On the Reliability of the Old Testament (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2003: ISBN 0-8028-4960-1) is a book by British Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen (born 1932). The book provides the reader with "the most sweeping scholarly case in a generation for the traditional beliefs held by Orthodox Jews and Christian conservatives", according to Richard Ostling. [1]
The book was intended to serve as a counterpart to F. F. Bruce's Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? (1943), and in so doing to counter the arguments of Biblical minimalism, which casts doubt upon the historical value of the Old Testament. [1]
The book opens with an introductory chapter surveying the history with which it intends to deal, the continuous narrative in the Hebrew Bible from the Genesis creation narrative to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity in the early days of the Persian Empire in the 5th century BC. The author claims that this history was written at the same time as the events it describes in its various sections, and that this can be confirmed by comparing the Old Testament with non-Biblical sources, both written and archaeological. He clarifies by stating that there are three elements he means to address, history, literature and culture, and three he does not, theology, doctrine, and dogma. [2]
The core of the book is eight chapters (chapters 2 to 9) surveying Biblical history and comparing it to the ages with which it deals, from the 3rd millennium (the period to which Kitchen traces the origins of the Biblical stories of Noah's Flood and other incidents from the opening chapters of Genesis) to the Babylonian captivity and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. The author presents his conclusions in chapter 10. [2]
In chapter 10, despite supporting the historicity of the Bible, Kitchen also criticizes biblical archaeology as it was conceived in the first half of the 20th century, particularly the works of William Foxwell Albright and Cyrus Herzl Gordon, whom he dismisses as "little local (and very parochial)" representatives of the "long-deceased American Biblical Archaeology/theology school". [3]
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The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in Koine Greek.
The Israelites were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat in the Jewish–Babylonian War and the destruction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The event is known to be historical, and is described in archaeological and extra-biblical sources, in addition to the Hebrew Bible.
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.
Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, England. He specialises in the ancient Egyptian Ramesside Period, and the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, as well as ancient Egyptian chronology, having written over 250 books and journal articles on these and other subjects since the mid-1950s. He has been described by The Times as "the very architect of Egyptian chronology".
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).
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.
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.
There is much disagreement within biblical scholarship today over the authorship of the Bible. The majority of scholars believe that most of the books of the Bible are the work of multiple authors and that all have been edited to produce the works known today. The following article outlines the conclusions of the majority of contemporary scholars, along with the traditional views, both Jewish and Christian.
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.
Biblical archaeology, occasionally known as Palestinology, 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.
The origins of Judaism lie in Bronze Age polytheistic Canaanite religion. Judaism also syncretized elements of other Semitic religions such as Babylonian religion, which is reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible.
Ben-Hadad I, son of Tabrimmon and grandson of Hezion, was king of Aram-Damascus between 885 BCE and 865 BCE. Ben-Hadad I was reportedly a contemporary of kings Baasha of the Kingdom of Israel and Asa of the Kingdom of Judah.
The Bible makes reference to various pharaohs of Egypt. These include unnamed pharaohs in events described in the Torah, as well as several later named pharaohs, some of whom were historical or can be identified with historical pharaohs.
Nehemiah 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, or the 11th chapter of the book of Ezra-Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible, which treats the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah as one book. Jewish tradition states that Ezra is the author of Ezra-Nehemiah as well as the Book of Chronicles, but modern scholars generally accept that a compiler from the 5th century BCE is the final author of these books. This chapter describes Nehemiah's position in the Persian court and his piety.
Ezra 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Ezra in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible, or the book of Ezra–Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible, which treats the book of Ezra and book of Nehemiah as one book. Jewish tradition states that Ezra is the author of Ezra–Nehemiah as well as the Book of Chronicles, but modern scholars generally believe that a compiler from the 5th century BCE is the final author of these books.
Biblical maximalism is the movement in Biblical scholarship that, as opposed to Biblical minimalism, affirms the historicity of central Biblical narratives, such as those pertaining to the United Monarchy, and the historical authenticity of ancient Israel as a whole. Due to differences between the Bible and 19th- and 20th-century archaeological findings, there exists discordance between these two parties of biblical exegetists: the biblical maximalists argue that prior to Judaism's Babylonian Captivity, the Bible serves an accurate historical source and should influence the conclusions drawn from archaeological studies; whereas biblical minimalists assert that the Bible must be read as fiction, unless proven otherwise by archaeological findings, and ought not be considered in secular studies.
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Simeon was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Book of Joshua locates its territory inside the boundaries of the Tribe of Judah. It is usually counted as one of the ten lost tribes, but as its territory was south of Judah and gradually being absorbed by Judah, it cannot be considered one of the tribes of the Kingdom of Israel and would certainly not have been affected by the Assyrian sack of the kingdom.