Biblical archaeology school

Last updated

Biblical archaeology, occasionally known as Palestinology, [1] [2] is the school of archaeology which concerns itself with the biblical world. In the academic setting it serves as an adjunct to biblical studies, providing the historical, cultural, and linguistic context to scripture. [3]

Contents

If the modern discipline had a founder, it would be William F. Albright, an American with roots in the Evangelical tradition. By the 1950s, Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck, E. A. Speiser, G. Ernest Wright, and Cyrus Gordon, claimed to have found physical evidence for the historical events behind many Old Testament narratives.

18th to early 20th century

Adriaan Reland, professor of philosophy at the University of Harderwijk, was one of the early Orientalists, teaching Hebrew antiquities from 1713. [4] [5] Although he never ventured beyond the borders of the Netherlands, he was also acclaimed as a cartographer [6] and published the first modern work of biblical archaeology, Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata , a detailed geographical survey of Palestine in 1696 written in Latin and published by Willem Broedelet, Utrecht, in 1714.

The foundations of biblical archaeology were laid in the 19th century with the work of antiquarians such as Johann Jahn, whose manual of biblical antiquities, Biblische Archäologie, (1802, translated into English 1839) was immensely influential in the middle years of the 19th century. Shortly thereafter, Edward Robinson, known as the founder of modern Palestinology published the bestselling Biblical Researches in Palestine, the Sinai, Petrae and Adjacent Regions (1841), which prompted a group of English clergymen and scholars to found the Palestine Exploration Fund "to promote research into the archaeology and history, manners and customs and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of biblical Palestine and the Levant" in 1865. [7] This was followed by the Deutscher Palästina-Verein (1877) and the École Biblique (1890). The American School of Oriental Research was founded in 1900, and the British School of Archaeology in 1919. The research these institutions sponsored, at least in these early days, was primarily geographic, and it was not until the 1890s that Sir Flinders Petrie introduced the basic principles of scientific excavation, including stratigraphy and ceramic typology to Palestinian archaeology. [8]

William F. Albright and the biblical archaeology school

The dominant figure in 20th-century biblical archaeology, defining its scope and shaping the mid-century consensus on the relationship between archaeology, the Bible, and the history of ancient Israel, was William F. Albright (1891–1971). An American with roots in the American Evangelical tradition (his parents served as Methodist missionaries in Chile), Director of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), (now the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research) through the 1920s and 1930s, editor of ASOR's Bulletin until 1968, and author of over a thousand books and articles, Albright drew biblical archaeology into the contemporary debates over the origins and reliability of the Bible. In the early decades of the 20th century much debate centered on the documentary hypothesis. This explained the Old Testament as the composite product of authors working between the 10th and 5th centuries BC, and raised the question of whether one could regard the books of the bible as a reliable source of information for Solomon's period or earlier." [9] European scholars such as Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), Albrecht Alt (1883–1956) and Martin Noth (1902–1968) suggested that the books of the Old Testament rested on a body of oral tradition that reflected historical events, but could not themselves be regarded as historically accurate. Albright saw archaeology as a practical means to test these ideas. Biblical archaeology, for him, therefore embraced all lands and any finds that could "throw some light, directly or indirectly, on the Bible". [10]

Albright and his followers believed that archaeology could and should be used to shed light on the biblical narrative, particularly the Old Testament. The influential academic positions held by Albright and his followers, and their immense output—Albright alone authored over a thousand books and articles—made their work highly influential, especially in America, and especially among ordinary Christians who wished to believe that archaeology had "proved the Bible true". In fact the members of the school were not biblical literalists, and their main concern was to discriminate between those parts of the biblical story that were true and those that were embellishments.

By the middle of the 20th century the work of Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck (1900–1971), E. A. Speiser (1902–1965), G. Ernest Wright (1909–1974) and Cyrus Gordon (1908–2001), had produced a consensus that biblical archaeology had provided physical evidence for the originating historical events behind the Old Testament narratives: in the words of Albright: "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history." [11] The consensus allowed the writing of authoritative textbooks such as John Bright's History of Israel (1959). [12] Bright did not believe that the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph could be regarded as reliable history, or that it was possible to reconstruct the origins of Israel from the biblical text alone, but he did believe that the stories in Genesis reflected the physical reality of the 20th to 17th centuries BC, and that it was therefore possible to write a history of the origins of Israel by comparing the biblical accounts with what was known of the time from other sources. [13]

Biblical archaeology today

Albrightian theories were largely overturned in the second half of the 20th century, especially in regards to suppositions that Albrightians made regarding the pre-monarchic era. Improved archaeological methods, notably Kathleen Kenyon's excavations at Jericho, did not support the conclusions the biblical archaeologists had drawn, with the result that central theories squaring the biblical narrative with archaeological finds, such as Albright's reconstruction of Abraham as an Amorite donkey caravaneer, were rejected by the archaeological community. The challenge reached its climax with the publication of two important studies: In 1974 Thomas L. Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives re-examined the record of biblical archaeology in relation to the Patriarchal narratives in Genesis and concluded that "not only has archaeology not proven a single event of the Patriarchal narratives to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely." [14] and in 1975 John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition reached a similar conclusion about the usefulness of tradition history: "A vague presupposition about the antiquity of the tradition based upon a consensus approval of such arguments should no longer be used as a warrant for proposing a history of the tradition related to early premonarchic times." [15]

At the same time a new generation of archaeologists, notably William G. Dever, criticized biblical archaeology for failing to take note of the revolution in archaeology known as processualism, which saw the discipline as a scientific one allied to anthropology, rather than as a part of the corpus of the humanities linked to history and theology. Biblical archaeology, Dever said, remained "altogether too narrowly within a theological angle of vision," [16] and should be abandoned and replaced with a regional Syro-Palestinian archaeology operating within a processual framework. [17]

Dever was broadly successful: most archaeologists working in the world of the Bible today do so within a processual or post-processual framework: yet few describe themselves in these terms. [18] The reasons for this attachment to the old nomenclature are complex, but are connected with the link between excavators (especially American ones) and the denominational institutions and benefactors who employ and support them, and with the unwillingness of biblical scholars, both conservative and liberal, to reject the link between the Bible and archaeology. [19] The result has been a blurring of the distinction[ original research? ][ failed verification ] between the theologically-based archaeology that interprets the archaeological record as "substantiating in general the theological message of a God who acts in history," [20] and Dever's vision of Syro-Palestinian archaeology as an "independent, secular discipline ... pursued by cultural historians for its own sake." [21]

Evangelical scholar Kenneth Kitchen, despite supporting the historicity of the Bible, has also been critical of biblical archaeology as it was conceived in the first half of the 20th century: in his book On the Reliability of the Old Testament , he dismisses Albright and Gordon as "little local (and very parochial)" representatives of the "long-deceased American Biblical Archaeology/theology school". [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abraham</span> Legendary patriarch in the Hebrew Bible

Abraham is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Jews and God; in Christianity, he is the spiritual progenitor of all believers, whether Jewish or non-Jewish; and in Islam, he is a link in the chain of Islamic prophets that begins with Adam and culminates in Muhammad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribe of Judah</span> One of the twelve Tribes of Israel

According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel, named after Judah, the son of Jacob. Judah was the first tribe to take its place in the Land of Israel, occupying the southern part of the territory. Jesse and his sons, including King David, belonged to this tribe.

The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's relationship to history—covering not just the Bible's acceptability as history but also the ability to understand the literary forms of biblical narrative. One can extend biblical historicity to the evaluation of whether or not the Christian New Testament is an accurate record of the historical Jesus and of the Apostolic Age. This tends to vary depending upon the opinion of the scholar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William F. Albright</span> American archaeologist and biblical scholar (1891–1971)

William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars", having become known to the public in 1948 for his role in the authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His scholarly reputation arose as a leading theorist and practitioner of biblical archaeology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Israel Finkelstein</span> Israeli archaeologist

Israel Finkelstein is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. He is also known for applying the exact and life sciences in archaeological and historical reconstruction. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biblical archaeology</span> Archaeological sub-discipline

Biblical archaeology is an academic school and a subset of Biblical studies and Levantine archaeology. Biblical archaeology studies archaeological sites from the Ancient Near East and especially the Holy Land, from biblical times.

The patriarchal age is the era of the three biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, according to the narratives of Genesis 12–50. It is preceded in the Bible by the primeval history and followed by The Exodus.

John Van Seters is a Canadian scholar of the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East. Currently University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, he was formerly James A. Gray Professor of Biblical Literature at UNC. He took his Ph.D. at Yale University in Near Eastern Studies (1965) and a Th.D. h.c. from the University of Lausanne (1999). His honours and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH fellowship, an ACLS Fellowship, and research fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and National Research Foundation of South Africa. His many publications include The Hyksos: A New Investigation (1966); Abraham in History and Tradition (1975); In Search of History ; The Edited Bible (2006); and The Biblical Saga of King David (2009).

Bryant G. Wood is an American biblical archaeologist and Young Earth creationist. Wood is known for arguing that the destruction of Jericho could be accorded with the biblical literalist chronology of c. 1400 BC. This date is some 150 years later than the accepted date of c. 1550 BC, first determined by Kathleen Kenyon and subsequently confirmed with radiocarbon dating.

Criticism of the Bible is the concerning about the factual accuracy of the claims and the moral tenability of the commandments made in the Bible, the holy books of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions. Devout Christians have long regarded their Bible as the perfect word of God. In addition to concerns about ethics in the Bible, about biblical inerrancy, or about the historicity of the Bible, there remain some questions of biblical authorship and as to what material to include in the biblical canon.

William Gwinn Dever is an American archaeologist, scholar, historian, semiticist, and theologian. He is an active scholar of the Old Testament, and historian, specialized in the history of the Ancient Near East and the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah in biblical times. He was Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1975 to 2002. He is a Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania.

George Ernest Wright, was a leading Old Testament scholar and biblical archaeologist. An expert in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology, he was especially known for his work in the study and dating of pottery. He was associated with the biblical theology movement.

Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, is a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:

  1. that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and
  2. that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study.

Thomas L. Thompson is an American-born Danish biblical scholar and theologian. He was professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1993 to 2009. He currently lives in Denmark.

<i>What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?</i> 2001 book by William G. Dever

What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel is a 2001 book by biblical scholar and archaeologist William G. Dever detailing his response to the claims of minimalists to the historicity and value of the Hebrew Bible. The book was also conceived as a response to Thomas L. Thompson's minimalist book The Bible in History.

The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham is a book by biblical scholar Thomas L. Thompson, Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

Niels Peter Lemche is a biblical scholar at the University of Copenhagen, whose interests include early Israel and its relationship with history, the Old Testament, and archaeology.

The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology are a series of lectures delivered and published under the auspices of the British Academy. The Leopold Schweich Trust Fund, set up in 1907, was a gift from Miss Constance Schweich in memory of her father. It provided for three public lectures to be delivered annually on subjects related to ‘the archaeology, art, history, languages and literature of Ancient Civilization with reference to Biblical Study’. The three papers given by each lecturer are published together in book form, by Oxford University Press. There have been many reprintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Levantine archaeology</span> Archaeological study of the Levant

Levantine archaeology is the archaeological study of the Levant. It is also known as Syro-Palestinian archaeology or Palestinian archaeology. Besides its importance to the discipline of Biblical archaeology, the Levant is highly important when forming an understanding of the history of the earliest peoples of the Stone Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Origins of Judaism</span>

The origins of Judaism lie in the Bronze Age amidst polytheistic ancient Semitic religions, specifically evolving out of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion, then co-existing with Babylonian religion, and syncretizing elements of Babylonian belief into the worship of Yahweh as reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.

References

  1. http://www.custodia.org/SBF-In-Memoriam-Father-Michele.html?lang=it [ dead link ]
  2. "Library of Palestinology (in Hebrew)". Israel Exploration Society. 1937. Archived from the original on 4 April 2021. Retrieved 4 February 2011.
  3. College, Wheaton. "Biblical Archaeology". Wheaton College. Retrieved 2022-10-26.
  4. Power And Religion in Baroque Rome: Barberini Cultural Policies, P. J. A. N. Rietbergen, p.321
  5. Adriaan Reland (1676-1718) Archived 2008-04-13 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Maps by Reland [ permanent dead link ]
  7. "Palestine Exploration Fund website, Introduction to the PEF". Archived from the original on 2008-10-13. Retrieved 2008-08-13.
  8. "David Noel Freedman and Bruce E. Willoughby, "Biblical Archaeology", MSN Encarta". Archived from the original on 2009-10-29.
  9. "J. Maxwell Miller, "History or Legend", The Christian Century, February 24, 2004, p. 42–47. From religion-online.org". Archived from the original on August 23, 2007. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
  10. Peter Moorey, A Century of Biblical Archaeology, p.54ff
  11. W.F.Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, 1954 edition, p. 128, quoted in Walter F. Kaiser, "What Good is Biblical Archaeology to Bible Readers?", Contact magazine, Winter 05/06, at gctuedu.com Archived 2008-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
  12. John Bright, A History of Israel, 4th edition
  13. G. W. Ahlstrom, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr. – Jun., 1975), review of John Bright's History of Israel (4th edition).
  14. Thomas L. Thompson, "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham", 1974, p.328, quoted in a review by Dennis Pardee, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1977
  15. Van Seters, John (1975). Abraham in History and Tradition. Echo Point Books and Media. p. 309. ISBN   978-1-62654-910-4.
  16. Joel Ng, "Introduction to Biblical Archaeology", 2003 (revised 2004), at Edwardtbabinski.com
  17. "Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.16" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  18. "Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.7" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-08-28. Retrieved 2018-11-06.
  19. Ziony Zevit, "Three Debates About Bible and Archaeology: The 'Biblical Archaeology' Debate", Biblica 83 (2002) pp.2–9
  20. Specifically this was the view of Albright's student, G. E. Wright, and his "Biblical Theology" school, which became popular in America in the 1950s. See Andrew G. Vaughn, review of William G. Dever, "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel" (2001), RBL 2003
  21. William G. Dever, quoted in Ziony Zevit, "The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions", 2001 [ permanent dead link ]
  22. Kitchen, K. A. (2006-06-09). On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 469. ISBN   978-0-8028-0396-2.