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Discrimination against atheists

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 Countries in which, as of 2007, apostasy of the local or state religion was punishable by execution under national (black) or regional (dark gray) law. Currently, this occurs only in Islamic nations.[1]
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The Greek word "atheoi" ("[those who are] without God") as it appears on the early 3rd-century Papyrus 46



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Discrimination against atheists, both at present and historically, includes the persecution of those identifying themselves or labeled by others as atheists, as well as discrimination against them. Atheophobia, the fear or hatred of those identified as atheists, is known to cause or be associated with this discrimination.[2][3] As atheism can be defined in various ways, those discriminated against on the grounds of being atheists might not have been considered as such in a different time or place.
Legal discrimination against atheists is uncommon in constitutional democracies, although some atheists and atheist groups, particularly in the United States, have protested against laws, regulations, and institutions that they view as discriminatory. In some Islamic countries, atheists face discrimination and severe penalties such as the withdrawal of legal status or, in the case of apostasy, capital punishment.



Contents  [hide]
1 Ancient times
2 Early modern period and Reformation
3 Modern era 3.1 Nazi Germany
4 Contemporary era 4.1 Western countries 4.1.1 Europe
4.1.2 Brazil
4.1.3 Canada
4.1.4 United States
4.2 Islamic countries 4.2.1 Algeria
4.3 Egypt 4.3.1 Saudi Arabia
4.3.2 Turkey

5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Ancient times[edit]
Some historians, such as Lucien Febvre, have postulated that atheism in its modern sense did not exist before the end of the seventeenth century.[4][5][6] However, as governmental authority rested on the notion of divine right, it was threatened by those who denied the existence of the local god. Those labeled as atheist, including early Christians and Muslims, were as a result targeted for legal persecution.[7][8]
Early modern period and Reformation[edit]
During the Early modern period, the term "atheist" was used as an insult and applied to a broad range of people, including those who held opposing theological beliefs, as well as suicides, immoral or self-indulgent people, and even opponents of the belief in witchcraft.[4][5][9] Atheistic beliefs were seen as threatening to order and society by philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas. Lawyer and scholar Thomas More said that religious tolerance should be extended to all except those who did not believe in a deity or the immortality of the soul.[7] John Locke, a founder of modern notions of religious liberty, argued that atheists (as well as Catholics and Muslims) should not be granted full citizenship rights.[7]
During the Inquisition, several of those accused of atheism or blasphemy, or both, were tortured or executed. These included the priest Giulio Cesare Vanini who was strangled and burned in 1619 and the Polish nobleman Kazimierz Łyszczyński who was executed in Warsaw,[4][10][11] as well as Etienne Dolet, a Frenchman executed in 1546. Though heralded as atheist martyrs during the nineteenth century, recent scholars hold that the beliefs espoused by Dolet and Vanini are not atheistic in modern terms.[6][12][13]
Modern era[edit]
During the nineteenth century, British atheists, though few in number, were subject to discriminatory practices.[14] Those unwilling to swear Christian oaths during judicial proceedings were unable to give evidence in court to obtain justice until the requirement was repealed by Acts passed in 1869 and 1870.[14] In addition, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford and denied custody of his two children after publishing a pamphlet titled The Necessity of Atheism.[15]
Atheist Charles Bradlaugh was elected as a Member of the British Parliament in 1880. He was denied the right to affirm rather than swear his oath of office, and was then denied the ability to swear the oath as other Members objected that he had himself said it would be meaningless. Bradlaugh was re-elected three times before he was finally able to take his seat in 1886 when the Speaker of the House permitted him to take the oath.[15]
Nazi Germany[edit]
In Germany during the Nazi era, a 1933 decree stated that "No National Socialist may suffer detriment... on the ground that he does not make any religious profession at all".[16] However, the regime strongly opposed "godless communism",[17][18] and most of Germany's atheist and largely left-wing freethought organizations were banned the same year; some right-wing groups were tolerated by the Nazis until the mid-1930s.[19][20] During negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of April 26, 1933 Hitler stated that "Secular schools can never be tolerated" because of their irreligious tendencies.[21] Hitler routinely disregarded this undertaking, and the Reich concordat as a whole and by 1939, all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities.[22]
In a speech made later in 1933, Hitler claimed to have "stamped out" the Gottlosenbewegung atheistic movement.[16] The word Hitler used, "Gottlosenbewegung", refers specifically to the communist freethought movement, not atheism in general.[23] The historian Richard J Evans wrote that, by 1939, 95% of Germans still called themselves Protestant or Catholic, while 3.5% were so called "gottgläubig" (lit. "believers in god", a non-denominational nazified outlook on god beliefs, often described as predominately based on creationist and deistic views[24]) and 1.5% atheist. According to Evans, those members of the affiliation gottgläubig "were convinced Nazis who had left their Church at the behest of the Party, which had been trying since the mid 1930s to reduce the influence of Christianity in society".[25] Heinrich Himmler, who himself was fascinated with Germanic paganism[citation needed], was a strong promoter of the gottgläubig movement and didn't allow atheists into the SS, arguing that their "refusal to acknowledge higher powers" would be a "potential source of indiscipline".[26] The majority of the three million Nazi Party members continued to pay their church taxes and register as either Roman Catholic or Evangelical Protestant Christians.[27]
Contemporary era[edit]
Western countries[edit]
Modern theories of constitutional democracy assume that citizens are intellectually and spiritually autonomous and that governments should leave matters of religious belief to individuals and not coerce religious beliefs using sanctions or benefits. The constitutions, human rights conventions and the religious liberty jurisprudence of most constitutional democracies provides legal protection of atheists and agnostics. In addition, freedom of expression provisions and legislation separating church from state also serve to protect the rights of atheists. As a result, open legal discrimination against atheists is not common in most Western countries.[7] However, prejudice against atheists does exist in Western countries. A University of British Columbia study conducted in the United States found that believers distrust atheists as much as they distrust rapists. The study also showed that atheists have lower employment prospects.[28]
Europe[edit]
In most of Europe, atheists are elected to office at high levels in many governments without controversy.[29] Some atheist organizations in Europe have expressed concerns regarding issues of separation of church and state, such as administrative fees for leaving the Church charged in Germany,[30] and sermons being organized by the Swedish parliament.[31] Ireland requires religious training from Christian colleges in order to work as a teacher in government-funded schools.[32] In the UK one-third of state-funded schools are faith-based.[33] However, there are no restrictions on atheists holding public office – the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, is an atheist.[34] According to a 2012 poll, 25% of the Turks in Germany believe atheists are inferior human beings.[35][36] Portugal has elected two presidents, Mário Soares and Jorge Sampaio who have openly expressed their irreligion. On the contrary, in Greece, the right-wing New Democracy government stated that "the Greek people have a right to know whether Mr. Tsipras is an atheist", citing their political opponent's irreligiosity as a reason he should not be elected, even though they granted that "it is his right".[37] In the Elder Pastitsios case, a 27-year old was sentenced to imprisonment for satirizing a popular apocalyptically-minded Greek Orthodox monk, while several metropolitans of the Greek Orthodox Church (which is not separated from the state) have also urged their flock "not to vote unbelievers into office", even going so far as to warn Greek Orthodox laymen that they would be "sinning if they voted atheists into public office."[38] [39]
Brazil[edit]
A 2009 survey showed that atheists are the most hated demographic group in Brazil, among several other minorities polled, being almost on par with drug addicts. According to the research, 17% of the interviewees stated they feel either hate or repulsion for atheists, while 25% feel antipathy and 29% are indifferent.[40]
Canada[edit]
Canadian secular humanist groups have worked to end the recitation of prayers during government proceedings, viewing them as discriminatory.[41][42] Scouts Canada states that while a belief in God or affliation with organized religion is not a requirement to join, members must have "a basic spiritual belief"[43] and one of the core values is "Duty to God: Defined as, The responsibility to adhere to spiritual principles, and thus to the religion that expresses them, and to accept the duties therefrom."[44]
United States[edit]
Further information: Irreligion in the United States



 Anti-atheist propaganda billboard posted in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in February 2008
Discrimination against atheists in the United States occurs in legal, personal, social, and professional contexts. Some American atheists compare their situation to the discrimination faced by ethnic minorities, LGBT communities, and women.[45][46][47][48] "Americans still feel it's acceptable to discriminate against atheists in ways considered beyond the pale for other groups," asserted Fred Edwords of the American Humanist Association.[49] However, other atheists reject these comparisons, arguing that while atheists may face disapproval they have not faced significant oppression or discrimination.[50][51]
In the United States, seven state constitutions include religious tests that would effectively prevent atheists from holding public office, and in some cases being a juror/witness, though these have not generally been enforced since the early twentieth century.[52][53][54] The U.S. Constitution allows for an affirmation instead of an oath in order to accommodate atheists and others in court or seeking to hold public office.[52][55] In 1961, the United States Supreme Court explicitly overturned the Maryland provision in the Torcaso v. Watkins decision, holding that laws requiring "a belief in the existence of God" in order to hold public office violated freedom of religion provided for by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[52][56][57] This decision is generally understood to also apply to witness oaths.[58]
Several American atheists have used court challenges to assert discrimination against atheists. Michael Newdow challenged inclusion of the phrase "under God" in the United States Pledge of Allegiance on behalf of his daughter, claiming that the phrase was discriminatory against non-theists.[59] He won the case at an initial stage, but the Supreme Court dismissed his claim, ruling that Newdow did not have standing to bring his case, thus disposing of the case without ruling on the constitutionality of the pledge.[60][61] Respondents to a survey were less likely to support a kidney transplant for hypothetical atheists and agnostics needing it, than for Christian patients with similar medical needs.[62] As the Boy Scouts of America does not allow atheists as members, atheist families and the ACLU from the 1990s onwards have launched a series of court cases arguing discrimination against atheists. In response to ACLU lawsuits, the Pentagon in 2004 ended sponsorship of Scouting units,[63][64] and in 2005 the BSA agreed to transfer all Scouting units out of government entities such as public schools.[65][66]
Few politicians have been willing to identify as non-theists, since such revelations have been considered "political suicide".[67][68] In a landmark move, California Representative Pete Stark came out in 2007 as the first openly nontheistic member of Congress.[49] In 2009, City Councilman Cecil Bothwell of Asheville, North Carolina was called "unworthy of his seat" because of his open atheism.[69] Several polls have shown that about 50 percent of Americans would not vote for a qualified atheist for president.[70][71] A 2006 study found that 40% of respondents characterized atheists as a group that did "not at all agree with my vision of American society", and that 48% would not want their child to marry an atheist. In both studies, percentages of disapproval of atheists were above those for Muslims, African-Americans and homosexuals.[72] Many of the respondents associated atheism with immorality, including criminal behaviour, extreme materialism, and elitism.[73] Atheists and atheist organizations have alleged discrimination against atheists in the military,[74][75][76][77][78][79] and recently, with the development of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, atheists have alleged institutionalized discrimination.[80][81] In several child custody court rulings, atheist parents have been discriminated against, either directly or indirectly. As child custody laws in the United States are often based on the "best interests of the child" principle, they leave family court judges ample room to consider a parent's ideology when settling a custody case. Atheism, lack of religious observation and regular church attendance, and the inability to prove one's willingness and capacity to attend to religion with his children, have been used to deny custody to non-religious parents.[82][83]
Prominent atheists and atheist groups have said that discrimination against atheists is illustrated by a statement reportedly made by George H. W. Bush during a public press conference just after announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 1987.[45][84][85][86] When asked by journalist Robert Sherman[disambiguation needed] about the equal citizenship and patriotism of American atheists, Sherman reported that Bush answered, "No, I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under God."[45][86][87][88] However, Sherman did not tape the exchange and no other journalist reported on it at the time.[45] George H. W. Bush's son, George W. Bush, acknowledged those who do not worship during a November 3, 2004 press conference when he said "I will be your president regardless of your faith... And if they choose not to worship, they're just as patriotic as your neighbor."[89]
The constitutions of these seven US states ban atheists from holding public office:
Arkansas: Article 19, Section 1"No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court."[90]Maryland: Article 37"That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution."[91]Mississippi: Article 14, Section 265"No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state."[92]North Carolina: Article 6, Section 8"The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God."[93]South Carolina: Article 17, Section 4"No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution."[94]Tennessee: Article 9, Section 2"No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state."[95]Texas: Article 1, Section 4"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being."[96]
An eighth state constitution affords special protection to theists.
Pennsylvania: Article 1, Section 4"No person who acknowledges the being of a God and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold any office or place of trust or profit under this Commonwealth."[97]
Islamic countries[edit]
See also: Islam and atheism and Apostasy in Islam
Atheists, or those accused of holding atheistic beliefs, may be subject to discrimination and persecution in many Islamic countries.[98] According to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, compared to other nations, "unbelievers... in Islamic countries face the most severe – sometimes brutal – treatment".[99] Atheists and other religious skeptics can be executed in at least thirteen nations: Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.[1]
According to popular interpretations of Islam, Muslims are not free to change religion or become an atheist: denying Islam and thus becoming an apostate is traditionally punished by death for men and by life imprisonment for women. The death penalty for apostasy is apparent in a range of Islamic states including: Iran,[100][101] Egypt,[102] Pakistan,[102] Somalia,[103] United Arab Emirates,[104] Qatar,[105] Yemen,[105] and Saudi Arabia.[102] Although there have been no recently reported executions in Saudi Arabia,[106] a judge in Saudi Arabia has recently recommended that imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi go before a high court on a charge of apostasy, which would carry the death penalty upon conviction.[107] While a death sentence is rare, it is common for atheists to be charged with blasphemy or inciting hatred.[108] New "Arab Spring" regimes in Tunisia and Egypt have jailed several outspoken atheists.[108]
Since an apostate can be considered a Muslim whose beliefs cast doubt on the Divine, and/or Koran, claims of atheism and apostasy have been made against Muslim scholars and political opponents throughout history.[109][110][111] Both fundamentalists and moderates agree that "blasphemers will not be forgiven" although they disagree on the severity of an appropriate punishment.[108] In northwestern Syria in 2013 during the Syrian Civil War, jihadists beheaded and defaced a sculpture of Al-Maʿarri (973–1058 CE), one of several outspoken Arab and Persian atheist intellectuals who lived and taught during the Islamic Golden Age.[112][113]
In Iran, atheists do not have any recognized legal status, and must declare that they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish or Zoroastrian, in order to claim some legal rights, including applying for entrance to university,[114][115] or becoming a lawyer.[116] The Iranian Atheists Association was established in 2013 to form a platform for Iranian atheists to start debates and to question the current Islamic regime's attitude towards atheists, apostasy, and human rights.[117] Similarly, Jordan requires atheists to associate themselves with a recognized religion for official identification purposes,[118] and atheists in Indonesia experience official discrimination in the context of registration of births and marriages, and the issuance of identity cards.[119] In 2012, Indonesian atheist Alexander Aan was beaten by a mob, lost his job as a civil servant and was sentenced to two and a half years in jail for expressing his views online.[120] In Egypt, intellectuals suspected of holding atheistic beliefs have been prosecuted by judicial and religious authorities. Novelist Alaa Hamad was convicted of publishing a book that contained atheistic ideas and apostasy that were considered to threaten national unity and social peace.[121][122]
Algeria[edit]
The study of Islam is a requirement in public and private schools for every Algerian child, irrespective of his/her religion.[123]
Atheist or agnostic men are prohibited from marrying Muslim women (Algerian Family Code I.II.31).[124] A marriage is legally nullified by the apostasy of the husband (presumably from Islam, although this is not specified; Family Code I.III.33). Atheists and agnostics cannot inherit (Family Code III.I.138.).
Egypt[edit]
[icon] This section requires expansion. (February 2015)
Saudi Arabia[edit]
Main article: Irreligion in Saudi Arabia
Atheism is prohibited in Saudi Arabia and can come with a death penalty if practiced.
In March 2014, the Saudi interior ministry issued a royal decree branding all atheists as terrorists, which defines terrorism as "calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based".[125]
Turkey[edit]
Compulsory religious instruction in Turkish schools is also considered discriminatory towards atheists.[126]
See also[edit]
American Humanist Association
Atheist Bus Campaign
Boy Scouts of America membership controversies
Center for Inquiry
International Humanist and Ethical Union
McCarthyism
Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers
Out Campaign
Religious discrimination
Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science
Secular Coalition for America
Secularization
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62.Jump up ^ Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions, Phil Zuckerman*
63.Jump up ^ Winkler v. Chicago School Reform Board[dead link]
64.Jump up ^ "Department of Defense settles part of litigation challenging its involvement with the Boy Scouts of America". Usdoj.gov. 16 November 2004. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
65.Jump up ^ "National Boy Scout Organization Agrees to End All Local Government Direct Sponsorship of Troops and Packs". American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. Archived from the original on 2008-11-21. Retrieved 2006-03-02.
66.Jump up ^ "Boy Scouts Jamboree to Stay at Army Base". Washington Times. Archived from the original on 2006-04-19. Retrieved 2006-03-02.
67.Jump up ^ Marinucci, Carla (2007-03-14). "Stark's atheist views break political taboo". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2009-03-12.
68.Jump up ^ "California Lawmaker Becomes Highest-Ranking Official To Say He's a Nonbeliever". Nysun.com. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
69.Jump up ^ "Critics Say Atheist N.C. City councilman Unworthy of Seat". Fox News. 7 April 2010. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
70.Jump up ^ "Faith in the System". Mother Jones. September–October 2004.
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87.Jump up ^ Sherman, Rob. "Vice President Bush Quote Regarding Atheists". robsherman.com.
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External links[edit]
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Ethics in the Bible

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Ethics in the Bibleare the ideas concerning right and wrong actions that exist in scripture in the Hebrewand Christian Bibles. Biblical accounts contain numerous prescriptions or lawsthat people use as guides to action.



Contents [hide]
1Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
2New Testament
3Theological issues3.1Euthyphro Dilemma
3.2Moral relativism
3.3God's benevolence
4Criticism4.1The Old Testament
4.2The New Testament
5See also
6References
7External links

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament[edit]
Main article: 613 Mitzvot
See also: Eye for an eye
Prescriptive utterances (commandments) are found throughout the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, some related to inter-human relationships (the prohibition against murder) while others focus on issues of worship and ritual (e.g. the Day of Atonementfestival). Rabbinic tradition classically schematizes these prescriptions into 613 mitzvot, beginning with "Be fruitful and multiply" (God's command to all life) and continuing on to the seven laws of Noah(addressed to all humanity) and the several hundred laws which apply specifically to the Israelites(such as the kashrutdietary laws). Rabbinic tradition also records the aforementioned distinction between commandments that relate to man's interaction with fellow man (בין אדם לחבירו) and those that affect his relationship with God (בין אדם למקום).[citation needed]Many commandments are remarkable in their blending of the two roles. For example, observance of Shabbatis couched in terms of recognizing God's sovereignty and creation of the world, while also being presented as a social-justice measure to prevent overworking one's employees, slaves, and animals. As a result, the Bible consistently binds worship of the Divine to ethical actions and ethical actions with worship of the Divine.[citation needed]
Several Biblical prescriptions may not correspond to modern notions of justice in relation to concepts such as slavery(Lev. 25:44-46), intolerance of religious pluralism(Deut. 5:7, Deut. 7:2-5, 2 Corinthians 6:14) or of freedom of religion(Deut. 13:6-12), discriminationand racism(Lev. 21:17-23, Deut. 23:1-3), treatment of women, honor killing(Ex. 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, Ex. 32:27-29), genocide(Num. 31:15-18, 1 Sam. 15:3), religious wars, and capital punishmentfor sexual behavior like adulteryand sodomyand for Sabbath breaking(Num. 15:32-36).
The Book of Proverbsrecommends disciplining a child:

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
—Proverbs 22:15
New Testament[edit]
See also: Biblical law in Christianity, Christian ethicsand Paul the Apostle and Judaism






The Good Samaritan
The main dispute of the Council of Jerusalem, whether non-Jewish converts should be considered bound to the Old Testament laws, are addressed elsewhere in the New Testament, e.g. regarding dietary laws

"Don't you perceive that whatever goes into the man from outside can't defile him, because it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach, then into the latrine, thus making all foods clean?"-Mark 7:18. (See also Mark 7)
or regarding divorce

"I tell you that whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries her when she is put away commits adultery."-Matthew 5:31. (See also Mark 5)
The central teachings of Jesusare presented in the Sermon on the Mount,[1]notably the "golden rule" and the prescription to "love your enemies"and "turn the other cheek".
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."-Matthew 5:43-44
Elsewhere in the New Testament (for example, the "Farewell Discourses" of John 14 through 16) Jesus elaborates on what has become known the commandment of love[according to whom?], repeated and elaborated upon in the epistles of Paul (1 Corinthians 13etc.), see also The Law of Christand The New Commandment.
Theological issues[edit]
Euthyphro Dilemma[edit]
Main articles: Euthyphro Dilemmaand Divine command theory
A central problem in religiously motivated ethics is the apparent tautologyinherent in the concept that what is commanded by God is morally right. This line of reasoning is introduced most famously in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, which asks whether something is right because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is right.
Moral relativism[edit]
Main articles: Antinomianismand Biblical law in Christianity
See also: Argument from inconsistent revelations
The predominant Christian view[citation needed]is that Jesus mediates a New Covenantrelationship between God and his followers and abolished some Mosaic Laws, according to the New Testament (Hebrews 10:15-18; Gal 3:23-25; 2 Cor 3:7-17; Eph 2:15; Heb 8:13, Rom 7:6etc.). From a Jewish perspective however, the Torah was given to the Jewish people as an eternal covenant (Exo 31:16-17, Exo 12:14-17, Mal 3:6-7) and will never be replaced or added to (Deut 4:2, 13:1). There are differences of opinion as to how the new covenant affects the validity of biblical law. The differences are mainly as a result of attempts to harmonize biblical statementsto the effect that the biblical law is eternal (Exodus 31:16-17, 12:14-17) with New Testament statements that suggest that it does not now apply at all, or at least does not fully apply. Most biblical scholars admit the issue of the Law can be confusing and the topic of Paul and the Lawis still frequently debated among New Testament scholars[2](for example, see New Perspective on Paul, Pauline Christianity); hence the various views.
God's benevolence[edit]
Further information: Theodicy
A central issue in monotheistethics is the problem of evil, the apparent contradiction between a benevolent, all-powerful Godand the existence of eviland hell (see Problem of Hell). Theodicyseeks to explain why we may simultaneously affirm God's goodness, and the presence of evil in the world. Descartesin his Meditationsconsiders, but rejects, the possibility that God is an evil demon ("dystheism").
The Bible contains numerous examples seemingly unethical acts of God.
In the Book of Exodus, God deliberately "hardened Pharaoh's heart", making him even more unwilling to free the Hebrew slaves (Exo 4:21, Rom 9:17-21).
Genocidal commands of God in Deuteronomy, such as the call to eradicate all the Canaanitetribes including children and infants (Deut 20:16-17). According to the Bible, this was to fulfill God's covenant to Israel, the "promised land" to his chosen people.(Deuteronomy 7:1-25)
God ordering the Israelites to undertake punitive military raids against other tribes. This happened, for instance, to the Midianites of Moab, who had enticed some Israelites into worshipping local gods (Numbers 25:1-18). The entire tribe was exterminated, except for the young virgin girls; who were kept by the Israelites as slaves (Numbers 31:1-54). In 1 Samuel 15:3, God orders the Israelites to "attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." [3]
In the Book of Job, God allows Satanto plague His loyal servant Job with devastating tragedies leaving all his children dead and himself poor. The nature of Divine justice becomes the theme of the entire book. However, after he got through his troubles his health was restored and all he had was doubled.
Sending evil spirits to people (1 Samuel 18:10, Judges 9:23).
Punishing the innocent for the sins of other people (Isa 14:21, Deut 23:2, Hosea 13:16).
Criticism[edit]
Simon Blackburnstates that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women".[4]Elizabeth Anderson, a Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that "the Bible contains both good and evil teachings", and it is "morally inconsistent".[5]Bertrand Russellstated that, "It seems to me that the people who have held to it [the Christian religion] have been for the most part extremely wicked....I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."[6]
The Old Testament[edit]
Elizabeth Anderson criticizes commands God gave to men in the Old Testament, such as: kill adulterers, homosexuals, and "people who work on the Sabbath" (Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 20:13; Exodus 35:2, respectively); to commit ethnic cleansing(Exodus 34:11-14, Leviticus 26:7-9); commit genocide(Numbers 21: 2-3, Numbers 21:33–35, Deuteronomy 2:26–35, and Joshua 1–12); and other mass killings.[7]Anderson considers the Bible to permit slavery, the beating of slaves, the rape of female captives in wartime, polygamy(for men), the killing of prisoners, and child sacrifice.[7]She also provides a number of examples to illustrate what she considers "God's moral character": "Routinely punishes people for the sins of others ... punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth", punishes four generations of descendants of those who worship other Gods, kills 24,000 Israelites because some of them sinned (Numbers 25:1–9), kills 70,000 Israelites for the sin of David in 2 Samuel 24:10–15, and "sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces" because they called someone names in 2 Kings 2:23–24.[8]
Blackburn provides examples of Old Testament moral criticisms such as the phrase in Exodus22:18 that has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America": "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and notes that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse".[9]Additional examples that are questioned today are: the prohibition on touching women during their "period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19–24)", the apparent approval of selling daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and the obligation to put to death someone working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2).[10]
The New Testament[edit]
Anderson criticizes what she terms morally repugnant lessons of the New Testament. She claims that "Jesus tells us his mission is to make family members hate one another, so that they shall love him more than their kin (Matt 10:35-37)", that "Disciples must hate their parents, siblings, wives, and children (Luke 14:26)", and that Peter and Paul elevate men over their wives "who must obey their husbands as gods" (1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34-5, Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, 1 Tim. 2: 11-2, 1 Pet. 3:1).[11]Anderson states that the Gospel of Johnimplies that "infants and anyone who never had the opportunity to hear about Christ are damned [to hell], through no fault of their own".[12]
Blackburn criticizes what he terms morally suspect themes of the New Testament.[13]He notes some "moral quirks" of Jesus: that he could be "sectarian" (Matt 10:5–6), racist (Matt 15:26 and Mark 7:27), and placed no value on animal life (Luke 8: 27–33).
See also[edit]
Antinomianism#Biblical law in Christianity
Antisemitism and the New Testament
Brotherly love (philosophy)
But to bring a sword
The Bible and slavery
Criticism of the Bible
Christianity and homosexuality
Women in the Bible
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^The Sermon on the mount: a theological investigation by Carl G. Vaught 2001 ISBN 978-0-918954-76-3pages xi–xiv
2.Jump up ^Gundry, ed., Five Views on Law and Gospel. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).
3.Jump up ^The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible, Norm Phelps, p. 14
4.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
5.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
6.Jump up ^Russell, Bertrand(1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
7.^ Jump up to: abElizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
8.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. pp. 336–337. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
9.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10, 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
10.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
11.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 338. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
12.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 339. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
13.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
External links[edit]
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/apol_index.html#phil_moral




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Ethics in the Bible

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search





[hide]This article has multiple issues. Please help improve itor discuss these issues on the talk page.





##This article's lead sectionmay not adequately summarizekey points of its contents. (August 2012)



Question book-new.svg

##This article relies too much on referencesto primary sources. (August 2012)





##This article needs additional citations for verification. (August 2012)





##This article possibly contains original research. (August 2012)



Unbalanced scales.svg

##The neutralityof this article is disputed. (June 2014)


Ethics in the Bibleare the ideas concerning right and wrong actions that exist in scripture in the Hebrewand Christian Bibles. Biblical accounts contain numerous prescriptions or lawsthat people use as guides to action.



Contents [hide]
1Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
2New Testament
3Theological issues3.1Euthyphro Dilemma
3.2Moral relativism
3.3God's benevolence
4Criticism4.1The Old Testament
4.2The New Testament
5See also
6References
7External links

Hebrew Bible/Old Testament[edit]
Main article: 613 Mitzvot
See also: Eye for an eye
Prescriptive utterances (commandments) are found throughout the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament, some related to inter-human relationships (the prohibition against murder) while others focus on issues of worship and ritual (e.g. the Day of Atonementfestival). Rabbinic tradition classically schematizes these prescriptions into 613 mitzvot, beginning with "Be fruitful and multiply" (God's command to all life) and continuing on to the seven laws of Noah(addressed to all humanity) and the several hundred laws which apply specifically to the Israelites(such as the kashrutdietary laws). Rabbinic tradition also records the aforementioned distinction between commandments that relate to man's interaction with fellow man (בין אדם לחבירו) and those that affect his relationship with God (בין אדם למקום).[citation needed]Many commandments are remarkable in their blending of the two roles. For example, observance of Shabbatis couched in terms of recognizing God's sovereignty and creation of the world, while also being presented as a social-justice measure to prevent overworking one's employees, slaves, and animals. As a result, the Bible consistently binds worship of the Divine to ethical actions and ethical actions with worship of the Divine.[citation needed]
Several Biblical prescriptions may not correspond to modern notions of justice in relation to concepts such as slavery(Lev. 25:44-46), intolerance of religious pluralism(Deut. 5:7, Deut. 7:2-5, 2 Corinthians 6:14) or of freedom of religion(Deut. 13:6-12), discriminationand racism(Lev. 21:17-23, Deut. 23:1-3), treatment of women, honor killing(Ex. 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, Ex. 32:27-29), genocide(Num. 31:15-18, 1 Sam. 15:3), religious wars, and capital punishmentfor sexual behavior like adulteryand sodomyand for Sabbath breaking(Num. 15:32-36).
The Book of Proverbsrecommends disciplining a child:

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.
—Proverbs 22:15
New Testament[edit]
See also: Biblical law in Christianity, Christian ethicsand Paul the Apostle and Judaism






The Good Samaritan
The main dispute of the Council of Jerusalem, whether non-Jewish converts should be considered bound to the Old Testament laws, are addressed elsewhere in the New Testament, e.g. regarding dietary laws

"Don't you perceive that whatever goes into the man from outside can't defile him, because it doesn't go into his heart, but into his stomach, then into the latrine, thus making all foods clean?"-Mark 7:18. (See also Mark 7)
or regarding divorce

"I tell you that whoever puts away his wife, except for the cause of sexual immorality, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries her when she is put away commits adultery."-Matthew 5:31. (See also Mark 5)
The central teachings of Jesusare presented in the Sermon on the Mount,[1]notably the "golden rule" and the prescription to "love your enemies"and "turn the other cheek".
"You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."-Matthew 5:43-44
Elsewhere in the New Testament (for example, the "Farewell Discourses" of John 14 through 16) Jesus elaborates on what has become known the commandment of love[according to whom?], repeated and elaborated upon in the epistles of Paul (1 Corinthians 13etc.), see also The Law of Christand The New Commandment.
Theological issues[edit]
Euthyphro Dilemma[edit]
Main articles: Euthyphro Dilemmaand Divine command theory
A central problem in religiously motivated ethics is the apparent tautologyinherent in the concept that what is commanded by God is morally right. This line of reasoning is introduced most famously in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, which asks whether something is right because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is right.
Moral relativism[edit]
Main articles: Antinomianismand Biblical law in Christianity
See also: Argument from inconsistent revelations
The predominant Christian view[citation needed]is that Jesus mediates a New Covenantrelationship between God and his followers and abolished some Mosaic Laws, according to the New Testament (Hebrews 10:15-18; Gal 3:23-25; 2 Cor 3:7-17; Eph 2:15; Heb 8:13, Rom 7:6etc.). From a Jewish perspective however, the Torah was given to the Jewish people as an eternal covenant (Exo 31:16-17, Exo 12:14-17, Mal 3:6-7) and will never be replaced or added to (Deut 4:2, 13:1). There are differences of opinion as to how the new covenant affects the validity of biblical law. The differences are mainly as a result of attempts to harmonize biblical statementsto the effect that the biblical law is eternal (Exodus 31:16-17, 12:14-17) with New Testament statements that suggest that it does not now apply at all, or at least does not fully apply. Most biblical scholars admit the issue of the Law can be confusing and the topic of Paul and the Lawis still frequently debated among New Testament scholars[2](for example, see New Perspective on Paul, Pauline Christianity); hence the various views.
God's benevolence[edit]
Further information: Theodicy
A central issue in monotheistethics is the problem of evil, the apparent contradiction between a benevolent, all-powerful Godand the existence of eviland hell (see Problem of Hell). Theodicyseeks to explain why we may simultaneously affirm God's goodness, and the presence of evil in the world. Descartesin his Meditationsconsiders, but rejects, the possibility that God is an evil demon ("dystheism").
The Bible contains numerous examples seemingly unethical acts of God.
In the Book of Exodus, God deliberately "hardened Pharaoh's heart", making him even more unwilling to free the Hebrew slaves (Exo 4:21, Rom 9:17-21).
Genocidal commands of God in Deuteronomy, such as the call to eradicate all the Canaanitetribes including children and infants (Deut 20:16-17). According to the Bible, this was to fulfill God's covenant to Israel, the "promised land" to his chosen people.(Deuteronomy 7:1-25)
God ordering the Israelites to undertake punitive military raids against other tribes. This happened, for instance, to the Midianites of Moab, who had enticed some Israelites into worshipping local gods (Numbers 25:1-18). The entire tribe was exterminated, except for the young virgin girls; who were kept by the Israelites as slaves (Numbers 31:1-54). In 1 Samuel 15:3, God orders the Israelites to "attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys." [3]
In the Book of Job, God allows Satanto plague His loyal servant Job with devastating tragedies leaving all his children dead and himself poor. The nature of Divine justice becomes the theme of the entire book. However, after he got through his troubles his health was restored and all he had was doubled.
Sending evil spirits to people (1 Samuel 18:10, Judges 9:23).
Punishing the innocent for the sins of other people (Isa 14:21, Deut 23:2, Hosea 13:16).
Criticism[edit]
Simon Blackburnstates that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women".[4]Elizabeth Anderson, a Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, states that "the Bible contains both good and evil teachings", and it is "morally inconsistent".[5]Bertrand Russellstated that, "It seems to me that the people who have held to it [the Christian religion] have been for the most part extremely wicked....I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world."[6]
The Old Testament[edit]
Elizabeth Anderson criticizes commands God gave to men in the Old Testament, such as: kill adulterers, homosexuals, and "people who work on the Sabbath" (Leviticus 20:10; Leviticus 20:13; Exodus 35:2, respectively); to commit ethnic cleansing(Exodus 34:11-14, Leviticus 26:7-9); commit genocide(Numbers 21: 2-3, Numbers 21:33–35, Deuteronomy 2:26–35, and Joshua 1–12); and other mass killings.[7]Anderson considers the Bible to permit slavery, the beating of slaves, the rape of female captives in wartime, polygamy(for men), the killing of prisoners, and child sacrifice.[7]She also provides a number of examples to illustrate what she considers "God's moral character": "Routinely punishes people for the sins of others ... punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth", punishes four generations of descendants of those who worship other Gods, kills 24,000 Israelites because some of them sinned (Numbers 25:1–9), kills 70,000 Israelites for the sin of David in 2 Samuel 24:10–15, and "sends two bears out of the woods to tear forty-two children to pieces" because they called someone names in 2 Kings 2:23–24.[8]
Blackburn provides examples of Old Testament moral criticisms such as the phrase in Exodus22:18 that has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America": "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and notes that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse".[9]Additional examples that are questioned today are: the prohibition on touching women during their "period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19–24)", the apparent approval of selling daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7), and the obligation to put to death someone working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2).[10]
The New Testament[edit]
Anderson criticizes what she terms morally repugnant lessons of the New Testament. She claims that "Jesus tells us his mission is to make family members hate one another, so that they shall love him more than their kin (Matt 10:35-37)", that "Disciples must hate their parents, siblings, wives, and children (Luke 14:26)", and that Peter and Paul elevate men over their wives "who must obey their husbands as gods" (1 Corinthians 11:3, 14:34-5, Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, 1 Tim. 2: 11-2, 1 Pet. 3:1).[11]Anderson states that the Gospel of Johnimplies that "infants and anyone who never had the opportunity to hear about Christ are damned [to hell], through no fault of their own".[12]
Blackburn criticizes what he terms morally suspect themes of the New Testament.[13]He notes some "moral quirks" of Jesus: that he could be "sectarian" (Matt 10:5–6), racist (Matt 15:26 and Mark 7:27), and placed no value on animal life (Luke 8: 27–33).
See also[edit]
Antinomianism#Biblical law in Christianity
Antisemitism and the New Testament
Brotherly love (philosophy)
But to bring a sword
The Bible and slavery
Criticism of the Bible
Christianity and homosexuality
Women in the Bible
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^The Sermon on the mount: a theological investigation by Carl G. Vaught 2001 ISBN 978-0-918954-76-3pages xi–xiv
2.Jump up ^Gundry, ed., Five Views on Law and Gospel. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993).
3.Jump up ^The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible, Norm Phelps, p. 14
4.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
5.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 336. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
6.Jump up ^Russell, Bertrand(1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
7.^ Jump up to: abElizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 337. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
8.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. pp. 336–337. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
9.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10, 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
10.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
11.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 338. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
12.Jump up ^Elizabeth Anderson, "If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?" In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 339. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
13.Jump up ^Blackburn, Simon(2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
External links[edit]
http://www.rationalchristianity.net/apol_index.html#phil_moral




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Historicity of the Bible

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The historicity of the Bible is the question of its "acceptability as a history," in the phrase of Thomas L. Thompson, a scholar who has written widely on this topic as it relates to the Old Testament.[1] This can be extended to the question of the Christian New Testament as an accurate record of the historical Jesus and the Apostolic Age.
Many fields of study compare the Bible and history, ranging from archeology and astronomy to linguistics and comparative literature. Scholars also examine the historical context of Bible passages, the importance ascribed to events by the authors, and the contrast between the descriptions of these events and historical evidence.
Archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth and twentieth century have supported some of the Old Testament's historical narratives and refuted some of the others.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]



Contents  [hide]
1 Materials and methods 1.1 Manuscripts and canons
1.2 Texts 1.2.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2.2 New Testament
1.3 Extra-biblical sources
1.4 Writing and reading history
2 Challenges to historicity 2.1 The Hebrew Bible
2.2 New Testament
3 Schools of archaeological and historical thought 3.1 Overview of academic views
3.2 Maximalist – Minimalist dichotomy
3.3 Biblical minimalism
3.4 Biblical maximalism
3.5 Decreasing conflict between the maximalist and minimalist schools
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

Materials and methods[edit]
Manuscripts and canons[edit]
The Bible exists in multiple manuscripts, none of them autographs, and multiple canons, none of which completely agree on which books have sufficient authority to be included or their order (see Books of the Bible).
To determine the accuracy of a copied manuscript, textual critics scrutinize the way the transcripts have passed through history to their extant forms. The higher the volume of the earliest texts (and their parallels to each other), the greater the textual reliability and the less chance that the transcript's content has been changed over the years. Multiple copies may also be grouped into text types (see New Testament text types), with some types judged closer to the hypothetical original than others. Differences often extend beyond minor variations and may involve, for instance, interpolation of material central to issues of historicity and doctrine, such as the ending of Mark 16.
The books comprising the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament (the two are almost, but not exactly, the same) were written largely in Biblical Hebrew, with a few exceptions in Biblical Aramaic. Today it exists in several traditions, including the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint 47 books (a Greek translation widely used in the period from the 3rd century BCE to roughly the 5th century CE, and still regarded as authoritative by the Orthodox Christian churches), the Samaritan Torah, the Westminster containing the modern 39 books, and others. Variations between these traditions are useful for reconstructing the most likely original text, and for tracing the intellectual histories of various Jewish and Christian communities. The very oldest fragment resembling part of the text of the Hebrew Bible so far discovered is a small silver amulet, dating from approximately 600 BCE, and containing a version of the Priestly Blessing ("May God make his face to shine upon you...").
According to the dominant theory called Greek primacy, the New Testament was originally written in Greek, of which 5,650 handwritten copies have survived in Greek, over 10,000 in Latin. When other languages are included, the total of ancient copies approaches 25,000. The next ancient text to come close to rivaling that number is Homer's Iliad, which is thought to have survived in 643 ancient copies.[9] Recognizing this, F. E. Peters remarked that "on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that make up the Christians' New Testament texts were the most frequently copied and widely circulated [surviving] books of antiquity".[citation needed] (This may be due to their preservation, popularity, and distribution brought about by the ease of seaborne travel and the many roads constructed during the time of the Roman Empire). When a comparison is made between the seven major critical editions of the Greek NT verse-by-verse – namely Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, Von Soden, Vogels, Merk, Bover, and Nestle-Aland – 62.9% of verses are variant free.[10]
A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was first asserted by Irenaeus, c. 180.[11] The many other gospels that then existed were eventually deemed non-canonical (see Biblical canon) and suppressed. In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books as what would become the New Testament canon,[12] and he used the phrase "being canonized" (kanonizomena) in regards to them.[13] The Council of Rome in 382 under the authority of Pope Damasus I issued an identical canon,[12] and his decision to commission the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.[14] See Development of the New Testament canon for details.
Texts[edit]
Hebrew Bible[edit]
The Hebrew Bible is not a single book but rather a collection of texts, most of them anonymous, and most of them the product of more or less extensive editing prior to reaching their modern form. These texts are in many different genres, but three distinct blocks approximating modern narrative history can be made out.
Torah: Genesis to Deuteronomy
God creates the world; the world God creates is good, but it becomes thoroughly corrupted by man's decision to sin. God destroys all but the eight remaining righteous people in a deluge and shortens man's lifespan significantly. God selects Abraham to inherit the land of Canaan. The children of Israel, Abraham's grandson, go into Egypt, where their descendants are enslaved. The Israelites are led out of Egypt by Moses (Exodus) and receive the laws of God, who renews the promise of the land of Canaan.
Deuteronomic history: Joshua to 2 Kings
The Israelites conquer the land of Canaan under Joshua, successor to Moses. Under the Judges they live in a state of constant conflict and insecurity, until the prophet Samuel anoints Saul as king over them. Saul proves unworthy, and God selects David as his successor. Under David the Israelites are united and conquer their enemies, and under Solomon his son they live in peace and prosperity. But the kingdom is divided under Solomon's successors, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, and the kings of Israel fall away from God and eventually the people of the north are taken into captivity by outsiders. Judah, unlike Israel, has some kings who follow God, but many do not, and eventually it too is taken into captivity, and the Temple of God built by Solomon is destroyed.
Chronicler's history: Chronicles and Ezra/Nehemiah
(Chronicles begins by reprising the history of the Torah and the Deuteronomistic history, with some differences over details. It introduces new material following its account of the fall of Jerusalem, the event which concludes the Deuteronomic history). The Babylonians, who had destroyed the Temple and taken the people into captivity, are themselves defeated by the Persians under their king Cyrus. Cyrus permits the exiles to return to Jerusalem. The Temple is rebuilt, and the Laws of Moses are read to the people.
Other
(Several other books of the Hebrew Bible are set in a historical context or otherwise give information which can be regarded as historical, although these books do not present themselves as histories).
The prophets Amos and Hosea write of events during the 8th century kingdom of Israel; the prophet Jeremiah writes of events preceding and following the fall of Judah; Ezekiel writes of events during and preceding the exile in Babylon; and other prophets similarly touch on various periods, usually those in which they write.
Several books are included in some canons but not in others. Among these, Maccabees is a purely historical work of events in the 2nd century BCE. Others are not historical in orientation but are set in historical contexts or reprise earlier histories, such as Enoch, an apocalyptic work of the 2nd century BCE.
New Testament[edit]
While the authorship of some of the Pauline epistles is largely undisputed, there is no scholarly consensus on the authors of the other books of the New Testament, which most modern scholars acknowledge as pseudonymous autographs[15][16] written more than a generation after the events they describe.
Gospels/Acts
Jesus is born to Joseph and Mary; he is baptised by John the Baptist and begins a preaching and healing mission in Galilee; he comes up to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, is arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified. He is raised from the dead by God, appears before his followers, issuing the Great Commission, and ascends to Heaven, to sit at the Right Hand of God, with a promise to return. The followers of Jesus, who had been fearful following the Crucifixion, are encouraged by Jesus' resurrection and continue to practice and to preach his teachings. The Apostle Paul preaches throughout the eastern Mediterranean, is arrested, and appeals. He is sent to Rome for trial, and the narrative breaks off.
Epistles/Revelation
The epistles (literally "letters") are largely concerned with theology, but the theological arguments they present form a "history of theology". Revelation deals with the last judgement and the end of the world.
Extra-biblical sources[edit]
Prior to the 19th century, textual analysis of the Bible itself was the only tool available to extract and evaluate whatever historical data it contained. The past two hundred years, however, have seen a proliferation of new sources of data and analytical tools, including:
Other Near Eastern texts, documents and inscriptions[17]
The material remains recovered throughout the Near East by archaeological excavation, analysed by ever more sophisticated technical and statistical apparatus[18]
Historical geography, demography, soil science, technology studies, and comparative linguistics[19]
Anthropological and sociological modelling
The Apocrypha, or non-canonical texts
Writing and reading history[edit]



 W.F. Albright, the doyen of biblical archaeology, in 1957
The meaning of the term "history" is itself dependent on social and historical context. Paula McNutt, for instance, notes that the Old Testament narratives "do not record 'history' in the sense that history is understood in the twentieth century ... The past, for biblical writers as well as for twentieth-century readers of the Bible, has meaning only when it is considered in light of the present, and perhaps an idealized future." (p. 4, emphasis added)[20]
Biblical history has also diversified its focus during the modern era. The project of biblical archaeology associated with W.F. Albright, which sought to validate the historicity of the events narrated in the Bible through the ancient texts and material remains of the Near East,[21] has a more specific focus compared to the more expansive view of history described by archaeologist William Dever. In discussing the role of his discipline in interpreting the biblical record, Dever has pointed to multiple histories within the Bible, including the history of theology (the relationship between God and believers), political history (usually the account of "Great Men"), narrative history (the chronology of events), intellectual history (ideas and their development, context and evolution), socio-cultural history (institutions, including their social underpinnings in family, clan, tribe and social class and the state), cultural history (overall cultural evolution, demography, socio-economic and political structure and ethnicity), technological history (the techniques by which humans adapt to, exploit and make use of the resources of their environment), natural history (how humans discover and adapt to the ecological facts of their natural environment), and material history (artefacts as correlates of changes in human behaviour).[22]
A special challenge for assessing the historicity of the Bible is sharply differing perspectives on the relationship between narrative history and theological meaning. Supporters of biblical literalism "deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood."[23] But prominent scholars have expressed diametrically opposing views: "[T]he stories about the promise given to the patriarchs in Genesis are not historical, nor do they intend to be historical; they are rather historically determined expressions about Israel and Israel's relationship to its God, given in forms legitimate to their time, and their truth lies not in their facticity, nor in the historicity, but their ability to express the reality that Israel experienced."[24]
This apparently irreconcilable clash of views is most acute for the questions of the greatest contemporary political significance (such as the promise of land by God to Abraham) and theological import (the Virgin Birth and Resurrection of Jesus), which are also the "events" that have proved the least susceptible to extra-biblical confirmation.
Challenges to historicity[edit]
The Hebrew Bible[edit]



 The Garden of Eden: from history to mythology. By Lucas Cranach der Ältere(1472–1553)
There had always been a critical tradition dating back to at least St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), with interpretations "plainly at variance with what are commonly perceived in evangelicalism as traditional views of Genesis."[25] The Jewish tradition has also maintained a critical thread in its approach to biblical primeval history. The influential medieval philosopher Maimonides maintained a skeptical ambiguity towards creation ex nihilo and considered the stories about Adam more as "philosophical anthropology, rather than as historical stories whose protagonist is the 'first man'."[26] Greek philosophers Aristotle,[27] Critolaus[28] and Proclus[29] held that the world was eternal.
The birth of geology was marked by the publication of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth in 1788. This marked the intellectual revolution that would dethrone Genesis as the ultimate authority on primeval earth and prehistory. The first casualty was the Creation story itself, and by the early 19th century "no responsible scientist contended for the literal credibility of the Mosaic account of creation." (p. 224)[30] The battle between uniformitarianism and catastrophism kept the Flood alive in the emerging discipline, until Adam Sedgwick, the president of the Geological Society, publicly recanted his previous support in his 1831 presidential address:

We ought indeed to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of the former world entombed in those deposits.[31]
All of which left the "first man" and his putative descendants in the awkward position of being stripped of all historical context until Charles Darwin naturalized the Garden of Eden with the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. Public acceptance of this scientific revolution was, and remains, uneven but the mainstream scholarly community soon arrived at a consensus, which holds today, that Genesis 1–11 is a highly schematic literary work representing theology/mythology rather than history.[32]
A central pillar of the Bible's historical authority was the tradition that it had been composed by the principal actors or eyewitnesses to the events described – the Pentateuch was the work of Moses, Joshua was by Joshua, and so on. But the Protestant Reformation had brought the actual texts to a much wider audience, which combined with the growing climate of intellectual ferment in the 17th century that was the start of the Age of Enlightenment threw a harsh sceptical spotlight on these traditional claims. In Protestant England the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his major work Leviathan (1651) denied Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and identified Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as having been written long after the events they purported to describe. His conclusions rested on internal textual evidence, but in an argument that resonates with modern debates, he noted: "Who were the original writers of the several Books of Holy Scripture, has not been made evident by any sufficient testimony of other History, (which is the only proof of matter of fact)."[33]



 Title page of Simon's Critical history, 1682.
The Jewish philosopher and pantheist Baruch Spinoza echoed Hobbes's doubts about the provenance of the historical books in his A Theologico-Political Treatise (published in 1670),[34] and elaborated on the suggestion that the final redaction of these texts was post-exilic under the auspices of Ezra (Chapter IX). He had earlier been effectively excommunicated by the rabbinical council of Amsterdam for his perceived heresies. The French priest Richard Simon brought these critical perspectives to the Catholic tradition in 1678, observing "the most part of the Holy Scriptures that are come to us, are but Abridgments and as Summaries of ancient Acts which were kept in the Registries of the Hebrews," in what was probably the first work of biblical textual criticism in the modern sense.[35]
In response Jean Astruc, applying source criticism methods common in the analysis of classical secular texts to the Pentateuch, believed he could detect four different manuscript traditions, which he claimed Moses himself had redacted. (p. 62–64)[32] His 1753 book initiated the school known as higher criticism that culminated in Julius Wellhausen formalising the documentary hypothesis in the 1870s,[36] which in various modified forms still dominates understanding of the composition of the historical narratives.
By the end of the 19th century the scholarly consensus was that the Pentateuch was the work of many authors writing from 1000 BCE (the time of David) to 500 BCE (the time of Ezra) and redacted c.450, and as a consequence whatever history it contained was more often polemical than strictly factual – a conclusion reinforced by the then fresh scientific refutations of what were at the time widely classed as biblical mythologies, as discussed above.
In the following decades Hermann Gunkel drew attention to the mythic aspects of the Pentateuch, and Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth and the tradition history school argued that although its core traditions had genuinely ancient roots, the narratives were fictional framing devices and were not intended as history in the modern sense. Though doubts have been cast on the historiographic reconstructions of this school (particularly the notion of oral traditions as a primary ancient source), much of its critique of biblical historicity found wide acceptance. Gunkel's observation that

if, however, we consider figures like Abraham, Issac, and Jacob to be actual persons with no original mythic foundations, that does not at all mean that they are historical figures ... For even if, as may well be assumed, there was once a man call 'Abraham,' everyone who knows the history of legends is sure that the legend is in no position at the distance of so many centuries to preserve a picture of the personal piety of Abraham. The 'religion of Abraham' is, in reality, the religion of the legend narrators which they attribute to Abraham[37]
has in various forms become a commonplace of contemporary criticism.[38]
In the United States the biblical archaeology movement, under the influence of Albright, counter-attacked, arguing that the broad outline within the framing narratives was also true, so that while scholars could not realistically expect to prove or disprove individual episodes from the life of Abraham and the other patriarchs, these were real individuals who could be placed in a context proven from the archaeological record. But as more discoveries were made, and anticipated finds failed to materialise, it became apparent that archaeology did not in fact support the claims made by Albright and his followers. Today, only a minority of scholars continue to work within this framework, mainly for reasons of religious conviction.[39] William Dever stated in 1993 that "[Albright's] central theses have all been overturned, partly by further advances in Biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he himself gave encouragement and momentum ... The irony is that, in the long run, it will have been the newer 'secular' archaeology that contributed the most to Biblical studies, not 'Biblical archaeology'."[40]
The scholarly history of the Deuteronomic history parallels that of the Pentateuch: the European tradition history school argued that the narrative was untrustworthy and could not be used to construct a narrative history; the American Albright school asserted that it could when tested against the archaeological record; and modern archaeological techniques proved crucial in deciding the issue. The test case was the book of Joshua and its account of a rapid, destructive conquest of the Canaanite cities: but by the 1960s it had become clear that the archaeological record did not, in fact, support the account of the conquest given in Joshua: the cities which the Bible records as having been destroyed by the Israelites were either uninhabited at the time, or, if destroyed, were destroyed at widely different times, not in one brief period.[citation needed] The most high-profile example was the "fall of Jericho."
John Garstang, who excavated in the 1930s, announced that he had found fallen walls dating to the time of the biblical Battle of Jericho.[41] However, Garstang later revised the destruction to a much earlier period.[41] Kathleen Kenyon dated the destruction of the walled city to the middle of the 16th century (c. 1550 BC), too early to match the usual dating of the Exodus to Pharaoh Ramses, on the basis of her excavations in the early 1950s.[42] The same conclusion, based on an analysis of all the excavation findings, was reached by Piotr Bienkowski.[43]
Thomas L. Thompson, a leading minimalist scholar for example has written
"There is no evidence of a United Monarchy, no evidence of a capital in Jerusalem or of any coherent, unified political force that dominated western Palestine, let alone an empire of the size the legends describe. We do not have evidence for the existence of kings named Saul, David or Solomon; nor do we have evidence for any temple at Jerusalem in this early period. What we do know of Israel and Judah of the tenth century does not allow us to interpret this lack of evidence as a gap in our knowledge and information about the past, a result merely of the accidental nature of archeology. There is neither room nor context, no artifact or archive that points to such historical realities in Palestine's tenth century. One cannot speak historically of a state without a population. Nor can one speak of a capital without a town. Stories are not enough."
Proponents of this theory also point to the fact that the division of the land into two entities, centered at Jerusalem and Shechem, goes back to the Egyptian rule of Israel in the New Kingdom. Solomon's empire is said to have stretched from the Euphrates in the north to the Red Sea in the south; it would have required a large commitment of men and arms and a high level of organization to conquer, subdue, and govern this area. But there is little archaeological evidence of Jerusalem being a sufficiently large city in the 10th century BCE, and Judah seems to be sparsely settled in that time period. Since Jerusalem has been destroyed and then subsequently rebuilt approximately 15 to 20 times since the time of David and Solomon, some argue much of the evidence could easily have been eliminated.
None of the conquests of David nor Solomon are mentioned in contemporary histories. Culturally, the Bronze Age collapse is otherwise a period of general cultural impoverishment of the whole Levantine region, making it difficult to consider the existence of any large territorial unit such as the Davidic kingdom, whose cultural features rather seem to resemble the later kingdom of Hezekiah or Josiah than the political and economic conditions of the 11th century. The biblical account makes no claim that Israel directly governed the areas included in their empires which are portrayed instead as tributaries.[citation needed] However, since the discovery of an inscription dating to the 9th or 8th century BCE on the Tel Dan Stele unearthed in the north of Israel, which may refer to the "house of David" as a monarchic dynast,[44] the debate has continued.[45] This is still disputed. There is a debate as to whether the united monarchy, the empire of King Solomon, and the rebellion of Jeroboam ever existed, or whether they are a late fabrication. The Mesha Stele, dated to c. 840 BCE, may reference the House of David, and mentions events and names found in Kings.[46]
There is a problem with the sources for this period of history. There are no contemporary independent documents other than the accounts of the Books of Samuel, which exhibits too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account. For example there is mention of late armor (1 Samuel 17:4–7, 38–39; 25:13), use of camels (1 Samuel 30:17), and cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), iron picks and axes (as though they were common, (2 Samuel 12:31), sophisticated siege techniques (2 Samuel 20:15). There is a gargantuan troop (2 Samuel 17:1), a battle with 20,000 casualties (2 Samuel 18:7), and a reference to Kushite paramilitary and servants, clearly giving evidence of a date in which Kushites were common, after the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, the period of the last quarter of the 8th century BCE.[47]
New Testament[edit]
The historicity of some NT teachings of Jesus is also currently debated among biblical scholars. The "quest for the historical Jesus" began as early as the 18th century, and has continued to this day. The most notable recent scholarship came in the 1980s and 1990s with the work of J. D. Crossan,[48] James D. G. Dunn,[49] John P. Meier,[50] E. P. Sanders[51] and N. T. Wright[52] being the most widely read and discussed. The earliest New Testament texts which refer to Jesus, Paul's letters, are usually dated in the 50s CE. Since Paul records very little of Jesus' life and activities, these are of little help in determining facts about the life of Jesus, although they may contain references to information given to Paul from the eyewitnesses of Jesus.[53]
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has shed light into the context of 1st century Judea, noting the diversity of Jewish belief as well as shared expectations and teachings. For example the expectation of the coming messiah, the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount and much else of the early Christian movement are found to have existed within apocalyptic Judaism of the period.[54] This has had the effect of centering Early Christianity much more within its Jewish roots than was previously the case. It is now recognised that Rabbinical Judaism and Early Christianity are only two of the many strands which survived until the Jewish revolt of 66 to 70 CE,[55][56] see also Split of early Christianity and Judaism.
Most modern scholars hold that the canonical Gospel accounts were written between 70 and 100 or 110 CE,[16] four to eight decades after the crucifixion, although based on earlier traditions and texts, such as "Q", Logia or sayings gospels, the passion account or other earlier literature (See List of Gospels). Some scholars argue that these accounts were compiled by witnesses[57][58] although this view is disputed by other scholars.[59] There are also secular references to Jesus, although they are few and quite late. Almost all historical critics agree, however, that a historical figure named Jesus taught throughout the Galilean countryside c. 30 CE, was believed by his followers to have performed supernatural acts, and was sentenced to death by the Romans, possibly for insurrection.[60]
Many scholars have pointed out, that the Gospel of Mark shows signs of a lack of knowledge of geographical, political and religious matters in Judea in the time of Jesus. Thus, today the most common opinion is, that the author is unknown and both geographically and historically at a distance to the narrated events[61][62][63][64] although opinion varies and scholars such as Craig Blomberg accept the more traditional view.[65] The use of expressions that may be described as awkward and rustic cause the Gospel of Mark to appear somewhat unlettered or even crude.[66] This may be attributed to the influence that Saint Peter, a fisherman, is suggested to have on the writing of Mark.[67] The writers of the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke used Mark as a source, with changes and improvement to peculiarities and crudities in Mark.[66]
The absence of evidence of Jesus' life before his meeting with John the Baptist has led to many speculations. It would seem that part of the explanation may lie in the early conflict between Paul and the Desposyni Ebionim, led by James the Just, supposedly the brother of Jesus, that led to Gospel passages critical of Jesus' family.[68]
The historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, the primary source for the Apostolic Age, is a major issue for biblical scholars and historians of Early Christianity.
While some biblical scholars view the Book of Acts as being extremely accurate and corroborated by archaeology, others view the work as being inaccurate and in conflict with the Pauline epistles. Acts portrays Paul as more in line with Jewish Christianity, while the Pauline epistles record more conflict, such as the Incident at Antioch, see also Paul the Apostle and Judaism.
Schools of archaeological and historical thought[edit]
Overview of academic views[edit]
An educated reading of the biblical text requires knowledge of when it was written, by whom, and for what purpose. For example, many academics would agree that the Pentateuch was in existence some time shortly after the 6th century BCE, but they disagree about when it was written. Proposed dates vary from the 15th century BCE to the 6th century BCE. One popular hypothesis points to the reign of Josiah (7th century BCE). In this hypothesis, the events of, for example, Exodus would have happened centuries before they were finally edited. This topic is expanded upon in dating the Bible.
An important point to keep in mind is the documentary hypothesis, which using the biblical evidence itself, claims to demonstrate that our current version was based on older written sources that were lost. Although it has been modified heavily over the years, most scholars accept some form of this hypothesis. There have also been and are a number of scholars who reject it, for example Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen[69] and Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, Jr.,[70] as well as the late Umberto Cassuto, O. T. Allis and Gleason Archer.
Maximalist – Minimalist dichotomy[edit]
The major split of biblical Scholarship into two opposing schools is strongly disapproved by non-fundamentalist biblical scholars, as being an attempt by so-called "conservative" Christians to portray the field as a bipolar argument, of which only one side is correct.[71]
Recently the difference between the Maximalist and Minimalist has reduced, however a new school started with a work, "The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel" by Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt.[72] This school argues that post-processual archaeology enables us to recognize the existence of a middle ground between Minimalism and Maximalism, and that both these extremes need to be rejected. Archaeology offers both confirmation of parts of the biblical record and also poses challenges to the interpretations made by some. The careful examination of the evidence demonstrates that the historical accuracy of the first part of the Old Testament is greatest during the reign of Josiah. Some feel that the accuracy diminishes, the further backwards one proceeds from this date. This they claim would confirm that a major redaction of the texts seems to have occurred at about that date.
Biblical minimalism[edit]
Main article: Biblical minimalism
The viewpoint sometimes called Biblical minimalism generally hold that the Bible is principally a theological and apologetic work, and all stories within it are of an aetiological character. The early stories are held to have a historical basis that was reconstructed centuries later, and the stories possess at most only a few tiny fragments of genuine historical memory—which by their definition are only those points which are supported by archaeological discoveries. In this view, all of the stories about the biblical patriarchs are fictional, and the patriarchs mere legendary eponyms to describe later historical realities. Further, biblical minimalists hold that the twelve tribes of Israel were a later construction, the stories of King David and King Saul were modeled upon later Irano-Hellenistic examples, and that there is no archaeological evidence that the united kingdom of Israel, which the Bible says that David and Solomon ruled over an empire from the Euphrates to Eilath, ever existed.
"It is hard to pinpoint when the movement started but 1968 seems to be a reasonable date. During this year, two prize winning essays were written in Copenhagen; one by Niels Peter Lemche, the other by Heike Friis, which advocated a complete rethinking of the way we approach the Bible and attempt to draw historical conclusions from it"[73]
In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico (1986), translated into English as History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (1988). In his footsteps followed Thomas L. Thompson with his lengthy Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources (1992) and, building explicitly on Thompson's book, P. R. Davies' shorter work, In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (1992). In the latter, Davies finds historical Israel only in archaeological remains, biblical Israel only in Scripture, and recent reconstructions of "ancient Israel" to be an unacceptable amalgam of the two. Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from 539 BCE onward. Niels Peter Lemche, Thompson's fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen, also followed with several titles that show Thompson's influence, including The Israelites in history and tradition (1998). The presence of both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term "Copenhagen school". The effect of biblical minimalism from 1992 onward was debate with more than two points of view[74][75]
Biblical maximalism[edit]
There is no scholarly controversy on the historicity of the events recounted after the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE, but there is great controversy concerning earlier data. The positions of "maximalists" vs. "minimalists" refer primarily to the monarchy period, spanning the 10th to 7th centuries BCE. The maximalist position holds that the accounts of the United Monarchy and the early kings of Israel, king David and king Saul, are to be taken as largely historical.[76]
Decreasing conflict between the maximalist and minimalist schools[edit]
In 2001, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman published the book The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts which advocated a view midway toward biblical minimalism and caused an uproar among many conservatives. In the 25th anniversary issue of Biblical Archeological Review(March/April 2001 edition), editor Hershel Shanks quoted several biblical scholars who insisted that minimalism was dying,[77] although leading minimalists deny this and a claim has been made "We are all minimalists now".[78]

Apart from the well-funded (and fundamentalist) “biblical archaeologists,” we are in fact nearly all “minimalists” now.[3]
—Philip Davies, "Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?"

The fact is that we are all minimalists -- at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. When I began my PhD studies more than three decades ago in the USA, the 'substantial historicity' of the patriarchs was widely accepted as was the unified conquest of the land. These days it is quite difficult to find anyone who takes this view.
 In fact, until recently I could find no 'maximalist' history of Israel since Wellhausen. ... In fact, though, 'maximalist' has been widely defined as someone who accepts the biblical text unless it can be proven wrong. If so, very few are willing to operate like this, not even John Bright (1980) whose history is not a maximalist one according to the definition just given.
—Lester L. Grabbe, "Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel"
In 2003, Kenneth Kitchen, a scholar who adopts a more maximalist point of view, authored the book On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Kitchen advocated the reliability of many (though not all) parts of the Torah and in no uncertain terms criticizes the work of Finkelstein and Silberman, to which Finkelstein has since responded.
Jennifer Wallace describes archaeologist Israel Finkelstein's view in her article Shifting Ground in the Holy Land, appearing in Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006:
He [Finkelstein] cites the fact – now accepted by most archaeologists – that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century B.C. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, Ai was abandoned before 2000 B.C. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in 1500 B.C. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging.
However, despite problems with the archaeological record, some maximalists place Joshua in the mid second millennium, at about the time the Egyptian Empire came to rule over Canaan, and not the 13th century as Finkelstein or Kitchen claim, and view the destruction layers of the period as corroboration of the biblical account. The destruction of Hazor in the mid-13th century is seen as corroboration of the biblical account of the later destruction carried out by Deborah and Barak as recorded in the Book of Judges. The location that Finkelstein refers to as "Ai" is generally dismissed as the location of the biblical Ai, since it was destroyed and buried in the 3rd millennium. The prominent site has been known by that name since at least Hellenistic times, if not before. Minimalists all hold that dating these events as contemporary are etiological explanations written centuries after the events they claim to report.
For the united monarchy both Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were really existing persons (no kings but bandit leaders or hill country chieftains)[79][80] from Judah about the 10th century BCE[81] - they do not assume that there was such a thing as united monarchy with a capital in Jerusalem.

The Bible reports that Jehoshaphat, a contemporary of Ahab, offered manpower and horses for the northern kingdom's wars against the Arameans. He strengthened his relationship with the northern kingdom by arranging a diplomatic marriage: the Israelite princess Athaliah, sister or daughter of King Ahab, married Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 8:18). The house of David in Jerusalem was now directly linked to (and apparently dominated by) the Israelite royalty of Samaria. In fact, we might suggest that this represented the north's takeover by marriage of Judah. Thus in the ninth century BCE—nearly a century after the presumed time of David—we can finally point to the historical existence of a great united monarchy of Israel, stretching from Dan in the north to Beer-sheba in the south, with significant conquered territories in Syria and Transjordan. But this united monarchy—a real united monarchy—was ruled by the Omrides, not the Davidides, and its capital was Samaria, not Jerusalem.[4]
—Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon. In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition.
Others such as David Ussishkin argue that those who follow the biblical depiction of a united monarchy do so on the basis of limited evidence while hoping to uncover real archaeological proof in the future.[82] Gunnar Lehmann suggests that there is still a possibility that David and Solomon were able to become local chieftains of some importance and claims that Jerusalem at the time was at best a small town in a sparsely populated area in which alliances of tribal kinship groups formed the basis of society. He goes on further to claim that it was at best a small regional centre, one of three to four in the territory of Judah and neither David nor Solomon had the manpower or the requisite social/political/administrative structure to rule the kind of empire described in the Bible.[83]
These views are strongly criticized by William G. Dever,[84] Helga Weippert, Amihai Mazar and Amnon Ben-Tor.
André Lemaire states in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple[85] that the principal points of the biblical tradition with Solomon as generally trustworthy, as does Kenneth Kitchen, who argue that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state.
Recently Finkelstein has joined with the more conservative Amihai Mazar, to explore the areas of agreement and disagreement and there are signs the intensity of the debate between the so-called minimalist and maximalist scholars is diminishing.[72] This view is also taken by Richard S. Hess,[86] which shows there is in fact a plurality of views between maximalists and minimalists. Jack Cargill[87] has shown that popular textbooks not only fail to give readers the up to date archaeological evidence, but that they also fail to correctly represent the diversity of views present on the subject. And Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle provide an overview of the respective evolving approaches and attendant controversies, especially during the period from the mid-1980s through 2011, in their book Biblical History and Israel's Past.
See also[edit]
Abraham#Historicity and origins
Authorship of the Bible
Biblical archaeology school
Biblical criticism
Biblical inerrancy
Biblical literalism
Book of Daniel#Composition
Book of Esther#Historicity
Book of Joshua#Genre (historicity)
Rudolf Bultmann
Census of Quirinius
Chronology of Jesus
Crucifixion darkness
Dating the Bible
David#Historicity
Development of the New Testament canon
Documentary hypothesis
The Exodus#Historicity
Ezra#Academic view
Flood geology
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Historicity of Jesus
Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)#History
List of artifacts in biblical archaeology
Massacre of the Innocents#Historicity
Moses#Historicity
Sanhedrin trial of Jesus
Science and the Bible
Theudas
Notes[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Thompson 2014, p. 164.
2.Jump up ^ Peter Enns, 3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship, January 10, 2013. Quote: "Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites. The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it."
3.^ Jump up to: a b Philip Davies "Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?"
4.^ Jump up to: a b Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2006). "3. Murder, Lust, and Betrayal". David and Solomon. In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: Free Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-7432-4363-6. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
5.Jump up ^ "The mainstream view of critical biblical scholarship accepts that Genesis-Joshua (perhaps Judges) is substantially devoid of reliable history and that it was in the Persian period that the bulk of Hebrew Bible literature was either composed or achieved its canonical shape." —Philip Davies, Minimalism, "Ancient Israel," and Anti-Semitism
6.Jump up ^ "He cites the fact—now accepted by most archaeologists—that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century b.c. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, and Ai was abandoned before 2000 b.c. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in 1500 b.c. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging." —Jennifer Wallace, „Shifting Ground in the Holy Land”, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006
7.Jump up ^ "So although much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another." —Jonathan Michael Golden, Ancient Canaan and Israel: new perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 275
8.Jump up ^ Lester L. Grabbe, Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel, Proceedings of the British Academy, October 2007
9.Jump up ^ Komoszewski, J. Ed; Wallace, Daniel J. (2006). Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don't Tell You. Grand Rapids, Mich: Kregel Publications. p. 70. ISBN 0-8254-2982-X.
10.Jump up ^ Aland, Barbara; Aland, Kurt (1995). The text of the New Testament: an introduction to the critical editions and to the theory and practice of modern textual criticism. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. p. 29. ISBN 0-8028-4098-1.
11.Jump up ^ Ferguson, Everett (2002). "Factors leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon". In Sanders, James; McDonald, Lee Martin. The Canon Debate. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers. p. 301. ISBN 1-56563-517-5.
12.^ Jump up to: a b Lindberg, Carter (2006). A Brief History of Christianity. Blackwell Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 1-4051-1078-3.
13.Jump up ^ Brakke, David (1994). "Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty Ninth Festal Letter". Harvard Theological Review 87: 395–419.
14.Jump up ^ Bruce, F. F. (1988). The canon of scripture. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. p. 225. ISBN 0-8308-1258-X.
15.Jump up ^ Ehrman, Bart (2011). "Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are", Harper One, ISBN 0062012614
16.^ Jump up to: a b Mack, Burton (1996), "Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth", Harper One, ISBN 0060655186
17.Jump up ^ The most recent and most complete anthology of ancient Near Eastern texts, all translated into English, is The Context of Scripture (3 vols.; ed. William W. Hallo. assoc. ed. K. Lawson Younger, Jr.; Leiden: Brill, 1997-2002). Its worthy predecessor, which is still useful but lacks many texts discovered since the mid-20th century, is Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ed. James B. Pritchard; 3rd ed. with supplement; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969). The two preeminent anthologies of inscriptions of ancient Israel and its immediate neighbors such as Aram (ancient Syria), Ammon, Edom, Moab, Phoenicia, and Philistia (not Egypt or Mesopotamia) are: 1) Shmuel Ahituv, ed., Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008) and 2) Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1997). This last book has been criticized for mixing seals and seal impressions of known authenticity with unreliable seals and seal impressions of unknown origin, which could be forgeries. In general, if a known place of excavation by an archaeological team is mentioned, the discoveries should be considered reliable; otherwise not.
18.Jump up ^ The most extensive summary, site by site, is The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols. plus supplementary vol. 5; ed. Ephraim Stern; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993-2008). A two-volume series which gives period-by-period coverage of archaeological discoveries and their significance is 1) Amihay Mazar, Archaeological of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990) and 2) Ephraim Stern, Archaeological of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732-332 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 2001)
19.Jump up ^ In historical geography, the preeminent book in English is Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta's Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006).
20.Jump up ^ McNutt, Paula M. (1999). Reconstructing the society of ancient Israel. London: SPCK. ISBN 0-281-05259-X.
21.Jump up ^ Albright, William Foxwell (1985). Archaeology of Palestine. Peter Smith Pub Inc. p. 128. ISBN 0-8446-0003-2. "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history."
22.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (2008), "Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
23.Jump up ^ Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard (1999) [1979]. "The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy". God, Revelation and Authority 4. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books. pp. 211–219. ISBN 1-58134-056-7.
24.Jump up ^ Thompson, Thomas (2002) [1974]. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International. ISBN 1-56338-389-6.
25.Jump up ^ Young, Davis A (March 1988). "The contemporary relevance of Augustine's view of Creation". Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 40 (1): 42–45. "But someone may ask: 'Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, who stretches out heaven like a skin?' Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false.... But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions"
26.Jump up ^ Klein-Braslavy, Sara (1986). "The Creation of the world and Maimonides' interpretation of Gen. i–v". In Pines, S.; Yovel, Y. Maimonides and Philosophy (International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées). Berlin: Springer. pp. 65–78. ISBN 90-247-3439-8.
27.Jump up ^ Physics I, 7
28.Jump up ^ Tiziano Dorandi, Chapter 2: Chronology, in Algra et al. (1999) The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, page 50. Cambridge
29.Jump up ^ Lang, Helen, "Introduction", p.2 in Proclus (2001). On the Eternity of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22554-6.
30.Jump up ^ Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1996) [1951]. Genesis and geology: a study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-34481-2.
31.Jump up ^ Quoted in Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1996) [1951]. Genesis and geology: a study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 142–143. ISBN 0-674-34481-2.
32.^ Jump up to: a b Wenham, Gordon J. (2003). "Genesis 1–11". Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-2551-7.
33.Jump up ^ Hobbes, Thomas (1651). "Chapter XXXIII. Of the number, antiquity, scope, authority and interpreters of the books of Holy Scripture". Leviathan. Green Dragon in St. Paul's Churchyard: Andrew Crooke.
34.Jump up ^ Spinoza, Baruch (1670). "Chapter VIII. Of the authorship of the Pentateuch and the other historical books of the Old Testament". A Theologico-Political Treatise (Part II).
35.Jump up ^ Simon, Richard (1682). A critical history of the Old Testament (PDF). London: Walter Davis. p. 21.
36.Jump up ^ Wellhausen, Julius (1885). Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.
37.Jump up ^ Gunkel, Hermann (1997) [1901]. Biddle, Mark E. tr, ed. Genesis. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. p. lxviii. ISBN 0-86554-517-0.
38.Jump up ^ "[F]or not only has "archaeology" not proven a single event of the patriarchal tradition to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely ... it must be concluded that any such historicity as is commonly spoken of in both scholarly and popular works about the patriarchs of Genesis is hardly possible and totally improbable." Thompson, op cit, p. 328
39.Jump up ^ Mazar, Amihay (1992). Archaeology of the land of the Bible, 10,000-586 BCE. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42590-2.
40.Jump up ^ Dever, William (March 1993). "What Remains of the House that Albright Built?". The Biblical Archaeologist (The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 56, No. 1) 56 (1): 25–35. doi:10.2307/3210358. JSTOR 3210358.
41.^ Jump up to: a b Thomas A. Holland (1997). "Jericho". In Eric M. Meyers. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. Oxford University Press. pp. 220–224.
42.Jump up ^ Kathleen M. Kenyon (1957). Digging up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations, 1952-1956. New York: Praeger. p. 229.
43.Jump up ^ Piotr Bienkowski (1986). Jericho in the Late Bronze Age. Warminster. pp. 120–125.
44.Jump up ^ Schniedewind WM (1996). "Tel Dan Stela: New Light on Aramaic and Jehu's Revolt". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 302: 75–90. doi:10.2307/1357129. JSTOR 1357129.
45.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (2002), What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 080282126X
46.Jump up ^ LeMaire, André. "House of David Restored in Moabite Inscription", Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1994.
47.Jump up ^ Redford, Donald B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in ancient times. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. p. 305. ISBN 0-691-00086-7.
48.Jump up ^ Crossan, J. D. "The Historical Jesus: A Mediterranean Jewish Peasant," HarperOne, 1993, ISBN 0060616296
49.Jump up ^ James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1, Eerdmans, 2003"
50.Jump up ^ John P. Meier, "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols., the most recent volume from Yale University Press, 2001"
51.Jump up ^ Sanders, E.P. "The Historical Figure of Jesus," Penguin, 1996, ISBN 0141928220
52.Jump up ^ Wright, N.T. "Jesus and the Victory of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God", Vol. 2, Augsburg Fortress Press, 1997, ISBN 0800626826
53.Jump up ^ John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew Volume I, Doubleday, 1991.
54.Jump up ^ The Dead Sea scrolls and Christian origins, Joseph Fitzmyer, pp. 28ff
55.Jump up ^ Bernstein, Richard (April 1, 1998). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Looking for Jesus and Jews in the Dead Sea Scrolls". The New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
56.Jump up ^ Shanks, Hershel "Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader From the Biblical Archaeology Review", archive.org
57.Jump up ^ Bauckham, Richard "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0802831621
58.Jump up ^ Byrskog, Samuel "Story as History, History as Story," Mohr Siebeck, 2000, ISBN 3161473051
59.Jump up ^ Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, March 28, 2006
60.Jump up ^ Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew, Vol. II, Doubleday, 1994, ISBN 0300140339
61.Jump up ^ Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Danske selskab, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1998.
62.Jump up ^ Nineham, Dennis, Saint Mark, Westminster Press, 1978, ISBN 0664213448, p 193
63.Jump up ^ Bart Ehrman, The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, p. 74 ISBN 0195154622
64.Jump up ^ McDonald, Lee Martin and Porter, Stanley. Early Christianity and its Sacred Literature, Hendrickson Publishers, 2000, p. 286 ISBN 1565632664
65.Jump up ^ Strobel, Lee. ”The Case for Christ”. 1998. Chapter one, an interview with Blomberg, ISBN 0310209307
66.^ Jump up to: a b Text-critical methodology and the pre-Caesarean text: Codex W in the Gospel, Larry W. Hurtado, p. 25
67.Jump up ^ "biblical literature." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 02 Nov. 2010 .
68.Jump up ^ EBIONISM; EBIONITES in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE (Bible History Online). Bible-history.com. Retrieved on 2012-09-11.
69.Jump up ^ Kitchen, K. A. (2003). On the reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-4960-1.
70.Jump up ^ https://www.jashow.org/wiki/index.php/Exploding_the_J.E.D.P._Theory_-_The_Documentary_Hypothesis
71.Jump up ^ Spong, John Shelby (1992) "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" (Harper)
72.^ Jump up to: a b Finkelstein, Israel; Mazar, Amihai and Schmidt, Brian (2007). The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Society of Biblical Lit. ISBN 978-1-58983-277-0.
73.Jump up ^ George Athas, 'Minimalism': The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies, edited transcript of lecture, 3rd ed., University of Sydney, April 29, 1999.
74.Jump up ^ Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2010). "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008, Part 1: Introducing a Bibliographic Essay in Five Parts". Journal of Religious and Theological Information 9 (3–4): 76. doi:10.1080/10477845.2010.526920.
75.Jump up ^ Brettler, Marc Z. (2003). "The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues". AJS Review 27: 1–21. doi:10.1017/S0364009403000011. JSTOR 4131767. Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2012). "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008 and Beyond, Part 2.1: The Literature of Perspective, Critique, and Methodology, First Half". Journal of Religious and Theological Information 11 (3–4): 101–137, in which the relevant section is "Toward a Balanced View of Minimalism: A Summary of Published Critiques"; the Official version of record is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10477845.2012.673111?journalCode=wrti20#.UjVAiNI6Pgc . Author's Accepted Draft if freely available at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_fsdocs/52/.
76.Jump up ^ "Maximalists and Minimalists", Livius.org.
77.Jump up ^ Jack Cargill Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks. Quoting Amy Dockster Marcus about the minimalists: "The bottom line is that when it comes to the big picture, they are often right. Many of their ideas, once considered far-fetched, are now solidly mainstream concepts."
78.Jump up ^ American Journal of Theology & Philosophy Vol. 14, No.1 January, 1993
79.Jump up ^ David and Solomon Beschrijving. Bol.com
80.Jump up ^ Richard N. Ostling Was King David legend or fiction? The Associated Press
81.Jump up ^ David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition pp20
82.Jump up ^ Ussishkin, David, "Solomon's Jerusalem: The Texts and the Facts on the Ground" in Vaughn Andrew G. and Killebrew, Ann E. eds. (2003), "Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period" (SBL Symposium Series 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature)
83.Jump up ^ Lehrmann, Gunnar, "The United Monarchy in the Countryside: Jerusalem, Judah, and the Shephelah during the Tenth Century BCE", in Vaughn Andrew G. and Killebrew, Ann E. eds. (2003), "Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period" (SBL Symposium Series 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature)
84.Jump up ^ Dever 2001, p. 160
85.Jump up ^ Shanks, Hershel (1999). Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Pearson, p. 113 ISBN 0130853631
86.Jump up ^ Hess, Richard S. (2007) "Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey", Baker Academic, ISBN 0801027179
87.Jump up ^ "Jack Cargill - Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks - The History Teacher, 34.3". Retrieved 5 October 2014.
References[edit]
Banks, Diane (2006). Writing The History Of Israel. Continuum International Publishing Group.
Brettler, Mark Zvi (2005). How to Read the Bible. Jewish Publication Society.
Davies, Philip R. (1995). In Search of 'Ancient Israel'. Continuum International Publishing Group.
Davies, Philip R. (n.d.). Minimalism, 'Ancient Israel', and Anti-Semitism. The Bible and Interpretation.
Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1998.
Davies, Philip R. (2008). Memories of Ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox Press.
Dever, William G. (2012). The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel. Eerdmans.
Finkelstein, Israel; Mazar, Amihay; Schmidt, Brian B. (2007). The Quest for the Historical Israel. Society of Biblical Literature.
Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 1988
Garbini, Giovanni, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, 1988 (trans from Italian).
Halpern, Baruch, "Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel", Bible Review, December 1995, p26 - 35, 47.
Lemche, Niels Peter, Early Israel, 1985.
Lemche, Niels Peter (1998). The Israelites in History and Tradition. Westminster John Knox Press.
Moore, Megan Bishop; Kelle, Brad E. (2011). Biblical History and Israel's Past. Eerdmans.
Provan, Iain W., "Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel", Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p585-606. (a critique of the Copenhagen School of Thought - with responses by Davies (above) and Thompson (below))
Thompson, Thomas L. (1992). Early History of the Israelite People. Brill.
Thompson, Thomas L., "A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?" Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p683-698. (a response to the article by Iain W. Provan - above)
Thompson, Thomas L. (1999). The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel. Basic Book.
Thompson, Thomas L. (n.d.). A view from Copenhagen: Israel and the History of Palestine. The Bible and Interpretation.
Van Seters, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.
Whitelam, Keith W. (1996). The Invention of Ancient Israel. Routledge.
Barenboim, Peter. "Biblical Roots of Separation of Powers", Moscow : Letny Sad, 2005, ISBN 5-94381-123-0, http://lccn.loc.gov/2006400578
Biran, Avraham. "'David' Found at Dan." Biblical Archaeology Review 20:2 (1994): 26–39.
Brettler, Marc Z., “The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 1–21.
Coogan, Michael D. "Canaanites: Who Were They and Where Did They Live?" Bible Review 9:3 (1993): 44ff.
Davies, Philip R. 1992, 2nd edition 1995, reprinted 2004.In Search of 'Ancient Israel' . Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Dawood, N.J. 1978. Tales from the Arabian Nights, Doubleday, A delightful children's version translated from the original Arabic.
Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2001
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil A. 2001 The Bible Unearthed. New York: Simon and Schuster
Garbini, Giovanni. 1988. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. Translated by John Bowden from the original Italian edition. New York: Crossroad.
Harpur, Tom. 2004. "The Pagan Christ. Recovering the Lost Light" Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto.
Kitchen, Kenneth A. 2003 On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Koehler; Dr. Ralph D. Christian Bible History. ISBN 1-4208-1242-4.
Larsson, G. 2007. "The Chronological System of the Old Testament". Peter Lang GmbH.
Lemche, Niels P. 1998. The Israelites in History and Tradition London : SPCK ; Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press.
Mazar, Amihai. 1992. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E. New York: Doubleday.
Miller, J. Maxwell, and John Haralson Hayes, "A history of ancient Israel and Judah" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1986)
Moore, Megan Bishop and Brad E. Kelle, Biblical History and Israel's Past, 2011.
Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975.
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. 2010. "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008, Part 1: Introducing a Bibliographic Essay in Five Parts,” Journal of Religious and Theological Information 9/3–4: 71-83.
Na'aman, Nadav. 1996 ."The Contribution of the Amarna Letters to the Debate on Jerusalem's Political Position in the Tenth Century B.C.E." BASOR. 304: 17–27.
Na'aman, Nadav. 1997 "Cow Town or Royal Capital: Evidence for Iron Age Jerusalem." Biblical Archaeology Review. 23, no. 4: 43–47, 67.
Noth, Martin, "Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien", 1943; English translation as "The Deuteronomistic History", Sheffield, 1981, and "The Chronicler's History", Sheffield, 1987.
Shanks, Hershel. 1995. Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography. New York: Random House.
Shanks, Hershel. 1997 "Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers." Biblical Archaeology Review. 23, no. 4: 26–42, 66.
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God, Eerdmans, 2002 (1st edition 1990)
Steiner, Margareet and Jane Cahill. "David's Jerusalem: Fiction or Reality?" Biblical Archaeology Review 24:4 (1998): 25–33, 62–63; 34–41, 63. This article presents a debate between a Biblical minimalist and a Biblical maximalist.
Thompson, Thomas L. (2014). Biblical Narrative and Palestine's History: Changing Perspectives 2. Routledge.
________. The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past. London.
________. 1992. The Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources. Leiden and New York: Brill.
Yamauchi, Edwin, The Stones and the Scriptures. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1972.
External links[edit]
'Minimalism' – The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies
Why I Believe The New Testament Is Historically Reliable by Gary Habermas
Biblical Archaeology Society: examines discoveries and controversies about historical veracity of the Bible
Livius.org: Maximalism and minimalism
Notes on minimalism by George Athas



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Historicity of the Bible

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The historicity of the Bible is the question of its "acceptability as a history," in the phrase of Thomas L. Thompson, a scholar who has written widely on this topic as it relates to the Old Testament.[1] This can be extended to the question of the Christian New Testament as an accurate record of the historical Jesus and the Apostolic Age.
Many fields of study compare the Bible and history, ranging from archeology and astronomy to linguistics and comparative literature. Scholars also examine the historical context of Bible passages, the importance ascribed to events by the authors, and the contrast between the descriptions of these events and historical evidence.
Archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth and twentieth century have supported some of the Old Testament's historical narratives and refuted some of the others.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]



Contents  [hide]
1 Materials and methods 1.1 Manuscripts and canons
1.2 Texts 1.2.1 Hebrew Bible
1.2.2 New Testament
1.3 Extra-biblical sources
1.4 Writing and reading history
2 Challenges to historicity 2.1 The Hebrew Bible
2.2 New Testament
3 Schools of archaeological and historical thought 3.1 Overview of academic views
3.2 Maximalist – Minimalist dichotomy
3.3 Biblical minimalism
3.4 Biblical maximalism
3.5 Decreasing conflict between the maximalist and minimalist schools
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

Materials and methods[edit]
Manuscripts and canons[edit]
The Bible exists in multiple manuscripts, none of them autographs, and multiple canons, none of which completely agree on which books have sufficient authority to be included or their order (see Books of the Bible).
To determine the accuracy of a copied manuscript, textual critics scrutinize the way the transcripts have passed through history to their extant forms. The higher the volume of the earliest texts (and their parallels to each other), the greater the textual reliability and the less chance that the transcript's content has been changed over the years. Multiple copies may also be grouped into text types (see New Testament text types), with some types judged closer to the hypothetical original than others. Differences often extend beyond minor variations and may involve, for instance, interpolation of material central to issues of historicity and doctrine, such as the ending of Mark 16.
The books comprising the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament (the two are almost, but not exactly, the same) were written largely in Biblical Hebrew, with a few exceptions in Biblical Aramaic. Today it exists in several traditions, including the Masoretic Text, the Septuagint 47 books (a Greek translation widely used in the period from the 3rd century BCE to roughly the 5th century CE, and still regarded as authoritative by the Orthodox Christian churches), the Samaritan Torah, the Westminster containing the modern 39 books, and others. Variations between these traditions are useful for reconstructing the most likely original text, and for tracing the intellectual histories of various Jewish and Christian communities. The very oldest fragment resembling part of the text of the Hebrew Bible so far discovered is a small silver amulet, dating from approximately 600 BCE, and containing a version of the Priestly Blessing ("May God make his face to shine upon you...").
According to the dominant theory called Greek primacy, the New Testament was originally written in Greek, of which 5,650 handwritten copies have survived in Greek, over 10,000 in Latin. When other languages are included, the total of ancient copies approaches 25,000. The next ancient text to come close to rivaling that number is Homer's Iliad, which is thought to have survived in 643 ancient copies.[9] Recognizing this, F. E. Peters remarked that "on the basis of manuscript tradition alone, the works that make up the Christians' New Testament texts were the most frequently copied and widely circulated [surviving] books of antiquity".[citation needed] (This may be due to their preservation, popularity, and distribution brought about by the ease of seaborne travel and the many roads constructed during the time of the Roman Empire). When a comparison is made between the seven major critical editions of the Greek NT verse-by-verse – namely Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, Von Soden, Vogels, Merk, Bover, and Nestle-Aland – 62.9% of verses are variant free.[10]
A four gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was first asserted by Irenaeus, c. 180.[11] The many other gospels that then existed were eventually deemed non-canonical (see Biblical canon) and suppressed. In his Easter letter of 367, Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, gave a list of exactly the same books as what would become the New Testament canon,[12] and he used the phrase "being canonized" (kanonizomena) in regards to them.[13] The Council of Rome in 382 under the authority of Pope Damasus I issued an identical canon,[12] and his decision to commission the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.[14] See Development of the New Testament canon for details.
Texts[edit]
Hebrew Bible[edit]
The Hebrew Bible is not a single book but rather a collection of texts, most of them anonymous, and most of them the product of more or less extensive editing prior to reaching their modern form. These texts are in many different genres, but three distinct blocks approximating modern narrative history can be made out.
Torah: Genesis to Deuteronomy
God creates the world; the world God creates is good, but it becomes thoroughly corrupted by man's decision to sin. God destroys all but the eight remaining righteous people in a deluge and shortens man's lifespan significantly. God selects Abraham to inherit the land of Canaan. The children of Israel, Abraham's grandson, go into Egypt, where their descendants are enslaved. The Israelites are led out of Egypt by Moses (Exodus) and receive the laws of God, who renews the promise of the land of Canaan.
Deuteronomic history: Joshua to 2 Kings
The Israelites conquer the land of Canaan under Joshua, successor to Moses. Under the Judges they live in a state of constant conflict and insecurity, until the prophet Samuel anoints Saul as king over them. Saul proves unworthy, and God selects David as his successor. Under David the Israelites are united and conquer their enemies, and under Solomon his son they live in peace and prosperity. But the kingdom is divided under Solomon's successors, Israel in the north and Judah in the south, and the kings of Israel fall away from God and eventually the people of the north are taken into captivity by outsiders. Judah, unlike Israel, has some kings who follow God, but many do not, and eventually it too is taken into captivity, and the Temple of God built by Solomon is destroyed.
Chronicler's history: Chronicles and Ezra/Nehemiah
(Chronicles begins by reprising the history of the Torah and the Deuteronomistic history, with some differences over details. It introduces new material following its account of the fall of Jerusalem, the event which concludes the Deuteronomic history). The Babylonians, who had destroyed the Temple and taken the people into captivity, are themselves defeated by the Persians under their king Cyrus. Cyrus permits the exiles to return to Jerusalem. The Temple is rebuilt, and the Laws of Moses are read to the people.
Other
(Several other books of the Hebrew Bible are set in a historical context or otherwise give information which can be regarded as historical, although these books do not present themselves as histories).
The prophets Amos and Hosea write of events during the 8th century kingdom of Israel; the prophet Jeremiah writes of events preceding and following the fall of Judah; Ezekiel writes of events during and preceding the exile in Babylon; and other prophets similarly touch on various periods, usually those in which they write.
Several books are included in some canons but not in others. Among these, Maccabees is a purely historical work of events in the 2nd century BCE. Others are not historical in orientation but are set in historical contexts or reprise earlier histories, such as Enoch, an apocalyptic work of the 2nd century BCE.
New Testament[edit]
While the authorship of some of the Pauline epistles is largely undisputed, there is no scholarly consensus on the authors of the other books of the New Testament, which most modern scholars acknowledge as pseudonymous autographs[15][16] written more than a generation after the events they describe.
Gospels/Acts
Jesus is born to Joseph and Mary; he is baptised by John the Baptist and begins a preaching and healing mission in Galilee; he comes up to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, is arrested, tried, condemned, and crucified. He is raised from the dead by God, appears before his followers, issuing the Great Commission, and ascends to Heaven, to sit at the Right Hand of God, with a promise to return. The followers of Jesus, who had been fearful following the Crucifixion, are encouraged by Jesus' resurrection and continue to practice and to preach his teachings. The Apostle Paul preaches throughout the eastern Mediterranean, is arrested, and appeals. He is sent to Rome for trial, and the narrative breaks off.
Epistles/Revelation
The epistles (literally "letters") are largely concerned with theology, but the theological arguments they present form a "history of theology". Revelation deals with the last judgement and the end of the world.
Extra-biblical sources[edit]
Prior to the 19th century, textual analysis of the Bible itself was the only tool available to extract and evaluate whatever historical data it contained. The past two hundred years, however, have seen a proliferation of new sources of data and analytical tools, including:
Other Near Eastern texts, documents and inscriptions[17]
The material remains recovered throughout the Near East by archaeological excavation, analysed by ever more sophisticated technical and statistical apparatus[18]
Historical geography, demography, soil science, technology studies, and comparative linguistics[19]
Anthropological and sociological modelling
The Apocrypha, or non-canonical texts
Writing and reading history[edit]



 W.F. Albright, the doyen of biblical archaeology, in 1957
The meaning of the term "history" is itself dependent on social and historical context. Paula McNutt, for instance, notes that the Old Testament narratives "do not record 'history' in the sense that history is understood in the twentieth century ... The past, for biblical writers as well as for twentieth-century readers of the Bible, has meaning only when it is considered in light of the present, and perhaps an idealized future." (p. 4, emphasis added)[20]
Biblical history has also diversified its focus during the modern era. The project of biblical archaeology associated with W.F. Albright, which sought to validate the historicity of the events narrated in the Bible through the ancient texts and material remains of the Near East,[21] has a more specific focus compared to the more expansive view of history described by archaeologist William Dever. In discussing the role of his discipline in interpreting the biblical record, Dever has pointed to multiple histories within the Bible, including the history of theology (the relationship between God and believers), political history (usually the account of "Great Men"), narrative history (the chronology of events), intellectual history (ideas and their development, context and evolution), socio-cultural history (institutions, including their social underpinnings in family, clan, tribe and social class and the state), cultural history (overall cultural evolution, demography, socio-economic and political structure and ethnicity), technological history (the techniques by which humans adapt to, exploit and make use of the resources of their environment), natural history (how humans discover and adapt to the ecological facts of their natural environment), and material history (artefacts as correlates of changes in human behaviour).[22]
A special challenge for assessing the historicity of the Bible is sharply differing perspectives on the relationship between narrative history and theological meaning. Supporters of biblical literalism "deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood."[23] But prominent scholars have expressed diametrically opposing views: "[T]he stories about the promise given to the patriarchs in Genesis are not historical, nor do they intend to be historical; they are rather historically determined expressions about Israel and Israel's relationship to its God, given in forms legitimate to their time, and their truth lies not in their facticity, nor in the historicity, but their ability to express the reality that Israel experienced."[24]
This apparently irreconcilable clash of views is most acute for the questions of the greatest contemporary political significance (such as the promise of land by God to Abraham) and theological import (the Virgin Birth and Resurrection of Jesus), which are also the "events" that have proved the least susceptible to extra-biblical confirmation.
Challenges to historicity[edit]
The Hebrew Bible[edit]



 The Garden of Eden: from history to mythology. By Lucas Cranach der Ältere(1472–1553)
There had always been a critical tradition dating back to at least St Augustine of Hippo (354–430), with interpretations "plainly at variance with what are commonly perceived in evangelicalism as traditional views of Genesis."[25] The Jewish tradition has also maintained a critical thread in its approach to biblical primeval history. The influential medieval philosopher Maimonides maintained a skeptical ambiguity towards creation ex nihilo and considered the stories about Adam more as "philosophical anthropology, rather than as historical stories whose protagonist is the 'first man'."[26] Greek philosophers Aristotle,[27] Critolaus[28] and Proclus[29] held that the world was eternal.
The birth of geology was marked by the publication of James Hutton's Theory of the Earth in 1788. This marked the intellectual revolution that would dethrone Genesis as the ultimate authority on primeval earth and prehistory. The first casualty was the Creation story itself, and by the early 19th century "no responsible scientist contended for the literal credibility of the Mosaic account of creation." (p. 224)[30] The battle between uniformitarianism and catastrophism kept the Flood alive in the emerging discipline, until Adam Sedgwick, the president of the Geological Society, publicly recanted his previous support in his 1831 presidential address:

We ought indeed to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic Flood. For of man, and the works of his hands, we have not yet found a single trace among the remnants of the former world entombed in those deposits.[31]
All of which left the "first man" and his putative descendants in the awkward position of being stripped of all historical context until Charles Darwin naturalized the Garden of Eden with the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. Public acceptance of this scientific revolution was, and remains, uneven but the mainstream scholarly community soon arrived at a consensus, which holds today, that Genesis 1–11 is a highly schematic literary work representing theology/mythology rather than history.[32]
A central pillar of the Bible's historical authority was the tradition that it had been composed by the principal actors or eyewitnesses to the events described – the Pentateuch was the work of Moses, Joshua was by Joshua, and so on. But the Protestant Reformation had brought the actual texts to a much wider audience, which combined with the growing climate of intellectual ferment in the 17th century that was the start of the Age of Enlightenment threw a harsh sceptical spotlight on these traditional claims. In Protestant England the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in his major work Leviathan (1651) denied Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and identified Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles as having been written long after the events they purported to describe. His conclusions rested on internal textual evidence, but in an argument that resonates with modern debates, he noted: "Who were the original writers of the several Books of Holy Scripture, has not been made evident by any sufficient testimony of other History, (which is the only proof of matter of fact)."[33]



 Title page of Simon's Critical history, 1682.
The Jewish philosopher and pantheist Baruch Spinoza echoed Hobbes's doubts about the provenance of the historical books in his A Theologico-Political Treatise (published in 1670),[34] and elaborated on the suggestion that the final redaction of these texts was post-exilic under the auspices of Ezra (Chapter IX). He had earlier been effectively excommunicated by the rabbinical council of Amsterdam for his perceived heresies. The French priest Richard Simon brought these critical perspectives to the Catholic tradition in 1678, observing "the most part of the Holy Scriptures that are come to us, are but Abridgments and as Summaries of ancient Acts which were kept in the Registries of the Hebrews," in what was probably the first work of biblical textual criticism in the modern sense.[35]
In response Jean Astruc, applying source criticism methods common in the analysis of classical secular texts to the Pentateuch, believed he could detect four different manuscript traditions, which he claimed Moses himself had redacted. (p. 62–64)[32] His 1753 book initiated the school known as higher criticism that culminated in Julius Wellhausen formalising the documentary hypothesis in the 1870s,[36] which in various modified forms still dominates understanding of the composition of the historical narratives.
By the end of the 19th century the scholarly consensus was that the Pentateuch was the work of many authors writing from 1000 BCE (the time of David) to 500 BCE (the time of Ezra) and redacted c.450, and as a consequence whatever history it contained was more often polemical than strictly factual – a conclusion reinforced by the then fresh scientific refutations of what were at the time widely classed as biblical mythologies, as discussed above.
In the following decades Hermann Gunkel drew attention to the mythic aspects of the Pentateuch, and Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth and the tradition history school argued that although its core traditions had genuinely ancient roots, the narratives were fictional framing devices and were not intended as history in the modern sense. Though doubts have been cast on the historiographic reconstructions of this school (particularly the notion of oral traditions as a primary ancient source), much of its critique of biblical historicity found wide acceptance. Gunkel's observation that

if, however, we consider figures like Abraham, Issac, and Jacob to be actual persons with no original mythic foundations, that does not at all mean that they are historical figures ... For even if, as may well be assumed, there was once a man call 'Abraham,' everyone who knows the history of legends is sure that the legend is in no position at the distance of so many centuries to preserve a picture of the personal piety of Abraham. The 'religion of Abraham' is, in reality, the religion of the legend narrators which they attribute to Abraham[37]
has in various forms become a commonplace of contemporary criticism.[38]
In the United States the biblical archaeology movement, under the influence of Albright, counter-attacked, arguing that the broad outline within the framing narratives was also true, so that while scholars could not realistically expect to prove or disprove individual episodes from the life of Abraham and the other patriarchs, these were real individuals who could be placed in a context proven from the archaeological record. But as more discoveries were made, and anticipated finds failed to materialise, it became apparent that archaeology did not in fact support the claims made by Albright and his followers. Today, only a minority of scholars continue to work within this framework, mainly for reasons of religious conviction.[39] William Dever stated in 1993 that "[Albright's] central theses have all been overturned, partly by further advances in Biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he himself gave encouragement and momentum ... The irony is that, in the long run, it will have been the newer 'secular' archaeology that contributed the most to Biblical studies, not 'Biblical archaeology'."[40]
The scholarly history of the Deuteronomic history parallels that of the Pentateuch: the European tradition history school argued that the narrative was untrustworthy and could not be used to construct a narrative history; the American Albright school asserted that it could when tested against the archaeological record; and modern archaeological techniques proved crucial in deciding the issue. The test case was the book of Joshua and its account of a rapid, destructive conquest of the Canaanite cities: but by the 1960s it had become clear that the archaeological record did not, in fact, support the account of the conquest given in Joshua: the cities which the Bible records as having been destroyed by the Israelites were either uninhabited at the time, or, if destroyed, were destroyed at widely different times, not in one brief period.[citation needed] The most high-profile example was the "fall of Jericho."
John Garstang, who excavated in the 1930s, announced that he had found fallen walls dating to the time of the biblical Battle of Jericho.[41] However, Garstang later revised the destruction to a much earlier period.[41] Kathleen Kenyon dated the destruction of the walled city to the middle of the 16th century (c. 1550 BC), too early to match the usual dating of the Exodus to Pharaoh Ramses, on the basis of her excavations in the early 1950s.[42] The same conclusion, based on an analysis of all the excavation findings, was reached by Piotr Bienkowski.[43]
Thomas L. Thompson, a leading minimalist scholar for example has written
"There is no evidence of a United Monarchy, no evidence of a capital in Jerusalem or of any coherent, unified political force that dominated western Palestine, let alone an empire of the size the legends describe. We do not have evidence for the existence of kings named Saul, David or Solomon; nor do we have evidence for any temple at Jerusalem in this early period. What we do know of Israel and Judah of the tenth century does not allow us to interpret this lack of evidence as a gap in our knowledge and information about the past, a result merely of the accidental nature of archeology. There is neither room nor context, no artifact or archive that points to such historical realities in Palestine's tenth century. One cannot speak historically of a state without a population. Nor can one speak of a capital without a town. Stories are not enough."
Proponents of this theory also point to the fact that the division of the land into two entities, centered at Jerusalem and Shechem, goes back to the Egyptian rule of Israel in the New Kingdom. Solomon's empire is said to have stretched from the Euphrates in the north to the Red Sea in the south; it would have required a large commitment of men and arms and a high level of organization to conquer, subdue, and govern this area. But there is little archaeological evidence of Jerusalem being a sufficiently large city in the 10th century BCE, and Judah seems to be sparsely settled in that time period. Since Jerusalem has been destroyed and then subsequently rebuilt approximately 15 to 20 times since the time of David and Solomon, some argue much of the evidence could easily have been eliminated.
None of the conquests of David nor Solomon are mentioned in contemporary histories. Culturally, the Bronze Age collapse is otherwise a period of general cultural impoverishment of the whole Levantine region, making it difficult to consider the existence of any large territorial unit such as the Davidic kingdom, whose cultural features rather seem to resemble the later kingdom of Hezekiah or Josiah than the political and economic conditions of the 11th century. The biblical account makes no claim that Israel directly governed the areas included in their empires which are portrayed instead as tributaries.[citation needed] However, since the discovery of an inscription dating to the 9th or 8th century BCE on the Tel Dan Stele unearthed in the north of Israel, which may refer to the "house of David" as a monarchic dynast,[44] the debate has continued.[45] This is still disputed. There is a debate as to whether the united monarchy, the empire of King Solomon, and the rebellion of Jeroboam ever existed, or whether they are a late fabrication. The Mesha Stele, dated to c. 840 BCE, may reference the House of David, and mentions events and names found in Kings.[46]
There is a problem with the sources for this period of history. There are no contemporary independent documents other than the accounts of the Books of Samuel, which exhibits too many anachronisms to have been a contemporary account. For example there is mention of late armor (1 Samuel 17:4–7, 38–39; 25:13), use of camels (1 Samuel 30:17), and cavalry (as distinct from chariotry) (1 Samuel 13:5, 2 Samuel 1:6), iron picks and axes (as though they were common, (2 Samuel 12:31), sophisticated siege techniques (2 Samuel 20:15). There is a gargantuan troop (2 Samuel 17:1), a battle with 20,000 casualties (2 Samuel 18:7), and a reference to Kushite paramilitary and servants, clearly giving evidence of a date in which Kushites were common, after the 26th Dynasty of Egypt, the period of the last quarter of the 8th century BCE.[47]
New Testament[edit]
The historicity of some NT teachings of Jesus is also currently debated among biblical scholars. The "quest for the historical Jesus" began as early as the 18th century, and has continued to this day. The most notable recent scholarship came in the 1980s and 1990s with the work of J. D. Crossan,[48] James D. G. Dunn,[49] John P. Meier,[50] E. P. Sanders[51] and N. T. Wright[52] being the most widely read and discussed. The earliest New Testament texts which refer to Jesus, Paul's letters, are usually dated in the 50s CE. Since Paul records very little of Jesus' life and activities, these are of little help in determining facts about the life of Jesus, although they may contain references to information given to Paul from the eyewitnesses of Jesus.[53]
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has shed light into the context of 1st century Judea, noting the diversity of Jewish belief as well as shared expectations and teachings. For example the expectation of the coming messiah, the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount and much else of the early Christian movement are found to have existed within apocalyptic Judaism of the period.[54] This has had the effect of centering Early Christianity much more within its Jewish roots than was previously the case. It is now recognised that Rabbinical Judaism and Early Christianity are only two of the many strands which survived until the Jewish revolt of 66 to 70 CE,[55][56] see also Split of early Christianity and Judaism.
Most modern scholars hold that the canonical Gospel accounts were written between 70 and 100 or 110 CE,[16] four to eight decades after the crucifixion, although based on earlier traditions and texts, such as "Q", Logia or sayings gospels, the passion account or other earlier literature (See List of Gospels). Some scholars argue that these accounts were compiled by witnesses[57][58] although this view is disputed by other scholars.[59] There are also secular references to Jesus, although they are few and quite late. Almost all historical critics agree, however, that a historical figure named Jesus taught throughout the Galilean countryside c. 30 CE, was believed by his followers to have performed supernatural acts, and was sentenced to death by the Romans, possibly for insurrection.[60]
Many scholars have pointed out, that the Gospel of Mark shows signs of a lack of knowledge of geographical, political and religious matters in Judea in the time of Jesus. Thus, today the most common opinion is, that the author is unknown and both geographically and historically at a distance to the narrated events[61][62][63][64] although opinion varies and scholars such as Craig Blomberg accept the more traditional view.[65] The use of expressions that may be described as awkward and rustic cause the Gospel of Mark to appear somewhat unlettered or even crude.[66] This may be attributed to the influence that Saint Peter, a fisherman, is suggested to have on the writing of Mark.[67] The writers of the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke used Mark as a source, with changes and improvement to peculiarities and crudities in Mark.[66]
The absence of evidence of Jesus' life before his meeting with John the Baptist has led to many speculations. It would seem that part of the explanation may lie in the early conflict between Paul and the Desposyni Ebionim, led by James the Just, supposedly the brother of Jesus, that led to Gospel passages critical of Jesus' family.[68]
The historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, the primary source for the Apostolic Age, is a major issue for biblical scholars and historians of Early Christianity.
While some biblical scholars view the Book of Acts as being extremely accurate and corroborated by archaeology, others view the work as being inaccurate and in conflict with the Pauline epistles. Acts portrays Paul as more in line with Jewish Christianity, while the Pauline epistles record more conflict, such as the Incident at Antioch, see also Paul the Apostle and Judaism.
Schools of archaeological and historical thought[edit]
Overview of academic views[edit]
An educated reading of the biblical text requires knowledge of when it was written, by whom, and for what purpose. For example, many academics would agree that the Pentateuch was in existence some time shortly after the 6th century BCE, but they disagree about when it was written. Proposed dates vary from the 15th century BCE to the 6th century BCE. One popular hypothesis points to the reign of Josiah (7th century BCE). In this hypothesis, the events of, for example, Exodus would have happened centuries before they were finally edited. This topic is expanded upon in dating the Bible.
An important point to keep in mind is the documentary hypothesis, which using the biblical evidence itself, claims to demonstrate that our current version was based on older written sources that were lost. Although it has been modified heavily over the years, most scholars accept some form of this hypothesis. There have also been and are a number of scholars who reject it, for example Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen[69] and Old Testament scholar Walter Kaiser, Jr.,[70] as well as the late Umberto Cassuto, O. T. Allis and Gleason Archer.
Maximalist – Minimalist dichotomy[edit]
The major split of biblical Scholarship into two opposing schools is strongly disapproved by non-fundamentalist biblical scholars, as being an attempt by so-called "conservative" Christians to portray the field as a bipolar argument, of which only one side is correct.[71]
Recently the difference between the Maximalist and Minimalist has reduced, however a new school started with a work, "The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel" by Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, and Brian B. Schmidt.[72] This school argues that post-processual archaeology enables us to recognize the existence of a middle ground between Minimalism and Maximalism, and that both these extremes need to be rejected. Archaeology offers both confirmation of parts of the biblical record and also poses challenges to the interpretations made by some. The careful examination of the evidence demonstrates that the historical accuracy of the first part of the Old Testament is greatest during the reign of Josiah. Some feel that the accuracy diminishes, the further backwards one proceeds from this date. This they claim would confirm that a major redaction of the texts seems to have occurred at about that date.
Biblical minimalism[edit]
Main article: Biblical minimalism
The viewpoint sometimes called Biblical minimalism generally hold that the Bible is principally a theological and apologetic work, and all stories within it are of an aetiological character. The early stories are held to have a historical basis that was reconstructed centuries later, and the stories possess at most only a few tiny fragments of genuine historical memory—which by their definition are only those points which are supported by archaeological discoveries. In this view, all of the stories about the biblical patriarchs are fictional, and the patriarchs mere legendary eponyms to describe later historical realities. Further, biblical minimalists hold that the twelve tribes of Israel were a later construction, the stories of King David and King Saul were modeled upon later Irano-Hellenistic examples, and that there is no archaeological evidence that the united kingdom of Israel, which the Bible says that David and Solomon ruled over an empire from the Euphrates to Eilath, ever existed.
"It is hard to pinpoint when the movement started but 1968 seems to be a reasonable date. During this year, two prize winning essays were written in Copenhagen; one by Niels Peter Lemche, the other by Heike Friis, which advocated a complete rethinking of the way we approach the Bible and attempt to draw historical conclusions from it"[73]
In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico (1986), translated into English as History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (1988). In his footsteps followed Thomas L. Thompson with his lengthy Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources (1992) and, building explicitly on Thompson's book, P. R. Davies' shorter work, In Search of 'Ancient Israel' (1992). In the latter, Davies finds historical Israel only in archaeological remains, biblical Israel only in Scripture, and recent reconstructions of "ancient Israel" to be an unacceptable amalgam of the two. Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from 539 BCE onward. Niels Peter Lemche, Thompson's fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen, also followed with several titles that show Thompson's influence, including The Israelites in history and tradition (1998). The presence of both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term "Copenhagen school". The effect of biblical minimalism from 1992 onward was debate with more than two points of view[74][75]
Biblical maximalism[edit]
There is no scholarly controversy on the historicity of the events recounted after the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE, but there is great controversy concerning earlier data. The positions of "maximalists" vs. "minimalists" refer primarily to the monarchy period, spanning the 10th to 7th centuries BCE. The maximalist position holds that the accounts of the United Monarchy and the early kings of Israel, king David and king Saul, are to be taken as largely historical.[76]
Decreasing conflict between the maximalist and minimalist schools[edit]
In 2001, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman published the book The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts which advocated a view midway toward biblical minimalism and caused an uproar among many conservatives. In the 25th anniversary issue of Biblical Archeological Review(March/April 2001 edition), editor Hershel Shanks quoted several biblical scholars who insisted that minimalism was dying,[77] although leading minimalists deny this and a claim has been made "We are all minimalists now".[78]

Apart from the well-funded (and fundamentalist) “biblical archaeologists,” we are in fact nearly all “minimalists” now.[3]
—Philip Davies, "Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?"

The fact is that we are all minimalists -- at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. When I began my PhD studies more than three decades ago in the USA, the 'substantial historicity' of the patriarchs was widely accepted as was the unified conquest of the land. These days it is quite difficult to find anyone who takes this view.
 In fact, until recently I could find no 'maximalist' history of Israel since Wellhausen. ... In fact, though, 'maximalist' has been widely defined as someone who accepts the biblical text unless it can be proven wrong. If so, very few are willing to operate like this, not even John Bright (1980) whose history is not a maximalist one according to the definition just given.
—Lester L. Grabbe, "Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel"
In 2003, Kenneth Kitchen, a scholar who adopts a more maximalist point of view, authored the book On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Kitchen advocated the reliability of many (though not all) parts of the Torah and in no uncertain terms criticizes the work of Finkelstein and Silberman, to which Finkelstein has since responded.
Jennifer Wallace describes archaeologist Israel Finkelstein's view in her article Shifting Ground in the Holy Land, appearing in Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006:
He [Finkelstein] cites the fact – now accepted by most archaeologists – that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century B.C. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, Ai was abandoned before 2000 B.C. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in 1500 B.C. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging.
However, despite problems with the archaeological record, some maximalists place Joshua in the mid second millennium, at about the time the Egyptian Empire came to rule over Canaan, and not the 13th century as Finkelstein or Kitchen claim, and view the destruction layers of the period as corroboration of the biblical account. The destruction of Hazor in the mid-13th century is seen as corroboration of the biblical account of the later destruction carried out by Deborah and Barak as recorded in the Book of Judges. The location that Finkelstein refers to as "Ai" is generally dismissed as the location of the biblical Ai, since it was destroyed and buried in the 3rd millennium. The prominent site has been known by that name since at least Hellenistic times, if not before. Minimalists all hold that dating these events as contemporary are etiological explanations written centuries after the events they claim to report.
For the united monarchy both Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were really existing persons (no kings but bandit leaders or hill country chieftains)[79][80] from Judah about the 10th century BCE[81] - they do not assume that there was such a thing as united monarchy with a capital in Jerusalem.

The Bible reports that Jehoshaphat, a contemporary of Ahab, offered manpower and horses for the northern kingdom's wars against the Arameans. He strengthened his relationship with the northern kingdom by arranging a diplomatic marriage: the Israelite princess Athaliah, sister or daughter of King Ahab, married Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 8:18). The house of David in Jerusalem was now directly linked to (and apparently dominated by) the Israelite royalty of Samaria. In fact, we might suggest that this represented the north's takeover by marriage of Judah. Thus in the ninth century BCE—nearly a century after the presumed time of David—we can finally point to the historical existence of a great united monarchy of Israel, stretching from Dan in the north to Beer-sheba in the south, with significant conquered territories in Syria and Transjordan. But this united monarchy—a real united monarchy—was ruled by the Omrides, not the Davidides, and its capital was Samaria, not Jerusalem.[4]
—Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon. In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition.
Others such as David Ussishkin argue that those who follow the biblical depiction of a united monarchy do so on the basis of limited evidence while hoping to uncover real archaeological proof in the future.[82] Gunnar Lehmann suggests that there is still a possibility that David and Solomon were able to become local chieftains of some importance and claims that Jerusalem at the time was at best a small town in a sparsely populated area in which alliances of tribal kinship groups formed the basis of society. He goes on further to claim that it was at best a small regional centre, one of three to four in the territory of Judah and neither David nor Solomon had the manpower or the requisite social/political/administrative structure to rule the kind of empire described in the Bible.[83]
These views are strongly criticized by William G. Dever,[84] Helga Weippert, Amihai Mazar and Amnon Ben-Tor.
André Lemaire states in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple[85] that the principal points of the biblical tradition with Solomon as generally trustworthy, as does Kenneth Kitchen, who argue that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state.
Recently Finkelstein has joined with the more conservative Amihai Mazar, to explore the areas of agreement and disagreement and there are signs the intensity of the debate between the so-called minimalist and maximalist scholars is diminishing.[72] This view is also taken by Richard S. Hess,[86] which shows there is in fact a plurality of views between maximalists and minimalists. Jack Cargill[87] has shown that popular textbooks not only fail to give readers the up to date archaeological evidence, but that they also fail to correctly represent the diversity of views present on the subject. And Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle provide an overview of the respective evolving approaches and attendant controversies, especially during the period from the mid-1980s through 2011, in their book Biblical History and Israel's Past.
See also[edit]
Abraham#Historicity and origins
Authorship of the Bible
Biblical archaeology school
Biblical criticism
Biblical inerrancy
Biblical literalism
Book of Daniel#Composition
Book of Esther#Historicity
Book of Joshua#Genre (historicity)
Rudolf Bultmann
Census of Quirinius
Chronology of Jesus
Crucifixion darkness
Dating the Bible
David#Historicity
Development of the New Testament canon
Documentary hypothesis
The Exodus#Historicity
Ezra#Academic view
Flood geology
Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles
Historicity of Jesus
Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy)#History
List of artifacts in biblical archaeology
Massacre of the Innocents#Historicity
Moses#Historicity
Sanhedrin trial of Jesus
Science and the Bible
Theudas
Notes[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Thompson 2014, p. 164.
2.Jump up ^ Peter Enns, 3 Things I Would Like to See Evangelical Leaders Stop Saying about Biblical Scholarship, January 10, 2013. Quote: "Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel’s origins: the period of slavery in Egypt, the mass departure of Israelite slaves from Egypt, and the violent conquest of the land of Canaan by the Israelites. The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it."
3.^ Jump up to: a b Philip Davies "Beyond Labels: What Comes Next?"
4.^ Jump up to: a b Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2006). "3. Murder, Lust, and Betrayal". David and Solomon. In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition. New York: Free Press. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-7432-4363-6. Retrieved December 24, 2010.
5.Jump up ^ "The mainstream view of critical biblical scholarship accepts that Genesis-Joshua (perhaps Judges) is substantially devoid of reliable history and that it was in the Persian period that the bulk of Hebrew Bible literature was either composed or achieved its canonical shape." —Philip Davies, Minimalism, "Ancient Israel," and Anti-Semitism
6.Jump up ^ "He cites the fact—now accepted by most archaeologists—that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century b.c. had ceased to exist by that time. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, and Ai was abandoned before 2000 b.c. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in 1500 b.c. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging." —Jennifer Wallace, „Shifting Ground in the Holy Land”, Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006
7.Jump up ^ "So although much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another." —Jonathan Michael Golden, Ancient Canaan and Israel: new perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 275
8.Jump up ^ Lester L. Grabbe, Some Recent Issues in the Study of the History of Israel, Proceedings of the British Academy, October 2007
9.Jump up ^ Komoszewski, J. Ed; Wallace, Daniel J. (2006). Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don't Tell You. Grand Rapids, Mich: Kregel Publications. p. 70. ISBN 0-8254-2982-X.
10.Jump up ^ Aland, Barbara; Aland, Kurt (1995). The text of the New Testament: an introduction to the critical editions and to the theory and practice of modern textual criticism. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. p. 29. ISBN 0-8028-4098-1.
11.Jump up ^ Ferguson, Everett (2002). "Factors leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon". In Sanders, James; McDonald, Lee Martin. The Canon Debate. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers. p. 301. ISBN 1-56563-517-5.
12.^ Jump up to: a b Lindberg, Carter (2006). A Brief History of Christianity. Blackwell Publishing. p. 15. ISBN 1-4051-1078-3.
13.Jump up ^ Brakke, David (1994). "Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty Ninth Festal Letter". Harvard Theological Review 87: 395–419.
14.Jump up ^ Bruce, F. F. (1988). The canon of scripture. Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press. p. 225. ISBN 0-8308-1258-X.
15.Jump up ^ Ehrman, Bart (2011). "Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are", Harper One, ISBN 0062012614
16.^ Jump up to: a b Mack, Burton (1996), "Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth", Harper One, ISBN 0060655186
17.Jump up ^ The most recent and most complete anthology of ancient Near Eastern texts, all translated into English, is The Context of Scripture (3 vols.; ed. William W. Hallo. assoc. ed. K. Lawson Younger, Jr.; Leiden: Brill, 1997-2002). Its worthy predecessor, which is still useful but lacks many texts discovered since the mid-20th century, is Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ed. James B. Pritchard; 3rd ed. with supplement; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969). The two preeminent anthologies of inscriptions of ancient Israel and its immediate neighbors such as Aram (ancient Syria), Ammon, Edom, Moab, Phoenicia, and Philistia (not Egypt or Mesopotamia) are: 1) Shmuel Ahituv, ed., Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008) and 2) Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1997). This last book has been criticized for mixing seals and seal impressions of known authenticity with unreliable seals and seal impressions of unknown origin, which could be forgeries. In general, if a known place of excavation by an archaeological team is mentioned, the discoveries should be considered reliable; otherwise not.
18.Jump up ^ The most extensive summary, site by site, is The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols. plus supplementary vol. 5; ed. Ephraim Stern; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993-2008). A two-volume series which gives period-by-period coverage of archaeological discoveries and their significance is 1) Amihay Mazar, Archaeological of the Land of the Bible: 10,000-586 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 1990) and 2) Ephraim Stern, Archaeological of the Land of the Bible, Volume II: the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods, 732-332 B.C.E. (New York: Doubleday, 2001)
19.Jump up ^ In historical geography, the preeminent book in English is Anson F. Rainey and R. Steven Notley, The Sacred Bridge: Carta's Atlas of the Biblical World (Jerusalem: Carta, 2006).
20.Jump up ^ McNutt, Paula M. (1999). Reconstructing the society of ancient Israel. London: SPCK. ISBN 0-281-05259-X.
21.Jump up ^ Albright, William Foxwell (1985). Archaeology of Palestine. Peter Smith Pub Inc. p. 128. ISBN 0-8446-0003-2. "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history."
22.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (2008), "Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel" (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
23.Jump up ^ Henry, Carl Ferdinand Howard (1999) [1979]. "The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy". God, Revelation and Authority 4. Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books. pp. 211–219. ISBN 1-58134-056-7.
24.Jump up ^ Thompson, Thomas (2002) [1974]. The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International. ISBN 1-56338-389-6.
25.Jump up ^ Young, Davis A (March 1988). "The contemporary relevance of Augustine's view of Creation". Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 40 (1): 42–45. "But someone may ask: 'Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, who stretches out heaven like a skin?' Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false.... But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions"
26.Jump up ^ Klein-Braslavy, Sara (1986). "The Creation of the world and Maimonides' interpretation of Gen. i–v". In Pines, S.; Yovel, Y. Maimonides and Philosophy (International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées). Berlin: Springer. pp. 65–78. ISBN 90-247-3439-8.
27.Jump up ^ Physics I, 7
28.Jump up ^ Tiziano Dorandi, Chapter 2: Chronology, in Algra et al. (1999) The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, page 50. Cambridge
29.Jump up ^ Lang, Helen, "Introduction", p.2 in Proclus (2001). On the Eternity of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22554-6.
30.Jump up ^ Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1996) [1951]. Genesis and geology: a study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-34481-2.
31.Jump up ^ Quoted in Gillispie, Charles Coulston (1996) [1951]. Genesis and geology: a study in the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 142–143. ISBN 0-674-34481-2.
32.^ Jump up to: a b Wenham, Gordon J. (2003). "Genesis 1–11". Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-2551-7.
33.Jump up ^ Hobbes, Thomas (1651). "Chapter XXXIII. Of the number, antiquity, scope, authority and interpreters of the books of Holy Scripture". Leviathan. Green Dragon in St. Paul's Churchyard: Andrew Crooke.
34.Jump up ^ Spinoza, Baruch (1670). "Chapter VIII. Of the authorship of the Pentateuch and the other historical books of the Old Testament". A Theologico-Political Treatise (Part II).
35.Jump up ^ Simon, Richard (1682). A critical history of the Old Testament (PDF). London: Walter Davis. p. 21.
36.Jump up ^ Wellhausen, Julius (1885). Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.
37.Jump up ^ Gunkel, Hermann (1997) [1901]. Biddle, Mark E. tr, ed. Genesis. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press. p. lxviii. ISBN 0-86554-517-0.
38.Jump up ^ "[F]or not only has "archaeology" not proven a single event of the patriarchal tradition to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely ... it must be concluded that any such historicity as is commonly spoken of in both scholarly and popular works about the patriarchs of Genesis is hardly possible and totally improbable." Thompson, op cit, p. 328
39.Jump up ^ Mazar, Amihay (1992). Archaeology of the land of the Bible, 10,000-586 BCE. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42590-2.
40.Jump up ^ Dever, William (March 1993). "What Remains of the House that Albright Built?". The Biblical Archaeologist (The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 56, No. 1) 56 (1): 25–35. doi:10.2307/3210358. JSTOR 3210358.
41.^ Jump up to: a b Thomas A. Holland (1997). "Jericho". In Eric M. Meyers. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. Oxford University Press. pp. 220–224.
42.Jump up ^ Kathleen M. Kenyon (1957). Digging up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations, 1952-1956. New York: Praeger. p. 229.
43.Jump up ^ Piotr Bienkowski (1986). Jericho in the Late Bronze Age. Warminster. pp. 120–125.
44.Jump up ^ Schniedewind WM (1996). "Tel Dan Stela: New Light on Aramaic and Jehu's Revolt". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 302: 75–90. doi:10.2307/1357129. JSTOR 1357129.
45.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (2002), What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 080282126X
46.Jump up ^ LeMaire, André. "House of David Restored in Moabite Inscription", Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1994.
47.Jump up ^ Redford, Donald B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in ancient times. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press. p. 305. ISBN 0-691-00086-7.
48.Jump up ^ Crossan, J. D. "The Historical Jesus: A Mediterranean Jewish Peasant," HarperOne, 1993, ISBN 0060616296
49.Jump up ^ James D. G. Dunn, "Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Vol. 1, Eerdmans, 2003"
50.Jump up ^ John P. Meier, "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols., the most recent volume from Yale University Press, 2001"
51.Jump up ^ Sanders, E.P. "The Historical Figure of Jesus," Penguin, 1996, ISBN 0141928220
52.Jump up ^ Wright, N.T. "Jesus and the Victory of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God", Vol. 2, Augsburg Fortress Press, 1997, ISBN 0800626826
53.Jump up ^ John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew Volume I, Doubleday, 1991.
54.Jump up ^ The Dead Sea scrolls and Christian origins, Joseph Fitzmyer, pp. 28ff
55.Jump up ^ Bernstein, Richard (April 1, 1998). "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Looking for Jesus and Jews in the Dead Sea Scrolls". The New York Times. Retrieved May 25, 2010.
56.Jump up ^ Shanks, Hershel "Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Reader From the Biblical Archaeology Review", archive.org
57.Jump up ^ Bauckham, Richard "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0802831621
58.Jump up ^ Byrskog, Samuel "Story as History, History as Story," Mohr Siebeck, 2000, ISBN 3161473051
59.Jump up ^ Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Bart D. Ehrman, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, March 28, 2006
60.Jump up ^ Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew, Vol. II, Doubleday, 1994, ISBN 0300140339
61.Jump up ^ Analecta Romana Instituti Danici, Danske selskab, Copenhagen, Denmark, 1998.
62.Jump up ^ Nineham, Dennis, Saint Mark, Westminster Press, 1978, ISBN 0664213448, p 193
63.Jump up ^ Bart Ehrman, The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, p. 74 ISBN 0195154622
64.Jump up ^ McDonald, Lee Martin and Porter, Stanley. Early Christianity and its Sacred Literature, Hendrickson Publishers, 2000, p. 286 ISBN 1565632664
65.Jump up ^ Strobel, Lee. ”The Case for Christ”. 1998. Chapter one, an interview with Blomberg, ISBN 0310209307
66.^ Jump up to: a b Text-critical methodology and the pre-Caesarean text: Codex W in the Gospel, Larry W. Hurtado, p. 25
67.Jump up ^ "biblical literature." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 02 Nov. 2010 .
68.Jump up ^ EBIONISM; EBIONITES in the Bible Encyclopedia - ISBE (Bible History Online). Bible-history.com. Retrieved on 2012-09-11.
69.Jump up ^ Kitchen, K. A. (2003). On the reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. ISBN 0-8028-4960-1.
70.Jump up ^ https://www.jashow.org/wiki/index.php/Exploding_the_J.E.D.P._Theory_-_The_Documentary_Hypothesis
71.Jump up ^ Spong, John Shelby (1992) "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism" (Harper)
72.^ Jump up to: a b Finkelstein, Israel; Mazar, Amihai and Schmidt, Brian (2007). The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel. Society of Biblical Lit. ISBN 978-1-58983-277-0.
73.Jump up ^ George Athas, 'Minimalism': The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies, edited transcript of lecture, 3rd ed., University of Sydney, April 29, 1999.
74.Jump up ^ Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2010). "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008, Part 1: Introducing a Bibliographic Essay in Five Parts". Journal of Religious and Theological Information 9 (3–4): 76. doi:10.1080/10477845.2010.526920.
75.Jump up ^ Brettler, Marc Z. (2003). "The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues". AJS Review 27: 1–21. doi:10.1017/S0364009403000011. JSTOR 4131767. Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2012). "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008 and Beyond, Part 2.1: The Literature of Perspective, Critique, and Methodology, First Half". Journal of Religious and Theological Information 11 (3–4): 101–137, in which the relevant section is "Toward a Balanced View of Minimalism: A Summary of Published Critiques"; the Official version of record is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10477845.2012.673111?journalCode=wrti20#.UjVAiNI6Pgc . Author's Accepted Draft if freely available at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_fsdocs/52/.
76.Jump up ^ "Maximalists and Minimalists", Livius.org.
77.Jump up ^ Jack Cargill Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks. Quoting Amy Dockster Marcus about the minimalists: "The bottom line is that when it comes to the big picture, they are often right. Many of their ideas, once considered far-fetched, are now solidly mainstream concepts."
78.Jump up ^ American Journal of Theology & Philosophy Vol. 14, No.1 January, 1993
79.Jump up ^ David and Solomon Beschrijving. Bol.com
80.Jump up ^ Richard N. Ostling Was King David legend or fiction? The Associated Press
81.Jump up ^ David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition pp20
82.Jump up ^ Ussishkin, David, "Solomon's Jerusalem: The Texts and the Facts on the Ground" in Vaughn Andrew G. and Killebrew, Ann E. eds. (2003), "Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period" (SBL Symposium Series 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature)
83.Jump up ^ Lehrmann, Gunnar, "The United Monarchy in the Countryside: Jerusalem, Judah, and the Shephelah during the Tenth Century BCE", in Vaughn Andrew G. and Killebrew, Ann E. eds. (2003), "Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period" (SBL Symposium Series 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature)
84.Jump up ^ Dever 2001, p. 160
85.Jump up ^ Shanks, Hershel (1999). Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, Pearson, p. 113 ISBN 0130853631
86.Jump up ^ Hess, Richard S. (2007) "Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey", Baker Academic, ISBN 0801027179
87.Jump up ^ "Jack Cargill - Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks - The History Teacher, 34.3". Retrieved 5 October 2014.
References[edit]
Banks, Diane (2006). Writing The History Of Israel. Continuum International Publishing Group.
Brettler, Mark Zvi (2005). How to Read the Bible. Jewish Publication Society.
Davies, Philip R. (1995). In Search of 'Ancient Israel'. Continuum International Publishing Group.
Davies, Philip R. (n.d.). Minimalism, 'Ancient Israel', and Anti-Semitism. The Bible and Interpretation.
Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1998.
Davies, Philip R. (2008). Memories of Ancient Israel. Westminster John Knox Press.
Dever, William G. (2012). The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel. Eerdmans.
Finkelstein, Israel; Mazar, Amihay; Schmidt, Brian B. (2007). The Quest for the Historical Israel. Society of Biblical Literature.
Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 1988
Garbini, Giovanni, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, 1988 (trans from Italian).
Halpern, Baruch, "Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel", Bible Review, December 1995, p26 - 35, 47.
Lemche, Niels Peter, Early Israel, 1985.
Lemche, Niels Peter (1998). The Israelites in History and Tradition. Westminster John Knox Press.
Moore, Megan Bishop; Kelle, Brad E. (2011). Biblical History and Israel's Past. Eerdmans.
Provan, Iain W., "Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel", Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p585-606. (a critique of the Copenhagen School of Thought - with responses by Davies (above) and Thompson (below))
Thompson, Thomas L. (1992). Early History of the Israelite People. Brill.
Thompson, Thomas L., "A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?" Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p683-698. (a response to the article by Iain W. Provan - above)
Thompson, Thomas L. (1999). The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel. Basic Book.
Thompson, Thomas L. (n.d.). A view from Copenhagen: Israel and the History of Palestine. The Bible and Interpretation.
Van Seters, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.
Whitelam, Keith W. (1996). The Invention of Ancient Israel. Routledge.
Barenboim, Peter. "Biblical Roots of Separation of Powers", Moscow : Letny Sad, 2005, ISBN 5-94381-123-0, http://lccn.loc.gov/2006400578
Biran, Avraham. "'David' Found at Dan." Biblical Archaeology Review 20:2 (1994): 26–39.
Brettler, Marc Z., “The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 1–21.
Coogan, Michael D. "Canaanites: Who Were They and Where Did They Live?" Bible Review 9:3 (1993): 44ff.
Davies, Philip R. 1992, 2nd edition 1995, reprinted 2004.In Search of 'Ancient Israel' . Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
Dawood, N.J. 1978. Tales from the Arabian Nights, Doubleday, A delightful children's version translated from the original Arabic.
Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2001
Finkelstein, Israel and Silberman, Neil A. 2001 The Bible Unearthed. New York: Simon and Schuster
Garbini, Giovanni. 1988. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. Translated by John Bowden from the original Italian edition. New York: Crossroad.
Harpur, Tom. 2004. "The Pagan Christ. Recovering the Lost Light" Thomas Allen Publishers, Toronto.
Kitchen, Kenneth A. 2003 On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
Koehler; Dr. Ralph D. Christian Bible History. ISBN 1-4208-1242-4.
Larsson, G. 2007. "The Chronological System of the Old Testament". Peter Lang GmbH.
Lemche, Niels P. 1998. The Israelites in History and Tradition London : SPCK ; Louisville, Ky. : Westminster John Knox Press.
Mazar, Amihai. 1992. Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E. New York: Doubleday.
Miller, J. Maxwell, and John Haralson Hayes, "A history of ancient Israel and Judah" (Westminster John Knox Press, 1986)
Moore, Megan Bishop and Brad E. Kelle, Biblical History and Israel's Past, 2011.
Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975.
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. 2010. "Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008, Part 1: Introducing a Bibliographic Essay in Five Parts,” Journal of Religious and Theological Information 9/3–4: 71-83.
Na'aman, Nadav. 1996 ."The Contribution of the Amarna Letters to the Debate on Jerusalem's Political Position in the Tenth Century B.C.E." BASOR. 304: 17–27.
Na'aman, Nadav. 1997 "Cow Town or Royal Capital: Evidence for Iron Age Jerusalem." Biblical Archaeology Review. 23, no. 4: 43–47, 67.
Noth, Martin, "Uberlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien", 1943; English translation as "The Deuteronomistic History", Sheffield, 1981, and "The Chronicler's History", Sheffield, 1987.
Shanks, Hershel. 1995. Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography. New York: Random House.
Shanks, Hershel. 1997 "Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers." Biblical Archaeology Review. 23, no. 4: 26–42, 66.
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God, Eerdmans, 2002 (1st edition 1990)
Steiner, Margareet and Jane Cahill. "David's Jerusalem: Fiction or Reality?" Biblical Archaeology Review 24:4 (1998): 25–33, 62–63; 34–41, 63. This article presents a debate between a Biblical minimalist and a Biblical maximalist.
Thompson, Thomas L. (2014). Biblical Narrative and Palestine's History: Changing Perspectives 2. Routledge.
________. The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past. London.
________. 1992. The Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources. Leiden and New York: Brill.
Yamauchi, Edwin, The Stones and the Scriptures. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1972.
External links[edit]
'Minimalism' – The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies
Why I Believe The New Testament Is Historically Reliable by Gary Habermas
Biblical Archaeology Society: examines discoveries and controversies about historical veracity of the Bible
Livius.org: Maximalism and minimalism
Notes on minimalism by George Athas



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Biblical archaeology

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 It has been suggested that Biblical archaeology school be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2014.
For the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see Historicity of the Bible and List of artifacts in biblical archaeology.
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Biblical archaeology involves the recovery and scientific investigation of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the periods and descriptions in the Bible, be they from the Old Testament (Tanakh) or from the New Testament, as well as the history and cosmogony of the Judeo-Christian religions. The principal location of interest for this branch of the archaeological sciences is what is known in the relevant religions as the Holy Land, which from a western perspective is also called the Middle East. Even though the main reference points of biblical archaeology are mainly theological and religious, the study of these references is a methodical science. The scientific techniques used are the same as those used in general archaeology, such as excavation and radiocarbon dating among others. In contrast, the archaeology of the ancient Middle East simply deals with the Ancient Near East, or Middle East, without giving any especial consideration to whether its discoveries have any relationship with the Bible.
Biblical archaeology is polemical as there are a number of points of view regarding the nature of its purpose and aims, and what these should be. A number of points of view from important archaeologists are included in the section on Expert Commentaries.



Contents  [hide]
1 Archaeology
2 Location
3 Dates
4 Periods in biblical archaeology
5 History 5.1 Stages in the development of biblical archaeology
6 Schools of thought in biblical archaeology
7 Brief summary of important archaeological sites and findings 7.1 Selected discoveries
7.2 Objects with unknown or disproved biblical origins
8 Biblical archaeology and the Catholic Church
9 Expert commentaries
10 Excavations and surveys
11 See also
12 References
13 Further reading
14 External links

Archaeology[edit]



 Mosaic from a Byzantine Church dating from the 5th century. Mosaics are one of the main elements studied by biblical archaeology.
Main article: Archaeology
See also: Archaeological theory
In order to understand the significance of biblical archaeology it is first necessary to understand two basic concepts: archaeology as a scientific framework and the Bible as an object for research. Archaeology is a science, not in the Aristotelian sense of cognitio certa per causas but in the modern sense of systematic knowledge.[1] Vicente Vilar expands on this point by stating that archaeology is both art and science: as an art it searches for the material remains of ancient civilizations and tries to reconstruct, as far as possible, the environment and the organizations of one or many historical epochs;[1] as a relatively recent modern science, and as Benesch has said, it is a science that is barely 200 years old but that has, however, completely changed our ideas about the past.[2]
It might be thought that archaeology would have to disregard the information contained within religions and many philosophical systems. However, apart from the great deal of factual material that they provide such as places of worship, holy objects and other scientifically observable things, there are other aspects that are equally important for scientific archaeological investigation such as religious texts, rites, customs and traditions. Myths are commonly used by archaeologists and historians as clues to events or places that have become hidden in the background, a process that Rudolf Bultmann calls "demythification" – the most notable example being Homer’s poems and the mythical city of Troy. This contemporary perception of the myth, mainly developed by Bultmann, has encouraged scientists such as archaeologists to examine the areas indicated by the biblical tales.[3][4]



 The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, holds valuable resources for both scientific and biblical research and exploration.
Biblical archaeology is the discipline occupied with the scientific investigation and recovery of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the times and descriptions of the Bible. A broad swathe of time between 2000 BC and 100 AD.[5] Other authors prefer to talk about the "archaeology of Palestine" and to define the relevant territories as those to the east and west of the River Jordan. This indicates that "biblical archaeology" or that of Palestine is circumscribed by the territories that were the backdrop to the biblical stories.
The raison d’etre of biblical archaeology derives from the fact that is allows an understanding of the peoples that inhabited the Holy Land. It allows an understanding of their history, culture, identity and movements. This makes it possible to know the exact location of the stories and compare them with fact. Regarding this, Kaswalder has noted that previously the American and Israeli school of biblical archaeology saw archaeology as proof of the veracity of the biblical stories,[6] as can be seen in the work of authors of the stature of William F. Albright, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin However, today archaeologist are not trying to prove that the stories in the Bible are true, they are trying to discover the historical world upon which the books of the bible drew and from which they derive their meaning. Using this approach, introduced by P. Kaswalder,[7] it is possible to shed light on the following, according to the classification presented by the Catalan papyrologist Joan Maria Vernet:[8]
Biblical archaeology can shed light on the knowledge that we have regarding certain historical data described in the biblical stories such as governments, people, battles and cities.
It allows us to provide some specific details reflected in the books of the bible for example Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Pool of Bethesda, Calvary and others that effectively relate to those described in the biblical stories.
Biblical archaeology lends fundamental support to exegetical studies.
Location[edit]



 The territory known as the Middle East was without doubt the location of the events that inspired the writing of the biblical texts.
The geographical area that circumscribes the area of interest for biblical archaeology is obviously the biblical lands, also known as the "Holy Land". There are many points of view regarding the exact extent of this area, however, biblical archaeology specifically concentrates on the Land of Israel, Palestine and Jordan, the area called the southern Levant. Many researchers are also interested in other areas that are mentioned in the biblical tales and which have a great importance for their connecting thread: Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia which are of interest to scientists interested in the Tanakh. Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome have greater connections with the stories from the New Testament.
Dates[edit]
In the same way that the spatial criteria vary according to the various points of view of the different researchers, there are also a variety of dates that are of interest. Kaswalder comments that:
The period is understood to run from the 9th millennium BC, which corresponds to the earliest dated Neolithic remains of Jericho, to 700 AD, which marks the first invasions by Muslim armies. This time period is considered by some authorities to be too wide and controversial.
A second narrower period has been described that is more closely defined by the biblical stories: from the middle Bronze Age, that is from 2000 BC, which according to Biblical chronology corresponds with the time of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) until the end of the 1st century AD, with the death of the last apostle John the Evangelist and the end of the so-called Apostolic Church. The term Apostolic Church is taken to mean the historical period when Jesus's apostles were alive, including Paul of Tarsus. This period ends with the death of John the Evangelist, the exact date of his death is not known, but it is presumed to be around 110 AD. However, some scholars consider that the authors of the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation may have been John’s disciples.
Periods in biblical archaeology[edit]
The following list of periods for Syro-Palestinian archaeology is based on the table provided in Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 33-34[9] up to the end of the Iron Age, and from the definitions provided by the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, p. 55, for later periods.[10]
Neolithic period: ca. 8500–4300 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) = ca. 8500–6000 Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) = ca. 8500–7500
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) = 7500–6000
Pottery Neolithic: 6,000–4,300 BC Pottery Neolithic A (PNA) = 6000–5000
Pottery Neolithic B (PNB) = 5000–4300

Chalcolithic period: 4300–3300 BC
Bronze age: 3300-1200 BC Early Bronze (EB) Age = 3300-2300 BC Early Bronze I (EB I) = 3300–3050
Early Bronze II–Early Bronze III (EB II–EB III) = 3050–2300/2000
Middle Bronze (MB) Age = 2300/2000–1550 BC Early Bronze IV (EB IV)/Middle Bronze I (MB I) 2300–2000
Middle Bronze IIA (also called MB II) = 2000-1800/1750
Middle Bronze IIB-C III (also called MBII and III) = 1800/1750–1550
Late Bronze (LB) Age = 1550–1200 BC Late Bronze I (LB I) = 1550–1400
Late Bronze IIA–B (LB IIA–B) = 1400–1200

Iron Age: 1200-586 BC Iron IA = 1200–1150
Iron IB = 1150–1000
Iron IIA = 1000-925
Iron IIB = 925-720
Iron IIC = 720-586
Babylonian period: 586-539 BC
Persian period: 539-332 BC
Hellenistic period = 332-63 BC Early Hellenistic = 332-198
Late Hellenistic = 198-63
Roman period: 63 BC-324 AD
History[edit]
The study of biblical archaeology started at the same time as general archaeology and obviously its development relates to the discovery of highly important ancient artifacts.
Stages in the development of biblical archaeology[edit]
The development of biblical archaeology has been marked by different periods:
Ancient: Although archaeology can be considered to be a modern science it should be recognized that many historical authors have left valuable documents that even today are essential reading for students of biblical archaeology. The most important historical sources include Josephus, Origen, Eusebius and the Diary of Egeria. Egeria or Aetheria, was a Spanish woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 381 and 384. Her diary of the journey, which was a surprisingly adventurous journey for a woman of that time, is a source of study and research even today.
Before the British Mandate in Palestine: The first archaeological explorations started in the 19th century initially by Europeans. There were many renowned archaeologists working at this time but one of the best known was Edward Robinson who discovered a number of ancient cities. The Palestine Exploration Fund was created in 1865 with Queen Victoria as its patron. Large investigations were carried out around the Temple in Jerusalem in 1867 by Charles Warren and Charles William Wilson,[11] for whom Jerusalem’s "Wilson’s Arch" is named. The American Palestine Exploration Society was founded in 1870. In the same year a young French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, arrived in the Holy Land in order to study two notable inscriptions: the Mesha Stele in Jordan and inscriptions in the Temple of Jerusalem. Another personality entered the scene in 1890, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who has become known as the "father of Palestine archaeology". In Tell-el-Hesi, Petrie laid down the basis for methodical exploration by giving a great importance to the analysis of ceramics as archaeological markers. In effect, the recovered objects or fragments serve to fix the chronology with a degree of precision, as pottery was made in different ways and with specific characteristics during each epoch throughout history. In 1889 the Dominican Order opened the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, which would become world-renowned in its field. Such authorities as M-J. Lagrange and L. H. Vincent stand out among the early archaeologists at the school. In 1898, the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) was founded in Berlin, a number of its excavations were subsequently funded by Emperor William II of Germany. Many other similar organizations were founded at this time with the objective of furthering this nascent discipline, although the investigations of this epoch had the sole objective of proving the veracity of the biblical stories.
During the British Mandate in Palestine (1922-1948): The investigation and exploration of the Holy Land increased considerably during this time and was dominated by the genius of William Foxwell Albright, C. S. Fischer, the Jesuits, the Dominicans and many others. This era of great advances and activity closed with a flourish: the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in 1947 and its subsequent excavation, which would in large part be directed by the Frenchman Roland de Vaux.
After the British Mandate: 1948 marked the start of a new social and political era for the Holy Land with the foundation of the State of Israel and the entrance on the scene of the Israeli archaeologists. Initially their excavations were limited to the territory of the state, but after the Six-Day War they extended into the occupied territories of the West Bank. An important figure in the archaeology of this period was Kathleen Kenyon, who directed the excavations of Jericho and the Ophel of Jerusalem. Crystal Bennett led the excavations at Petra and Amman’s citadel, Jabal al-Qal'a. The archaeological museums of the Franciscans and the Dominicans in Jerusalem are particularly notable.
Schools of thought in biblical archaeology[edit]
Main article: Biblical archaeology school
Biblical archaeology is the subject of permanent debate. One of the sources of greatest dispute is the period when kings ruled Israel and more generally the historicity of the Bible. It is possible to define two loose schools of thought regarding these areas: biblical minimalism and maximalism, depending on whether the bible is considered to be a non-historical, religious document or not. The two schools are not separate units but form a spectrum, making it difficult to define different camps and limits. However, it is possible to define points of difference, although these differences seem to be decreasing over time.
Brief summary of important archaeological sites and findings[edit]
Main article: List of artifacts significant to the Bible



 The Caves at Qumran where biblical archaeology’s most important findings of all time were found, in the valley of the Dead Sea.
A summary of the excavations carried out in this area is included at Table I at the end of this article.
Archaeology in the Holy Lands has made a number of important findings. Perhaps the most important of these include:
Qumran: For many, this is the site of perhaps one of the most important finds of all time. It is composed of the Kiryit or ruins of a monastery pertaining to the Essenes, caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the monk’s cemetery and many other elements that have changed the history of biblical studies.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouins in the caves of Kiryit Qumran in 1947 and subsequent excavations were initially led by Roland de Vaux. The Scrolls comprise some 800 documents in tens of thousands of fragments. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, they contain biblical and apocryphal works, prayers and legal texts and sectarian documents. Another piece of papyrus that has proved polemical is the so-called 7Q5, which is a small piece of papyrus whose origin is difficult to identify. The Spanish papyrologist Josep O’Callaghan Martínez, backed by the German biblical exegesist Carsten Peter Thiede, has concluded that it was a portion of a New Testament text, although this opinion remains controversial.
The Walls of Jericho: A stratum of burnt matter relating to the City-IV destruction has been dated to 1617–1530 BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. It contains remains of The Walls of Jericho, which were destroyed either by an earthquake or a siege. Opinions are divided as to whether this destruction corresponds to that described in the Bible. According to the biblical account the Israelites destroyed the city after its walls fell down in around 1407 BC. Excavations led by John Garstang in 1930 dated the destruction of Jericho to 1400 BC, which would confirm the biblical story. However, the site was re-excavated by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s and the destruction of the walls was redated to around 1550 BC. Bryant G. Wood later reviewed Kenyon’s field notes and made a number of criticisms of her work. Wood found a number of ambiguities in the investigations and he also pointed to results of carbon 14 tests on a burnt stratum that dated the layer to 1410 BC, with a margin of error of 40 years. Wood’s conclusions therefore confirmed Garstang’s original estimates. However, the carbon dating result was a consequence of an incorrect calibration. In 1995 Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used a high precision radiocarbon dating test on 18 samples from Jericho, including six samples of carbonized cereal from the burnt stratum. The results of these tests gave the age of the strata as 1562 BC, with a margin of error of 38 years. These results therefore confirm Kenyon's estimate and cast doubt on the biblical story.[12][13][14]



 First depiction of Jehu on the Black Obelisk he is seen prostrating at the feet of King Shalmaneser III.
Selected discoveries[edit]



 A reconstruction of the Jerusalem of the 1st century AD, made possible thanks to the findings of Biblical Archaeology.
Detailed lists of objects can be found at the following pages:
List of artifacts significant to the Bible
List of burial places of biblical figures
Manuscripts of the bible: List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, List of New Testament papyri and List of New Testament uncials
List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources
Objects with unknown or disproved biblical origins[edit]
Biblical archaeology has also been the target of several celebrated forgeries, which have been perpetrated for a variety of reasons. One of the most celebrated is that of the James Ossuary, when information came to light in 2002 regarding the discovery of an ossuary, with an inscription that said "Jacob, son of Joseph and brother of Jesus". In reality the artifact had been discovered twenty years before, after which it had exchanged hands a number of times and the inscription had been added. This was discovered because it did not correspond to the pattern of the epoch from which it dated.[15]
The objects in the following list generally come from private collections and were often purchased in antique’s markets. Their authenticity is highly controversial and in some cases they have been proved to be fakes.
The Ark of the Covenant: There have been a number of claims regarding the Ark’s current location. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that it holds the Ark in Axum, Ethiopia. Local tradition claims that it was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Objects originating from the "antiques" dealer Oded Golan. As described above, the Israeli police accused Golan and his accomplices of falsifying the James Ossuary in 2004, they were also accused of falsifying a number of other objects: The Jehoash Inscription, which describes repairs to the temple in Jerusalem. It is suspected that the inscription has been falsified onto authentic ancient stones.
Various ostracas mentioning the temple or biblical names.
A stone candelabra with seven arms, decorated with a menorah from the temple.
A stone seal with gold borders that was attributed to King Manasseh of Judah.
A quartz plate with an inscription in the ancient Egyptian language stating that King Shishak had captured the ancient city of Megiddo.
An ivory pomegranate with the inscription "property of the priests of the Temple" carved on an authentic piece of antique ivory.
Numerous bullas, including some that mention biblical figures such as the scribe Baruch ben Neriah and the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Various groups have claimed to have found Noah’s Ark. Many scholars consider that these findings belong to pseudoarcheology. An Italian creationist group called The Narkas is just one of the many groups that claim to know the exact location of the Ark’s remains on the summit of Mount Ararat, on the border between Turkey and Armenia. Photos of the site can be seen at the Narkas website.[16]
In 2004 an expedition investigated a ridge 19 km from the summit of Mount Ararat, which is believed to be an alternative landing site for the Ark. Samples were submitted to the Geological and Nuclear Sciences Crown Research Institute in Wellington, New Zealand for testing. However, geologists at the government institute concluded that the samples were volcanic rock and not petrified wood.[17]
Shroud of Turin: Critics insist that the linen cloth contains a painting of Jesus made in the Middle Ages. Others maintain that the image was formed by an energetic process that darkened the fibres of the shroud at the moment of resurrection. Radiocarbon dating of some sample material taken from the shroud has been dated to the Middle Ages, but some researchers claim that the samples were taken from a patch that had been re-woven into the shroud's border area during that time period.[18][19]
Saint Veronica’s Veil: A cloth with the face of a man, said to be Jesus by believers, imprinted on it. Believers think that it was the cloth used by Veronica to clean Jesus's face on the Via Dolorosa on the way to Calvary. There are at least six images in existence that bear a marked resemblance to each other and which all claim to be the original Veil.

Biblical archaeology and the Catholic Church[edit]
The majority of excavations and investigations carried out in the area where the biblical narratives are set mainly have the objective of casting light on the historical, cultural, economic and religious background to the texts, therefore their main objective is not usually proving the veracity of these stories. However, there are some groups that take a more fundamentalist approach and which organize archaeological campaigns with the intention of finding proof that the Bible is factual and that its narratives should be understood as historical events. This is not the position of the official Catholic Church.[20][21]
Archaeological investigations carried out with scientific methods can offer useful data in fixing a chronology that helps to order the biblical stories. In certain cases these investigations can find the place where these narratives took place. In other cases they can confirm the veracity of the stories. However, in other matters they can question events that have been taken as historical fact, providing arguments that show that certain stories are not historical narratives but belong to a different narrative genre.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII recommended that interpretations of the Scripture take archaeological findings into account in order to discern the literary genres that the Scriptures used.[22]

[...] the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. [...]Let those who cultivate biblical studies turn their attention with all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect none of those discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating and writing.[...]
— Pius XII, Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, paragraphs 35 and 40
Since this time archaeology has been considered to provide valuable assistance and as an indispensable tool of the biblical sciences.
Expert commentaries[edit]

[...]"the purpose of biblical archaeology is the clarification and illumination of the biblical text and content through archaeological investigation of the biblical world."
— written by J.K. Eakins in a 1977 essay published in Benchmarks in Time and Culture and quoted in his essay "Archaeology and the Bible, An Introduction", [3].
Bryant G. Wood notes the consensus of archaeologists on the following point: "The purpose of biblical archaeology is to enhance our comprehension of the Bible, and so its greatest achievement, in my view, has been the extraordinary illumination of the . . . time of the Israelite monarchy".[23]
In a statement on biblical archaeology Robert I. Bradshaw has commented: "It is virtually universally agreed that the purpose of biblical archaeology is not to ‘prove’ the Bible. However ... in as much as archaeology sheds light on that history it is important to biblical studies."[24]
One of the world's leading biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever contributed to the article on "Archaeology" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary. In this article he reiterates his perceptions of the negative effects of the close relationship that has existed between Syro-Palestinian archaeology and biblical archaeology, which has caused the archaeologists working in this field, particularly the American archaeologists, to resist adoption of the new methods of "processual archaeology". In addition he considers that: "Underlying much scepticism in our own field [referring to the adaptation of the concepts and methods of a "new archaeology"], one suspects the assumption (although unexpressed or even unconscious) that ancient Palestine, especially Israel during the biblical period, was unique, in some "superhistorical" way that was not governed by the normal principles of cultural evolution".[25]
Dever found that Syro-Palestinian archaeology had been treated in American institutions as a sub discipline of bible studies. Where it was expected that American archaeologists would try to "provide valid historical evidence of episodes from the biblical tradition". According to Dever "the most naïve [idea regarding Syro-Palestinian archaeology] is that the reason and purpose of "biblical archaeology" (and, by extrapolation, of Syro-Palestinian archaeology) is simply elucidate facts regarding the Bible and the Holy Land".[26]
Dever has also written that:

"Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so."[27] From the beginnings of what we call biblical archaeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archaeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archaeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archaeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.[28]
Dever also wrote:

Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence....[29] I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information...[30]
Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the Haaretz newspaper:

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.[31][32]
Professor Finkelstein told the Jerusalem Post that Jewish archaeologists have found no historical or archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative on the Exodus, the Jews' wandering in Sinai or Joshua's conquest of Canaan. On the alleged Temple of Solomon, Finkelstein said that there is no archaeological evidence to prove it really existed.[33] Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist who has worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed with Israel Finkelstein.[33]
Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said:

“Really, it’s a myth,”... “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”[34]
Excavations and surveys[edit]
The following is a summary of important excavations and surveys:

Year
Site
Biblical name
Excavated by
Comment

‘rediscovered’ Petra on August 22, 1812. Al Khazneh Al Khazneh Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Al Khazneh ("The Treasury"; Arabic: الخزنة‎) is one of the most elaborate buildings in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.
1841 Survey N/a Edward Robinson Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine, the Sinai, Petrae and Adjacent Regions, based on his survey of the Near East conducted over several years, proposed biblical names for modern sites.
1871-77 Survey N/a Charles Warren The Survey of Western Palestine, published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, reflected Warren's detailed field surveys in Palestine and especially the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Major discoveries included the foundation stones of Herod's Temple, the first Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions (jar handles with LMLK seals), and water shafts under the City of David.
1890 Tell el-Hesi Eglon Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie The site was believed at the time to be the biblical Lachish, but is now commonly identified with Eglon. Petrie noticed strata exposed by waterflow adjacent to the site, and popularized details of pottery groups excavated therefrom. This marked the introduction of scientific stratigraphy to Palestinian archaeology.
1891-92 Tell el-Hesi Eglon Frederick J. Bliss N/a
1898–1900 Tell es-Safi Gath? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Az-Zakariyya Azekah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Tell ej-Judeideh Moresheth-Gath or Libnah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Tell Sandahannah Mareshah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1902–3, 1907–9 Gezer Gezer R.A.S. Macalister The Gezer calendar was discovered on the surface during this excavation.
1902–4 Taanach Taanach Ernst Sellin N/a
1903–5 Megiddo Megiddo Gottlieb Schumacher N/a
1905–7 Galilee Galilee Herman Kohl, Ernst Sellin, and Carl Watzinger A survey of ancient synagogues
1907–9 Shechem Shechem Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger N/a
1908, 1910–1 Samaria Samaria David G. Lyon, Clarence S. Fisher, and George A. Reisner N/a
1911–3 Beth Shemesh Beth Shemesh Duncan Mackenzie N/a
1921–3, 1925–8, 1930–3 Clarence S. Fisher, Alan Rowe, and Gerald M. Fitzgerald Beth Shean Beth Shean Clarence S. Fisher, Alan Rowe, and Gerald M. Fitzgerald N/a
1922–3 Tell el-Ful Gibeah? William F. Albright N/a
1925–39 Megiddo Megiddo Clarence S. Fisher, P.L.O. Guy, and Gordon Loud N/a
1926, 1928, 1930, 1932 Tell Beit Mirsim Eglon or Debir–Kirjath Sepher? William F. Albright N/a
1926–7, 1929, 1932, 1935 excavated Tell en-Nasbeh Mizpah in Benjamin William Frederic Badè N/a
1928–33 Beth Shemesh Beth Shemesh Elihu Grant N/a
1930–6 excavated Jericho Jericho John Garstang N/a
1931–3, 1935 excavated Samaria Samaria John W. Crowfoot N/a
1932–38 Lachish Lachish James L. Starkey The excavation was terminated when Starkey was killed by armed Arabs[35] near Hebron while on his way to the opening ceremonies of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem
1936–40 Beit She'arim Beit She'arim Benjamin Mazar N/a
1948–50, 1952–5 excavated Jaffa N/a Jacob Kaplan N/a
1954, 1959–62 excavated Ramat Rahel N/a Yohanan Aharoni N/a
1955–8, 1968 Hazor Hazor Yigael Yadin N/a
1956–7, 1959–60, 1962 excavated Gibeon Gibeon James B. Pritchard N/a
1961–7 excavated ) Jerusalem (City of David) N/a Kathleen Kenyon N/a
1962–7 Arad Arad Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran N/a
1962–3, 1965–72 Ashdod Ashdod Moshe Dothan N/a
1963–5 excavated Masada N/a Yigael Yadin N/a
1964–74 Gezer Gezer G. Ernest Wright, William G. Dever, and Joe D. Seger N/a
1968–78 Jerusalem (southwest corner of the Temple Mount) Temple Mount Benjamin Mazar N/a
1969–76 Beersheba Beersheba Yohanan Aharoni and Ze'ev Herzog N/a
1969–82 Jerusalem (Jewish Quarter) Jerusalem Nahman Avigad N/a
1973–94 Lachish Lachish David Ussishkin N/a
1975–82 Aroer Aroer Avraham Biran Aroer is an Israelite town in the Negev Desert, not to be confused with the Moabite Aroer located in Jordan
1977–9, 1981–9 Timnah Timnah Amihai Mazar and George L. Kelm N/a
1978–85 Jerusalem (City of David) Jerusalem Yigal Shiloh N/a
1979–80 Ketef Hinnom N/a Gabriel Barkay N/a
1966-1972 Et-Tell Ai Joseph A. Callaway
1981–2, 1984–8, 1990, 1992–6 Ekron Ekron Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin N/a
1989–96 Beit-Shean Beit-Shean Amihai Mazar N/a
1994–ongoing Megiddo Megiddo Israel Finkelstein and Eric H. Cline N/a
1996–2002, 2004–ongoing Tell es-Safi (identified as biblical Gath of the Philistines) Gath Aren Maeir N/a
1997– Tel Rehov  Amihai Mazar N/a
1999–2001, 2005 Tel Zayit Libnah Ron Tappy N/a
2005 Ramat Rahel N/a Oded Lipschits N/a
2005 Nahal Tut N/a Amir Gorzalczany and Gerald Finkielsztejn excavated N/a
2007 Khirbet Qeiyafa N/a Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor N/a

See also[edit]
Archaeology of Israel
Biblical Archaeology Review
The Bible's Buried Secrets
Biblical maximalism
Biblical minimalism
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Flood geology
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Khirbet el-Qom
List of Biblical figures identified in extra-Biblical sources
Ostracon
Parchment
Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
Syro-Palestinian archaeology
7Q5, a Dead Sea scroll fragment
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Vilar, Vicente. Archeologia della Palestina. Enciclopedia della Biblia I, 672.,(in Italian)
2.Jump up ^ Kurt Benesch: Past to discover cited by J.M. Vernet in his "Curso Básico de Arqueología Bíblica", Teologado Salesiano Internacional de Ratisbonne, Jerusalén, 2001 (in Italian).
3.Jump up ^ R. Bultmann, Nuovo Testamento e mitología, p. 203 (in Italian)
4.Jump up ^ Cf. L. Randellini, voce Demitizzazione, in ER, vol. 2, coll. 623-635; Id., Bultmann’s hermeneutics condemn K. Barth and the existentialist interpretation that he applies to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (K. Barth, L'Epistola ai Romani): cfr. R. Marlé, o.c., pp. 36-41; J.M. Robinson, La Nuova Ermeneutica, pp. 34-35. 41-47 (In Italian)
5.Jump up ^ Volkmar Fritz, Introduzione all'archeologia biblica (tr. en. Introduction to biblical archaeology), pp 13-19
6.Jump up ^ Pietro Kaswalder, "L`archeologia biblica e le origini di Israele" (tr. en. Biblical archaeology and the origins of Israel), in Rivista Biblica 41, pp. 171-188, 1993.
7.Jump up ^ El archaeologist Father Pietro Kaswalder, O.F.M. is professor of Old Testament exegesis and archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem.
8.Jump up ^ J.M. Vernet, "Basic Course in Biblical Archaeology ", International Silesian Theologate of Ratisbonne, Jerusalem, 2001 (in Italian), p. 5
9.Jump up ^ Cline, E.H. (2009). "3". Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (1 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-0-19-534263-5.
10.Jump up ^ Mills and Bullard, 1990, p. 55.
11.Jump up ^ Not to be confused with Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
12.Jump up ^ Bruins, Hendrik and van der Plicht, Johannes. "Tell-es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon results of short-lived cereal and multiyear charcoal samples from the end of the Middle Bronze Age." Radiocarbon vol.37, no.2, 1995, p. 213-220.
13.Jump up ^ Is Bryant Wood's chronology of Jericho valid?
14.Jump up ^ Ebon Musings: Let the Stones Speak
15.Jump up ^ Forgers "tried to rewrite biblical history", Conal Urquhart, The Guardian, Friday 31 December 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/31/religion.israel.
16.Jump up ^ Narkas website http://www.noahsark.it.
17.Jump up ^ NZ man’s hunt for Noah’s Ark hits a rocky patch, The New Zealand Herald, 10 November 2004 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3608608.
18.Jump up ^ http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/science-shines-new-light-on-shroud-of-turins-age/
19.Jump up ^ R.N Rogers, "Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin", Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, 2005, pp. 189–194, article; S. Benford, J. Marino, "Discrepancies in the radiocarbon dating area of the Turin shroud", Chemistry Today, vol 26 n 4 / July–August 2008, p. 4-12, article;Emmanuel Poulle, ″Les sources de l'histoire du linceul de Turin. Revue critique″, Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, 2009/3-4, Abstract; G. Fanti, F. Crosilla, M. Riani, A.C. Atkinson, "A Robust statistical analysis of the 1988 Turin Shroud radiocarbon analysis", Proceedings of the IWSAI, ENEA, 2010.
20.Jump up ^ Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible, by Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 5 October 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article2599023.ece
21.Jump up ^ The Gift of Scripture, Party Two, Section 14 The truth of Scripture, p17 Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales and Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, 2005, http://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Resources/Scripture/GoS.pdf
22.Jump up ^ Pius XII (30 September 1943). "Divino Afflante Spiritu Encyclical Of Pope Pius Xi On Promoting Biblical Studies". Retrieved 6 February 2013.
23.Jump up ^ Originally in Biblical Archaeology Review, May–June, 1995, p. 33 and quoted in web article Two Jigsaw Puzzles, Two Purposes, United Church of God Canada [1], viewed 6 February 2013.
24.Jump up ^ Archaeology & the Patriarchs, Robert I Bradshaw, 1992, web article, Biblical Studies.org.uk [2].
25.Jump up ^ The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Archaeology, W. Dever, p. 357
26.Jump up ^ The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Archaeology, W. Dever, p. 358
27.Jump up ^ Bible gets a reality check, MSNBC, Alan Boyle
28.Jump up ^ The Bible's Buried Secrets, PBS Nova, 2008
29.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (March–April 2006). "The Western Cultural Tradition Is at Risk". Biblical Archaeology Review 32 (2): 26 & 76.
30.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (January 2003). "Contra Davies". The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
31.Jump up ^ The Nature of Home: A Lexicon of Essays, Lisa Knopp, p. 126
32.Jump up ^ Deconstructing the walls of Jericho
33.^ Jump up to: a b http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2705-senior-israeli-archaeologist-casts-doubt-on-jewish-heritage-of-jerusalem
34.Jump up ^ Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, The New York Times, April 3, 2007
35.Jump up ^ UN Archives REPORT by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1938
Further reading[edit]
William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940)
Anati E. Palestine Before the Hebrews: A History, From the Earliest Arrival of Man to the Conquest of Canaan, 1963
Chapman, and J.N. Tubb, Archaeology & The Bible (British Museum, 1990)
Cornfeld, G.and D.N. Freedman, Archaeology Of The Bible Book By Book (1989)
Davies, P.R., In Search of 'Ancient Israel': A Study in Biblical Origins, Sheffield (JSOT Press, 1992).
Davis, Thomas, Shifting sands: the rise and fall of Biblical archaeology (2004)
Dever, William G., "Archaeology and the Bible : Understanding their special relationship", in Biblical Archaeology Review 16:3, (May/June 1990)
Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-2126-X.
Dever, William G. (2003). Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8.
Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2001), The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-7432-2338-1.
Frend, William Hugh Clifford, The Archaeology of Early Christianity. A History, Geoffrey Chapman, 1997. ISBN 0-225-66850-5
Frerichs, Ernest S. and Leonard H. Lesko eds. Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6 Denver Seminary review
Hallote, R. Bible, Map and Spade: The American Palestine Exploration Society, Frederick Jones Bliss and the Forgotten Story of Early American Biblical Archaeology, (Gorgias Press, 2006) Discusses American involvement in biblical archaeology before 1900.
Herzog, Ze'ev (October 29, 1999), Deconstructing the walls of Jericho, Ha'aretz.
Keller, Werner, The Bible as History, 1955.
Lance, H.D. The Old Testament and The Archaeologist. London, (1983)
Mancini, Ignazio. Archaeological Discoveries Relative to the Judaeo-Christians: Historical Survey, trans. [from Italian] by G. Bushnell [as] updated by the author. In series, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum: Collectio minor, no. 10. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1970. Without ISBN or SBN
Mazar, A., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (The Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1990)
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica series, no. 12. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature.
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2009),"Corrections and Updates to 'Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E.,' " Maarav 16/1, pp. 49–132.
Negev, Avraham, and Gibson, Shimon, (eds.) (2003). Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Ramsey, George W. The Quest For The Historical Israel. London (1982)
Robinson, Edward (1856) Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1838–52, Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster.
Schoville, Keith N. Biblical Archaeology in Focus. Baker Publishing Group, (1978).
Thompson, J.A., The Bible And Archaeology, revised edition (1973)
Wright, G. Ernest, Biblical Archaeology. Philadelphia: Westminster, (1962).
Yamauchi, E. The Stones And The Scriptures. London: IVP, (1973).



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Biblical archaeology

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 It has been suggested that Biblical archaeology school be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2014.
For the movement associated with William F. Albright and also known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. For the interpretation of biblical archaeology in relation to biblical historicity, see Historicity of the Bible and List of artifacts in biblical archaeology.
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Biblical archaeology involves the recovery and scientific investigation of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the periods and descriptions in the Bible, be they from the Old Testament (Tanakh) or from the New Testament, as well as the history and cosmogony of the Judeo-Christian religions. The principal location of interest for this branch of the archaeological sciences is what is known in the relevant religions as the Holy Land, which from a western perspective is also called the Middle East. Even though the main reference points of biblical archaeology are mainly theological and religious, the study of these references is a methodical science. The scientific techniques used are the same as those used in general archaeology, such as excavation and radiocarbon dating among others. In contrast, the archaeology of the ancient Middle East simply deals with the Ancient Near East, or Middle East, without giving any especial consideration to whether its discoveries have any relationship with the Bible.
Biblical archaeology is polemical as there are a number of points of view regarding the nature of its purpose and aims, and what these should be. A number of points of view from important archaeologists are included in the section on Expert Commentaries.



Contents  [hide]
1 Archaeology
2 Location
3 Dates
4 Periods in biblical archaeology
5 History 5.1 Stages in the development of biblical archaeology
6 Schools of thought in biblical archaeology
7 Brief summary of important archaeological sites and findings 7.1 Selected discoveries
7.2 Objects with unknown or disproved biblical origins
8 Biblical archaeology and the Catholic Church
9 Expert commentaries
10 Excavations and surveys
11 See also
12 References
13 Further reading
14 External links

Archaeology[edit]



 Mosaic from a Byzantine Church dating from the 5th century. Mosaics are one of the main elements studied by biblical archaeology.
Main article: Archaeology
See also: Archaeological theory
In order to understand the significance of biblical archaeology it is first necessary to understand two basic concepts: archaeology as a scientific framework and the Bible as an object for research. Archaeology is a science, not in the Aristotelian sense of cognitio certa per causas but in the modern sense of systematic knowledge.[1] Vicente Vilar expands on this point by stating that archaeology is both art and science: as an art it searches for the material remains of ancient civilizations and tries to reconstruct, as far as possible, the environment and the organizations of one or many historical epochs;[1] as a relatively recent modern science, and as Benesch has said, it is a science that is barely 200 years old but that has, however, completely changed our ideas about the past.[2]
It might be thought that archaeology would have to disregard the information contained within religions and many philosophical systems. However, apart from the great deal of factual material that they provide such as places of worship, holy objects and other scientifically observable things, there are other aspects that are equally important for scientific archaeological investigation such as religious texts, rites, customs and traditions. Myths are commonly used by archaeologists and historians as clues to events or places that have become hidden in the background, a process that Rudolf Bultmann calls "demythification" – the most notable example being Homer’s poems and the mythical city of Troy. This contemporary perception of the myth, mainly developed by Bultmann, has encouraged scientists such as archaeologists to examine the areas indicated by the biblical tales.[3][4]



 The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, holds valuable resources for both scientific and biblical research and exploration.
Biblical archaeology is the discipline occupied with the scientific investigation and recovery of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the times and descriptions of the Bible. A broad swathe of time between 2000 BC and 100 AD.[5] Other authors prefer to talk about the "archaeology of Palestine" and to define the relevant territories as those to the east and west of the River Jordan. This indicates that "biblical archaeology" or that of Palestine is circumscribed by the territories that were the backdrop to the biblical stories.
The raison d’etre of biblical archaeology derives from the fact that is allows an understanding of the peoples that inhabited the Holy Land. It allows an understanding of their history, culture, identity and movements. This makes it possible to know the exact location of the stories and compare them with fact. Regarding this, Kaswalder has noted that previously the American and Israeli school of biblical archaeology saw archaeology as proof of the veracity of the biblical stories,[6] as can be seen in the work of authors of the stature of William F. Albright, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin However, today archaeologist are not trying to prove that the stories in the Bible are true, they are trying to discover the historical world upon which the books of the bible drew and from which they derive their meaning. Using this approach, introduced by P. Kaswalder,[7] it is possible to shed light on the following, according to the classification presented by the Catalan papyrologist Joan Maria Vernet:[8]
Biblical archaeology can shed light on the knowledge that we have regarding certain historical data described in the biblical stories such as governments, people, battles and cities.
It allows us to provide some specific details reflected in the books of the bible for example Hezekiah's Tunnel, the Pool of Bethesda, Calvary and others that effectively relate to those described in the biblical stories.
Biblical archaeology lends fundamental support to exegetical studies.
Location[edit]



 The territory known as the Middle East was without doubt the location of the events that inspired the writing of the biblical texts.
The geographical area that circumscribes the area of interest for biblical archaeology is obviously the biblical lands, also known as the "Holy Land". There are many points of view regarding the exact extent of this area, however, biblical archaeology specifically concentrates on the Land of Israel, Palestine and Jordan, the area called the southern Levant. Many researchers are also interested in other areas that are mentioned in the biblical tales and which have a great importance for their connecting thread: Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia which are of interest to scientists interested in the Tanakh. Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome have greater connections with the stories from the New Testament.
Dates[edit]
In the same way that the spatial criteria vary according to the various points of view of the different researchers, there are also a variety of dates that are of interest. Kaswalder comments that:
The period is understood to run from the 9th millennium BC, which corresponds to the earliest dated Neolithic remains of Jericho, to 700 AD, which marks the first invasions by Muslim armies. This time period is considered by some authorities to be too wide and controversial.
A second narrower period has been described that is more closely defined by the biblical stories: from the middle Bronze Age, that is from 2000 BC, which according to Biblical chronology corresponds with the time of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) until the end of the 1st century AD, with the death of the last apostle John the Evangelist and the end of the so-called Apostolic Church. The term Apostolic Church is taken to mean the historical period when Jesus's apostles were alive, including Paul of Tarsus. This period ends with the death of John the Evangelist, the exact date of his death is not known, but it is presumed to be around 110 AD. However, some scholars consider that the authors of the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Revelation may have been John’s disciples.
Periods in biblical archaeology[edit]
The following list of periods for Syro-Palestinian archaeology is based on the table provided in Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 33-34[9] up to the end of the Iron Age, and from the definitions provided by the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, p. 55, for later periods.[10]
Neolithic period: ca. 8500–4300 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) = ca. 8500–6000 Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) = ca. 8500–7500
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) = 7500–6000
Pottery Neolithic: 6,000–4,300 BC Pottery Neolithic A (PNA) = 6000–5000
Pottery Neolithic B (PNB) = 5000–4300

Chalcolithic period: 4300–3300 BC
Bronze age: 3300-1200 BC Early Bronze (EB) Age = 3300-2300 BC Early Bronze I (EB I) = 3300–3050
Early Bronze II–Early Bronze III (EB II–EB III) = 3050–2300/2000
Middle Bronze (MB) Age = 2300/2000–1550 BC Early Bronze IV (EB IV)/Middle Bronze I (MB I) 2300–2000
Middle Bronze IIA (also called MB II) = 2000-1800/1750
Middle Bronze IIB-C III (also called MBII and III) = 1800/1750–1550
Late Bronze (LB) Age = 1550–1200 BC Late Bronze I (LB I) = 1550–1400
Late Bronze IIA–B (LB IIA–B) = 1400–1200

Iron Age: 1200-586 BC Iron IA = 1200–1150
Iron IB = 1150–1000
Iron IIA = 1000-925
Iron IIB = 925-720
Iron IIC = 720-586
Babylonian period: 586-539 BC
Persian period: 539-332 BC
Hellenistic period = 332-63 BC Early Hellenistic = 332-198
Late Hellenistic = 198-63
Roman period: 63 BC-324 AD
History[edit]
The study of biblical archaeology started at the same time as general archaeology and obviously its development relates to the discovery of highly important ancient artifacts.
Stages in the development of biblical archaeology[edit]
The development of biblical archaeology has been marked by different periods:
Ancient: Although archaeology can be considered to be a modern science it should be recognized that many historical authors have left valuable documents that even today are essential reading for students of biblical archaeology. The most important historical sources include Josephus, Origen, Eusebius and the Diary of Egeria. Egeria or Aetheria, was a Spanish woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 381 and 384. Her diary of the journey, which was a surprisingly adventurous journey for a woman of that time, is a source of study and research even today.
Before the British Mandate in Palestine: The first archaeological explorations started in the 19th century initially by Europeans. There were many renowned archaeologists working at this time but one of the best known was Edward Robinson who discovered a number of ancient cities. The Palestine Exploration Fund was created in 1865 with Queen Victoria as its patron. Large investigations were carried out around the Temple in Jerusalem in 1867 by Charles Warren and Charles William Wilson,[11] for whom Jerusalem’s "Wilson’s Arch" is named. The American Palestine Exploration Society was founded in 1870. In the same year a young French archaeologist, Charles Clermont-Ganneau, arrived in the Holy Land in order to study two notable inscriptions: the Mesha Stele in Jordan and inscriptions in the Temple of Jerusalem. Another personality entered the scene in 1890, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who has become known as the "father of Palestine archaeology". In Tell-el-Hesi, Petrie laid down the basis for methodical exploration by giving a great importance to the analysis of ceramics as archaeological markers. In effect, the recovered objects or fragments serve to fix the chronology with a degree of precision, as pottery was made in different ways and with specific characteristics during each epoch throughout history. In 1889 the Dominican Order opened the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem, which would become world-renowned in its field. Such authorities as M-J. Lagrange and L. H. Vincent stand out among the early archaeologists at the school. In 1898, the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) was founded in Berlin, a number of its excavations were subsequently funded by Emperor William II of Germany. Many other similar organizations were founded at this time with the objective of furthering this nascent discipline, although the investigations of this epoch had the sole objective of proving the veracity of the biblical stories.
During the British Mandate in Palestine (1922-1948): The investigation and exploration of the Holy Land increased considerably during this time and was dominated by the genius of William Foxwell Albright, C. S. Fischer, the Jesuits, the Dominicans and many others. This era of great advances and activity closed with a flourish: the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in 1947 and its subsequent excavation, which would in large part be directed by the Frenchman Roland de Vaux.
After the British Mandate: 1948 marked the start of a new social and political era for the Holy Land with the foundation of the State of Israel and the entrance on the scene of the Israeli archaeologists. Initially their excavations were limited to the territory of the state, but after the Six-Day War they extended into the occupied territories of the West Bank. An important figure in the archaeology of this period was Kathleen Kenyon, who directed the excavations of Jericho and the Ophel of Jerusalem. Crystal Bennett led the excavations at Petra and Amman’s citadel, Jabal al-Qal'a. The archaeological museums of the Franciscans and the Dominicans in Jerusalem are particularly notable.
Schools of thought in biblical archaeology[edit]
Main article: Biblical archaeology school
Biblical archaeology is the subject of permanent debate. One of the sources of greatest dispute is the period when kings ruled Israel and more generally the historicity of the Bible. It is possible to define two loose schools of thought regarding these areas: biblical minimalism and maximalism, depending on whether the bible is considered to be a non-historical, religious document or not. The two schools are not separate units but form a spectrum, making it difficult to define different camps and limits. However, it is possible to define points of difference, although these differences seem to be decreasing over time.
Brief summary of important archaeological sites and findings[edit]
Main article: List of artifacts significant to the Bible



 The Caves at Qumran where biblical archaeology’s most important findings of all time were found, in the valley of the Dead Sea.
A summary of the excavations carried out in this area is included at Table I at the end of this article.
Archaeology in the Holy Lands has made a number of important findings. Perhaps the most important of these include:
Qumran: For many, this is the site of perhaps one of the most important finds of all time. It is composed of the Kiryit or ruins of a monastery pertaining to the Essenes, caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the monk’s cemetery and many other elements that have changed the history of biblical studies.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouins in the caves of Kiryit Qumran in 1947 and subsequent excavations were initially led by Roland de Vaux. The Scrolls comprise some 800 documents in tens of thousands of fragments. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, they contain biblical and apocryphal works, prayers and legal texts and sectarian documents. Another piece of papyrus that has proved polemical is the so-called 7Q5, which is a small piece of papyrus whose origin is difficult to identify. The Spanish papyrologist Josep O’Callaghan Martínez, backed by the German biblical exegesist Carsten Peter Thiede, has concluded that it was a portion of a New Testament text, although this opinion remains controversial.
The Walls of Jericho: A stratum of burnt matter relating to the City-IV destruction has been dated to 1617–1530 BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. It contains remains of The Walls of Jericho, which were destroyed either by an earthquake or a siege. Opinions are divided as to whether this destruction corresponds to that described in the Bible. According to the biblical account the Israelites destroyed the city after its walls fell down in around 1407 BC. Excavations led by John Garstang in 1930 dated the destruction of Jericho to 1400 BC, which would confirm the biblical story. However, the site was re-excavated by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s and the destruction of the walls was redated to around 1550 BC. Bryant G. Wood later reviewed Kenyon’s field notes and made a number of criticisms of her work. Wood found a number of ambiguities in the investigations and he also pointed to results of carbon 14 tests on a burnt stratum that dated the layer to 1410 BC, with a margin of error of 40 years. Wood’s conclusions therefore confirmed Garstang’s original estimates. However, the carbon dating result was a consequence of an incorrect calibration. In 1995 Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used a high precision radiocarbon dating test on 18 samples from Jericho, including six samples of carbonized cereal from the burnt stratum. The results of these tests gave the age of the strata as 1562 BC, with a margin of error of 38 years. These results therefore confirm Kenyon's estimate and cast doubt on the biblical story.[12][13][14]



 First depiction of Jehu on the Black Obelisk he is seen prostrating at the feet of King Shalmaneser III.
Selected discoveries[edit]



 A reconstruction of the Jerusalem of the 1st century AD, made possible thanks to the findings of Biblical Archaeology.
Detailed lists of objects can be found at the following pages:
List of artifacts significant to the Bible
List of burial places of biblical figures
Manuscripts of the bible: List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, List of New Testament papyri and List of New Testament uncials
List of biblical figures identified in extra-biblical sources
Objects with unknown or disproved biblical origins[edit]
Biblical archaeology has also been the target of several celebrated forgeries, which have been perpetrated for a variety of reasons. One of the most celebrated is that of the James Ossuary, when information came to light in 2002 regarding the discovery of an ossuary, with an inscription that said "Jacob, son of Joseph and brother of Jesus". In reality the artifact had been discovered twenty years before, after which it had exchanged hands a number of times and the inscription had been added. This was discovered because it did not correspond to the pattern of the epoch from which it dated.[15]
The objects in the following list generally come from private collections and were often purchased in antique’s markets. Their authenticity is highly controversial and in some cases they have been proved to be fakes.
The Ark of the Covenant: There have been a number of claims regarding the Ark’s current location. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that it holds the Ark in Axum, Ethiopia. Local tradition claims that it was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Objects originating from the "antiques" dealer Oded Golan. As described above, the Israeli police accused Golan and his accomplices of falsifying the James Ossuary in 2004, they were also accused of falsifying a number of other objects: The Jehoash Inscription, which describes repairs to the temple in Jerusalem. It is suspected that the inscription has been falsified onto authentic ancient stones.
Various ostracas mentioning the temple or biblical names.
A stone candelabra with seven arms, decorated with a menorah from the temple.
A stone seal with gold borders that was attributed to King Manasseh of Judah.
A quartz plate with an inscription in the ancient Egyptian language stating that King Shishak had captured the ancient city of Megiddo.
An ivory pomegranate with the inscription "property of the priests of the Temple" carved on an authentic piece of antique ivory.
Numerous bullas, including some that mention biblical figures such as the scribe Baruch ben Neriah and the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel.
Various groups have claimed to have found Noah’s Ark. Many scholars consider that these findings belong to pseudoarcheology. An Italian creationist group called The Narkas is just one of the many groups that claim to know the exact location of the Ark’s remains on the summit of Mount Ararat, on the border between Turkey and Armenia. Photos of the site can be seen at the Narkas website.[16]
In 2004 an expedition investigated a ridge 19 km from the summit of Mount Ararat, which is believed to be an alternative landing site for the Ark. Samples were submitted to the Geological and Nuclear Sciences Crown Research Institute in Wellington, New Zealand for testing. However, geologists at the government institute concluded that the samples were volcanic rock and not petrified wood.[17]
Shroud of Turin: Critics insist that the linen cloth contains a painting of Jesus made in the Middle Ages. Others maintain that the image was formed by an energetic process that darkened the fibres of the shroud at the moment of resurrection. Radiocarbon dating of some sample material taken from the shroud has been dated to the Middle Ages, but some researchers claim that the samples were taken from a patch that had been re-woven into the shroud's border area during that time period.[18][19]
Saint Veronica’s Veil: A cloth with the face of a man, said to be Jesus by believers, imprinted on it. Believers think that it was the cloth used by Veronica to clean Jesus's face on the Via Dolorosa on the way to Calvary. There are at least six images in existence that bear a marked resemblance to each other and which all claim to be the original Veil.

Biblical archaeology and the Catholic Church[edit]
The majority of excavations and investigations carried out in the area where the biblical narratives are set mainly have the objective of casting light on the historical, cultural, economic and religious background to the texts, therefore their main objective is not usually proving the veracity of these stories. However, there are some groups that take a more fundamentalist approach and which organize archaeological campaigns with the intention of finding proof that the Bible is factual and that its narratives should be understood as historical events. This is not the position of the official Catholic Church.[20][21]
Archaeological investigations carried out with scientific methods can offer useful data in fixing a chronology that helps to order the biblical stories. In certain cases these investigations can find the place where these narratives took place. In other cases they can confirm the veracity of the stories. However, in other matters they can question events that have been taken as historical fact, providing arguments that show that certain stories are not historical narratives but belong to a different narrative genre.
In 1943, Pope Pius XII recommended that interpretations of the Scripture take archaeological findings into account in order to discern the literary genres that the Scriptures used.[22]

[...] the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. [...]Let those who cultivate biblical studies turn their attention with all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect none of those discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating and writing.[...]
— Pius XII, Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, paragraphs 35 and 40
Since this time archaeology has been considered to provide valuable assistance and as an indispensable tool of the biblical sciences.
Expert commentaries[edit]

[...]"the purpose of biblical archaeology is the clarification and illumination of the biblical text and content through archaeological investigation of the biblical world."
— written by J.K. Eakins in a 1977 essay published in Benchmarks in Time and Culture and quoted in his essay "Archaeology and the Bible, An Introduction", [3].
Bryant G. Wood notes the consensus of archaeologists on the following point: "The purpose of biblical archaeology is to enhance our comprehension of the Bible, and so its greatest achievement, in my view, has been the extraordinary illumination of the . . . time of the Israelite monarchy".[23]
In a statement on biblical archaeology Robert I. Bradshaw has commented: "It is virtually universally agreed that the purpose of biblical archaeology is not to ‘prove’ the Bible. However ... in as much as archaeology sheds light on that history it is important to biblical studies."[24]
One of the world's leading biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever contributed to the article on "Archaeology" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary. In this article he reiterates his perceptions of the negative effects of the close relationship that has existed between Syro-Palestinian archaeology and biblical archaeology, which has caused the archaeologists working in this field, particularly the American archaeologists, to resist adoption of the new methods of "processual archaeology". In addition he considers that: "Underlying much scepticism in our own field [referring to the adaptation of the concepts and methods of a "new archaeology"], one suspects the assumption (although unexpressed or even unconscious) that ancient Palestine, especially Israel during the biblical period, was unique, in some "superhistorical" way that was not governed by the normal principles of cultural evolution".[25]
Dever found that Syro-Palestinian archaeology had been treated in American institutions as a sub discipline of bible studies. Where it was expected that American archaeologists would try to "provide valid historical evidence of episodes from the biblical tradition". According to Dever "the most naïve [idea regarding Syro-Palestinian archaeology] is that the reason and purpose of "biblical archaeology" (and, by extrapolation, of Syro-Palestinian archaeology) is simply elucidate facts regarding the Bible and the Holy Land".[26]
Dever has also written that:

"Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so."[27] From the beginnings of what we call biblical archaeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archaeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archaeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archaeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.[28]
Dever also wrote:

Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence....[29] I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information...[30]
Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the Haaretz newspaper:

This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.[31][32]
Professor Finkelstein told the Jerusalem Post that Jewish archaeologists have found no historical or archaeological evidence to back the biblical narrative on the Exodus, the Jews' wandering in Sinai or Joshua's conquest of Canaan. On the alleged Temple of Solomon, Finkelstein said that there is no archaeological evidence to prove it really existed.[33] Professor Yoni Mizrahi, an independent archaeologist who has worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency, agreed with Israel Finkelstein.[33]
Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said:

“Really, it’s a myth,”... “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”[34]
Excavations and surveys[edit]
The following is a summary of important excavations and surveys:

Year
Site
Biblical name
Excavated by
Comment

‘rediscovered’ Petra on August 22, 1812. Al Khazneh Al Khazneh Johann Ludwig Burckhardt Al Khazneh ("The Treasury"; Arabic: الخزنة‎) is one of the most elaborate buildings in the ancient Jordanian city of Petra.
1841 Survey N/a Edward Robinson Robinson's Biblical Researches in Palestine, the Sinai, Petrae and Adjacent Regions, based on his survey of the Near East conducted over several years, proposed biblical names for modern sites.
1871-77 Survey N/a Charles Warren The Survey of Western Palestine, published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, reflected Warren's detailed field surveys in Palestine and especially the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Major discoveries included the foundation stones of Herod's Temple, the first Iron Age Hebrew inscriptions (jar handles with LMLK seals), and water shafts under the City of David.
1890 Tell el-Hesi Eglon Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie The site was believed at the time to be the biblical Lachish, but is now commonly identified with Eglon. Petrie noticed strata exposed by waterflow adjacent to the site, and popularized details of pottery groups excavated therefrom. This marked the introduction of scientific stratigraphy to Palestinian archaeology.
1891-92 Tell el-Hesi Eglon Frederick J. Bliss N/a
1898–1900 Tell es-Safi Gath? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Az-Zakariyya Azekah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Tell ej-Judeideh Moresheth-Gath or Libnah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1898–1900 Tell Sandahannah Mareshah? Frederick J. Bliss and R.A.S. Macalister N/a
1902–3, 1907–9 Gezer Gezer R.A.S. Macalister The Gezer calendar was discovered on the surface during this excavation.
1902–4 Taanach Taanach Ernst Sellin N/a
1903–5 Megiddo Megiddo Gottlieb Schumacher N/a
1905–7 Galilee Galilee Herman Kohl, Ernst Sellin, and Carl Watzinger A survey of ancient synagogues
1907–9 Shechem Shechem Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger N/a
1908, 1910–1 Samaria Samaria David G. Lyon, Clarence S. Fisher, and George A. Reisner N/a
1911–3 Beth Shemesh Beth Shemesh Duncan Mackenzie N/a
1921–3, 1925–8, 1930–3 Clarence S. Fisher, Alan Rowe, and Gerald M. Fitzgerald Beth Shean Beth Shean Clarence S. Fisher, Alan Rowe, and Gerald M. Fitzgerald N/a
1922–3 Tell el-Ful Gibeah? William F. Albright N/a
1925–39 Megiddo Megiddo Clarence S. Fisher, P.L.O. Guy, and Gordon Loud N/a
1926, 1928, 1930, 1932 Tell Beit Mirsim Eglon or Debir–Kirjath Sepher? William F. Albright N/a
1926–7, 1929, 1932, 1935 excavated Tell en-Nasbeh Mizpah in Benjamin William Frederic Badè N/a
1928–33 Beth Shemesh Beth Shemesh Elihu Grant N/a
1930–6 excavated Jericho Jericho John Garstang N/a
1931–3, 1935 excavated Samaria Samaria John W. Crowfoot N/a
1932–38 Lachish Lachish James L. Starkey The excavation was terminated when Starkey was killed by armed Arabs[35] near Hebron while on his way to the opening ceremonies of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem
1936–40 Beit She'arim Beit She'arim Benjamin Mazar N/a
1948–50, 1952–5 excavated Jaffa N/a Jacob Kaplan N/a
1954, 1959–62 excavated Ramat Rahel N/a Yohanan Aharoni N/a
1955–8, 1968 Hazor Hazor Yigael Yadin N/a
1956–7, 1959–60, 1962 excavated Gibeon Gibeon James B. Pritchard N/a
1961–7 excavated ) Jerusalem (City of David) N/a Kathleen Kenyon N/a
1962–7 Arad Arad Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran N/a
1962–3, 1965–72 Ashdod Ashdod Moshe Dothan N/a
1963–5 excavated Masada N/a Yigael Yadin N/a
1964–74 Gezer Gezer G. Ernest Wright, William G. Dever, and Joe D. Seger N/a
1968–78 Jerusalem (southwest corner of the Temple Mount) Temple Mount Benjamin Mazar N/a
1969–76 Beersheba Beersheba Yohanan Aharoni and Ze'ev Herzog N/a
1969–82 Jerusalem (Jewish Quarter) Jerusalem Nahman Avigad N/a
1973–94 Lachish Lachish David Ussishkin N/a
1975–82 Aroer Aroer Avraham Biran Aroer is an Israelite town in the Negev Desert, not to be confused with the Moabite Aroer located in Jordan
1977–9, 1981–9 Timnah Timnah Amihai Mazar and George L. Kelm N/a
1978–85 Jerusalem (City of David) Jerusalem Yigal Shiloh N/a
1979–80 Ketef Hinnom N/a Gabriel Barkay N/a
1966-1972 Et-Tell Ai Joseph A. Callaway
1981–2, 1984–8, 1990, 1992–6 Ekron Ekron Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin N/a
1989–96 Beit-Shean Beit-Shean Amihai Mazar N/a
1994–ongoing Megiddo Megiddo Israel Finkelstein and Eric H. Cline N/a
1996–2002, 2004–ongoing Tell es-Safi (identified as biblical Gath of the Philistines) Gath Aren Maeir N/a
1997– Tel Rehov  Amihai Mazar N/a
1999–2001, 2005 Tel Zayit Libnah Ron Tappy N/a
2005 Ramat Rahel N/a Oded Lipschits N/a
2005 Nahal Tut N/a Amir Gorzalczany and Gerald Finkielsztejn excavated N/a
2007 Khirbet Qeiyafa N/a Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor N/a

See also[edit]
Archaeology of Israel
Biblical Archaeology Review
The Bible's Buried Secrets
Biblical maximalism
Biblical minimalism
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Flood geology
History of ancient Israel and Judah
Khirbet el-Qom
List of Biblical figures identified in extra-Biblical sources
Ostracon
Parchment
Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures
Syro-Palestinian archaeology
7Q5, a Dead Sea scroll fragment
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Vilar, Vicente. Archeologia della Palestina. Enciclopedia della Biblia I, 672.,(in Italian)
2.Jump up ^ Kurt Benesch: Past to discover cited by J.M. Vernet in his "Curso Básico de Arqueología Bíblica", Teologado Salesiano Internacional de Ratisbonne, Jerusalén, 2001 (in Italian).
3.Jump up ^ R. Bultmann, Nuovo Testamento e mitología, p. 203 (in Italian)
4.Jump up ^ Cf. L. Randellini, voce Demitizzazione, in ER, vol. 2, coll. 623-635; Id., Bultmann’s hermeneutics condemn K. Barth and the existentialist interpretation that he applies to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (K. Barth, L'Epistola ai Romani): cfr. R. Marlé, o.c., pp. 36-41; J.M. Robinson, La Nuova Ermeneutica, pp. 34-35. 41-47 (In Italian)
5.Jump up ^ Volkmar Fritz, Introduzione all'archeologia biblica (tr. en. Introduction to biblical archaeology), pp 13-19
6.Jump up ^ Pietro Kaswalder, "L`archeologia biblica e le origini di Israele" (tr. en. Biblical archaeology and the origins of Israel), in Rivista Biblica 41, pp. 171-188, 1993.
7.Jump up ^ El archaeologist Father Pietro Kaswalder, O.F.M. is professor of Old Testament exegesis and archaeology at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem.
8.Jump up ^ J.M. Vernet, "Basic Course in Biblical Archaeology ", International Silesian Theologate of Ratisbonne, Jerusalem, 2001 (in Italian), p. 5
9.Jump up ^ Cline, E.H. (2009). "3". Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (1 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-0-19-534263-5.
10.Jump up ^ Mills and Bullard, 1990, p. 55.
11.Jump up ^ Not to be confused with Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, the Scottish physicist and Nobel Prize winner.
12.Jump up ^ Bruins, Hendrik and van der Plicht, Johannes. "Tell-es-Sultan (Jericho): Radiocarbon results of short-lived cereal and multiyear charcoal samples from the end of the Middle Bronze Age." Radiocarbon vol.37, no.2, 1995, p. 213-220.
13.Jump up ^ Is Bryant Wood's chronology of Jericho valid?
14.Jump up ^ Ebon Musings: Let the Stones Speak
15.Jump up ^ Forgers "tried to rewrite biblical history", Conal Urquhart, The Guardian, Friday 31 December 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/dec/31/religion.israel.
16.Jump up ^ Narkas website http://www.noahsark.it.
17.Jump up ^ NZ man’s hunt for Noah’s Ark hits a rocky patch, The New Zealand Herald, 10 November 2004 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=3608608.
18.Jump up ^ http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/science-shines-new-light-on-shroud-of-turins-age/
19.Jump up ^ R.N Rogers, "Studies on the Radiocarbon Sample from the Shroud of Turin", Thermochimica Acta, Vol. 425, 2005, pp. 189–194, article; S. Benford, J. Marino, "Discrepancies in the radiocarbon dating area of the Turin shroud", Chemistry Today, vol 26 n 4 / July–August 2008, p. 4-12, article;Emmanuel Poulle, ″Les sources de l'histoire du linceul de Turin. Revue critique″, Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique, 2009/3-4, Abstract; G. Fanti, F. Crosilla, M. Riani, A.C. Atkinson, "A Robust statistical analysis of the 1988 Turin Shroud radiocarbon analysis", Proceedings of the IWSAI, ENEA, 2010.
20.Jump up ^ Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible, by Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 5 October 2005, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article2599023.ece
21.Jump up ^ The Gift of Scripture, Party Two, Section 14 The truth of Scripture, p17 Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales and Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, 2005, http://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Resources/Scripture/GoS.pdf
22.Jump up ^ Pius XII (30 September 1943). "Divino Afflante Spiritu Encyclical Of Pope Pius Xi On Promoting Biblical Studies". Retrieved 6 February 2013.
23.Jump up ^ Originally in Biblical Archaeology Review, May–June, 1995, p. 33 and quoted in web article Two Jigsaw Puzzles, Two Purposes, United Church of God Canada [1], viewed 6 February 2013.
24.Jump up ^ Archaeology & the Patriarchs, Robert I Bradshaw, 1992, web article, Biblical Studies.org.uk [2].
25.Jump up ^ The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Archaeology, W. Dever, p. 357
26.Jump up ^ The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Archaeology, W. Dever, p. 358
27.Jump up ^ Bible gets a reality check, MSNBC, Alan Boyle
28.Jump up ^ The Bible's Buried Secrets, PBS Nova, 2008
29.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (March–April 2006). "The Western Cultural Tradition Is at Risk". Biblical Archaeology Review 32 (2): 26 & 76.
30.Jump up ^ Dever, William G. (January 2003). "Contra Davies". The Bible and Interpretation. Retrieved 2007-02-12.
31.Jump up ^ The Nature of Home: A Lexicon of Essays, Lisa Knopp, p. 126
32.Jump up ^ Deconstructing the walls of Jericho
33.^ Jump up to: a b http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/2705-senior-israeli-archaeologist-casts-doubt-on-jewish-heritage-of-jerusalem
34.Jump up ^ Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, The New York Times, April 3, 2007
35.Jump up ^ UN Archives REPORT by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the year 1938
Further reading[edit]
William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940)
Anati E. Palestine Before the Hebrews: A History, From the Earliest Arrival of Man to the Conquest of Canaan, 1963
Chapman, and J.N. Tubb, Archaeology & The Bible (British Museum, 1990)
Cornfeld, G.and D.N. Freedman, Archaeology Of The Bible Book By Book (1989)
Davies, P.R., In Search of 'Ancient Israel': A Study in Biblical Origins, Sheffield (JSOT Press, 1992).
Davis, Thomas, Shifting sands: the rise and fall of Biblical archaeology (2004)
Dever, William G., "Archaeology and the Bible : Understanding their special relationship", in Biblical Archaeology Review 16:3, (May/June 1990)
Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-2126-X.
Dever, William G. (2003). Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8.
Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2001), The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-7432-2338-1.
Frend, William Hugh Clifford, The Archaeology of Early Christianity. A History, Geoffrey Chapman, 1997. ISBN 0-225-66850-5
Frerichs, Ernest S. and Leonard H. Lesko eds. Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6 Denver Seminary review
Hallote, R. Bible, Map and Spade: The American Palestine Exploration Society, Frederick Jones Bliss and the Forgotten Story of Early American Biblical Archaeology, (Gorgias Press, 2006) Discusses American involvement in biblical archaeology before 1900.
Herzog, Ze'ev (October 29, 1999), Deconstructing the walls of Jericho, Ha'aretz.
Keller, Werner, The Bible as History, 1955.
Lance, H.D. The Old Testament and The Archaeologist. London, (1983)
Mancini, Ignazio. Archaeological Discoveries Relative to the Judaeo-Christians: Historical Survey, trans. [from Italian] by G. Bushnell [as] updated by the author. In series, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum: Collectio minor, no. 10. Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1970. Without ISBN or SBN
Mazar, A., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (The Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1990)
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200–539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica series, no. 12. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature.
Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2009),"Corrections and Updates to 'Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E.,' " Maarav 16/1, pp. 49–132.
Negev, Avraham, and Gibson, Shimon, (eds.) (2003). Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Ramsey, George W. The Quest For The Historical Israel. London (1982)
Robinson, Edward (1856) Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1838–52, Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster.
Schoville, Keith N. Biblical Archaeology in Focus. Baker Publishing Group, (1978).
Thompson, J.A., The Bible And Archaeology, revised edition (1973)
Wright, G. Ernest, Biblical Archaeology. Philadelphia: Westminster, (1962).
Yamauchi, E. The Stones And The Scriptures. London: IVP, (1973).



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