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.
Together with John Van Seters's Abraham in History and Tradition (1975), this book marked the culmination of a growing current of dissatisfaction in scholarly circles with the then-current consensus (or near-consensus) on the patriarchal narratives. The consensus can be summarized as the proposal that, even if archaeology could not directly confirm the existence of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), these patriarchal narratives had originated in a second millennium BC setting because many personal names, place names, and customs referenced in the Genesis narratives were unique to that era. This view was expressed by John Bright in his influential History of Israel (1959, 2nd edition 1960) in these words; "one is forced to the conclusion that the patriarchal narratives authentically reflect social customs at home in the second millennium rather than those of later Israel".[1]
Thompson points out that, in fact, none of the archaeological evidence cited by the dominant scholars of the time (notably William F. Albright, E. A. Speiser, Cyrus Gordon, and Bright himself) actually provided irrefutable proof for the historicity of the patriarchal narratives, arguing that "not only has archaeology not proven a single event of the patriarchal traditions to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely."[2] He therefore concludes that "the quest for the historical Abraham is a basically fruitless occupation both for the historian and the student of the Bible."[3]
Albright's reputation never quite recovered from the publication of Thompson's book.[4]
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.
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.
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.
The Jebusites were, according to the books of Joshua and Samuel from the Tanakh, a Canaanite tribe that inhabited Jerusalem, then called Jebus prior to the conquest initiated by Joshua and completed by King David, although a majority of scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel and most likely reflects a much later period. The Books of Kings as well as 1 Chronicles state that Jerusalem was known as Jebus prior to this event. The identification of Jebus with Jerusalem is sometimes disputed by scholars. According to some biblical chronologies, the city was conquered by King David in 1003 BCE.
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 United Monarchy or the United Kingdom of Israel is a political entity described in the deuteronomistic history of the Hebrew Bible as having existed under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon, encompassing the territories of both the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
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.
Abraham in History and Tradition is a book by biblical scholar John Van Seters.
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).
The Twelve Tribes of Israel are, according to Hebrew scriptures, the descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob, who collectively form the Israelite nation. The tribes were through his twelve sons through his wives, Leah and Rachel, and his concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. In modern scholarship, there is skepticism as to whether there ever were twelve Israelite tribes, with the use of the number 12 thought more likely to signify a symbolic tradition as part of a national founding myth.
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.
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:
that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and
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.
The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past,, is a book by Thomas L. Thompson, Professor of Old Testament at the University of Copenhagen. Its US title is The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel.
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 Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, is an event in the Hebrew Bible book of Genesis 14:1–17 that occurs in the days of Abram and Lot. The Vale of Siddim was the battleground for the cities of the Jordan River plain revolting against Mesopotamian rule.
The Nuzi texts are ancient documents found during an excavation of Nuzi, an ancient Mesopotamian city southwest of Kirkuk in modern Kirkuk Governorate of Iraq, located near the Tigris river. They were found on cuneiform tablets written in the Akkadian language. The site consists of one medium-sized multiperiod tell and two small single period mounds. The texts are mainly legal and business documents. They have previously been viewed as evidence for the age and veracity of certain parts of the Old Testament, especially of the Patriarchal age, but that attribution is now doubted by most scholars.
The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites. The scholarly consensus is that the Exodus, as described in the Torah, is not historical, even though there may be a historical core behind the Biblical narrative.
The composition of the Torah was a process that involved multiple authors over an extended period of time. While Jewish tradition holds that all five books were originally written by Moses sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE, leading scholars have rejected Mosaic authorship since the 17th century.
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