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Originally posted by tclune:
ISTM that this view would be much more devastating to the nationalistic claims of the current state of Israel than anything else. For Christians, the claims with respect to who Christ is and was are the bases for our faith. If it were to turn out that Jacob and/or Moses were mythical or composite characters, it hardly seems that it would roil the surface of Christianity at all. But, if Christ were mythical or not raised from the dead, then (as Paul noted)our faith is in vain.

--Tom Clune

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Originally posted by Woodworm:
the reigns of the biblical baddies could be very prosperous, whereas the reigns of the faithful could be a total horlix.

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Originally posted by Woodworm:
They make what I think is a pretty convincing case, for example, that:

1. The Exodus never happened.

2. The story of Israel's Kings in the book of Kings, and whether they were successful or unsuccessful depending on whether they were faithful or unfaithful to Jahweh, is the creation of theological bias and is not historically accurate...

...In fact, the archaological evidence doesn't bear out this supposed correlation - the reigns of the biblical baddies could be very prosperous, whereas the reigns of the faithful could be a total horlix.

My question is, if this is true, where does it leave us Christians?

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Originally posted by §Andrew:
Traditional Christianity gave a huge fight to preserve the historical accuracy of the divine economy in the Old Testament, stressing the unity of the two testaments.

If God is not like the God we read about in the Old Testament, then we have a problem here, because it would turn out that Christianity gives a false image of God.

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Originally posted by tclune:
I am not aware of the Church fighting to preserve the historical accuracy of the OT at all.

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The image of God has very little to do with the question of whether the revelation of that image is communicated through history or literature.

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Originally posted by Ken: If the whole thing was a bit of post-exilic priestly spin-doctoring then I would expect David (& Solomon) would have been written up in a very different light.

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Herodotus' invention earned him the twin titles "The Father of History", first conferred by Cicero, and "The Father of Lies".[5] As these epithets imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero's On the Laws (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales and, more importantly, the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications.

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Thanks Woodworm. You've provided me with something I've been looking for. I have heard lots of scholars say that the Exodus didn't happen in archaeological evidence, but it is hard to find such things through the chaff of people that are defending that it did. I look forward to reading it.

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Originally posted by Woodworm:
That raises a further question, and one I was thinking about recently: is there evidence outside the Bible for the Exile? The wholesale movement of populations strikes me as something that would leave all kinds of interesting traces: archaeological, linguistic, DNA ...

Hart's response is right, plenty of evidence, although according to The Bible Unearthed (sorry) the external evidence is that the numbers exiled were relatively low, with a lot of folk left behind (as I guess you would expect).

Thanks v much to all for the other responses, which I am still processing. I can't agree with the posts to the effect that that it doesn't terribly matter; Andrew is right that traditional teaching claims a factual paradigm, hence my question as to whether it is "enough" if the stories are myths.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Thanks Woodworm. You've provided me with something I've been looking for. I have heard lots of scholars say that the Exodus didn't happen in archaeological evidence, but it is hard to find such things through the chaff of people that are defending that it did. I look forward to reading it.

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Part of the issue lies in how we understand "history" as well. We have to remember that the "historical" books of the OT are written by ancient authors, not modern authors. Thus they reflect ancient understandings of history, not post-enlightenment literalism.

One difference in such a worldview is the way ancients understood "their" history as "our" history. When an ancient Hebrew is telling the story of Exodus, he's not telling it as something that happened to them, it's something that happened to us. Thus a redactor, writing centuries after the event, is going to write what may have happened to a handful of people as if it happened to the entire group at the time of writing.

Thus Exodus might be seen as the story of a handful of slaves, that was appropriated and owned by the nation of Israel.

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I live in a country of Fundiliteralists in many ways. I honestly "get" that the story is not literal, unfortunately, many people don't.

I personally think it didn't happen....at....all as described. But I am willing to let an expert inform me otherwise, thus the book.
 

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Posted by PhilA (# 8792) on :
 
As far as the Exodus is concerned, lets be clear: there is no evidence of it happening as the bible portrays.

However, there is an unnamed city, dating from Ramses II that was unfinished for no discernible reason. Because the Egyptians didn't write about failures, only victories, there is nothing in the Egyptian archives about this place, it was literally stumbled upon by farmers and mentioned to archaeologists.

One explanation for why it wasn't finished is because the work force picked up and legged it. It is quite possible that these slaves (of which the Egyptian word is translated as 'Hebrew') began to identify as one people and became somewhat nomadic for a time. If you look at a lot of the laws in the Torah, they make sense for a nomadic people - no pigs, because they don't travel well, no shellfish, it travels really badly, no permanent worship space but a tabernacle, YHWH portrayed as a defender and warrior God pre settling in the promised land, no king initially, no idols to carry around, be careful who you shag (babies don't travel well either), speedy settling of disputes, punishments for transgressions comprise of leaving the social group (ritual uncleanliness) rather than banishment from the land as in other 'nation based' societies- this all adds up and points towards a transitional people.

Of course, when this changed and the people settled in the promised land, this also became part of the story and you can see the rules and society change and the image of God changes to one of a protector and defender. As farming and agriculture becomes more important, it is no longer simply livestock that is to be sacrificed, but tithing of fields as well... the examples go on through all 613 rules and can be placed chronologically in the narrative they sit alongside. Their implementation and integration can be plotted through three primary phases of Hebrew life: 'nomadic and transitional', 'settling and building' and 'settled and farming'.

When the stories were written down many years later (probably whilst in Exile in Babylon) they had already taken on much more mythic and foundational properties and became entwined with the group's identity both socially and religiously.

Being able to academically study the past of a people through its religious writing doesn't make that history and story any less true or any less important. However, one has to view the story through the understanding that many of the different books were written for different audiences and for different purposes, just as the NT books were. To categorize them as either 'history' or 'fiction' is such a blunt tool as to be useless.
 

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Posted by Organ Builder (# 12478) on :
 
I happen to love archeology as long as someone else is doing the digging in the dirt under a blazing sun, but it needs to be read skeptically as well.

Anyone who doesn't think so needs to order this book.
 

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Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Just as stupid question, as I've not read the book, but I have done some archaeological digging: if people are wandering in the desert, what archaeological evidence is there likely to be? The stuff that provides good archaeological evidence tends to be buildings, nice solid stone ones for preference, which don't stack up with nomadic tribes.
 

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Posted by Leetle Masha (# 8209) on :
 
Organ Builder, Macaulay's book puts me in mind of a clever little novel from the '60s by Walter Miller: A Canticle for Leibowitz
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Just two cents here and there--

I suspect that what would remain from desert wanderings would be mainly tiny things (amulets? easily portable, anyway, even though made of stone or metal) and the occasional piece of leather clothing or harness, that just happened to get discarded in the right environment to last 4000 years. I have a hard time thinking of much else desert wanderers would leave behind.

I thought there WAS quite a bit of evidence for warfare in Canaan? Of course, proving who did what to whom when is another matter. But that area was Grand Central Station for every army on the move in the Middle East, due to trade routes and geographical issues; the biblical accounts of almost unceasing war are aparently right on.

As for "the good guys" have the good reigns, and the "bad guys" never prosper, the Bible shows nothing of the sort. It is David, Israel's first and in many ways best king, whose hands are so covered in blood that God won't let him build the temple; and it is Solomon the apostate and enslaver of his fellow Israelites who enjoys the most peaceful, powerful and wealthy reign in the whole catalogue. The correlation between faithfulness and peaceful prosperity is never very clear. There's a bit clearer link between repentance and (temporary) rescue.
 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Well, all I can say about this at the moment is that I'm glad I'm not the ONLY person who read point 2 and thought "Um, yes, I already knew that, that's exactly what the Bible says actually".

Nowhere does the Bible suggest that the 'good' kings had the most EARTHLY success and the 'bad' kings had the least. It is quite clearly judging them on theological grounds. But 'good' kings died young and 'bad' kings reigned for decades.

To be honest, if point 2 is the book's idea of a gasp! shock! horror! the Bible is wrong! moment, then it greatly diminishes my interest in reading it to find out more about point 1. Because point 2 looks very much like someone having an agenda, and creating a straw man in order to knock it down.
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
I came across this critique on line. It seems pretty measured to me.

I've no doubt that history, oral tradition, legend, politics and theological outlooks are all intertwined in the OT and the evidence of archaeology can shed light on those things. I'm going to take this advice at the end of the linked critique.

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I recommend this book if you like to be rattled—if you enjoy a provocative, polemical read. Finkelstein and Silberman tell us there were no patriarchs, no Exodus, no conquest of Canaan, and no united monarchy. Such assertions challenge any complacent acceptance of conventional views. They force biblical scholars to recheck the evidence behind their own visions of the Bible and Israel’s history.

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Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Part of the issue lies in how we understand "history" as well. We have to remember that the "historical" books of the OT are written by ancient authors, not modern authors. Thus they reflect ancient understandings of history, not post-enlightenment literalism.

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Thus Exodus might be seen as the story of a handful of slaves, that was appropriated and owned by the nation of Israel.

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To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates - the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.

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Originally posted by ken:
In some ways the Old Testament has a more modern view of history than the Greek writings do. I am very impressed by the general background of technological advancement in it.

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
I cannot recall the details, but there was some recent discoveries that David did exist FWIW.

As to fictional narratives. I have no issue with the names and places, what I find troubling is the apparent serious lack of evidence of a tribe running around and the lack Egyptian evidence. It just seems really odd, at minimum. That someone would contrive that part to make a story around all these people doesn't seem like a stretch at all.
It's like watching as Moses sits his grandchildren and spins a yarn for them all to keep their attention.

There is also the following question....
Where does one begin to question the entire merits of a book if it is sold as "some level of literal" and is later proven to be some version of not "literal at all"? I have answered the question for myself, I pose it rhetorically.

I guess if the Bible was sold as "Don't get to worked up in the details folks! Its a terrifying tale with raunchy bits, action, and a power packed ending with moral lessons thrown in for fun" I wouldn't have had such an expectation for it. As it is, that's almost never what I hear except for sometimes the most liberal of liberal folks.

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It literally is what it is. The trick is teasing the history out of the literature.

As for the "one guy spinning a yarn to amuse his children" theory, that doesn't jibe at all with modern scholarship that reads the Torah as a collaborative effort that spanned centuries. There are places where you can still see the seams if you read closely. As has been observed, there are (as my prof, Julie Duncan, who FWIW, worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls put it) kernels of history throughout the whole text. It's very heavily mythologized history (as a lot of history from this time was), but it's still history.

It's not pure fiction, and it's not pure non-fiction. It's a sloppy mess of both.

And personally, it's fun getting worked up on the details. That's how you work it out.

Besides, what sick fuck of a parent would read their kids Leviticus as part of a bedtime story? And who would make up all those, well, numbers at the beginning of Numbers? or the Genealogies? Or all those screwy details for how to construct a Tabernacle that we've been paraphrasing in Kerygmania?

Like I said, I'm not arguing for hard literal historicity, but to me the argument for pure fiction makes about as much sense as pure non-fiction. Nobody would write and collate this much material just because it was fun. There's an historical reason this stuff was put together the way it was, and it was done by historical people.

I suppose a more fruitful question might be: Why did they do it?
 

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Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :
 

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Originally posted by Ynot:
Isn't it more important that the stories in the Bible are good stories, or God's stories, as opposed to true stories?
I think I'd be more worried if science came up with facts confirming the truth of the Bible stories. I'd loose my faith. I know faith doesn't keep me good, but it keeps me better than I would have been without it.

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Originally posted by Woodworm:
...My question is, if this is true, where does it leave us Christians? Is it enough for the Exodus to be a powerful myth? Can it be meaningfully distinguished from powerful secular myths or stories? If the OT authors misrepresented history to suit their own agenda, is there anything in the Bible that we can trust?

This is old ground I expect but I am properly perplexed & would be grateful for views.

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Originally posted by ken:
...If the whole thing was redacted in an attempt to prove that all living Israelites were the descendents of the original sons of Jacob and no-one else then those parts would presumably have been edited out.

And the very fact that they weren't edited out in the post-exilic period, when they attached great importance to blood-lines, purity, and separation is itself a clue that those later redactors had too great an attachment to the texts to feel free to alter them. (or that there were enough diverse copies that they would have been found out if they had)

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Besides, if it's really a fabrication...

Who the hell expends that much energy making up names for cities and peoples and inventories that never existed? If so, that's a volume of imaginary cultures and places that even Robert Jordan (RIP) would find daunting!

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
The picture of the world of the Patriarchs does not fit into the era claimed for it: but it does fit very well into the 8th century BCE:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Besides, if it's really a fabrication...

Who the hell expends that much energy making up names for cities and peoples and inventories that never existed? If so, that's a volume of imaginary cultures and places that even Robert Jordan (RIP) would find daunting!

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The misconception of posters here is that the authors of this book are asserting that the OT was "invented" history: when actually they are saying Israelite history was up till c. the 8th century BCE an orally transmitted one, and that when finally written out as the Torah, it drew all the physical details from that century. The picture of the world of the Patriarchs does not fit into the era claimed for it: but it does fit very well into the 8th century BCE: there are no made up names of towns and rulers: these are just misplaced by a bunch of centuries!

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Originally posted by Woodworm:
My question is, if this is true, where does it leave us Christians? Is it enough for the Exodus to be a powerful myth?

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
There is always the possibility that some future discovery will prove an Exodus and historicity of the essential Biblical stories. But that does not seem reasonable to expect, given the complete lack of any such evidence to even suggest that the OT stories are literally true. Everywhere you look in the Middle East the discovered evidence refutes the OT picture of "history": it is out of place or non existent, i.e. made out of whole cloth for religious agenda purposes, as you've pointed out.

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Let me begin by clarifying which books of the Hebrew Bible I think can be utilized by the would-be historian, whether textual scholar or archaeologist. With most scholars, I would exclude much of the Pentateuch, specifically the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. These materials obviously constitute a sort of "pre-history" that has been attached to the main epic of ancient Israel by late editors. All this may be distilled from long oral tradition, and I suspect that some of the stories -- such as parts of the Patriarchal narratives -- may once have had a historical setting. These traditions, however, are overlaid with legendary and even fantastic materials that the modern reader may enjoy as "story," but which can scarcely be taken seriously as history.

- What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? (pg. 97)

After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible historical figures. Virtually the last archaeological word was written by me more than 20 years ago for a basic handbook of biblical studies, Israelite and Judean History. And, as we have seen, archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit. Indeed, the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. A Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in southern Transjordan in the middle 13th century B.C., where many scholars think the biblical traditions concerning the god Yahweh arose. But archaeology can do nothing to confirm such a figure as a historical personage, much less prove that he was the founder of later Israelite religion. As for Leviticus and Numbers, these are clearly additions to the "pre-history" by very late Priestly editorial hands, preoccupied with notions of ritual purity, themes of the "promised land," and othe literary motifs that most modern readers will scarcely find edifying, much less historical.

- ibid (pg. 99)

Now let us turn to the biblical data. If we look at the biblical texts describing the origins of Israel, we see at once that the traditional account contained in Genesis through Joshua simple cannot be reconciled with the picture derived above from archaeological investigation. The whole "Exodus-Conquest" cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term "myth": perhaps "historical fiction" ...

- ibid (pg. 121)

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Originally posted by Pottage:
I don't agree that wherever you look in the Middle East you will find clear evidence of findings which refute Biblical history.

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... But clear evidence sitting in every museum you care to visit that the Bible is, as you say, all just "concocted"? I don't think so.

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My personal view is that events described in the OT in deep antiquity are probably signifcantly corrupted, and the further back in time the events are the greater the likelihood that this is so.

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But I think you overstate the case for deliberate invention many hundreds of years after the fact.

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For instance, why does it seem unreasonable to expect that ongoing excavatations such as that at Khirbet Qeiyafa may substantiate the basic historicity of the OT? Most of that site remains to be excavated in a project that is likely to take some years, but already it appears to be a significant settlement dating from the 10th century BCE. It stands near to Gath but it contains materially different types of pottery to those found in Gath, and it has yielded what appears to be Hebrew writing. A fortification that required the placing of 200,000 tons of stone doesn't SOUND like Finkelstein's vision of Israel in that era as a scattering of hamlets and hill settlements under no central authority. Evidence from that site of everyday literacy dating back to the 10th century BCE suggests in fact that it is relatively UNlikely that the earlier events recorded in the OT are just legends redacted hundreds of years later than this period.

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And as Ken has explained, the Biblical texts which describe Bronze Age events put them in a Bronze Age context, not that of the the seventh century BCE or later.

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:

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Originally posted by Ynot:
Isn't it more important that the stories in the Bible are good stories, or God's stories, as opposed to true stories?
I think I'd be more worried if science came up with facts confirming the truth of the Bible stories. I'd loose my faith. I know faith doesn't keep me good, but it keeps me better than I would have been without it.

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Is God absent from real human history? If you think so, then I suppose it's not a problem.

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
But no matter how much of the authors' theories is proven or otherwise, one thing seems abundantly clear: the OT is not what traditional Judeo-Christianity has believed it to be: the revealed "word of God" and literal history, but instead a collection of very old (oral) traditional tales woven into a much more modern concept to legitimize the claims of Judah over the lands round about.

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Originally posted by Pottage:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
But no matter how much of the authors' theories is proven or otherwise, one thing seems abundantly clear: the OT is not what traditional Judeo-Christianity has believed it to be: the revealed "word of God" and literal history, but instead a collection of very old (oral) traditional tales woven into a much more modern concept to legitimize the claims of Judah over the lands round about.

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OK. To some extent we're talking about differences in emphasis then, your case having been stated in more absolute terms than you actually see it. But I still think that the older parts of the historical Biblical narrative display an understanding of what the world was like many centuries earlier than the 7th century BCE rather than as it was at that time. It's not accurate to say that what the Bible describes is simply a lot of old legends pulled together and reduced to writing for the first time in 7th century BCE and given what was then a contemporary context either to make sense of them or to pursue what was then a contemporary political agenda.

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Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Just as stupid question, as I've not read the book, but I have done some archaeological digging: if people are wandering in the desert, what archaeological evidence is there likely to be? The stuff that provides good archaeological evidence tends to be buildings, nice solid stone ones for preference, which don't stack up with nomadic tribes.

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That's worth making as a general point. Why on earth should we expect archaeology to provide us with evidence for the way of life or even existence of any one arbitrarily chosen group of people from three or four thousand years ago? It doesn't even give us that for people we know existed three or four hundred years ago.

Partly its a scope problem, to do with the kind of evidence we are dealing with. Archaeology really doesn't tell us the same kind of thing as narrative history does. They can support and illustrate each other, but its very hard to use them to prove or disprove hypotheses made in the other field.

Partly its a scale problem. We've dug up literally hundreds of millions of relics of dead people. But that is out of countless billions of possible relics. So the chance of hitting any one ancient group of people is tiny. Its like the famous golfball and blade of grass effect. Bloke hits golfball. It lands on blade of grass. How unlikely is that?! There are thousands of blades of grass per square metre! Tens of thousands of square metres on the golf course! Its far less than a one-in-a-million chance! But you always hit at least one blade of grass. What's difficult is choosing which blade of grass (or hole) you are going to hit before you strike the ball. Archaeologists are playing on a golf course the size of the planet with millions of holes.

It is bloody difficult to associate stuff dug up by archaeologists with individuals known to written history. More or less impossible for anyone other than kings with their faces on coins - and that applies as much to the 15th century AD as BC. The chance of finding detailed evidence about any one family of ancient shepherds is tiny. Even a big one with lots of camels. There are hundreds of millions of families of ancient shepherds whose bones might be in those hills. And we're talking about a small group of people who are described as living alongside larger numbers of people with a different culture - or rather many different cultures. In a case like this absence of evidence really isn't evidence of absence. What archaeological evidence is likely to be left in modern England by Gypsies or Travellers or Malaysian students or Spanish tourists or Polish plumbers or Tamil shopkeepers? But we know that there have been tens of thousands of such people here.

And if you had the luck to dig up the actual pots and pans that Abraham or Joshua or Jesse ate off, how would you possibly identify them with those people anyway? We only know about the Patriarchs from a handful of books which we have in one version written maybe a thousand years later in a different language from the one they spoke. (Well, different from what Abraham and Joshua spoke, maybe not Jesse - Hebrew is a Canaanite language pretty close to Phoenician, but the OT says that the original Patriarchs were Arameans from Harran - Abraham, like Jesus, spoke Aramaic at home, not Hebrew) Whether it is accurate or not that is a different kind of information from the kind archaeology gets.

And I don't just mean that we shouldn't expect to find evidence of named individuals or families. We should expect to miss whole cultures and lifestyles. Whole groups of cultures. Never mind ancient nomads. We are still discovering the remains of lost cities in the Middle East. Big cities with stone buildings and walls and canals. That we are still finding new ones means there are almost certainly more still to find - and many more we will never find. Which means that not finding one is not conclusive evidence that it never existed.

Heck, every now and again we discover the remains of a entirely unknown urban civilisation in the Middle East. And often we don't know exactly who they were or what language they spoke or what their religion was, or anything.

Elamites are mentioned in the Bible. We dug up some of their cities. They seem to have been the people who invented writing. We still can't read their earliest writings nor do we know if they represent one language or more than one. There are whole lost cultures in there. Same with the Indus Valley/Harappa cultures. We don't really know whether the Hurrians were the same people as the Mitanni and whether or not they are the same as the people the Bible calls Horites. (Don't even start on the Hivites and the Perizzites) Inscriptions in previously unknown writing systems have been found in Iran and Turkmenistan and Xinjang form the early 4th century BC (lending credence to the idea that the invention of writing spread to China from Iran) There are remains of pyramids in Iran, and we have no idea who built them. That we are still discovering such things is a clue that there are more to discover and many we will never discover.

In the last few years archaeologists have uncovered neolithic megaliths and sculptures Turkey that almost certainly predate any others we know about. There are carved stones three metres high, and lifesize 3d sculptures of animals.
This is evidence of a culture apparently unlike any other we know about, totally unknown till the 1990s. It is just outside the city of Urfa, which is ancient Edessa, and so smack plonk in the middle of exactly the bit of the world that the Biblical Patriarchs were supposed to live in. (Which is also pretty much the same area we now know agriculture was invented in) Abraham's family are described as living in Haran, which is about thirty miles away. Think about that. We have, in the lifetime of this website, discovered an entire previously unknown civilisation in the same county that Abraham was supposed to have lived in.

We lost all record of he entire Hittite Empire for three thousand years. If you read books published in the early 20th century they aren't even on the map, literally. We're not talking about a few dozen semi-nomadic shepherds here. These people built big cities out of stone. They had armies and tax collectors and ambassadors and schools and a unique hieroglypic script and two or three religions all their own. They fought against the Egyptians and Assyrians and the Hurrians/Mittani and Urartu and Ugarit and loads of other people; and sometimes they won. They may have invented iron working. Almost certainly the first people to do it on a large scale. They are really very important to history. And we forgot them entirely.

And we still aren't quite sure how the original Hittites related to the Hittite Empire Hittites ("Nesli" IIRC) or to the Hittite and/or Mitanni/Hurrian/Luwian successor state at Carchemish (which is also near Urfa and Harran, and is the site of the battle at which the Babylonians beat the Egyptians and made the exile described in Jeremiah inevitable). And we don't know at all how they relate to the Hittites mentioned in the Pentateuch (which is set contemporaneously with the early Hittite Empire) or the Hittites that Uriah was one of (which on the face of it might mean the neo-Hittites of Carchemish, or their relatives in nearby cities - who were establishing themselves in Syria at exactly the time of King David )
 

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Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :
 
Fantastic post Ken.

I started thinking of the 'Hittite' Empire part way through before you started mentioning. Saw a documentary about that only a few weeks ago. One of the biggest empires of its time, and yet they were utterly missing from the recorded history that had come down to us.

(And the doco said they had nothing to do with with the other Hittites, this was simply the name that was picked early on for them. What else are you going to do with a people you have NO reference point for?)
 

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Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :
 
Serious question then.

Why do the archaeologists seem so sure that this culture did not exist as written in Gen-Josh?

This does not strike me as caged in typically conservative scientific language. I have heard this lack-of-evidence for Israelites repeatedly. We also have the problem of a lack of mention by other cultures that tend to mention such things (Egyptians).

Are you just being an apologist for their existence because you want it to be true, or because you actually know that the archaeologists are being deliberately dismissive? I am not saying that to be mean, I actually am trying to discern the "truth".
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Why do the archaeologists seem so sure that this culture did not exist as written in Gen-Josh?

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Which archaeologists? The ones who wrote this book? (which I haven't read of course) You'd have to ask them. I happen to think they are wrong.

Archaeologists in general? I think you'll find that some think one thing and some another.

Also, I'm not an arachaelogist or a historian. Just someone who reads books.
 

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Posted by Mad Geo (# 2939) on :
 
Fair enough.

As I said earlier, I have been looking for this for a while as I had heard other archaeologists make that statement (I read books too ). I was interested in supporting evidence (of which we have at least two books here now).
 

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Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Why do the archaeologists seem so sure that this culture did not exist as written in Gen-Josh?

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Which archaeologists? The ones who wrote this book? (which I haven't read of course) You'd have to ask them. I happen to think they are wrong.

Archaeologists in general? I think you'll find that some think one thing and some another.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
William Dever writes ...

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After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible historical figures. Virtually the last archaeological word was written by me more than 20 years ago for a basic handbook of biblical studies, Israelite and Judean History. And, as we have seen, archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus has similarly been discarded as a fruitless pursuit

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
I have heard this lack-of-evidence for Israelites repeatedly. We also have the problem of a lack of mention by other cultures that tend to mention such things (Egyptians).

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There is, for example, a Babylonian clay tablet which records Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem in 597 BC, as narrated in the book of Jeremiah. For this book the author has selected over seventy such 'documents', mainly from Western Asia, with some examples included from Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor, dating from the period of the Patriarchs to the New Testament times, c. 2000 BC to c. AD 100

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We have no reason to fear archaeology. In fact it is this very science which has done more to authenticate our scriptures than any other. Thus we encourage the secular archaeologists to dig, for as they dig we know they will only come closer to that which our scriptures have long considered to be the truth, and give us reason to claim that indeed our Bible has the right to claim true authority as the only historically verified Word of God. This is why so many eminent archaeologists are standing resolutely behind the Biblical accounts. Listen to what they say (taken from McDowell's Evidences 1972:65-67):

G.E. Wright states,"We shall probably never prove that Abram really existed...but what we can prove is that his life and times, as reflected in the stories about him, fit perfectly within the early second millennium, but imperfectly within any later period."

Sir Frederic Kenyon mentions, "The evidence of archaeology has been to re-establish the authority of the Old Testament, and likewise to augment its value by rendering it more intelligible through a fuller knowledge of its background and setting."

William F. Albright (a renowned archaeologist) says, "The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the 18th and 19th centuries, certain phases which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history."

Millar Burrows of Yale states, "On the whole, archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the scriptural record."

Joseph Free confirms that while thumbing through the book of Genesis, he mentally noted that each of the 50 chapters are either illuminated or confirmed by some archaeological discovery, and that this would be true for most of the remaining chapters of the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

[qb]Nelson Glueck[qb] (a Jewish Reformed scholar and archaeologist) probably gives us the greatest support for the historicity of the Bible when he states, "To date no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a single, properly understood biblical statement."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
This impresses me as a false dilemma: folk lore typically displays a (nuanced and evolving) understanding of what the world was like which, in part, sustains it through generations of oral transmission, but that renders it no less folk lore - a tapestry of political propaganda, folk history, theology, and re-imagined myth.

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The picture of the world of the Patriarchs does not fit into the era claimed for it: but it does fit very well into the 8th century BCE

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Originally posted by Pottage:
...

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The picture of the world of the Patriarchs does not fit into the era claimed for it: but it does fit very well into the 8th century BCE

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In fact it is the opposite of this which is true.


But I do regard the inclusion of contextually appropriate material as having evidential weight - it suggests that the lives of the Patriarchs (for example) were not simply fabricated from whole cloth in the 7th century BCE. These stories in the form we have them may or may not be free from error. MerlintheMad and I are agreed that the older the story the greater the possibility of inaccuracy. However the inclusion of these details does imply that these were stories of great vintage in the 7th century and that those who wrote them down then were keen to preserve the accuracy of the accounts as they had them. This extended to setting down details that would have seemed to them to be wrong, the price for a slave for instance, or a nobleman having ridden on a mule.

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quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
...We lost all record of he entire Hittite Empire for three thousand years. ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:

We now know through archeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE...
"...It was only then that camels became a common enough feature of the landscape to be included as an incidental detail in a leterary narrative."

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My own research, however, and that of several other scholars, has shown that there is actually plenty of evidence for domesticated camels from the second millennium BC. Some of this evidence includes a bronze figurine of a camel in a kneeling position found at Byblos and dated to the 19th/18th centuries BE; a gold camel figurine in a kneeling position from the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (2070-1960 BC); a petroglyph at Aswan in Egypt which shows a man leading a camel by a rope (writing next to the picture suggests its dates to 2423-2263 BC); and a figurine from Aabussir el Melek, Egypt showing a recumbent camel carrying a load (dated to the 3rd millennium BC). To these examples, I can take pride in adding another that was discovered by myself (Younker 1997), along with colleagues, Dick and JoAnn Davidson (our children), William Shea and David Merling during an excursion into the Wadi Nasib in the Sinai during the month of July 1998. There I noticed a petroglyph of a camel being led by a man not far from a stele of Ammenemes III and some famous proto-Sinaitic inscriptions discovered by Georg Gerster in 1961. Based on the patina of the petroglyphs, the dates of the accompanying inscriptions and nearby archaeological remains it would seem that this camel petroglyph dates to the Late Bronze Age, probably not later than 1500 BC. Clearly, scholars who have denied the presence of domesticated camels in the 2nd millennium BC have been committing the fallacy of arguing from silence. This approach should not be allowed to cast doubt upon the veracity of any historical document, let alone Scripture.

It is interesting to note how, once an idea gets into the literature, it can become entrenched in conventional scholarly thinking. I remember doing research on the ancient site of Hama in Syria. As I was reading through the excavation reports (published in French), I came across a reference to a figurine from the 2nd millennium which the excavator thought must be a horse, but the strange hump in the middle of its back made one think of a camel. I looked at the photograph and the figurine was obviously that of a camel! This scholar was so influenced by the idea that camels were not used until the 1st millennium, that when he found a figurine of one in the second millennium, he felt compelled to call it a horse! This is a classic example of circular reasoning.

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To encapsulate, Prof. MacDonald’s findings have an enormously important bearing on the Patriarchal narratives. First the pre-Abrahamic date for domesticated camels nullifies the claim that their mention in Genesis is anachronistic. Second, ownership of camels would have greatly facilitated the Patriarchs’ frequent travels between Mesopotamia and Canaan.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:

Do you really believe that they are unaware of what is in your typical high school textbooks?

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Originally posted by PhilA:
As far as the Exodus is concerned, lets be clear: there is no evidence of it happening as the bible portrays.

However, there is an unnamed city, dating from Ramses II that was unfinished for no discernible reason. Because the Egyptians didn't write about failures, only victories, there is nothing in the Egyptian archives about this place, it was literally stumbled upon by farmers and mentioned to archaeologists.

One explanation for why it wasn't finished is because the work force picked up and legged it. It is quite possible that these slaves (of which the Egyptian word is translated as 'Hebrew') began to identify as one people and became somewhat nomadic for a time.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Hawk:
What books are on your reading list Pottage?

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Not much history at the moment actually, aside from a couple of books on British India. I'm weak: if I see The Bible Unearthed in a bookshop I'll probably end up buying it!
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 
JoannaP, that is correct, as far as reaching the general readership audience is concerned: but I think that Silberman and Finkelstein have attempted to break some new ground for thought as well.

From the authors' Acknowledgements:

"Almost eight years ago (that would be c. 1993) -- during a peaceful summer weekend with our families on the coast of Maine -- the idea for this book was born. The debate about the historical reliability of the Bible was again beginning to attract considerable attention outside scholarly circles and we came to the realization that an updated book on this subject for general readers was needed. In it, we could set out what we believed to be the compelling archaeological and historical evidence for a new understanding of the rise of ancient Israel and the emergence of its sacred historical texts.

"Over the intervening years, the archaeological battle over the Bible has grown increasingly bitter. It has sunk -- in some times and places -- to personal attacks and accusations of hidden political motives. Did the Exodus happen? Was there a conquest of Canaan? Did David and Solomon actually rule over a vast empire? Questions like these have attracted the attention of journalists and commentators all over the world. And the public discussion of each of these questions has often gone far beyond the confines of academic archaeology and biblical criticism into the hotly contested realms of theology and religious belief.

"Despite the passions aroused by this subject, we believe that a reassessment of finds from earlier excavations and the continuing discoveries by new digs have made it clear that scholars must now approach the problems of biblical origins and ancient Israelite society from a completely new perspective. In the following chapters, we will present evidence to bolster that contention and to reconstruct a very different history of ancient Israel. Readers must judge for themselves if our reconstruction fits the evidence."
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 
Pottage, I found The Bible Unearthed at the local library, and bought my own paperback copy used on the Net for my second read....
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Why do the archaeologists seem so sure that this culture did not exist as written in Gen-Josh?

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Which archaeologists? The ones who wrote this book? (which I haven't read of course) You'd have to ask them. I happen to think they are wrong.

Archaeologists in general? I think you'll find that some think one thing and some another.

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Originally posted by Hawk:
I found Jayhawker Soule’s post to be the funniest.

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During the first half of this century and even up through the 1960s, many archaeologists were optimistic that archaeological discoveries had validated many of the historical claims of the Bible, if not the theological interpretations given to that history by the Biblical authors. For example, Albright triumphantly declared in the mid 1930s: "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition of the Bible as a source of history". Albright's most famous student, G. E. Wright, also believed that archaeology and the Bible were very closely aligned when he concluded that biblical archaeology's "chief concern is not with strata or pots or methodology. Its central and absorbing interest is the understanding and exposition of the scriptures".

Such sentiments as the above are examples of what Lemche has recently referred to as:

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"the pervasive mania within certain archaeological circles for correlating text with excavation before either the text or the excavation has had an opportunity to speak for itself".

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This highly optimistic view of what archaeology can do for biblical studies - historically speaking, at least - is now all but absent except among the most conservative of archaeologists and biblical historians. The contemporary view of most archaeologists is that the purpose of archaeology, however defined, is not to prove the Bible true in any sense, historically or otherwise.

- Archaeology and the Bible by John Laughlin

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• Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000-586 B.C.E. by Amihai Mazar,
• Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times by Donald Redford, and, perhaps,
• The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt edited by Ian Shaw

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
<snip>Take the repeated mention of camels, for instance. The stories of the patriarchs are packed with camels, usually heards of camels; but as in the story of Joseph's sale by his brothers into slavery (Genesis 37:25), camels are also described as beasts of burden used in caravan trade. We now know through archeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE. And an even more telling detail -- the camel caravan carrying "gum, balm, and myrrh", in the Joseph story -- reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE....

"...It was only then that camels became a common enough feature of the landscape to be included as an incidental detail in a leterary narrative."<snip>

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there is no archaeological evidence that camels were domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium or that they were widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
By the way, should you actually choose to stop chuckling long enough to read enough to have an informed opinion

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Can’t I do both

Your first post was funny as the author you quoted had the temerity to say that his 20 year old opinion was the last word on the subject. This arrogance and even willful ignorance of the continuing debate gave me a wry smile. I ‘quote-mined’ for some opposing viewpoints, not because they supported my viewpoint (which I haven’t fully decided on yet) but because they showed why his arrogance was inaccurate and humorous. I don’t think his opinion on archeology is disproved by a handful of internet quotes but I do think that his arrogance is nicely punctured.

I found your above post far more interesting and much more reasonable, despite your sniffy-nosed attitude towards me. I’ve just bought the Redford book off Amazon which looks very interesting. I am a history graduate but I am lacking in detailed knowledge of this period so I was actually grateful for your recommendations. Thank you.
 

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Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :
 
You'se guys just don't get it, do you?

It must be true, I read it in a book.
 

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Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
As I understand it, it's very much Redford's theories that are represented in The Bible Unearthed so that might well be a useful read.

I do think though that it's unfair to assume that anyone who takes issue with that viewpoint is doing so because they cannot bear the thought that the Patriarchal stories and the early history of Israel and Judah as described in the OT might not be literally true. Some of the assertions made by ths school of thought are incompatible with actual discoveries in the dirt and it's legitimate to take issue with them on that score; it isn't simply a matter of people clinging blindly to unshakeable preconceptions of inerrancy.

I think Redford is thought of as the source for the lists of supposed anachronisms in Samuel which often seem to feature in articles on this. Some of these may well be indicative of later redaction, but some of them, on enquiry, turn out not to be anachronistic after all. Camels are one example, which perhaps we've already broken the back of in this thread, so another straw is unnecessary. Another is the reference to Goliath wearing scale armour: it's been said that this is an anachronism because 7th century warriors would have worn such armour. And of course it IS true that scale armour would have been familiar in the 7th century BCE, but that doesn't mean it wasn't also common in the tenth century. As indeed it was, with examples dating from the 10th and 11th centuries BCE pulled from the dirt in Megiddo, Lachish and elsewhere.
 

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Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
Did David and Solomon actually rule over a vast empire?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Johnny S:
You'se guys just don't get it, do you?

It must be true, I read it in a book.

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
"Vast" is comparative: in this case it would include all of present day Israel, and north into Lebanon and south to the borders of Egypt, and east to the desert: as the OT tells us. It would also mean that Israel was dominant, i.e. completely independent of either Egypt or Asyria. Instead, the evidence from the ground limits "Israel" and "Judah" to the narrow strip along the Jordan and southern highlands, and gives them respectively populations of c. 50K and 5K ONLY....

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Are the authors perhaps engaging in an implicit criticism of the modern nation of Israel through this criticism of the bible as a source? Are these their true antagonists?

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
"Vast" is comparative: in this case it would include all of present day Israel, and north into Lebanon and south to the borders of Egypt, and east to the desert: as the OT tells us. It would also mean that Israel was dominant, i.e. completely independent of either Egypt or Asyria. Instead, the evidence from the ground limits "Israel" and "Judah" to the narrow strip along the Jordan and southern highlands, and gives them respectively populations of c. 50K and 5K ONLY....

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Originally posted by JoannaP:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Are the authors perhaps engaging in an implicit criticism of the modern nation of Israel through this criticism of the bible as a source? Are these their true antagonists?

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If Finkelstein was that severe a critic of the modern nation of Israel, would he be the Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze Age and Iron Ages at Tel Aviv University?

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
..."As the OT tells us"...chapter and verse? I feel that it's there, but it'd be easier if we had some specific text to work from.

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
mousethief put it pretty well. I know tons of people in American universities who stridently oppose American nationalism expressed abroad.

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Originally posted by JoannaP:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
mousethief put it pretty well. I know tons of people in American universities who stridently oppose American nationalism expressed abroad.

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O.K. I know this sounds as if I am contradicting my prevous post, but I find it easier to imagine some-one in that position "stridently" expressing their criticism than doing it "implicitly" through a book on their country's prehistory and early history.

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:

quote:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
..."As the OT tells us"...chapter and verse? I feel that it's there, but it'd be easier if we had some specific text to work from.

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(Gen. 15:18)

18 In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:

Israel intended to subject all the lands given to their father Abram. There are far too many references in the OT to list here; but they are the evidence that goes into the maps of most Bibles, showing the extent of the various kingdoms of Saul, David, Solomon, Israel and Judah. At the fullest extent -- Solomon's kingdom -- it reached from Egypt well north of Damascus to the Euphrates, and east of Jordan to the desert, and to the borders of a much reduced Philistia and Phoenicia.

But the rub seems to be that there is NO evidence, outside the OT claims, that the legendary David and Solomon ever actually held anymore than their ancestral lands in the Jordan valley and the central hill country....

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quote:

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Originally posted by Hawk:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
By the way, should you actually choose to stop chuckling long enough to read enough to have an informed opinion

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I found your above post far more interesting and much more reasonable, despite your sniffy-nosed attitude towards me. I’ve just bought the Redford book off Amazon which looks very interesting. I am a history graduate but I am lacking in detailed knowledge of this period so I was actually grateful for your recommendations. Thank you.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mad Geo:

quote:

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Originally posted by Johnny S:
You'se guys just don't get it, do you?

It must be true, I read it in a book.

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It does kinda reflect on the Bible that way, doesn't it!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
...Where did it say that Solomon's Kingdom extended from Egypt to Lebanon? ...

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Originally posted by Pottage:
As I understand it, it's very much Redford's theories that are represented in The Bible Unearthed so that might well be a useful read.

I do think though that it's unfair to assume that anyone who takes issue with that viewpoint is doing so because they cannot bear the thought that the Patriarchal stories and the early history of Israel and Judah as described in the OT might not be literally true. Some of the assertions made by ths school of thought are incompatible with actual discoveries in the dirt and it's legitimate to take issue with them on that score; it isn't simply a matter of people clinging blindly to unshakeable preconceptions of inerrancy.

I think Redford is thought of as the source for the lists of supposed anachronisms in Samuel which often seem to feature in articles on this. Some of these may well be indicative of later redaction, but some of them, on enquiry, turn out not to be anachronistic after all. Camels are one example, which perhaps we've already broken the back of in this thread, so another straw is unnecessary. Another is the reference to Goliath wearing scale armour: it's been said that this is an anachronism because 7th century warriors would have worn such armour. And of course it IS true that scale armour would have been familiar in the 7th century BCE, but that doesn't mean it wasn't also common in the tenth century. As indeed it was, with examples dating from the 10th and 11th centuries BCE pulled from the dirt in Megiddo, Lachish and elsewhere.

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quote:

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Some of the assertions made by ths school of thought are incompatible with actual discoveries in the dirt and it's legitimate to take issue with them on that score; it isn't simply a matter of people clinging blindly to unshakeable preconceptions of inerrancy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
I guess one problem with saying "The Bible says" is that the Bible isn't a single book, but a collection. It might be more interesting to look at different parts of the bible and figure out where they fit in historically. What was it that created the "House of David" and "King of Israel" that have been confirmed to exist as political entities as far back as the ninth century and as far north as Tel Dan (which some sources refer to as "northernmost Israel"?*

*Tel Dan Stele

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
I believe you to be entirely mistaken. Professor Finkelstein is an archaeologist with unimpeachable credentials who's views stem primarily from his field work and satistical analysis of Israelite ethnogenesis in the hill country. Professor Redford is an Egyptologist. While his views on the Exodus are shared (and briefly quoted) by Finkelstein, it is a natural overlap, and his explication of the relevant Egyptian archaeology goes qualitatively above and beyond any "lists of supposed anachronisms."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Pottage:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
I believe you to be entirely mistaken. Professor Finkelstein is an archaeologist with unimpeachable credentials who's views stem primarily from his field work and satistical analysis of Israelite ethnogenesis in the hill country. Professor Redford is an Egyptologist. While his views on the Exodus are shared (and briefly quoted) by Finkelstein, it is a natural overlap, and his explication of the relevant Egyptian archaeology goes qualitatively above and beyond any "lists of supposed anachronisms."

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You're entirely at liberty to believe that I am mistaken. I might be, though nothing you have posted demonstrates that I am.

I haven't challenged the professional expertise or credentials of Finkelstein or Redford. I have said they they are representative of one school of thought on this topic (which is true), and that there are other opinions (which is true). And I have said that you are wrong to assert that all those who hold contradictory opinions do so because their minds are closed to science by their position on issues such as Biblical inerrancy. In fact some do so because they interpret the archaeology differently to those whom you particulary admire.

As it happens, though I don't like what I have read on this thread about about the book that this thread is about, overall I am closer to the Finkelstein "camp" as it were than to his fiercer critics. I would have hoped that this is apparent from my posts, but the tone of your post suggests that perhaps it is not.

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
Respectfully, what archaeology in particular do you find subject to a different interpretation?

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And an even more telling detail -- the camel caravan carrying "gum, balm, and myrrh", in the Joseph story -- reveals an obvious familiarity with the main products of the lucrative Arabian trade that flourished under the supervision of the Assyrian empire in the eighth-seventh centuries BCE

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[the Exodus] didn't happen, not in the 15th century BCE and not in the 13th century BCE.

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Originally posted by Pottage:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
Respectfully, what archaeology in particular do you find subject to a different interpretation?

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I wouldn't like this thread to descend into the sort of debate you find between protagonists in this rather bitter little debate. I know you've asserted here that Finkelstein's POV is accepted by an overwhelming consensus of archaeologists, but really that overstates the case: anyone with a passing interest in the topic or five minutes to spare to Google it will know that the debate between the different viewpoints is ongoing and unresolved.

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
I don't believe I ever suggested "that Finkelstein's [general] POV is accepted by an overwhelming consensus of archaeologists" and, in fact, began by quoting Dever precisely because he is best known as an ardent polemicist against both Finkelstein and the minimalists. As for the debate between the minimalists and their detractors, I generally find myself more closely aligned to the latter.

Perhaps we should both take a few moments to reread the OP and my initial response ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

I think you'll find a broad consensus among archaeologist if you were to take the time to look. It didn't happen. This is not just inference from lack of evidence, but inference to best explanation from abundant evidence, both in Egypt and Canaan.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

committed to conforming their 'facts' with their dogma.

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Originally posted by Pottage:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
I don't believe I ever suggested "that Finkelstein's [general] POV is accepted by an overwhelming consensus of archaeologists" and, in fact, began by quoting Dever precisely because he is best known as an ardent polemicist against both Finkelstein and the minimalists. As for the debate between the minimalists and their detractors, I generally find myself more closely aligned to the latter.

Perhaps we should both take a few moments to reread the OP and my initial response ...

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Perhaps, though you'll understand that I've nothing else to go on to determine what you think aside from what you post. That includes your opening contribution and also this which was addressed to ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

I think you'll find a broad consensus among archaeologist if you were to take the time to look. It didn't happen. This is not just inference from lack of evidence, but inference to best explanation from abundant evidence, both in Egypt and Canaan.

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You seem to be saying that you believe that those who have reached conclusions that you are inclined to endorse form a broad, overwhelming consensus, whereas those who think differently do so, not because of any genuine scientific disagreement over the interpretation of the archaeology but (as you put it in that opening contribution) because they are

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

committed to conforming their 'facts' with their dogma.

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I agree with Hawk about the most profitable direction for this thread to take.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Pottage:
I think I'll observe rather than contribute to this thread for a time. I hope it develops as Hawk has proposed it should, but I fear that whilst you and I talk endlessly past each other it stands little chance of doing that.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Hawk:
...Merlin has mentioned that they found evidence that there was no destruction layers in the archeology of the period where the invasions of Canaan were supposed to have taken place. That they knew where to look and the counter-argument that they just haven’t found the evidence yet can’t be true as they have found the evidence and it is not as the Bible records (I.e. that during the period where the Bible says the city or town was supposed to have been attacked and destroyed the archeology of the walls etc has been uncovered and show no sign of this) This is interesting if true. Would someone who has read this book or other minimalists be able to fill me in on some details about this? I would be interested as to which period the archeologists were looking in to find these layers. Are their targeted dates accurate? Did they check other periods that have been suggested for the time of the Canaan invasions (as obviously there is debate about this)?

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I have heard that the walls of Jericho were actually discovered and they had fallen outwards (as the Bible records) which was unique. Surely this is evidence of destruction in the archeology? What do the minimalists say to argue against this?

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Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of over 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back to 11,000 years ago (9000 BC)

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Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
No mention of acheology after it fell in 1600 bce (which would be to early?)...

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:

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Originally posted by Hawk:
[QUOTE]
I have heard that the walls of Jericho were actually discovered and they had fallen outwards (as the Bible records) which was unique. Surely this is evidence of destruction in the archeology? What do the minimalists say to argue against this?

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Nothing of the sort has been found, else the authors would have mentioned it, I am sure, and debunked it with the following:

"Jericho was among the most important [pieces of the archeological puzzle that simply did not fit]. As we have noted, the cities of Canaan were unfortified and there were no walls that could have come tumbling down. In the case of Jericho, there was no trace of a settlement of any kind in the thirteenth century BCE, and the earlier Late Bronze settlement, dating to the fourteenth century BCE, was small and poor, almost insignificant, and unfortified. There was also no sign of destruction. Thus the famous scene of the Israelite forces marching around the walled town with the Ark of the Covenant, causing Jericho's might walls to collapse by the blowing of their war trumpets was, to put it simply, a romantic mirage." (pp 81,82)

---

quote:

---

The meticulous work of Kenyon showed that Jericho was indeed heavily fortified and that it had been burned by fire. Unfortunately, she misdated her finds, resulting in what seemed to be a discrepancy between the discoveries of archaeology and the Bible. She concluded that the Bronze Age city of Jericho was destroyed about 1550 B.C. by the Egyptians. An in-depth analysis of the evidence, however, reveals that the destruction took place around 1400 B.C. (end of the Late Bronze I period), exactly when the Bible says the conquest occurred.

---

quote:

---

Jericho was once thought to be a ‘Bible problem’ because of the seeming disagreement between archaeology and the Bible. When the archaeology is correctly interpreted, however, just the opposite is the case. The archaeological evidence supports the historical accuracy of the biblical account in every detail. Every aspect of the story that could possibly be verified by the findings of archaeology is, in fact, verified.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jay-Emm:

Also has the oldest wall to be discovered 8k bce

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
... A cursory glance at google provides plenty of the other side of this debate. Mostly from Christian websites like Answers In Genesis which I am aware is biased.

---

Good grief ...

One fun consequence of this search for confirmation is that those involved find themselves naturally (i.e., opportunistically) coalescing around an early date for the Exodus, perhaps oblivious to the fact that this creates other problems. But then again, these proponents are likewise unconcerned with the fact that the rapid conquest narrative has little reflection in Judges.

[ 09. June 2009, 11:07: Message edited by: Jayhawker Soule ]
 

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Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
None of this is particularly new - in fact there are many people that are now challenging the long held beliefs that the Exodus is almost entirely mythic and that Israel as a nation is also mythic, but the Merenptah stela is and always has been a very large fly in that particular ointment.
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 
Finkelstein is surely educated to the debates surrounding Jericho's destroyed walls.

Not only Jericho, but Ai, Harad, Heshbon and the Gibeonite towns are among the other sites that show NO population for the crucial period of the biblical Conquest.

Is Finkelstein's dating correct, or are the literalists correct? Or are they all up in the night together? I am in the "camp" of those who know nothing and can only listen to the arguments.

As mentioned, the chronolgy is important and must fit into the over all picture of biblical history. There are countless problems with getting it all to work together according to the evidence from the ground. Thus, the conclusion that the religious history of the Bible is not the same thing as the empirical history revealed by archeology: ergo biblical history is not literalist history....
 

---

Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
None of this is particularly new - in fact there are many people that are now challenging the long held beliefs that the Exodus is almost entirely mythic and that Israel as a nation is also mythic, but the Merenptah stela is and always has been a very large fly in that particular ointment.

---

• the Exodus is folklore

• the Exodus is almost entirely mythic and ... Israel as a nation is also mythic

quote:

---

Mention of Israel as a people rather than a state

Since the stela includes just one line mentioning Israel, it is difficult for scholars to deduce a substantial amount of information about what "Israel" meant in this stela. The stela does make clear, however, that Israel at this stage, refers to a people since the hieroglyphic determinative for "country" is absent for Israel.

While the other defeated Egyptian enemies listed besides Israel in this document such as Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam were given the determinative for a city-state—"a throw stick plus three mountains designating a foreign country"—the hieroglyphs which refer to Israel instead employ the determinative sign used for foreign peoples: a throw stick plus a man and a woman over three vertical plural lines. This sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples without a fixed city-state, thus implying a seminomadic or rural status for Israel in Merneptah's Year 5. Apart from this, there is little else that can be concluded about Israel at this time. [source]

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
To talk of the mention of Israel being in reference to a people rather than a state seems a tad silly to me, and more than a little playfulness with semantics.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I would hope that archaelogical discoveries will certainly survive beyond my inane meandering and disorganized thought patterns in this life, but then who knows what might turn up in the soil next week that could change everything.

---

Yes: we understand what you bring to the table today but cannot know what science might bring to the table tomorrow. That seems to me a good beginning ...
 

---

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
I'm too weak to steer clear of this thread!

The Merneptah Stele is interesting, but it's also been the subject of some quite abstract theorising. What I think we actually know about it is limited to what I can list in this post, but I'd be interested to know what your take is Jayhawker Soule as you seem to have a special interest in this topic and to have done a considerable amount of reading.

Most specific is the date. Because Egyptian dynasties are dated so well from other evidence, we have considerable confidence the stele dates from 1209/1208 BCE and refers in this stanza to the state of affairs in and around Canaan then or a year or two previously. Unlike the stanzas dealing with the Libyans though, the stele doesn't seem to say expressly that Merneptah himself is responsible for the desolation of these Canaanite cities, so possibly he didn't actually campaign in Canaan. The inscription might simply record that these places have been reduced (in some way) and are no threat, and that 'on Merneptah's watch' (as it were) Egypt's border in that direction is secure. The dating is of only limited help to us anyway though, because when we're trying to put dates to events in the early history of Israel/Judah we're frustrated by the tendency of the Biblical authors to use stylised numbers. In particular there is the widespread use of multiples of 40, not to signify a specific number of years as stated but just to give a general sense of the passing of a substantial period, perhaps a generation.

We're fairly confident that the word commonly seized upon as saying "Israel" on the stele does indeed say that, though it seems to transliterate as "isrir" or "isriar". I read somewhere that this actually breaks down to "Issa, Ra and El" and refers to what may have been a type of Canaanite who had adopted some elements of Egyptian culture and worship alongside their own and that therefore the stele has nothing to do with Israelites. But with nothing to support it whatever that interpretation seems quite fanciful.

We can also be reasonably confident that this expression refers to a grouping of people, and not (say) a geographical feature or an individual. There also seems no reason to doubt the analysis that "Israel" is referred to in terms appropriate to a people but not a state. The Egyptian practice in these things seems consistent. However that doesn't really help us all that much either because we don't know what criteria were applied by the Egyptians in deciding whether they regarded some grouping of foreigners as a state or not.

Perhaps they only regarded foreigners as a state if they posed a threat. That said, the triumphant recording of "Israel" amongst the others in the inscription suggests that, statehood or otherwise, "Israel" being in a sorry state was a Good Thing for Egypt and worthy of note. So whoever "Israel" was in this context we're not talking of a small band of brigands or anything. Alternatively, perhaps the Egyptians regarded it as emblematic of statehood to have a king (rather than judges, for instance), or to be a single social and political entity (rather than a dozen related tribes). The truth is we've no idea.

Finally, it seems pretty likely that whoever "Israel" was in 1209 BCE it was a people located in the vicinity of Canaan, because their reduction and desolation is mentioned at the same time as the equivalent fate of Ashkelon and Gezer. It's also been said (although I'm not sure how reliably) that the depiction of "Israel" on the carvings at Karnak that are contemporary with the other known copy of the Merneptah Stele shows them as similar to the Canaanites in terms of dress, hair etc, and different from, for example, the way the Libyans are depicted.
 

---

Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
Finally, it seems pretty likely that whoever "Israel" was in 1209 BCE it was a people located in the vicinity of Canaan, ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
It's also been said (although I'm not sure how reliably) that the depiction of "Israel" on the carvings at Karnak ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
What depiction of Israel?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
What depiction of Israel?

---

Are you saying that you don't accept Frank Yurko's theories about the carvings at Karnak (scepticism which I would understand having formed a good idea from this thread of how you view the topic overall) or that the debate about it has passed you by? I'm afraid I'm not good at subtlety.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
...I'd be interested to know what your take is Jayhawker Soule as you seem to have a special interest in this topic and to have done a considerable amount of reading...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
It's also been said (although I'm not sure how reliably) that the depiction of "Israel" on the carvings at Karnak that are contemporary with the other known copy of the Merneptah Stele shows them as similar to the Canaanites in terms of dress, hair etc, and different from, for example, the way the Libyans are depicted.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
... I would genuinely be interested in what you think about the stele that was the subject of my post.

... In the temple of Karnak there is an incomplete copy of the Merneptah Stele. Near to that there are four reliefs showing military scenes. They were traditionally thought to be associated with Ramesses II but are now thought (by some) to depict his son Merneptah's (assumed) military successes in Canaan. They show three battles involving walled cities (one of them actually named as Ashkelon) and a fourth battle scene in open country.

Frank Yurco proposed that the latter depicts "Israelite" warriors. They are shown as indistinguishable from the Canaanite warriors on the other panels. ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pottage:
[qb]... I would genuinely be interested in what you think about the stele that was the subject of my post.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
Have I correctly summarised what we do and don't know about the Israel reference on [the Merneptah Stele], and the extent to which what we do know contributes to answering the questions raised on this thread?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Pottage:
[qb]... I would genuinely be interested in what you think about the stele that was the subject of my post.

---

I would still be interested in what you think of the substantive topic, that is ...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ok, I would like to discuss that stele. Can we start with why you dismiss Yurco as being wholly irrelevant?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I'm not so sure to be honest. If by 1220 Israel is in fact a state (a huge jump of assumption!), then it is entirely possible that in 1440, israel was in the process of emerging as a gathered people into a concept of state (call that exodus or something else)

---

• quote:

  ---

  Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
  

  quote:

  ---

  Originally posted by fletcher christian:
  None of this is particularly new - in fact there are many people that are now challenging the long held beliefs that the Exodus is almost entirely mythic and that Israel as a nation is also mythic, but the Merenptah stela is and always has been a very large fly in that particular ointment.

  ---

  Absolute rubbish! To reframe the debate from

  • the Exodus is folklore

  to

  • the Exodus is almost entirely mythic and ... Israel as a nation is also mythic

  is simply dishonest -- a pathetic straw man that distorts Finkelstein and the debate at hand. The Merneptah Stele is irrelevant ...
  
  ... well, not quite:
  

  quote:

  ---

  Mention of Israel as a people rather than a state
  
  Since the stela includes just one line mentioning Israel, it is difficult for scholars to deduce a substantial amount of information about what "Israel" meant in this stela. The stela does make clear, however, that Israel at this stage, refers to a people since the hieroglyphic determinative for "country" is absent for Israel.
  
  While the other defeated Egyptian enemies listed besides Israel in this document such as Ashkelon, Gezer and Yanoam were given the determinative for a city-state—"a throw stick plus three mountains designating a foreign country"—the hieroglyphs which refer to Israel instead employ the determinative sign used for foreign peoples: a throw stick plus a man and a woman over three vertical plural lines. This sign is typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples without a fixed city-state, thus implying a seminomadic or rural status for Israel in Merneptah's Year 5. Apart from this, there is little else that can be concluded about Israel at this time. [source]

  ---

  The problem here should be obvious. In what we might now refer to as Fletcher's Folly, a circa 1210 BCE reference "typically used by the Egyptians to signify nomadic groups or peoples without a fixed city-state" is foolishly trotted out to bolster the historicity of a circa 1440 BCE Exodus and conquest.
  
  Your "large fly" is entirely your problem.

  ---

Now, please read the following slowly and carefully ...

• This thread is about Finkelstein's "The Bible Unearthed."

To which you offer[ed] the following fractured responsed that barely rises to the level of non sequitur ...

• Finkelstein argues that the Biblical Exodus is folklore and that the 15th century BCE conquest of Jericho is fictive.
• The late 13th century BCE Menerptah stele refences Israel as a people.
• Therefore the stele serves as evidence that a nation Israel existed in the past.

But Finkelstein never denies the existence of Israel as a nation and the stele has zero relevance to the historicity of the conquest narrative. And, quite frankly, if Fletcher's Fractured Folly is unhelpful, silliness such as

quote:

---

If by 1220 Israel is in fact a state (a huge jump of assumption!), then it is entirely possible that in 1440, israel was in the process of emerging as a gathered people into a concept of state (call that exodus or something else)

---

sinks to the level of the pathetically absurd. Specifically:

• There is nothing about the Menerptah stele that points to a circa 1220 Israeli state.
• There is nothing about a circa 1220 Isaeli state that suggests a circa 1440 gathering of people into a concept of a state.
• There is nothing about a circa 1440 BCE gathering of people into the concept of a state that suggests the the historicity of the Biblical Exodus/Conquest narrative.

You are simply confused ...
 

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Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
No, it's not confusion, it's simply the fact that we don't really know, which in effect means that any argument is a straw man
 

---

Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
No, it's not confusion, it's simply the fact that we don't really know, which in effect means that any argument is a straw man

---

Rubbish.
 

---

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ok, I would like to discuss that stele. Can we start with why you dismiss Yurco as being wholly irrelevant?

---

I reject Yurko's relevance to this thread much as I reject the Merneptah stele's relevance to this thread. As I noted previously, a circa 1210 BCE reference to a people hardly constitutes evidence for a circa 1440 BCE exodus/Conquest.

---

The stele seemed relevant when you made a point about it earlier in the discussion, but let that pass.

However, on the topic very specifically of The Bible Unearthed the stele records that around 1200 BCE "Israel" was sufficiently significant to mighty Egypt that a successful pharoah would make a point of recording its defeat. If Yurco is right (which I don't know because the debate about his viewpoint has petered out both in the literature and on this thread) then in 1200 BCE "Israel" deployed an army which included a force of chariots. This is materially inconsistent with the way that Finkelstein's book depicts the Israelites at that time, as scattered pastoralists under little central authority.

It isn't the only piece of archaeology that's been mentioned on this thread which casts doubt on the picture Finkelstein paints in this book. See for instance this from the first page:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
For instance, why does it seem unreasonable to expect that ongoing excavatations such as that at Khirbet Qeiyafa may substantiate the basic historicity of the OT? Most of that site remains to be excavated in a project that is likely to take some years, but already it appears to be a significant settlement dating from the 10th century BCE. It stands near to Gath but it contains materially different types of pottery to those found in Gath, and it has yielded what appears to be Hebrew writing. A fortification that required the placing of 200,000 tons of stone doesn't SOUND like Finkelstein's vision of Israel in that era as a scattering of hamlets and hill settlements under no central authority. Evidence from that site of everyday literacy dating back to the 10th century BCE suggests in fact that it is relatively UNlikely that the earlier events recorded in the OT are just legends redacted hundreds of years later than this period.

---

 

---

Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
...However, on the topic very specifically of The Bible Unearthed the stele records that around 1200 BCE "Israel" was sufficiently significant to mighty Egypt that a successful pharoah would make a point of recording its defeat. If Yurco is right (which I don't know because the debate about his viewpoint has petered out both in the literature and on this thread) then in 1200 BCE "Israel" deployed an army which included a force of chariots. This is materially inconsistent with the way that Finkelstein's book depicts the Israelites at that time, as scattered pastoralists under little central authority.

---

Try this on: subtlety and irony and rhetorical devices are not modern "inventions". The stele is recording a victory over chariot-wielding "Canaanites", whose origin is being lampooned/denigrated by comparing them to their ancestors' nomadic lifestyle. None of the satire would be transmitted by the stele to today's linguists. This lampoon would be all the more biting if there was actually a contemporary hill country populated by semi-nomadic "Israelites (as Silberman and Finkelstein assert) and Merneptah's propagandists are belittling the Canaanites they have assertedly defeated by calling them "Israelites" as well.

quote:

---

It isn't the only piece of archaeology that's been mentioned on this thread which casts doubt on the picture Finkelstein paints in this book. See for instance this from the first page:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
For instance, why does it seem unreasonable to expect that ongoing excavatations such as that at Khirbet Qeiyafa may substantiate the basic historicity of the OT? Most of that site remains to be excavated in a project that is likely to take some years, but already it appears to be a significant settlement dating from the 10th century BCE. It stands near to Gath but it contains materially different types of pottery to those found in Gath, and it has yielded what appears to be Hebrew writing...

---

---

As "Hebrew writing" is borrowed (and apparently learned late by the Israelite culture), the presence of it anywhere isn't going to be very good evidence of the extensiveness of Hebrew people. What will tie any far-flung site to the "kingdoms" of Israel and Judah, is the utter lack of pig bones. All of the hill country settlements share that lack in common; none of the villages there raised or ate pigs, at, all. And they are unique in this dietary quirk.
 

---

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
Try this on: subtlety and irony and rhetorical devices are not modern "inventions". The stele is recording a victory over chariot-wielding "Canaanites", whose origin is being lampooned/denigrated by comparing them to their ancestors' nomadic lifestyle. None of the satire would be transmitted by the stele to today's linguists. This lampoon would be all the more biting if there was actually a contemporary hill country populated by semi-nomadic "Israelites (as Silberman and Finkelstein assert) and Merneptah's propagandists are belittling the Canaanites they have assertedly defeated by calling them "Israelites" as well.

---

True, but that's purely speculative. I could equally suggest that "Israel" is referred to on the stele using a denominator for a tribe rather than a country as a matter of spite rather than accuracy - Merneptah deliberately belittling the Israelites because the Egyptians bore them special animosity for some reason, perhaps a series of plagues or something. But of course that would be unfounded speculation too, and equaly valueless.

Khirbet Qeiyafa hasn't been fully dug yet, so the inherent difficulty of proving a negative (no evidence of the eating of pigs or dogs which were both eaten in Philistine culture but ,not Israelite) makes your test a tough one for the moment. On the other hand, all the pottery finds so far are consistent with this not being a Philistine settlement, because they are markedly different from the pottery finds in Gath, just 12 kilometers away. The 2009 digging season is just a couple of weeks away though - let's wait and see.
 

---

Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
However, on the topic very specifically of The Bible Unearthed the stele records that around 1200 BCE "Israel" was sufficiently significant to mighty Egypt that a successful pharoah would make a point of recording its defeat.

---

Why do you insist on continuing this silliness? Merneptah is fully acknowledged and discussed by Finkelstein and everyone else in the field.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
It the only piece of archaeology that's been mentioned on this thread which casts doubt on the picture Finkelstein paints in this book. See for instance this from the first page:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
For instance, why does it seem unreasonable to expect that ongoing excavatations such as that at Khirbet Qeiyafa may substantiate the basic historicity of the OT?

---

---

Go to the "Musings ..." thread and tell us what your oily "basic historicity" means and when you date you hoped for Exodus ... Oh, and try actuallly reading Finkelstein.
 

---

Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
After determining earlier in this thread that from what I'd read here about The Bible Unearthed I didn't think I'd be bothered to read it, I did then immediately confess that I'm totally irresolute about things like that and would inevitably pick up a copy now. I have done so, and I have been reading it.

I am inclined to agree with Finkelstein's chronology, as I think you might know if you've been reading my posts on this thread with the same courteous attention as I have accorded to yours. But I think that some of what Finkelstein and Silberman have written here is unconvincing. In particular, in the context of issues that have been mentioned on this thread I think that they grossly overstate the evidence for (for instance) David's kingdom comprising nothing more than a scattered handful of illiterate hill farmers. I'm quite sure that the Biblical record contains a great deal of propaganda, and we all acknowledge the unreliability of numbers in the Biblical account, but in seeking to redress the balance Finkelstein and Silberman paint a picture that for different reasons also has unconvincing perspective.

I don't see the purpose of your Musings thread, given that this one is active. As to the Exodus, I've posted here already:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage
I hasten to make it clear (though I've said this already) that this doesn't mean I think that, for example, the Exodus happened just as the Biblical record describes. Very clearly there has been considerable embellishment. But the case isn't made for simply asserting as I know from this thread is your opinion:

quote:

---

[the Exodus] didn't happen, not in the 15th century BCE and not in the 13th century BCE.

---

A true view, I think, based on what we know so far in scientific terms is more likely to be something like this:

"It's implausible for many reasons that it happened just as the Bible tells us. It may not have happened at all, or it may have happened at a different date and in a different way than would be gleaned from a literal reading of the Bible. But there's litle evidence either way, and such as there is is incomplete and is patchy enough to be subject to conflicting interpretations. Many of those differing opinions are sincerely held by archaeologists and historians based on rigrous analysis rather than their respective personal views of the relevant books of the Bible."

---

 

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Posted by Yerevan (# 10383) on :
 

quote:

---

And your somewhat inane condescension seems a tad silly to me,

---

quote:

---

Now, please read the following slowly and carefully ...silliness such as...sinks to the level of the pathetically absurd...You are simply confused

---

quote:

---

Rubbish.

---

quote:

---

Why do you insist on continuing this silliness?

---

quote:

---

Go to the "Musings ..." thread and tell us what your oily "basic historicity" means and when you date you hoped for Exodus ... Oh, and try actuallly reading Finkelstein.

---

JS, are you always this charming or does obscure OT archaeology bring out the best in you?
 

---

Posted by §Andrew (# 9313) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
As I noted previously, a circa 1210 BCE reference to a people hardly constitutes evidence for a circa 1440 BCE exodus/Conquest.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I'm not so sure to be honest. If by 1220 Israel is in fact a state (a huge jump of assumption!), then it is entirely possible that in 1440, israel was in the process of emerging as a gathered people into a concept of state (call that exodus or something else)

---

 

---

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :
 
Well, this conversation’s going nowhere at the moment, largely because Jayhawker refuses to play with anyone’s ball but his own and keeps posting sarcastic and insulting remarks when ever anyone asks him a polite question.

In an effort to get the game going again, let me ask an open question – when did Israel take over the Caananite territory and how did they do it? This has been touched on already I think but I would like to hear more. Obviously Finklestein doesn’t believe the Exodus happened at all, whether the conservative Christian interpretation of the Biblical description of it or any other version that could be interpreted. As far as I understand, he argues that the Israelites never existed as a people in Egypt, never left, never crossed the desert to the promised land, never entered Canaan as a people. They didn’t do it in the 15th Century and they didn’t do it in the 13th Century. His attacks on other people’s theories are all very well but what does he replace them with? What is his explanation for where the Israelite nation came from? In the 11th Century and before there is no record of them as a nation or a settled people. Just references to wanderers (Shasu/Abiru). In 890 there is a reference to The Kingdom of Israel. During these centuries at the beginning of the first millennium Israel was coming from nowhere to become a settled and well defined nation with kings, cities and a military force. What happened?

My book by Donald Redford arrived yesterday and it is very interesting. I think the strongest argument he makes for the lack of a conquest and settled Israel before the 21st Dynasty is that Egypt basically ruled that area before the 11th century, sometimes directly and sometimes just by receiving tribute from vassal states. Their bureaucrats, soldiers and commissioners were all over it. The Egyptian Empire, he says, stretched all over Canaan during the 18th-20th dynasties between 1550 and 1070 and it seems strange that they wouldn’t have noticed a foreign horde of Israelites attacking their territory. The Egypt in the accounts in Joshua and Judges seems to be very distant and much weaker than that which is known to have existed before the 11th Century. Far more akin to the Egypt we understand the Third Intermediate Period to be (1070-664). If this view of Egypt is correct then the Conquest must have happened after 1070BC. I haven’t read the next chapter in the book yet so I don’t know yet what Redford thinks but I would be interested what others think in the meantime. Do you accept this argument? Are there arguments that go against this idea of Egyptian dominance of the area? If you agree with this argument then what happens next? Where did the Israelites come from, when did they take over control of Canaan and how did they forge their nation?

Coming back to the Exodus; Finklestein says “the Exodus didn’t happen, not in the 15th century and not in the 13th century.” But what about the 11th century and after? Has anyone discussed that as a possible date? In my opinion, the Bible accounts of the Exodus are so long and so detailed and carry such weight of authority throughout the Bible they cannot be discarded completely as a myth. Though written by priests for a theological purpose they are still a detailed historical document and I still rate them as extremely valuable accounts. Though I am keeping my mind open I am still inclined to believe that the events described in Exodus actually happened, in some form or another. The debate continues, for me, as to the dating, the interpretation and the context.
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
In my opinion, the Bible accounts of the Exodus are so long and so detailed and carry such weight of authority throughout the Bible they cannot be discarded completely as a myth. Though written by priests for a theological purpose they are still a detailed historical document and I still rate them as extremely valuable accounts. Though I am keeping my mind open ...

---

So open, in fact, that we can see right through it ...
 

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Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
This has been one of the most thorny issues in for archaeology for over a century. There are many who feel that the lack of archaeological evidence for the existence of Israel as a nation state and for the exodus means that it didn't happen. But there are just as many who feel that the lack of archaeological evidence means they are unable to make a decision and they are unwilling to commit an intellectual and academic suicide by emphatically stating what may or may not be true on the basis that much archaeology in the region has been successively destroyed and plundered - right up to the present day. There are others who believe that the exodus and the state of Israel did exist and did happen and they have various theories that range from reasonable to fanciful.

This is the quagmire that this thread circles around, and as far as I can see most of the people here fall into the second grouping - which is more or less what you would expect. But Jayhawker seems to think he has all the answers and we are all thick. So far, to back up his carefully considered and reasonable arguments, he has thrown out one-liners and insults.

Jay - if we are being a bit thick is there any chance you could enlighten us? Otherwise this thread might descend into one very long troll.
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
As I noted previously, a circa 1210 BCE reference to a people hardly constitutes evidence for a circa 1440 BCE exodus/Conquest.

---

So your book as disproved the Cecil B De Mille version of the Exodus. Fine. We can be reasonably sure that Canaan was not conquered in three weeks by an army of six hundred thousand gold-plated war-heroes led by Rameses II cousin.

Why Bible-believing Christians should be worried by or interested in that is beyond me. As I said on the other thread the stories about the pre-monarchical period are set in the times when the Philistines were powerful - that is over two centuries later.

Far from 1210 being too late for the conquest it is about the earliest believable date. For all sorts of reasons. Most obviously because the Philistines probably didn't live in that region before then and certainly weren't politically powerful. The stories in Judges and Samuel about wars with the Philistines have to be set between about 1180 BC and 950 BC.

For another reason, because any attempt to escape from Egypt by going to Canaan in the 15th or 14th century BC would have been a bit stupid because they ran the place. The New Kingdom, before the Sea Peoples wars (c 1175 BC), is not a very credible backdrop for the stories set after the conquest of Canaan. It might be one for the story of the flight into Egypt, and maybe the wanderings in the wilderness, but not the conquest. They Egyptians came back big-time a couple of dynasties later. Joshua, Judges & Samuel have to be set in that gap where there is no significant Egyptian presence in Canaan - that is from about 1175 BC to about 950 BC

For another reason, because the enemies of the Israelites are said to have iron weapons and the Israelites didn't. That's very explicit, its part of the story. Its a clear folk memory of a bronze-age people bumping into the Iron Age. Either that or whoever wrote it shares a modern archaeologists view of history. It also sets the date at about 1200 BC at the earliest (cos no iron weapons anywhere in the region before then, though there were in Anatolia and maybe other places) and maybe about 800 at the latest (because by that time everyone Orkney to Omsk knew about iron)

NB these arguments do not even depend on the stories being true - they are arguments about when they are set. They would be as relevant if we all agreed that the Bible was historical fiction and were trying to work out what period the people who made up the stories thought they were talking about.

For another reason, it is implied (though not made explicit) that the Egyptians didn't have iron weapons when the Hebrews left, but at least some Canaanite did a generation later. This is a lot stringier than the previous one about the Philistines, but if its relevant it places the start of the exodus before 1175-ish and the end after about 850 BC by which time everybody was using iron weapons.

For another reason the genealogies don't have enough generations in them. (ignore the long lists of place names in Chronicles - its Joshua, Judges, and especially Samuel/Kings that counts). The most famous of them (and therefore the most reliable because likely the most remembered) the ancestry of David has ten clear generations between Judah and David (Perez, Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, Nahshon, Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David) In the story Ram is a child when the family enter Egypt, Salmon survives the wilderness and Boaz is born in the Promised Land. That puts David as being born between one and two hundred years after his great-great-grandfather arrived in the land. Putting the date of the conquest at about 1250 BC at the earliest, 1100 BC at the latest. Almost all the other genealogies that go all through are about the same depth (as I said there are a very few in Chronicles that appear a lot deeper but in fact they are lists of place names or clans - the supposed ancestry of Joshua is one example) so this is not an argument from just one odd Bible verse.

For another reason, the Cecille B De Mill version is that there was a huge army of supposedly pureblooded Israelites. But the stories themselves describe quite small bands of people of mixed origins - as I showed in the previous overlong post. Forget the supposed census in Numbers - as I said I think the modern version misinterpret what those numbers mean, also I suspect there are some translation issues in that section, though as I am no Hebrew or Aramaic scholar I cant' really comment intelligently on that.

As I said before these arguments don't depend on the historical accuracy of the geneaologies (though personally I believe that they are accurate) because all that we're doing is showing that the people who wrote the Old Testament did not intend to say that as many as three or four centuries passed between the Exodus and David. If they had, and if they were making up as they went along, they would have invented more generations to fill the gap. But they didn't.

NB the idea that the period of the judges was a lot longer than that comes from just two lines of argument. First by adding together the time periods mentioned in Judges as if each story was supposedly set after the previous one. But they aren't, the stories in Judges are not set one after the other but flip around geographically. Also the book of Ruth, the last few stories in Judges, and the first part of Samuel are all set in the same place and time - the very small area between Bethlehem & Benjamin in the generation before the monarchy. Secondly one verse from 2 KIngs 6 that says the Temple was in the 480th year after "the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt" (& a quote from Stephen the Martyr in the New Testament that is probably meant as a reference to that) (There is a passage in Judges where Sihon king of the Amorites is supposed to say that Israel has been living on the banks of the Jordan for three hundred years. But since when was I meant to belive that the words of Sihon king of the Amorites were inspired truth? And anyway that might be going back to a time before the Exodus so even if it is true it says nothing about the date of the Exodus) As a general principle of Biblical interpretation, if an interpretation of one solitary verse seems to contradict the whole thread of the story, you've probably got that verse wrong.

Anyway, I'm pretty certain that people are misinterpreting what the numbers mean. OT use of numbers doesn't work like that. Its the geneologies they cared about and remembered. The numbers are more a sort of highlighting, a way of commenting on events. 70 is a complete long human lifetime. 40 a full generation or the completed time for a thing (40 days and nights, 40 years in the wilderness). 12 is the number of the whole people (12 tribes, 12 apostles). Saying "480 years" is not a way of counting years it is a way of describing years, as the complete fulfillment of the life of the people. It just means that the time was ripe for Israel to build a house to the LORD. But it no more means that the number of calendar years mapped one to one to the number of inches it takes to measure a forty-foot telescope than me saying "the time was ripe" means that the time was full of plant hormones and sunshine and went all red and soft and sweet and squishy.
 

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Posted by JoannaP (# 4493) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
Obviously Finklestein doesn’t believe the Exodus happened at all, whether the conservative Christian interpretation of the Biblical description of it or any other version that could be interpreted. As far as I understand, he argues that the Israelites never existed as a people in Egypt, never left, never crossed the desert to the promised land, never entered Canaan as a people. They didn’t do it in the 15th Century and they didn’t do it in the 13th Century. His attacks on other people’s theories are all very well but what does he replace them with? What is his explanation for where the Israelite nation came from?

---

IIRC, Finklestein's hypothesis is that the Israelites did not "come from" anywhere; they were already there.
After collapse of the city states on the plains at the end of the Bronze Age, there were just little susbistence farming villages in the hill country. These villages, which shared a common culture, gradually expanded and traded more with each other and they eventually became the northern kingdom.
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Jay - if we are being a bit thick ...

---

You're projecting.

By the way, what and when was this Exodus that you're not sure about?
 

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Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :
 
Thanks JoannaP.

However, Finklestein’s hypothesis completely fails to answer the question of the exodus accounts. He cannot pretend, as much as he’d like to, that the written account of the exodus and the desert wanderings doesn’t exist. Whether myth, legend or history, we have in front of us an incredibly detailed record of the Israelite’s memories of a nomad, desert past. There are incredibly detailed instructions, laws, hygiene requirements and blueprints for a desert tabernacle and a moveable ark. All of these details make no sense whatsoever if transposed onto a supposed sedentary, hill people.

There is no reason for the post-exilic city-dwelling priests to have made up all these instructions for life and worship in a desert environment. The evidence clearly shows that the Israelites remembered that they came from the desert and they had detailed knowledge of this wandering past. Their laws and culture shows that it developed from a nomad desert life.
 

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Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :
 
A troll then

Pity - could have been interesting
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

---

Hawk: Finklestein’s hypothesis completely fails to answer the question of the exodus accounts. He cannot pretend, as much as he’d like to, that the written account of the exodus and the desert wanderings doesn’t exist.

---

Finkelstein isn't suggesting that the exodus and united kingdom accounts don't exist! The accounts as written are, he hypothesizes, reworked to fit into late 7th century political conditions -- king Josiah's reign conditions: to convince the Canaanites that his rule over them is based on tradition going way back. Josiah was attempting to establish his kingdom as extensively as possible, with the "house of David" uniting the whole, as it was in the days of king David and Solomon his son.

The problem of dating, as ken points out, seems to be compounded by taking rhetorical devices to indicate passing time too literally.

The question of how literal the "Exodus and Conquest" are remains unsolvable at present; because too much inconsistency with the biblical details comes out of the ground: but we don't have enough evidence out of the ground yet to push for a consensus in one direction of the other.

Finkelstien, of course, disbelieves in a literal exodus, conquest, or extensive kingdom of impressive builders under David or Solomon....
 

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Posted by TiggyTiger (# 14819) on :
 
Wow, this was a long and detailed thread! It's taken me right up to my bedtime.

Time for my 'total horlix' (see first post in thread).

WTF is that?

Night-night, Sooty.
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
Just a reminder to stick to the issues and avoid dismissive personal comment which can get Shipmates into C3 violation territory.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
Finkelstein isn't suggesting that the exodus and united kingdom accounts don't exist! The accounts as written are, he hypothesizes, reworked to fit into late 7th century political conditions -- king Josiah's reign conditions: to convince the Canaanites that his rule over them is based on tradition going way back.

---

If so its very cleverly done because,. as I said a number of times at probably far to great a length, the technological and political incidental detail is clearly from between the 12th and 10th centuries. There are Hittites and Philistines. Philistines have iron weapons, the Egyptians and Hebrews don't. Nobody rides horses. Neither Egypt nor Assyria is an important political prescense in Canaan.

Imagine someone wrote a book set in early modern Europe. Imagine it had France and England in it, but not neither Burgundy. That it mentioned a "New World" over the ocean but neither America nor Australia were mentioned by name. Imagine if it said that some armies used muskets but others still used pikes. And there was no mention at all of steamships, railways, or rifles. That book would be set in the 16th century - just concievably in the 15th or 17th. But no-one in their right mind would claim that it was set in the 14th century. And no-one would say that it was written to reflect the political conditions of the 19th century.

I suppose that my contention is tha the people who say archaeology proves that the Exodus never happened are disproving a made-up Exodus that owes more to Sunday School teachers and Hollywood than it does to what is actually written in the Bible.

And the people who say that the Bible says that the Exodus happened in 1440 BC, or 1580 BC are also failing to read the Bible and are ignorant of the history of the region other than what is in the Bible. And their misreading of the Bible fuels the straw man that the skeptics then blow down easily.

And that both sides are also making a huge category mistake in the way they mix up archaeological and narrative data and misuse evidence.
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Hawk:
..., Finklestein’s hypothesis completely fails to answer the question of the exodus accounts. He cannot pretend, as much as he’d like to, that the written account of the exodus and the desert wanderings doesn’t exist.

---

You demonstrate a remarkable and irresponsible ignorance of both Finkelstein and the consensus of Syro-Palestinian archaeology. In fact, anyone who took the time to drive from Jerusalem to Eilat would have no trouble understanding the absorption of nomadic and semi-nomadic motifs. All involved recognize the obvious ...

• Yes, Egypt (repeatedly) oppressed Canaan and its people.
• Yes, Israelite ethnogenesis reflects Mesopotamian and southern-nomadic cultural influences.

But neither of these facts constitute an Exodus/Conquest. Why don't you actually read the book?
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:
I suppose that my contention is tha the people who say archaeology proves that the Exodus never happened are disproving a made-up Exodus that owes more to Sunday School teachers and Hollywood than it does to what is actually written in the Bible.

---

Your contention is rubbish.
 

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Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
Your contention is rubbish.

---

I thought archaeology was supposed to be rubbish.

Literally.

[ 18. June 2009, 14:21: Message edited by: Johnny S ]
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I don't know anything about this stuff and was hoping to learn something by reading this thread. Ken made an interesting post about the content of the biblical narrative containing facts and observations that pertain to one century, even though it's supposed to have been written centuries later. It seems like an interesting approach and I don't have the data to either confirm or deny it. But what is JS's response? "It's rubbish." Boy, that sure helps me understand.

To quote Monty Python, "This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction." Or rather one side is arguing and the other side blithely dismissing.
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
But what is JS's response? "It's rubbish." Boy, that sure helps me understand.

---

Perhaps you should spend more time reading Finkelstein than Ken ...
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
I don't have time to read all the books I would like to. I come to the ship in part hoping to learn about things I don't have the time to read books about. Purg is supposed to be a debate space. Why won't you debate?
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by mousethief:
Purg is supposed to be a debate space. Why won't you debate?

---

What specifically would you like to see debated? There can be no debate when the claim is something akin to ...

• The Exodus/Conquest is historical except that it didn't look like the Exodus and it didn't look like the Conquest and we haven't a clue when it happened but, that aside, maybe, just maybe ...

It's disingenuous nonsense.
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

It's disingenuous nonsense.

---

Definition of disingenuous

"lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere"

Jayhawker Soule

Clearly you missed my earlier reminder so I'm now naming you. Feel free to assert that anyone is posting nonsense. That is allowable comment in Purgatory.

However, a claim can only be disingenuous if a claimant so intends. So that is not legitimate criticism under our guidelines here, that's personal attack.

Read the guidelines. You've just committed a C3 violation. Back off.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by ken:

quote:

---

Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
Finkelstein isn't suggesting that the exodus and united kingdom accounts don't exist! The accounts as written are, he hypothesizes, reworked to fit into late 7th century political conditions -- king Josiah's reign conditions: to convince the Canaanites that his rule over them is based on tradition going way back.

---

If so its very cleverly done because,. as I said a number of times at probably far to great a length, the technological and political incidental detail is clearly from between the 12th and 10th centuries.

---

I don't think Finkelstein's and Silberman's efforts were meant to be clever, but instead, candid.

You are at utter loggerheads with their premise: they say the exact opposite of what you argue for: they say that the physical, political, geographical details in the patriarchal and Israelite narratives overwhelmingly fall well within the 7th century BCE and NO OTHER PERIOD.

quote:

---

...

And the people who say that the Bible says that the Exodus happened in 1440 BC, or 1580 BC are also failing to read the Bible and are ignorant of the history of the region other than what is in the Bible. And their misreading of the Bible fuels the straw man that the skeptics then blow down easily.

...

---

Again, the authors are not "misreading the Bible" so that they can knock down their own straw man. And they are not attacking some misapprehended "Sunday school" version of the Exodus and Conquest....

[ 18. June 2009, 19:43: Message edited by: MerlintheMad ]
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Barnabas62:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

It's disingenuous nonsense.

---

Definition of disingenuous

"lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere"

Jayhawker Soule

Clearly you missed my earlier reminder

---

Clearly you reject my contention that to claim to be debating or otherwise discussing the Exodus/Conquest narrative by gutting the Exodus/Conquest of any and all Biblical content is, in fact, "falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; [and/or] insincere" unless, of course, one is on the other side of the looking glass in which case those you rush to support are presumable invited to make the words mean whatever they wish them to mean so long as they pay them extra ...
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Barnabas62:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:

It's disingenuous nonsense.

---

Definition of disingenuous

"lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; insincere"

Jayhawker Soule

Clearly you missed my earlier reminder

---

Clearly you reject my contention that to claim to be debating or otherwise discussing the Exodus/Conquest narrative by gutting the Exodus/Conquest of any and all Biblical content is, in fact, "falsely or hypocritically ingenuous; [and/or] insincere" unless, of course, one is on the other side of the looking glass in which case those you rush to support are presumable invited to make the words mean whatever they wish them to mean so long as they pay them extra ...

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Host Hat On
Any further discussion of this Hostly ruling must take place in the Styx. That's the way we do things here. If you want to repeat your allegations there, feel free to do so. But there must be no more comment here.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

Host Hat Off

[ 19. June 2009, 06:45: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 

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Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
I don't think Finkelstein's and Silberman's efforts were meant to be clever, but instead, candid.

You are at utter loggerheads with their premise: they say the exact opposite of what you argue for: they say that the physical, political, geographical details in the patriarchal and Israelite narratives overwhelmingly fall well within the 7th century BCE and NO OTHER PERIOD.

---

I'm not sure that they do mean to argue that Merlin, though certainly the style of the book is a little declarative which might tend to give a more polarised and less nuanced impression of the argument than they would make in a book that wasn't aimed at a pop-science readership. Because they ARE scholars, and I think they would have to recognise the truth of what Ken has (correctly) said. If the Biblical record of the Patriarchal era was written around Josiah's time it was written so as to contain a lot of incidental detail which correctly relates the narrative to the period in which the stories were set. That doesn't mean Silberman and Finkelstein are wrong when they say that the Bible text we have now can't realistically have been composed much before the 7th Century BCE (on the contrary, to the extent that I follow the linguistic arguments that seems justified). However it does mean either:

(a) that Hilkiah (and whoever else might have been responsible) had a lot of pretty detailed older accounts to work from and that they strove to be consistent with those accounts even when that meant including in their redaction various details that weren't essential to the story and would have been anachronistic by their day; or

(b) that those scribes were able to employ a very modern and accurate understanding of the spread of technology and changes in custom and practice across the Middle East over the preceding centuries (an understanding that was then lost for about 27 centuries and today remains incomplete and is being added to in every archaeological digging season).


To my mind what is contentious about their premise is the lengths to which they take it. If they were more modest and sought to make out a case for the Biblical record being exaggerated by (inter alia) aggrandising propaganda from Josiah's time they would be much more convincing.

For instance, the Biblical depiction of Solomon as ruling over half the Levant with his massive professional armies, dealing with Egypt as an equal power, receiving tribute in gold by the ton doesn't really stack up. But neither does it wash to declare that:

quote:

---

Solomon’s Jerusalem was neither extensive nor impressive, but rather the rough hilltop stronghold of a local dynasty of rustic tribal chiefs. (op cit, p 22)

---

when political considerations mean that it is impossible for any parts of Solomon's Jerusalem that might clarify what it was like to be excavated.
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:
For instance, the Biblical depiction of Solomon as ruling over half the Levant with his massive professional armies, dealing with Egypt as an equal power, receiving tribute in gold by the ton doesn't really stack up. But neither does it wash to declare that:

quote:

---

Solomon’s Jerusalem was neither extensive nor impressive, but rather the rough hilltop stronghold of a local dynasty of rustic tribal chiefs. (op cit, p 22)

---

when political considerations mean that it is impossible for any parts of Solomon's Jerusalem that might clarify what it was like to be excavated.

---

"Solomon's Jerusalem" is the most studied plot of land on the planet. What specific evidence do you have that it in any way exceeded the characterization you quote? Again I invite you to visit the Israeli Museum, Jerusalem ...

Finally, I note that the chatter about Jericho has quieted down significantly as proponents of the multilayered Biblical narrative search tirelessly for some appropriate date for their longed for Exodus. In fact, we seem to be no longer speaking about the Exodus at all. How interesting ...
 

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Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Pottage:

For instance, the Biblical depiction of Solomon as ruling over half the Levant with his massive professional armies, dealing with Egypt as an equal power, receiving tribute in gold by the ton doesn't really stack up. But neither does it wash to declare that:

quote:

---

Solomon’s Jerusalem was neither extensive nor impressive, but rather the rough hilltop stronghold of a local dynasty of rustic tribal chiefs. (op cit, p 22)

---

---

The simple truth is that no one knows. Finklestein and his disciples might claim in pop-science ‘OMG The Bible is WRONG!!!’ books that it is definitively known and unarguable ‘FACT’ that Solomon’s kingdom was hilltop tribalism but Donald Redford, though sharing Finklesteins approach to the evidence states categorically that the simple fact is that there is no evidence for Palestine in the tenth century (apart from the Bible accounts). His conclusion is still that the Bible accounts are wrong but this appears to be a subjective distaste for them as historical documents rather than any facts. He ends his chapter about this period stating that until more evidence is found we have to reserve judgment on the period in entirety. I disagree of course but I appreciate his attitude to the subject far more than the simplistic declarations that Finklestein appears to construct his book out of.

What we do know is that the cities that Solomon was supposed to have captured show evidence of being built up and fortified in the tenth century. There are signs of the presence of a central authority, that could conceivably be from a strong centralized king in the area. There is not much more than that, according to Redford, but it does show that in the 10th century something was happening. Something very similar to the broad outline of a Solomonic king appearing and raising a kingdom in the area. How extensive it was, how powerful, any other questions we might want to ask, archeology and history can not answer.

All we have is the accounts written in the 7th century. Yet, IMO, these accounts should not be discarded as historical evidence, as Redford believes, but used. He likens them to the Arthurian legends as though Thomas Mallory writing in the fifteenth century could have known anything about the fourth century AD. I think this is a simplistic and silly comparison. I agree with Pottage and Ken that there are significant details in the text that show a good understanding of the period being written about. The anachronisms are contentious but the few bits that are actually anachronisms (and I haven’t been convinced about any specific ones yet) should not rubbish the entire account. I believe that the authors were working from significant extant material in composing their work and didn’t just make it up. They may have picked and chosen the material and highlighted bits and ignored other bits to argue a theological point (I doubt anyone would deny that) but they were working from a good knowledge of the events themselves. Whether this knowledge was from oral history or written works it is unknown. They refer to other books, annals of the kings, that are now lost to the modern reader, but they refer to them offhandedly as though the reader would know them well. There were other written works extant in this time detailing the period in question, just because we don’t know what they said is no reason to deny their existence.


And Jay, I'm largely ignoring you now as you've made it clear you're not here to join in the debate but to troll the thread and insult anyone who disagrees with you. However, if you want to actually engage in conversation in the future I'll be happy to answer you.

[ 19. June 2009, 10:41: Message edited by: Hawk ]
 

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Posted by BroJames (# 9636) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
"Solomon's Jerusalem" is the most studied plot of land on the planet. What specific evidence do you have that it in any way exceeded the characterization you quote? Again I invite you to visit the Israeli Museum, Jerusalem ...

---

The absence of evidence is not (per se) evidence of absence. Since this is an internet debate forum, the invitation to visit a museum in Jerusalem is hardly a realistic proposition for most of the people involved here. Rather than casting out rhetorical garnishes like this, perhaps you could tell us what we would see in the museum which would demonstrate that

quote:

---

Solomon’s Jerusalem was neither extensive nor impressive, but rather the rough hilltop stronghold of a local dynasty of rustic tribal chiefs.

---

 

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Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
I share your view Hawk, about Finkelstein's predisposition to construct a detailed picture of 10th Century BCE Judah based on his theories about the hill tribes of that era and earlier, and making no proper allowance for the fact that where we would be most likely to find evidence to prove or disprove the veracity of his vision is inaccessible beneath Temple Mount. It's a relatively sophisticated version of an argument from silence. Ironically it's exactly the criticism Finkelstein (rightly) makes of earlier generations of Biblical archaeologists who set out, essentially assuming the Biblical narrative could be read and understood verbatim, expecting and intending to prove it so with their spades.

I haven't been to the Israel Museum for many years, and then I spent most of my time in the Shrine of the Book which is a tribute to a more modern and open minded style of archaeology that I'm sure we would all endorse. Sadly that approach came last to the archaeology of the Bible, most probably because nowhere else is there as much "baggage". I've no idea whether the archaeology of Jerusalem has been investigated more intensively than, say, that of Rome or Athens (and I'm not much given to guesses or hyperbole) but I think there will have been a scientific rigour brought to bear outside the Biblical archaeology field earlier and more consistently than in and around ancient Israel/Judah, for obvious reasons.

Jayhawker Soule seems to share some of my own enthusiasms, and also seems to be more consistent than I am in his choice of screen name, and as a result I have seen his postings elsewhere. There is a consistency of style. I'm minded to adopt Hawk's proposed solution, which seems wisdom in Solomon's tradition.
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Hawk:
...All we have is the accounts written in the 7th century. Yet, IMO, these accounts should not be discarded as historical evidence, as Redford believes, but used. He likens them to the Arthurian legends as though Thomas Mallory writing in the fifteenth century could have known anything about the fourth century AD. I think this is a simplistic and silly comparison. I agree with Pottage and Ken that there are significant details in the text that show a good understanding of the period being written about. The anachronisms are contentious but the few bits that are actually anachronisms (and I haven’t been convinced about any specific ones yet) should not rubbish the entire account. I believe that the authors were working from significant extant material in composing their work and didn’t just make it up. They may have picked and chosen the material and highlighted bits and ignored other bits to argue a theological point (I doubt anyone would deny that) but they were working from a good knowledge of the events themselves. Whether this knowledge was from oral history or written works it is unknown. They refer to other books, annals of the kings, that are now lost to the modern reader, but they refer to them offhandedly as though the reader would know them well. There were other written works extant in this time detailing the period in question, just because we don’t know what they said is no reason to deny their existence.

...

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This concept of an illiterate culture managing to keep a record of the "insignificant details" of earlier centuries just doesn't wash.

HOW did the scribes and redactors of the 7th century take an oral tradition and record details of the 10th century (much less the patriarchal, dawn of recorded time, stories)? It is an impossible expectation of ANY oral tradition, to pass on stories and save details of the surrounding world that no longer exist. When pointing out WHERE the stories took place ("and it is seen to this day"), the physical details referred to must still be there to see: and if the details referred to have developed over the centuries from a tent encampment, to a village, then an open town, walled city, destroyed (by unidentified enemies) and unoccupied, back to a mere village amidst ruins, then finally back to a significant fortified site by Josiah's time, how could the oral tradition keep account of all of that, when in the Bible it only speaks of the site in the context of a single stage?

It is a constant in the artwork of any earlier period other than "modern" to portray biblical/historical scenes using the extant armor, weapons and architecture of the artist's time: e.g. when a medieval artist is striving for an "alien" feel, say to represent "Philistines", stylistic Middle Eastern/Arabic motifs are inserted (usually with laughable inaccuracy). Any known details of the past are preserved in the very same writings we reference today: all traces of unwritten details are lost to us, except those dug out of the ground -- mostly within living memory.

So I don't buy this idea that 7th century BCE redactors had some millennia-long memory of technological advancement: any mention of bronze-to-iron would be within their purview, at best a couple of centuries going back and preserved in written form by someone.

As the evidence for the "Hebrews" being a literate people supports the 8th to 7th century, there could only have been an oral tradition for the stories as they were passed down to Josiah's day: and the raw, physical details (the very world setting the stories lived in), changed with each generation's surroundings.

That is why Finkelstein emphasizes the similarities of the 7th century BCE Levantine world with the details of the much older stories: they were taking their physical trappings from the surrounding geo-political world of the redactors and the previous two or three generations (i.e. those still alive)....
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
This concept of an illiterate culture managing to keep a record of the "insignificant details" of earlier centuries just doesn't wash.

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What "illiterate culture"? Most of the people were almost certainly illiterate, but that doesn't mean the cultures were.

We're talking about Canaan & Syria, the places where they invented the alphabet. In, oh, about 1200-1000 BC. And Egyptian had been a written language for going on two thousand years before that. And don't even think about cuneiform.
 

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Posted by Pottage (# 9529) on :
 
The self-fulfilling part of Finkelstein's argument runs thus:

there couldn't have been records of the inconsequential details of the stories set centuries before the 7th century BCE because in those times the Israelites were illiterate rustics; nobody could remember those kind of details across ten or twenty generations; and so the details must be pure fabrication and thus reflective of the life and times of the 7th century BCE rather than the 10th or earlier.

BUT it's Finkelstein's own depiction of them (arguing from silence) which insists that the Israelites in bygone centuries were illiterate rustics (he describes King David as "a bandit chief").

On top of that, Ken has explained various ways in which the stories we're discussing disclose a familiarity with the way that Bronze Age gave way to Iron Age centuries before Josiah's time and how that impacted successively on the civilisations in that area. If these newly-literate scribes in the 7th century were making that all up from a few fireside folk tales they did an astounding job of getting details correct that would have been unavailable to scholars even comparatively recently. It's all the more remarkable because those details are often quite incidental to the plot of the stories, and so if they were making up the stories for their own political ends at the time it really shouldn't have mattered to them whether these incidentals were rght or wrong.

[x-post with ken]
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
I'm conscious that the verb "to troll" is in common use these days, but trolling is treated as a serious commandment breach here, is judged by the Admin, and may lead to suspension or permanent ban if the Admin make the finding. Shipmates, please, please stick to the issues and leave the interpretation of the commandments and guidelines to the Hosts.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

[I got chocolate today so I'm in a good mood.]
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by ken:

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad:
This concept of an illiterate culture managing to keep a record of the "insignificant details" of earlier centuries just doesn't wash.

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What "illiterate culture"? Most of the people were almost certainly illiterate, but that doesn't mean the cultures were.

We're talking about Canaan & Syria, the places where they invented the alphabet. In, oh, about 1200-1000 BC. And Egyptian had been a written language for going on two thousand years before that. And don't even think about cuneiform.

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Okay, then "they" ought to have had something to say about the influx of illiterate "Hebrews" that conquered them; and the Davidic "empire". As far as I can tell, the rub is that outside of the OT itself, there is practically nothing mentioning the same version of ancient history.

The Hebrews were illiterate until c. the 8th century BCE, which means that their history was an oral tradition: and orally transmitted traditions/histories get interpretted by the extant geo-political world; they don't remember things like technological breakthroughs, or place such in a remembered context....
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Pottage:
...Ken has explained various ways in which the stories we're discussing disclose a familiarity with the way that Bronze Age gave way to Iron Age centuries before Josiah's time and how that impacted successively on the civilisations in that area. If these newly-literate scribes in the 7th century were making that all up from a few fireside folk tales they did an astounding job of getting details correct that would have been unavailable to scholars even comparatively recently. It's all the more remarkable because those details are often quite incidental to the plot of the stories, and so if they were making up the stories for their own political ends at the time it really shouldn't have mattered to them whether these incidentals were rght or wrong.

[x-post with ken]

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This is what we're talking about: WHICH interpretation of the evidence from the ground is supported by the best theory? Ken seems to be mouthing the more traditional, religious mainstream version: Finkelstein is saying, "wait a minute here: if we don't approach the evidence we are getting from a religious expectation, it seems to reflect something starkly different from the OT version of Levantine history." So either the "insignificant details" are 7th century, or they are much earlier. Which is it to be? Can we tell yet? (I think not, judging by our duplication of the scholarly deadlock Finkelstein addresses at the opening of his Silberman's book.)

I sure can't tell if ken or Finkelstein is right or if both are mistaken together....
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by BroJames:

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
"Solomon's Jerusalem" is the most studied plot of land on the planet. What specific evidence do you have that it in any way exceeded the characterization you quote? Again I invite you to visit the Israeli Museum, Jerusalem ...

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The absence of evidence is not (per se) evidence of absence.

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As a matter of fact - and with all due respect to Sagan - while the absence of proof is not proof of absence, the absence of evidence is frequently significant evidence of absence.

By the way, when was this well concealed Exodus-Conquest?
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
Can we not talk about iron-age to bronze-age crossover without invoking the Exodus? Talk about straw men.
 

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Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad
It is a constant in the artwork of any earlier period other than "modern" to portray biblical/historical scenes using the extant armor, weapons and architecture of the artist's time: e.g. when a medieval artist is striving for an "alien" feel, say to represent "Philistines", stylistic Middle Eastern/Arabic motifs are inserted (usually with laughable inaccuracy).

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I heard a series of lectures on religious art by an art historian. She said that the artist was not trying to give an accurate visual representation of an event. The setting, poses, details, etc. were symbolic, to help the viewer interpret the scene. If you had asked the artist whether he thought that's what the event actually looked like, he would have looked blank and said, "Of course not."

Moo
 

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Posted by Jayhawker Soule (# 14012) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Can we not talk about iron-age to bronze-age crossover without invoking the Exodus?

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Actually, it's the only way you can talk about it with invoking folklore.

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Talk about straw men.

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Nonsense. Given the OP ...

quote:

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I have just finished reading The Bible UnearthedWikipedia here by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman. The authors examine archaological evidence to build up picture of what was going on in in Palestine roughly 1500-500 BCE, and compare it with OT stories of events at the time. They make what I think is a pretty convincing case, for example, that:

1. The Exodus never happened. There is no shortage of archaelogical evidence from the era in both Egypt and Palestine, but none to suggest that the people of Israel were ever held in captivity in Egypt, escaped, spent a period wandering around Sinai, or subsequently "arrived" in the promised land.

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... how does the Exodus become a straw man?

[ 19. June 2009, 23:57: Message edited by: Jayhawker Soule ]
 

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Posted by MerlintheMad (# 12279) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Moo:

quote:

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Originally posted by MerlintheMad
It is a constant in the artwork of any earlier period other than "modern" to portray biblical/historical scenes using the extant armor, weapons and architecture of the artist's time: e.g. when a medieval artist is striving for an "alien" feel, say to represent "Philistines", stylistic Middle Eastern/Arabic motifs are inserted (usually with laughable inaccuracy).

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I heard a series of lectures on religious art by an art historian. She said that the artist was not trying to give an accurate visual representation of an event. The setting, poses, details, etc. were symbolic, to help the viewer interpret the scene. If you had asked the artist whether he thought that's what the event actually looked like, he would have looked blank and said, "Of course not."

Moo

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I'm not talking about the stylization, but the pictured details. Assyrian art accurately shows the weapons and other gear; similarly, most medieval art shows the same for that period: but when trying for a "biblical look", it still uses contemporary weapons, armor, etc, because no one in the middle ages had a clue what Philistines or Jews looked like in their armor: all that information,scant though it is, came to light within almost living memory.

[ 20. June 2009, 00:23: Message edited by: MerlintheMad ]
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Jayhawker Soule:
how does the Exodus become a straw man?

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Threads are not bound by the OP. This one has wandered into a discussion of iron age-to-bronze age cultural/historical data.
 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
[I'm still in a good mood]

Jayhawker Soule, mousethief is right about the culture here. We don't adopt strict boundaries over issues under discussion. If the initial issue in the OP spawns an allied tangential discussion which catches the attention of some Shipmates, then they may discuss it, while others discuss the main issue. We don't apply strict segregation.

Tangential discussions often rejoin the main issue; on other occasions, a Shipmate may wish to take them out and create a separate thread. Sometime a Host may suggest that, or even do it.

None of us is required to engage in any such tangents. But within reasonable limits, they are allowable here.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
 

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Posted by Mockingbird (# 5818) on :
 
I find no contradiction between Finlkestein's thesis that the Exodus story's final redaction took place in the 7th century B.C., and the proposition that the traditional materials from which the redaction was made preserved details of an earlier time. The following occurs in the old ballad Charlie, a North Carolina variant of Geordie (Child 209):

quote:

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Go saddle me my milk-white steed,
the brown one ain't so speedy,
and I'll ride away to the king's high court
enquiring for poor Charlie.

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This ballad was collected in the days of gasoline-powered cars. Nothing prevented any singer from updating the words to

Bring around front my black sports-car,
the truck it ain't so speedy,
and I'll drive away to the Governer's house
inquiring for poor Charlie.

But at least on line of singers, those from whom Campbell and Sharp collected the words above, did not do so, instead preserving the traditional reference to horses and kings.
 

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Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Mockingbird:
Nothing prevented any singer from updating the words ...

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Yeah, but the Unfortunate Rake who had such bad luck when he rode to Cork City in the 18th century somehow accquired a six-shooter when he emigrated and became Dying Cowboy on the Streets of Laredo in the 19th. Then they took him to the Saint James Infirmary in the 20th where he changed sex and became black.

That said there is a lot of use in oral tradition. But like archaelogical evidence it doesn't always match with written history. To some extent they occupy different universes of discourse.

And also some cultures (such as Rwanda/Burundi) have formal or official oral traditions that have some of the characteristics of textual evidence (though of course text from the past is always a better clue to what was being said in th epast)

Though oral tradition is not the only way in which things get transmitted in a literate society - like Syria and Palaestine and Egypt in the early Iron Age.
 

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