Radcliffe Emerson

Archaeology seems to support the minimalists more than any other theory, however. At least what I've studied.

DrJim

The promise of minimalism lies not only in letting archaeology do its thing as archaeology but it also lets textual anaylsis be textual analysis. The hybrid methodology the "minimalist" (I don't like the term either) object to is "archaeology" with the "Bible" as the dominant tool of interpretting what is dug up (i.e., "digging up the Bible" methodology). True, a number of the biblical accounts can be backed up with the shovel (e.g. Babylonian attacks on Jerusalem), and one may be inclined to read 2 Kings for some additional details which cannot be verified in the physical remains that have been discovered. The tendency, however, is to use the biblical accounts to interpret finds that have, on their own, no obvious connection to the Bible: e.g., "Stables" in Megiddo MUST have been built by Solomon since the Bible says so: The minimalist position should accept that as possible, but would recognize that the biblical text may attribute well-known features of the city to a legendary king, and if there are no inscriptions on the building remains themeselves, there is no real evidence just who built the stables. Their existence does not "prove" Solomon existed, or even make it more plausible.

The same happens with the Exodus. In hard-core "Maximalism" there seems to be an unwritten premise that every thing in the ground has a bible story, and every bible story has left some remains. Total rubbish to the minimalists.


I am going to write a little blurb on Kings and new/old approaches to it for the forum, but I'm in the middle of term-paper season here, and I'm busy busy busy, so it might be a while off yet. Anyway, as far as I know, my thesis is one of the few real "minimalist" attempts to make sense of kings. I don't argue the historicity of the book (I'm not an archaeologist either). Rather, I do what minimalists should be doing (as far as I'm concerned), actually interpreting the book as if it is the production of a society inscribing its ideology, theology social identity, etc etc. in a literary work (which, by the way, I think is a pretty masterfully done collage of material of various dates etc). So what is important to me is HOW the story of the Israelite monarchies are told: what sort of heroes and villains, symbols of power and legitmacy etc are included and how, what sort of events are meant to be prototypes or symbols of the writers contemporary situation etc. Sometimes I sort of label what I do the "constructionist" position instead of "minimalist", since I'm interested in how ideas, symbols, narratives were put together to construct texts which express a constructed social identity meant to be a cornerstone of sociery's thinking about itself and its own past.
Anyway, one taste of the sort of change of methods and approaches that I will elaborate on a little bit more (perhaps early New Year, or over Christmas): one tenant of the older paradigms is that Kings (and many other biblical narratives) are essentially accurate, or at least were in their "original" form. This leads to some bizzare interpretations. In 1 Kings, 10-11, for example, Solomon is said to have obtained horses from Egypt (Hebrew "Mitzraim") and sold them on for a profit up north. Many scholars, however, have wondered about this, since it is unlikely that Egyptian horses would have found much of a market in Asia minor. Rather, the other way around! So, since the text MUST date to Solomon's time, and MUST reflect historical reality, MITRAIM cannot be allowed to stand. The solution: emend MITRAIM to MUSRI (same consonants except the final M is dropped), MUSRI being a place in Asia Minor. So the text is "corrected"!
What is lost, however, is all the other connections between Solomon and Egypt adn the connection between Kigns and Deuteronomy which says Israelite Kings must not return to egypt to obtain horses.

Since the "original" "business memo" as J. Gray (IIRC) called the horse dealing passage in Kings could not be criticising the king, because the accountant would have worked for Solomon and the critcisms were made only in Solomon's later years or after his death. So the text has to be "corrected". Therefore the "original" reference has NOTHING to do with later criticisms of Solomon or such criticisms were the motivating factor in the anceint "corruption".

Historicism gone mad, methinks.

The new approaches will see in 1 Kings a rich articulation of all sorts of Solomonic dealings with Egypt in light of Deuteronomy, and other traditions. Rather than historicize the lot, the interpreter will try to see the religious/political symbolism of this narrative as part of the texts total portrayal of Solmon and Israel's: Solomon in a manner of speaking reverses the Exodus: his Israel is a place of bondage like Egypt was. It is Pharoah, earlier in the text which eliminates a Canaanite stronghold in Israel (that was somethign the Israelites should have done after their escape FROM egypt). Loads of things like that.

Anyway, I hope to have somethign coherent sometime.

now, to go do somethign I'm being paid to do!

spin

The so-called stables of course look like all the store houses of the period. Why call them stables? Because the biblical archaeologist, not knowing any better, gave them the name.

Interesting.

Obviously the Kings we have today is not the original form though. A simple example: two descendants of Saul are Ish-bosheth and Mephibosheth and we should know that these two insulting names ("man of shame" and, traditionally, "exterminating the idol" or perhaps something like "scatter shame") were not the original names. First, no-one would call themselves such and second, we have the Chronicles versions, Ishbaal and Meribbaal ("man of Baal" and traditionally "Baal is my advocate"), which explain why we have the Kings versions: the Kings scribes eliminated the mention of Baal.

This should mean that Chronicles is using a source of the present Kings text and could be of interest as you work, as could Josephus(!).

Of course, if you are specifically interested in the Israelite data in Kings, then you needn't worry about Chronicles. This data is also bolstered by Assyrian evidence for some of the Israelite events.

(Jerusalem appears only close to the end of the Israelite period as a political entity; the city was only a village before then and Lachish was a much bigger place, size being closely related to importance here.)


spin


p.s. Those worried about Thompson's footnotes might read a few of his scholarly works.

Ebonmuse

I think that's a very good way to put it, DrJim, and I think that's the kind of conclusion I'm coming around to. I certainly can applaud the minimalists for having the sense not to take the biblical texts at face value, but that's not really an issue because the archaeologists realized that long ago.

Based on the replies I've gotten in this thread and some articles I've read since posting, I think that perhaps I was too harsh on the minimalists initially. The issue definitely isn't as black and white as Dever suggests it is, and I will say they are at least competent to make arguments on the issue. Nevertheless, I still think Dever's criticisms of the deconstructionist approach hit home, and I'm still extremely unimpressed by the fact that the only way they can evade some of their conclusions being falsified is to declare, without any grounds that I can see, that a whole slew of evidence is forged (and not just major things like the Tel Dan inscription - lots and lots of little things, like the hundreds of ostraca and bullae from a kingdom that they claim didn't even exist, much less was literate, at that time). It still seems to me that to the degree the minimalists are correct, the archaeologists already agreed with them.

spin

The sad thing with Dever is that he's not too different from the so-called minimalist, except for his lack of rigor and that he trips over his personal beliefs.

Actually, the people you are talking against do not believe that a
whole slew of evidence is forged at all. There is in fact very little evidence that they consider not to be kosher. You'll find that it is they who use the "primary" evidence consistently in their work.

Their approach is usually no different from any historian of the period in other areas. Each piece of evidence must be weighed and judged on its own merits.

It might be useful to read some of the Jewish archaeologist Israel Finkelstein's analyses to see just how many primary materials are used in modern non-fundamentally-biblical archaeology. (I've found some of his work on internet relating to Megiddo and also the development of settlements in the Iron Age at a time when Moses was supposed to have led the Hebrews to Palestine.)


spin

DrJim

I think the real potential for minimalism lies in new routes to understanding the Bible, not Judean/Israelite history per se. In this sense, the term "minimalism" is woefully misrepresentative. Indeed, the so-called "maximalist" camp follows as much a reductionist methodology as the die-hard "its-all-propagandistic-falsifications" crowd. When interpretation becomes little more than separating "late" additions from the "authentic" kernels telling you the way it really was, one has a reductionist, "minimalism": the text become little more than a "historical source" which needs a bit work around the edge. Sort out fact from later "traditions" according to ones' initial predelictions, and one is finished... At least, that is the way very many commentaries on Kings read (and modern ones too).


The newer historical paradigms stress the formation of the Biblical texts as a religio- political construct addressing the social circumstances of a Persian/Hellenistic era community in Judea (with some concerns for the diaspora, no doubt). It views the Bibles "history of Israel" not for its accuracy but religious / poitical / ethnic symbolism, structures of legitimization etc. This is the real potential of the new changes in direction.

I suppose there is starting to be some good bit of work coming out influenced by this approach, but it still hasn't trickled down into a lot of accessible commentaries etc. It is also unlikely that if (is "when" too optimistic?) this happens a lot of libraries won't be able to afford them with all the cut backs etc.

It is getting very hard to teach intro to OT classes with a mind to the new approaches: students run off to the library and pick up stuff that simply paraphrases the Bible to produce a history of Israel and contexts for the composition of the text itself (there being nothing else in the library). They then start wondering if their radical prof will fail them for it.


JRL

Ebonmuse

According to Dever, they do. In chapter 5, "Daily Life of Israel in the Time of the Divided Monarchy," he discusses the minimalist claim that there is no 10th-century evidence for Israel literacy, and more so, that "biblical Hebrew" is an invention of the Hellenistic-Roman period. Against this claim, he lists and discusses dozens of ostraca, seals, bullae, inscribed objects, and tomb inscriptions, and then cites several minimalists who apparently believe they're all forged. For one example, Thompson and Lemche have suggested that the bulla of Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe (Jer. 36:4-32) - we have at least three bullae all sealed with this same signet ring - are forgeries (p. 208). On the same page, he also cites Robert P. Carroll, "Madonna of Silences," in Lester Grabbe's Can a "History of Israel" Be Written? as one who charges that most of the recently published seals and bullae are faked.

spin

Recently forgery has cropped up as a profitable market and is being caught up with by Israeli archaerologists and police -- just think of the ossuary and that supposed Jehoash (?) stela. That's profit, stuff to be sold privately.

There are problems with the Tel Dan inscription.

There is the tendency to have two opposing positions regarding new artifacts:

1) they must be original, or

2) they can't be original.

Nobody can let things get analysed thoroughly before committing themselves. People use data from these unverified artifacts and deliberately build them into some status quo acceptance, so the only other position seems to be to trash new artifacts totally. Understandable, but just as wrong.

I know how both Lemche and Thompson work, both have rather provocative positions, but they provide a great deal of evidence for their positions. I don't know anything about the bullae, but I would be inclined to sift through their evidence before taking any position myself.

Having read Dever's efforts, I don't think he provides much justification for what he writes. He seems to have merely been tilting at the so-called minimalists lately.

Archaeology is of course the most important evidential input we have. For too long people have been treating the biblical accounts as history, when they should have been aware of when the notion of historiography was being belted out, and given up on the wrong-headed notion of projecting modern ideas of history onto ancient texts. But archaeology is nowhere near as accessible to the layman as biblical texts are. No-one seems to acknowledge that texts are only secondary evidence, unless placed in situ, as for example archives such as those from Ugarit. And then they have to be analysed and treated like any other literature.

Who advocates that biblical Hebrew is an invention other than Garbini? There are grave problems with the Hebrew language as we understand it, but there has to be a natural explanation for the existence of Hebrew with all its variations as shown by the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Hebrew literacy in the 10th century? That's almost certainly not possible. Literacy, maybe, but Hebrew literacy no. The linguistic emergence of the Hebrew language, or at least "southern Canaanite", was only happening in the 10th century.


spin

Ebonmuse

And I agree - spectacular artifacts of unknown provenance, suddenly turning up in the hands of private collectors who want to sell them for profit, should be regarded with the deepest suspicion. The dual fiascos over the Jehoash inscription and the James ossuary show that very well. But these bullae are not being hawked on the black market, they're sitting in a museum, and as far as I can tell they were found in situ by respectable scholars (Dever mentions Nahman Avigad, whom I don't know much about).

How so? I'm aware it was found in secondary context, with pieces of it reused as building material for a later structure, but it was found in situ, was it not?

He is spending quite a bit of time arguing with the minimalists, but when you say he doesn't provide enough justification I must disagree. This book provides a great deal of evidence. And he has said he's a secular humanist himself; I do not believe he's anxious to confirm as much of the biblical record as possible. To me, in this debate it's the minimalists who seem to be working from the position of greatest ideological bias, and we shouldn't disregard that just because their conclusions are friendly to our position. What's most important is what conclusion the evidence supports.

Apikorus

Dever's two recent popular books, whose titles I would quote were they not so awkwardly long, were hastily written but are very informative. As with all scholars, popular books don't really tell the story and you need to read their journal articles. (And by "journal" I don't mean BAR.) I very much doubt Thompson would want his career judged by The Mythic Past, which is pretty awful.

Garbini has a long story about the TDS, but even though we should all stipulate his great expertise in ancient Aramaic, his arguments are quite weak. (Would be happy to discuss this further, spin.) And just who does he think forged the TDS? Avraham Biran?

I've got to go home to check my copy of Scribes and Schools but I seem to recall Philip Davies making some noise about Biblical Hebrew being some late archaizing affectation.

spin's cautionary words regarding artifacts are quite correct.

As far as history in the Hebrew Bible, there's a pretty obvious historical core to much of the Deuteronomistic History (Kings in particular). About a dozen kings of Israel and Judah are referred to in Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions. In addition, events such as battles and wars mentioned in Kings (and some prophetic books) are corroborated by extrabiblical sources. The extreme minimalist position that the entire HB is a Hellenistic fabrication is abjectly ludicrous. Still on balance I'd say that today's scholars are on average tilted more toward biblical credulousness than skepticism.