penumbra

While waiting at my orthodontist's office this morning, I came across an article in a old copy of Harper's (March 2002) entitled "False Testament", authored by Daniel Lazare. I only had time to skim it, but saw that he seems to claim that modern archaeology has shown much of the Old Testament stories to be complete fabrications, not just embellishments of actual events. The exodus never happened, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and others never existed, Jewish monotheism is no older than the first century BCE, etc. Unfortunately, I didn't see much in the way of source information or references in the short time I had.

I didn't want to steal the magazine, and the Harpers web site doesn't have copies of articles back that far. Anybody have any good references for further reading on this particular issue?

Marduk

Search the Archives here, there was a long thread about this last year

Toto

Harpers magazine cover story: "False Testament"


Riposte: Remember that Harper's magazine article? (Haran on a BAR counter article)

MortalWombat

You may also want to check out the the Real Audio archive of a Talk of the Nation episode on NPR dealing with Biblical Archaeology last March.