Dever, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Arizona
An artist manipulates given materials, determining what the final product will look like. Dever, one of the most highly respected voices in his field, is not referring to the manner in which archaeological remains are retrieved, but rather to the manner in which one interprets the significance of those remains.
When it comes to interpretation of remains from the time and place of the Bible, the radical "differences" in interpretive style seem more like the art of war than the art of culture. For example, here are the infamous words that launched the most recent battle concerning archaeology and the Bible:
"This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel."
- Ze'ev Herzog, Professor of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Tel Aviv University
Herzog, along with other archaeologists, are considered biblical minimalists (or revisionists as Dever calls them) who see very little historical value in the Bible. Revisionists, like Herzog and Prof. Israel Finkelstein have attempted to speak in a bombastic fashion on behalf of the entire school of biblical archaeology. They are so convinced of their position that they ignore any other approach that does not concur with their own.
If anything gets Dever's blood boiling it is when revisionists distort archaeology, thus cheapening and mocking the integrity of his entire academic field.
Revisionists stubbornly dismiss as fictitious most historical aspects of the Bible. To them, the patriarchal period (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) is all imagination, the story of Joseph and the sojourn in Egypt is fabricated, as are the Exodus and the desert wanderings. The conquest, settlement and united monarchy (Saul, David and Solomon) are mere "propaganda" to quote Philip Davies. Marit Skjeggestad, a Scandinavian revisionist, said that on biblical history, "the archaeological record is silent."
"In fact," asserts Dever, "the archaeological record is not at all silent. It's only that some historians are deaf."
So let's turn to the evidence.
PATRIARCHAL PERIOD
One of the assumptions of Bible criticism is that the Bible was written much later than the time period it occurred. Specifically, the claim is that the Bible was written at least 1,000 years after the Exodus. As a result, the alleged biblical writers, who could not possibly know the minutiae of cultural norms of 1,000 years before, would by default include many details that were anachronistic. This would be like watching a movie about life in the 1950s where the actors wore digital watches because the writers did not do their research properly.
One of the main indications of an anachronism in the Bible was thought to be that of the camel. The Book of Genesis reports that camels were mainstay beasts of burden and transportation already at the time of Abraham, in the 18th century BCE. Yet it was originally thought that camels were first domesticated in the Middle East no earlier than the 12th century BCE. This anachronism was a clear indication of the later writing of the Bible. Or so it was thought.
All this changed with the turn of a shovel. Recent archaeological finds have clearly demonstrated that the camel was domesticated by the 18th century BCE. What was previously thought to be a knockout punch against the Bible, is now evidence supporting it.
Prof. Kenneth Kitchen, an Egyptologist at the University of Liverpool (retired) points out that the sale of Joseph to a caravan of Midianites (for 20 silver pieces) could have been an example of anachronism in the Bible, since 1,000 years later the price for a slave was much higher (ancient inflation). However, the price reported in the Bible matches precisely the going price of slaves in the region from Joseph's time period. This is just one example that demonstrates, according to Kitchen, that "it's more reasonable to assume that the biblical data reflect reality."
Furthermore, we find that the detailed descriptions of the court of the Pharaoh and its protocols, as reported in Genesis, are extremely accurate to that time period. Joseph's Egyptian name, clothing, and court orders are all very much in line with what we now understand to have been the norm for that time and place.
SOJOURN IN EGYPT
What about evidence of Jewish slavery?
Egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner said of Egyptian archaeology: "It must never be forgotten that we are dealing with a civilization thousands of years old and one of which only tiny remnants have survived. What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters."
This sketchy archaeological record makes a document preserved from the Israelite slavery period even more astounding. Known as the Brooklyn Papyrus (because it is in the Brooklyn Museum), this document portrays Israelite names from the Bible as the names of domestic slaves: Asher, Yissachar, and Shifra. The document also includes the term "hapiru" which many scholars agree has clear historical affinity to the biblical term "ivrim," meaning "Hebrews."
The Bible records that Jews built the storage cities of Pitom and Ramses. Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak has succeeded in positively identifying the city of Pi-Ramesse. This city he found dates exactly to the period of the sojourn in Egypt, and even contains many Asiatic (of Canaanite origin) remains at the area of the slave residences.
Egyptian records also tell how Pharaoh Rameses II built a new capital called Pi-Ramesse (the House of Rameses) on the eastern Nile delta, near the ancient area known as Goshen, the precise geographic area where the Bible places the Israelites.
Further, the Leiden Papyrus (another Egyptian document of that era) reports that an official for the construction of Ramasses II ordered to "distribute grain rations to the soldiers and to the Apiru who transport stones to the great pylon of Ramasses." (Apiru, as we said, is related to Hebrews.)
Professor Abraham Malamat of Hebrew University infers from this that the Hebrews were forced to build the city of Ramasses. "This evidence is circumstantial at best," notes Malamat, "but it's as much as a historian can argue."
EXODUS AND DESERT WANDERING
"When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land Philistines, although that was near; For God said: "Lest the people repent when they see war and return to Egypt." (Exodus 13:17)
Prof. Malamat explains the reason for this detour: At that time in Egyptian history, and lasting for only about 200 years, there was a massive, nearly impenetrable network of fortresses situated along the northern Sinai coastal route to Canaan. Yet these same defenses were absent near Egypt's access to southern Sinai -- because the Egyptians felt the southern route was certain death in the desert.
Therefore, when Moses tells the Israelites to encamp at a site that will mislead Pharaoh, the Egyptians will conclude that the Israelites "are entangled in the land, the wilderness has closed in on them" (Exodus 14:3). This, according to Malamat, "reflects a distinctly Egyptian viewpoint that must have been common at the time: In view of the fortresses on the northern coast, anyone seeking to flee Egypt would necessarily make a detour south into the desert, where they might well perish."
More evidence comes from an ancient victory monument called the "Elephantine Stele." Here is recorded a rebellion in which a renegade Egyptian faction bribed Asiatics living in Egypt to assist them. Although the rebellion ultimately failed, it does confirm that in the same time period when the Israelites were in Egypt, the Egyptians would very likely say, "Come let us deal wisely with them, for if war befalls us, they may join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land" (Exodus 1:10). "That is precisely what happened in the episode recorded in the Elephantine Stele," Malamat asserts.
Biblical criticism comes from the late archaeologist Gosta Ahlstrom. He declares: "It is quite clear that the biblical writers knew nothing about events in Palestine before the 10th century BCE, and they certainly didn't know anything of the geography of Palestine in the Late Bronze age," the time of the desert wandering and subsequent conquest of the land of Canaan. Ahlstrom's proof? He cites the biblical listing of cities along the alleged route that the Israelites traveled immediately before reaching the Jordan River -- Iyyim, Divon, Almon-divlatayim, Nevo, and Avel Shittim (Numbers 33:45-50), and reports that most of these locations have not been located, and those that were excavated did not exist at the time the Bible reports.
Geographic routes inscribed on the temple of Amon at Karnak, Egypt.In the meantime, writings from the walls of Egyptian Temples say differently. It is well known that Egypt had much reason to travel to Canaan in those days; trade, exploitation, military conquest. These routes are recorded in three different Egyptian Temples -- listed in the same order as provided in the Bible, and dated to the exact period of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Another piece of outside verification is an ancient inscription housed in the Amman Museum. Dating to the 8th century BCE (at least), it was found in the Jordanian village of Deir Alla, which was Moabite territory in biblical times. This inscription tells of a person by the name of Bilaam ben Beor, known to the locals as a prophet who would receive his prophecies at night. These features match precisely the Bilaam described in the Bible (Numbers 21) -- his full name, occupation, nighttime prophecies. And of course, Bilaam was a Moabite.
FROM WHICH PERSPECTIVE?
The biblical story of the Exodus is filled with divine intervention in the form of impressive miracles; the splitting of the sea, the revelation at Mount Sinai, the manna bread which fell from heaven, etc. In the opinion of Bible critics, the story is nonrealistic because there is little record of mass encampments from that time, and it is absurd to consider that the Israelites had provisions in the desert for such a huge population and for such a long period of time.
However, this opinion needs to be viewed in its proper perspective. It is not the Bible that the archaeologists are impugning, rather they find inconsistencies with their own reconstructed version! The Bible clearly states that the Israelites' food, clothing, and protection was provided directly by God. That the Bible does not always fit the academic reconstituted view, does not constitute an indictment of the Bible.
As for the issue of encampments are concerned, it is nearly impossible to find traces of large Bedouin encampments in the Sinai Desert from 200-300 years ago. So would one expect the remains of large encampments after 3,000 years?
CONQUEST OF CANAAN
Through the 1980s it was commonly held opinion that excavations in Jericho had failed to discover a city there at the time of Joshua.
In the early 1990s, however, Dr. Bryant G. Woods, then of the University of Toronto, reported finding startling remnants of Jericho in Joshua's time. The error of previous excavations, he asserts, was that archaeologists were digging in the wrong section of the mound of ancient Jericho.
Woods reported finding a 3-foot layer of ash covering the entire excavated area, clear evidence of destruction by fire. He further discovered large caches of wheat from the spring harvest that had barely been used. This means that the city fell not as a result of a starvation siege, as would be expected against a walled city, but rather after a very brief siege. All this matches the account in the Book of Joshua. Furthermore, the wheat was from the spring harvest; Joshua conquered Jericho immediately after Passover, the spring holiday.
Concerning Woods' work at Jericho, Dr. Lawrence Stager, the respected professor of Archaeology in Israel from Harvard University said: "On the whole the archaeological assessment is not unreasonable. There is evidence of destruction and the date isn't too far wrong."
Rarely can an archaeologist claim that "this is the very item the Bible spoke about." Yet Dr. Adam Zartal, chairman of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, may have done it. Joshua 8:30-35 tells of the fulfillment of Moses' command to build an altar on Mount Eval (Deut. 27). Zartal reports that his excavation team found this very altar. The place is right, the time is right, and the animal bones are consistent with the biblical offerings. Even the style of the altar is right, in such detail, says Zartal, that it looks nearly identical to the description of the Temple's altar as described in the Talmud -- a uniquely Israelite design that no Canaanite temples used then or later.
Zartal laments the response of the revisionist archaeological community. "What happened regarding the new accumulation of facts I have cited? Almost nothing. Since the appearance of the detailed report and the many articles I have published on the excavation... silence has descended on the scholarly world."
Regarding Zartal's find, Dr. Lawrence Stager said: "If a sacrificial altar stood on Mount Eval, its impact on our research is revolutionary. All of us [biblical archaeologists] have to go back to kindergarten."
STILL ADAMANT
Revisionists insist there was no such entity as "Israel" until at least the 9th century BCE. Yet a well known Egyptian inscription dated to about 1210 BCE clearly identifies an Israel in the land of Canaan as a people that had to be reckoned with. The inscription, which depicts the victories of Pharaoh Merneptah in Canaan, reads in part: "Israel is laid waste, his seed is no more."
How do revisionists react to this inscription? Dismissively. Says Dever: "They denigrate it as our only known reference. But one unimpeachable witness in the court of history is sufficient. There does exist in Canaan a people calling themselves Israel, who are thus called Israel by the Egyptians -- who after all are hardly biblically biased, and who cannot have invented such a specific and unique people for their own propaganda purposes."
More: In the book of Samuel, the Philistines are reported to be expert metal workers, and in the Book of Jeremiah they are reported to have originated in Crete. Both of these details concerning the Philistines, who were off the political map by the 9th century BCE, are corroborated through archaeology.
Furthermore, 1-Samuel 13:19-21 records the Israelites relying on the metal smiths of the Philistines, and a 'pym' used in the tool-sharpening process. But what this 'pym' was has been a mystery. Recent excavations found that an ancient coin weight called a "pym," which was used exclusively during the Israelite settlement period, was apparently the payment for the service of sharpening. Posits Dever: "Is it possible that a writer in the 2nd century BCE could have known of the existence of these pym weights which... would have disappeared for 5 centuries before his time? It is not possible."
Additionally, in the hill regions of Judea and Samaria (the heartland of ancient Israel), approximately 300 small agricultural villages were found, built between the 13-11th centuries BCE, the time period of the Israelite conquest of the land. According to Dever, this represented a large population increase that did not come from the native population. He writes, "Such a dramatic population increase cannot be accounted for by natural increase alone, much less by positing small groups of pastoral nomads settling down. Large numbers of people must have migrated here from somewhere else, strongly motivated to colonize an under populated fringe area of urban Canaan now in decline at the end of the Late Bronze Age." Also, the type of house structure was unique, and matched descriptions in the books of Judges and Samuel. Additionally, all of the settlements lacked any pig remnants amongst animal bones left in the area; only the Jews had a pigless diet.
DAVID AND SOLOMON
Some archaeological revisionists thought they'd dealt a harsh blow to the ego of Israeli nationalism and Jewish pride when they declared the united monarchy of David and Solomon "fictitious propaganda of the ancient biblical writers."
Let's see the evidence.
Aerial view of the ruin mound of ancient Megiddo in the Jezreel valley.The Bible relates how King Solomon renovated three cities -- Chatzor, Megiddo and Gezer -- to serve as garrisons for his cavalry. Archaeologists have discovered identically designed gates to these cities that date to the time of Solomon. Noted Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar wrote: "The city gates of Megiddo, Hazor, and Gezer were... bold illustration of a centralized, royal building operation attributable to Solomon on archaeological grounds as well as on the basis of the biblical reference."
Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a revisionist, theorized a different dating system that places the construction of the gates 100 years after the time of Solomon. Yet, says Dever, this new dating system "is not supported in print by a single other ranking archaeologist."
Tel Dan contain the first reference to the 'House of David' outside the Torah.Further evidence exists of David and Solomon, known biblically as the "founders of the House of David" (referring to the dynasty of kings beginning with David). In northern Israel, at the ancient Tel Dan, archaeologist Avraham Biran discovered a victory inscription dated to the 9th century BCE. A neighboring king, in describing his victories over Israel, writes in unambiguous terms the phrases, "King of Israel" and "Beit David" (House of David).
Additionally, another inscription of a foreign victory over Israel is the Mesha or Moabite Stone, dated to the 9th century BCE, and now housed in the Louvre Museum in France. French scholar Andre Lemair studied the inscription and concluded that the phrase "House of David" appears there also.
Ardent revisionist Dr. Philip Davies strove valiantly to claim that the readings are ambiguous. However, in the words of Anson Rainey:
"As someone who studies ancient inscriptions in the original, I have a responsibility to warn the lay audience that the new fad (revisionism) represented by Philip Davies and his ilk is merely a circle of dilettantes. Their view that nothing in the biblical tradition is earlier than the Persian period, especially their denial of the existence of the united monarchy, is a figment of their vain imagination. The name 'House of David' in the Tel Dan and Mesha inscriptions sounds the death knell to their specious conceit. Biblical scholarship and instruction should completely ignore the (revisionist) school. They have nothing to teach us."
Davies' evasive maneuver was also too much for Dever. He said that this "is an example of the lengths to which scholars will go to avoid the obvious when it does not suit them." It should be noted that the Tel Dan inscription was found shortly after Davies had just published his major revisionist work on the nonexistence of King David and the united monarchy.
Revisionists have also argued against King David's conquest of Jerusalem and Solomon's major building in the city, due to the lack of archaeological remains from that time period.
Archaeologist Jane Cahill explains the missing structures. In ancient Jerusalem, because of its narrow ridges and steep hills, one does not build on top of the remains of a preexisting structure, as one would do on flat land. Rather it is necessary to completely disassemble the previous building down to bedrock, in order to get a firm foundation and start again. Jerusalem was also heavily quarried by the Romans and Byzantines. This "means only that the archaeological record has not been sufficiently preserved," asserts Cahill.
Meanwhile, archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron have unearthed the remains of a defensive wall in Jerusalem that predates King David. They also found a small number of towers which protected the Gihon spring water supply, dating to the time of Abraham.
CONCLUSION
Dever sums up the attitude of objective scholars:
"In my view, most of the revisionists are no longer honest scholars, weighing all the evidence, attempting to be objective and fair-minded historians, seeking the truth. Determined to unmask the ideology of others, they have become ideologues themselves. The revisionist and the postmoderns are dangerous because they have created a kind of relativism -- an anything goes attitude -- that makes serious, critical inquiry difficult if not impossible."
So where do we stand?
Prof. Adam Zartal, chairman of the Dept. of Archaeology at the University of Haifa has this to say about archaeology and the Bible:
After years of research, however, I believe it is impossible to explore Israel's origins without the Bible. At the same time, the research should be as objective as possible. The Bible should be used cautiously and critically. But again and again we have seen the historical value of the BIble. Again and again we have seen that an accurate memory has been preserved in its transmuted narratives, waiting to be unearthed and exposed by archaeological fieldwork and critical mind work.
Let my people know.
For Further Reading:
1. "Archaeology of the Land of the Bible", Amihai Mazar, Doubleday Publishing, 1992
2. "Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence", Lesko and Frerichs: editors. Eisenbrauns Pulishing, 1997
Essay by Abrahm Malamat, "The Exodus:Egyptian Analogies"
Essay by Frank Yurco, "Merneptah's Cananite Campaigns and Israel's Origins"
3. Anchor Bible Dictionary (1992), "The City of David" essay by Tarler and Cahill, vol.2, p.55
4. Biblical Archaeological Review (BAR),
1. "The 'House of David' and the House of the Deconstructionists", Anson Rainey, Nov/Dec, 1994
2. "Exodus Itinerary Confirmed by Egyptian Evidence", Charles Krahmalkov, Sept/Oct, 1994
3. "Save us from Postmodern Malarky", William Dever, March/April 2000
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Reclaiming Biblical Jerusalem
by Rachel Ginsberg
The world of archeology is rocked by evidence of King David',s palace unearthed in Jerusalem.
How Jewish is Jerusalem?
You might think that's a silly question, but in the world of academia, revisionist history and even biblical archaeology, scholars have cast the shadow of doubt over Judaism's intrinsic connection to Jerusalem. The Moslem Waqf, the religious authority that administers the Temple Mount -- the site of Judaism's First and Second Temples -- has been claiming for years that there was never a temple there. But the idea that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and Jerusalem its holy capital has been under attack from far more reputable sources in recent decades as well.
For a growing number of academics and intellectuals, King David and his united kingdom of Judah and Israel, which has served for 3,000 years as an integral symbol of the Jewish nation, is simply a piece of fiction. The biblical account of history has been dismissed as unreliable by a cadre of scholars, some of whom have an overtly political agenda, arguing that the traditional account was resurrected by the Zionists to justify dispossessing Palestinian Arabs. The most outspoken of these is Keith Whitelam of the Copenhagen School which promotes an agenda of "biblical minimalism," whose best-known work is The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.
Even in Israel, this new school has found its voice. Israel Finkelstein, chairman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology, began championing a theory several years ago that the biblical accounts of Jerusalem as the seat of a powerful, unified monarchy under the rule of David and Solomon are essentially false. The scientific methods for his assumptions, called a "lower dating" which essentially pushes archaeological evidence into a later century and thus erases all evidence of a Davidic monarchy, were laughed off by traditional archaeologists. But his book, The Bible Unearthed, wound up on the New York Times' best-seller list and he became the darling of a sympathetic media. He concluded that David and Solomon, if they existed at all, were merely "hill-country chieftains" and Jerusalem a poor, small tribal village. He claims that the myth of King David was the creation of a cult of priests trying to create for themselves a glorious history.
Looking in the Wrong Place
But the debunkers of Jewish biblical history got some bad news recently, when a spunky, dedicated archaeologist began her latest dig. Dr. Eilat Mazar, world authority on Jerusalem's past, has taken King David out of the pages of the Bible and put him back into living history. Mazar's latest excavation in the City of David, in the southern shadow of the Temple Mount, has shaken up the archaeological world. For lying undisturbed for over 3,000 years is a massive building which Mazar believes is King David's palace.
For Mazar, 48, one of the world's leading authorities on the archaeology of ancient Jerusalem and head archaeologist of the Shalem Center Institute of Archaeology, the discovery was the culmination of years of effort and solid speculation. From the time she was a teenager, she had her nose in archaeology literature, and worked closely with her grandfather, renowned archaeologist Benjamin Mazar, who conducted the southern wall excavations next to the Western Wall. She holds a doctorate in archaeology from Hebrew University, is author of The Complete Guide to the Temple Mount Excavations, and in the 1970s and '80s worked on the digs supervised by Yigal Shilo in the City of David. The significant discoveries made then, including a huge wall called the "stepped-stone structure" -- which Shilo believed was a retaining wall for David's royal palace or part of the Jebusite fortress he conquered -- ignited Mazar to continue to look for the prize: David's palace itself.
Some biblical scholars gave up looking for the palace because, according to Mazar, they were looking in the wrong place. Scholars searched for remains of the palace within the walls of the ancient Jebusite city that David conquered and called Ir David (City of David). This city, while heavily fortified with both natural and man-made boundaries, was also very small, just nine acres in size. When no evidence of such a majestic palace as the Bible describes was found there, the next step was to claim that David's monarchy never really existed.
But Mazar always suspected that the palace was outside the original city, and cites the Bible to prove it. When the Philistines heard that David had been anointed, they went on the attack to apprehend him. This occurred after he conquered the Fortress of Zion, which was the actual nucleus of the city, and built his palace. The Bible says that David heard about it and "descended to the fortress," (2-Samuel 5:17), implying that he went down from his palace, which was higher up on the mountain than the citadel/city.
Mazar told Aish.com: "I always asked myself: Down from where? It must have been from his palace on top of the hill, outside the original Jebusite city."
Mazar says she was confident in her assessment of where the palace would be. What she discovered was a section of massive wall running about 100 feet from west to east along the length of the excavation (underneath what until this summer was the Ir David Visitors Center), and ending with a right-angle corner that turns south and implies a very large building.
Scientist, Not Philosopher
Within the dirt fill between the stones were found pottery shards dating to the 11th century BCE, the time when David established his monarchy. Based on biblical text and historic evidence, Mazar assumed that David would have built his palace outside the walls of the fortified but cramped Jebusite city which existed up to 2,000 years before; and in fact, the structure is built on the summit of the mountain, directly on bedrock along the city's northern edge, with no archaeological layers beneath it -- a sign that the structure constituted a new, northward expansion of the city's northern limit.
What most amazed Mazar was how close the building is to the surface -- just one to two meters underground. "The cynics kept saying, 'there will be so many layers, so many remnants of other cultures, it's not worth digging, it's too far down.' I was shocked at how easy it was to uncover it, and how well-preserved it was, as if it were just waiting 3,000 years for us to find it," Mazar said.
Mazar snickers at the idea that she is some sort of divine emissary revealing the eternity of David's kingdom. "I am a scientist, not a philosopher. My focus is on how magnificent and enduring these complex structures are, that they were preserved and protected for so many generations. In truth, when I began to excavate, I had to be prepared for any result. I even had to be prepared to accept Finkelstein's hypothesis if that's what the facts indicated. Still, I am a Jew and an Israeli, and I feel great joy when the details on the ground match the descriptions in the Bible. Today it's become fashionable to say there was no David, no Solomon, no Temple, no prophets. But suddenly the facts on the ground are speaking, and those outspoken voices are stammering."
Biblical References
The City of David is essentially the ancient nucleus of Jerusalem, located just south of the mountain on which the Holy Temples stood. From here the rest of the city as we know it grew and developed over the course of history. According to tradition, the first significant event that occurred there was the meeting between Abraham and Malki-tzedek, King of Shalem. King David, divinely directed, chose this city as the capital of his united kingdom. And the more archaeologists uncover and identify, the easier it is becoming to form a complete picture of the people who lived there -- with the pivotal Jewish history of the First Temple period, described in the Prophets, played out in its structures and installations.
The Bible says that King David brought God's Tabernacle to its final home in this original Jerusalem, expanded the city, and made it the spiritual and economic capital of the world at that time. According to Jewish tradition, he fulfilled God's master plan for a spiritual monarchy that would endure until the final Redemption.
"The construction that we found was a complicated and intricate engineering operation that must have required immense resources, and the dating matches," says Mazar. "This is the kind of step one would expect of a new ruler who wants to turn the city he conquered into his permanent residence, and who has an exceptional vision of the future development of the city."
According to the Bible, David's palace was constructed by Hiram, King of Tyre, the contemporary Phoenician ruler and his ally against the Philistines. Mazar, an expert in Phoenician construction from her excavations at Achziv on Israel's northern coast, attests that this building bears the mark of Phoenician construction, not likely to be found otherwise in the Judean hills.
In fact, quite a bit about David's palace is known from the Bible itself. It was a "house of cedars" built by Phoenician builders (2-Samuel 5:11 and 1-Chronicles 14:1) who used the cedars of Lebanon and developed a distinct style of stone masonry. Remains of pillars and decorative stone capitals in this particular style were discovered at the site years before, which was one clue Mazar used to look for the palace.
THE CLAY DISC
Mazar believes that the palace was used for Jewish monarchs until the destruction of the First Temple 450 years later. To indicate this, she speaks excitedly about a tiny clay item she found at the site (found on the 17th of Tammuz, the fast day commemorating the siege of Jerusalem before its destruction). It is called a "bulla," a clay disc, inscribed in ancient Hebrew script with the name of the sender as a "return address," used to seal papyrus scroll "mail." The bulla bears the name of Yehuchal Ben Shelemiah,* who is mentioned in Chapters 37 and 38 of the Book of Jeremiah. Yehuchal was one of two emissaries dispatched by King Tzidkiyahu to Jeremiah, asking him to pray for the people during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon. In an about-face, Chapter 38 tells that Yehuchal was one of four ministers who asked the king to kill Jeremiah, claiming that he was demoralizing the besieged nation with his prophecies of doom and destruction.
The bulla found on the site of the palace indicates that the building was used by the king, or at least by his ministers, until the destruction of Jerusalem soon afterwards. (In fact, a nearby cistern uncovered in what might have been a king's courtyard is speculated to perhaps be the pit Jeremiah was lowered into, as recorded in Jeremiah 38:6).
"For me, finding the bulla was tremendous," says Mazar. "Yehuchal was no longer just some name in a biblical account that I might not even have been sure was true. He was a real person. We now have his business card. The account is a real account. It is very rare to find such precise evidence for a narrative in the Bible."
Mazar took the bulla home to examine and decipher. With the help of a needle and magnifying glass, she cleaned off the grains of dust until the ancient inscription was revealed. Together with her boys, aged 14, 13, and 11, they managed to decipher the ancient Hebrew script. Mazar's late husband, also an archaeologist, had published material on bullas, and the boys made use of their father's articles which explained how to properly examine and decipher the clay.
Mazar is heady, not with personal glory or the fame that has followed her since the discovery, but with what she considers validation of the Bible she so loves and respects. "Today the scholarly approach to Tanach [the Bible] is that it's not true unless you can prove it true. Maybe we should do a little reverse. Why don't we say it's true unless we can prove otherwise?"
Too Biblical?
More than ten years ago, Mazar proposed a solid thesis as to the location of the palace, and argued her position in a piece published in Biblical Archaeological Review. After years of digging in the City of David under her professional mentor Yigal Shilo before he passed away, and based on finds several decades ago by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, she knew she was in the right place. David's palace was the topic of her last conversation with her famous grandfather, biblical archaeology Professor Binyamin Mazar, before he died ten years ago. He told her, "Kenyon found the protoaeolic capitals (of the decorative Phoenician stone-work), so go and find where she found them, and start there."
Despite her sound hypothesis and impeccable credentials, she couldn't find any financial backers, as if no one in the academic world really wanted to find David's palace. It would just be too politically complicated. It's no wonder, when even mainstream archaeologists are inclined to play down finds which might be considered too highly charged with biblical or historical accuracy.
An example is Adam Zertal, who in 1983 discovered an enormous sacrificial altar on Mount Eval, on the very mountain where Joshua was described in the Bible as having built an altar after the Jews crossed the Jordan River. The altar he found contained tools dating to the 12th century BCE, the time the Jewish people entered the Land, and its construction matched the descriptions of Joshua's altar in both biblical and rabbinic texts. But instead of the expected excitement accompanying such a monumental find, Zertal's academic colleagues ignored him and his discovery. The more vocal accused Zertal, a secular Jew raised on a kibbutz, of being politically motivated to support Jewish settlements in the area around Shechem (Nablus), where Mount Eval is located.
Despite the seeming indifference from the academic world, Mazar's proposal finally found a sponsor in the Shalem Center, an academic center in Jerusalem that recently established an institute for archaeological studies, and was funded by Roger Hertog, an American Jewish investment banker who told the New York Times that he fronted the dig because he wants to encourage scientific support for the Bible as a reflection of Jewish history.
David Hazony, editor-in-chief of Azure, a journal published by the Center, is excited about Mazar's results. "We don't want to see this shunted to the side like Zertal's discovery," he told Aish.com. "The message he got from his colleagues was, 'It's bad for business to find things from the Bible these days. It makes us look like unsophisticated messianic fanatics.' Unfortunately, academia has done much to undermine the Jews' capacity to say where they come from and what their past is all about. We want to create an environment where serious scholars can pursue their research without feeling intimidated."
Bulldozer on the Mount
But as fast as new Jewish artifacts are being unearthed, Mazar is concerned that a great number are being destroyed.
As spokesperson for the Committee Against the Desecration of Antiquities on the Temple Mount, Mazar has for the past six years tried to alert the world to the vandalism being perpetrated by the Muslim Waqf, who have their own agenda of destroying remnants of proof of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem, and who consistently deny that there ever was a First or Second Temple.
According to agreements made between the Israeli government and the Waqf, to whom the Israelis handed control of the Temple Mount in 1967, the Arabs are not permitted to carry out independent works on the Mount without permission from the Israel Antiquities Authority. Over the years, however, there have been indications of the Waqf breaking this status quo, such as when they sealed up the ancient Hulda Gates entrance to the Temple Mount on the southern wall and buried the adjoining steps and ancient tiling, and the sealing of an underground water cistern that some rabbis thought would lead to the Temple foundations.
The greatest breech was discovered in 1999, when the Waqf bulldozed and then paved over close to 6,000 square meters of the ancient Temple Mount surface. Temple Mount artifacts were ripped from the Mount and secretly dumped in several places throughout Jerusalem, mostly in the Kidron Valley east of the Old City and also in the city dump. Over 100 truckloads of Temple Mount rubble, soil and artifacts were clandestinely removed.
Tzachi Zweig, then an archaeology master's student at Bar Ilan University, blew the whistle on the Waqf when he discovered Temple artifacts in junk heaps around Jerusalem, and then presented some of the artifacts he unearthed at an archaeology conference at the university.
Under the supervision of his mentor, Professor Gabriel Barkay, dozens of truckloads of the "garbage" were moved to a special site near Mount Scopus, where until today teams of archaeologists and volunteers continue to find massive amounts of valuable, significant artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods.
Antiquities in Israel has long been a politically contentious topic, with all its religious and nationalistic overtones. The jury is still out on where all this activity will lead. But one thing is certain: Mazar's discovery has rocked the archeological world.
As Hazony wrote in Azure: "Is this absolute proof? No. But it is enough to shift the burden of proof... The normally reserved Amihai Mazar of Hebrew University, one of the most esteemed scholars in the field of biblical archaeology and author of the standard textbook, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000-586 BCE, has described the discovery as 'something of a miracle'."
"In the end," says Mazar, "the integrity of the land and its history will prevail. And I'm grateful to have a small part in it."
Footnote:
*And Yehuchal's "business card" is actually one of several that have been discovered in the last decade, which give further testimony to the veracity of the biblical account of the king's court activities prior to Jerusalem's destruction. In another excavation site, thought to be the remains of a public building, over 50 bullas were discovered under the charred layers of destruction. King Nebuchadnezzar's fires razed the city, but those same fires solidified the clay seals like a kiln, preserving them in good condition and fully legible. They bear dozens of Hebrew names, two of them belonging to characters in the Bible who were contemporaries of Yehuchal. One of those is Gemaryahu Ben Shafan, one of King Yehoyakim's scribes, in whose chamber Baruch Ben Neria read Jeremiah's words of rebuke and repentance (Jeremiah 36:10). Another name is Azaryahu Ben Hilkiyahu, a member of the family of high priests who officiated before Jerusalem's destruction (Chronicles I, 9:10).
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