Ebonmuse

Hello all,

I've been working on an article entitled "Let the Stones Speak" which discusses the historicity of the Old Testament in the light of archaeology. The first two parts, concerning the patriarchs and the Exodus, are finally more or less done, and so I thought I'd post them on a board full of intelligent people and hopefully invite some constructive criticism before I move on to the next part.

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch1.html
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch2.html

Anyone have any thoughts to offer? Are there any egregious errors I should correct? Anything I should provide more detail about? All comments will be welcomed; lavish praise may be sent in the form of small, unmarked bills.

doc58

I enjoyed giving your essays a brief overview. Now I need to read them thoroughly. This is a topic of great interest to me, as a former inerrantist.
Your posting has happened to occur at the same time I am reading, "The Bible Unearthed" by Finkelstein and Silberman.
It is an excellent book and in my view, completely destroys any thought of the Old Testament being historically accurate in any significant way.
Did you draw heavily from "The Bible Unearthed"? What other sources are you using?
I hope some of the resident experts here can further expand what you have started.

Ellis14

I've only glanced over the articles as yet but will read them in detail. Like the rest of the articles on your website, they are well-written, informative and enlightening. Sorry if you wanted criticism, you will have to settle for a compliment!

Ebonmuse

It is an excellent book, I agree, and it's one of the main sources for my article (see http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarchrefs.html). It by far provides the most detailed criticism of the OT account of any source I've come across. However, my one gripe is this: it needs footnotes! It's not that I doubt Finkelstein's authority on the topic, but I'd like to be able to look some of these things up for myself and get more detail, and I have no idea why they were left out. Maybe they figured a popular work didn't need them?

GakuseiDon

Hi Ebon. I will offer a pro-Christian (though non-inerrantist) perspective if you like.

Just a couple of nitpicks before I start: I wrote to you about a year ago regarding a couple of errors on one of your article. You acknowledged them, but I notice they are still there: http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/camel1.html
As I pointed out, and you acknowledged, Josephus would have to have been about 3 years old at the time. The date should be 90 CE.

There is no evidence that Philo of Alexandria spent any real time in Jerusalem, much less wrote his book there. I'd be interested in where you got that information from - was it Doherty, as you suggest?

Now, on to your articles!

For the first article:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch.html

However, the archaeology of the Old Testament is not a topic I have seen discussed much in either Christian or atheist circles.

There appear to be quite a few books and websites on the topic. Perhaps the word "debated" rather than "discussed" may be more appropriate?

Unlike the events of the New Testament, which occurred on a small, human scale and would not have left distinct archaeological evidence even if they really had happened, the narratives of the Old Testament describe events on a grand scale - vast migrations of people, enormous battles, invasions, and wars that resulted in the burning of great cities - and it is precisely these kinds of events which archaeology can confirm or disprove.

True enough... but you go on to include at small, human scale events in the OT as well, which you've already said can't be confirmed or disproved.

Long gone are the days when the first generation of Near Eastern archaeologists, fundamentalist believers to a man, could dig "with a spade in one hand and the Bible in the other," allowing the biblical text to interpret all their findings for them and then circularly concluding that their findings supported the veracity of that text.

Incorrect, as well as over the top. "Fundamentalist believers to a man"? Here is a
similar statement:
Sweeping generalisations hardly suggest a disinterested scholarly approach!

And in recent decades, as more evidence emerges, it has turned increasingly against them. A more complete picture of the history of ancient Israel has surfaced, one that brings out in sharp relief which parts of the Old Testament are historical and which parts are not...

A set of propositions such as the one presented above should not, of course, be accepted without supporting evidence...

Texts can be tampered with and records rewritten to suit the prejudice of the victors, but the wide-ranging remains of material culture are impossible to alter or falsify. This is the evidence we must draw upon if we are to write the true history of ancient Israel, and therefore, it is this evidence to which this essay will now turn. The stones shall speak.

Good! So, on to the evidence...

The second article:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch1.html

The problem is you spend the first half of the article talking about small human scale events. I think you are trying to layout the frame work for the second part of the article, but I think that needs to be explained more. My immediate reaction as I read through the first half is that you'd forgotten your statement about small stuff being unprovable!

In "Laws, Names and Customs", again, all you seem to show is that it is unproveable:
It was not that the customs mentioned in the Bible are not attested to anywhere in extra-biblical documents, but the opposite: many of the customs mentioned in the Bible were so widespread that historical parallels exist from almost every period, including the first millennium BCE, through the times of the divided monarchy, the Babylonian exile, and even beyond. Therefore, the study of names and customs in the Old Testament is of no help in resolving the boundaries of the patriarchal period.


Then why mention them? Were laws, names and customs part of the evidence that apologists were using? Is this part of "the evidence that is turning against them"?

I'm afraid that, like most of your articles, it comes across as a loosely connected series of statements, rather than a cohesive arguement.

The Amalekites

In Genesis 14:7, discussed above, King Chedorlaomer and his army come to the site of Enmishpat "and smote all the country of the Amalekites". Needless to say, this is a glaring anachronism, since Amalek, the sire of that tribe, had not been born yet! (Amalek was Esau's grandson - Genesis 36:12 - making him Abraham's great-great-grandson.)

I think you need to address the obvious point, that "the country of the Amalekites" refers to the country, and not the people. In other words, it is an anachronism along the lines of "Columbus discovered America" even though it wasn't called America at the time (and he didn't really discover it anyway).

This is particularly ironic, given your footnote in this article:
"Throughout this essay, I will use the term "Palestine" to denote the land where today exists the state of Israel,"

The Arabian Trade

... However, there is no evidence that this trade route, called the "king's highway", existed or was of importance in the second millennium BCE

Again, "no evidence" sounds weak. Should we expect evidence? Where would such evidence be found, and how can you show that it should have been there? Which stones aren't speaking?

The Arameans

The Arameans, a people who lived north of Israel in modern-day Syria, figure into the patriarchal narratives most prominently in the time of Jacob. Isaac's brother-in-law, Laban, whose daughters Leah and Rachel Jacob married, is identified as an Aramean (Genesis 31:20). According to the Bible, not only do the Arameans exist by the time of the patriarchs, but they are apparently a settled people: in Genesis 24:10 they are depicted as the inhabitants of the city of Nahor, and Laban is described as an inhabitant of the city of Haran (Genesis 27:43, 29:4).

I'm not sure how you derive that the Arameans were "a settled people" from those verses. Where do you get that from Gen 24:10, for instance? I'm scratching my head.

The third article on the Exodus:
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/otarch2.html

This is your strongest article IMO. No real criticisms here that I haven't already made. I'll look forward to Part 3, when you get around to it.

Ebon, your articles aren't bad. But they are sloppy and the flow isn't well thought out. The content seems to be paragraphs strung together haphardously, rather than forming a cohesive whole. The articles are probably a little better than average than what can be found on other websites, but then, they seem to be as convincing as the raptureready website.

Still, it's so easy for me to sit here and criticise! You've put it out there, which is more than I have done! And I'll admit my Christian bias, so my comments should be taken with a grain of salt. In short, well done, but a small amount of tidy-up is required! B+

Celsus

Hi ebonmuse,

It looks very good so far, and my only quibble is your reliance on a very small set of resources, mostly being the Anchor Bible Dictionary, and not enough minimalists! Peripherally, may I ask if Van Seters discuss his Supplementary Hypothesis in Abraham in History and Tradition?

Joel

Ebonmuse

Doh. You're absolutely right - I made that correction but never uploaded it. It's fixed now, thanks for the reminder.

His full name was Philo Judaeus (see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12023a.htm). As for that specific piece of information, it comes from chapter 2 of John Remsburg's The Christ. (I know I should have documented my sources better - that article is overdue for revision.) I'm aware that some Christians, J.P. Holding in particular, have raised questions about Remsburg's methodology, but since Holding seems to feel that lack of belief in Christianity is by itself sufficient to render one incompetent to discuss the subject, I don't put much stock in his criticisms. If the claim is shown to be mistaken or unfounded, I'll withdraw it.

What books and websites did you have in mind? I really haven't seen very much material about the archaeology of the OT either in discussion or in debate; all the articles I've come across which address the subject, both Christian and atheist, give it no more than a passing mention. For obvious reasons, Christians are usually more interested in the archaeology of the New Testament, and as for atheists - well, I don't know what their excuse is, but that's why I'm writing this. Even the Secular Web, as far as I'm aware, doesn't touch on this subject.

That's unavoidable, regrettably, since the life story of the patriarchs which takes up most of Genesis is about small, human-scale events, and I feel an article on the Old Testament wouldn't be complete without discussing it. As you've said, I never claimed to be able to disprove the existence of the patriarchs (correct me if I made any assertions to the contrary), but what I can show is that all the datable details of the story are anachronisms, and so there is no way to determine when these stories took place, if they took place.

Is it incorrect? The claims you cited from RaptureReady are obviously absurd, but I don't think it at all absurd to say that Near East archaeology began as a tool whose specific intended purpose was to prove the Bible historically (if not spiritually) true. Why else would people excavate there rather than anywhere else? Early archaeologists like Roland de Vaux, Nelson Glueck, John Garstang, William Albright, G.E. Wright, were all in Palestine for the express purpose of validating the Old Testament narrative. (I suppose one could quibble over the definition of "first generation".) Wright wrote a book called God Who Acts, for truth's sake.

Yes, it was part of the evidence they were using. I quote Finkelstein and Silberman:

"The American scholar Albright, however, argued that certain unique details in the stories in Genesis might hold the key to verifying their historical basis. Elements such as personal names, unusual marriage customs, and land-purchase laws might be identified in the records of second millennium BCE societies, from which the patriarchs reportedly came.... All these elements convinced Albright that the age of the patriarchs was a real one. He and his colleagues thus began to search for evidence for the presence of pastoral groups of Mesopotamian origin roaming throughout Canaan around 2000 BCE." (p.35)

I wouldn't say this evidence is "turning against them" as much as it was simply shown to be not useful for setting a date.

That criticism did occur to me, and I have no doubt that Christians will raise it. But I maintain that that argument is defensible. In the context you use it, "America" can be understood as a short-hand term for the land that would later be named that, I agree. But consider the following:

"Columbus sailed to the New World and traded with the people of Washington, D.C."

Would you agree that this is inaccurate?

I wish I had more information to give about that, but regrettably I can't go into more detail than is provided by my source, which in this case is Van Seters. What he says about that route, basically, is that Assyrian inscriptions mentioning its importance and the campaigns waged by Assyrian kings (starting with Tiglath-pileser III, who took the throne around 750 BCE) to control it are known from the mid-eighth century onward, but that there is no justification for reading that development all the way back into the second millennium. That's pretty much what he says. Finkelstein and Silberman say the same, though in less detail. I agree that more information would be helpful, but at the moment I have none.

In Genesis 24:10 and following verses, Abraham's servant goes to the "city of Nahor," where he encounters Rebekah and Laban, Abraham's grand-niece and grand-nephew. Rebekah, Laban, and their father Bethuel. All three of them are identified as Arameans (25:20). (Perhaps I should make this clearer in the text.) A nomadic people would not be dwelling in cities.

Thanks for your comments. Inasmuch as the flow is choppy, that's deliberate - I prefer to divide my essay up into sections, so each site or point of argument can be considered independently, and then tie them all together in the conclusion. In any event, it's easier than making awkward transitions from one section to the next. ("Another site which is important is..." - bleh!) Still, if you can suggest a way in which it might be improved, I'm amenable.

Ebonmuse

More sources would always be good, but for the level of detail I'm aiming at, I feel that going all the way back to the original excavation reports would be overkill. The Anchor Bible Dictionary and the NEAEHL are very accessible and up-to-date summaries of the work done at most sites, and their articles are very commonly written by the original excavators. Plus, it's my understanding that they're about as canonical as you get, and fairly conservative also, so no one will accuse me of relying only on biased, atheist sources. What I'd really like to find is not just more single-site descriptions, but more broad syntheses that compare and contrast the OT narrative with the archaeological realia. I have a few articles by Dever and Laughlin's book, but neither of them go into very much detail; The Bible Unearthed is of course the best synthesis of this type, but as I've already mentioned, my most serious gripe with it is its omission of footnotes. Something like a more technical version of it would be ideal.

As for the minimalists, in all honesty, I'm not sure I trust them. Their blanket dismissal of the possibility of any history in the Old Testament seems to me incredible, especially in light of the substantial extra-biblical textual and artifactual evidence of the period of the divided monarchy; I find their attempts to reinterpret such findings or dismiss them all as forgery to be unconvincing in the extreme. (I voiced some of my concerns about this subject earlier: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=67728). I'm sure their criticisms of earlier parts of the OT narrative are spot-on, but in many cases archaeologists can criticize those just as well (and have done so), so why not just rely on them?

Quote:

Peripherally, may I ask if Van Seters discuss his Supplementary Hypothesis in Abraham in History and Tradition?

Yes, to an extent. In chapter 6 under the section "Source Criticism", he discusses what he sees as problems differentiating between J and E, and suggests the alternative that J is in fact the single major narrative work which was later redacted by E and P. (He also seems to advocate combining D into J.) This is a fairly brief section, though.

Celsus

I'm quite surprised that nothing in that thread that DrJim, spin, or Apikorus said rubbed off on you. Don't you think they made a decent case for them? I would add more except that I thought they'd covered damn near everything. I've written on this at length here (my own forum), and I hope you'll join in the discussion, but excuse me for slow response. I don't think you should fall for Dever's caricature. Also, you do realise that the Jehoash inscription is a forgery even if the Tel Dan one isn't, right?
Thanks. I think I'll need to look elsewhere then.

Joel

Ebonmuse

Their replies certainly did make an impression on me; I now think the stance I took in the original post was too harsh. Nevertheless, I feel the substance of my position is sound, and they even agreed with me to an extent about that; DrJim's statement that minimalism is a great idea off to a lousy start is the best way I've seen it put so far. Whatever valid points the minimalists have to make, I find the assertion ludicrous that biblical Israel was an invention of the second century CE, and any and all evidence that says differently is forged. As I've said before and continue to believe, to the extent that the minimalists have good arguments to make, archaeologists agreed with them already.

I don't hold Dever wholly innocent. His polemic definitely gets unnecessarily personal at times. Still, given that the minimalist camp (Thompson at least) has accused him of academic fraud, he has a right to be at least a little angry.

Quote:

Also, you do realise that the Jehoash inscription is a forgery even if the Tel Dan one isn't, right?

Yes, of course. I'm actually not certain what to think about the Tel Dan inscription at the moment; I initially leaned toward its being genuine, but several criticisms I saw recently have made me less sure. I think the best course is to defer judgment until (unless) more evidence is found - a fragment of a stela in secondary context is a very flimsy foundation on which to build a monarchy, in any case.