Hex

As requested by Sven and Dean Anderson, I'll explain my statements about Finkelstein especially.

From Archaeohistorical Exodus gains credibility:

Now, realize that I do rely on Dever for this, though I've seen conflicts between Finkelstein and Rosen that work right into the same things.

In working to make a summary of The Bible Unearthed, I think that Dever's words cannot be beat:

Now, Dever is not a nobody. Likewise, Rosen (Steven A.) has an impressive list of peer-reviewed articles on topics in the area in question. I pick these two as focal points because they represent mainstream, accepted archaeologists in the field who have both brought up issues with Finkelstein's archaeological interpretations.


That said, The Bible Unearthed (or via: amazon.co.uk) (Finkelstein & Silberman, 2001) -is- an amazing attempt at reconciling the texts available with the archaeological evidence. As much as doing so involves revising a number of timelines, they did not go as far as some have tried. They do, however, end up rewriting not only some amount of history to make the information fit, but, in doing so, force a revision of the understanding of the -religion-.

Now, why is that such a bad thing? Well, in the face of the archaeological data that has been recovered in the area, there is a huge body of data. Some of it seems to flesh out aspects of the Biblical story. In a different thread I brought up the concrete nature of the use of archaeology to document a typical 12th-11th century Bronze/Iron age temple and how that matches fairly well to the description of Solomon's Temple. (Archaeology and Israelite Historiography: Part I, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research © 1995 The American Schools of Oriental Research, pp 61-80)

Finkelstein, however, goes beyond mainstream archaeology. In a manner that goes almost totally against The Bible Unearthed, in "Processes of Sedentarization and Nomadization in the History of Sinai and the Negev" (Israel Finkelstein, Avi Perevolotsky, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 279. (Aug., 1990), pp. 67-88.), Finkelstein goes against conventional archaeology and ethnoarchaeology to conclude that there are, what Rosen deems, 'invisible nomads'. Finklestein goes to referencing pre-19th century ethnographies that 'prove' that Bedouin don't leave remains in the archaeological record.

Why is that a big deal? Finkelstein's paper was written in 1990, well into a time-period where ethnoarchaeology has been studying the remains of nomadic peoples for 30 to 40 years. Why does he not integrate these more contemporary works into the analysis? He wants to prove sedentism. For Finkelstein in this project it's all or nothing. It's either evidence -for- sedentism as -any- archaeological remains, or it's -no- evidence for occupation by nomads by a -total- lack of archaeological evidence.

Am I just being picky? No. Why?

Because there is evidence that is recoverable. That's not to say that there aren't periods where such remains are hard to find, but where they do occur, one is honor-bound to note such.


In getting back to issues with The Bible Unearthed, Finkelstein asserts that archaeology can answer "not only when, but also why the
Bible was written" (p. 3).

What?

When, maybe. Why? Well now, that's getting deep into understanding a past culture. Explaining the trappings or shape of a temple or other structure, even perhaps some of the activities that went on there, sure, that's believable.

What we see of Finkelstein changes. Here, he's full of conjecture and, missing evidence is not simply missing, and therefore having nothing occuring, but rather, reasons to -squeeze- the timelines together. And, in doing this, they do what might be the worst possible thing for a scholarly work to do, that:

That, more than skipping data or anything else, is what I call bad archaeology.

Now, it should be noted that Dever is 'old school'. Thompson (1974) and Van Seters (1975) effectively demolished the historicity of the Patriarchs, and Devers never addressed it. He has been called a theist in his interpretations by some of the processualists and deconstructionsists, but his only real failing in that is that he clings to the historicity of Solomon's kingdom in scope and wealth.

What he is is slow to change. There needs to be a good, demonstrated body of evidence to prove that what he's got is to be accepted.

Conservative? Yep.

Stable? Yep.

Can the same be said for Finkelstein? Nope.

As much as I want to see progress, I want to see it in a good context, well documented, replicable, and sound.

Clivedurdle

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/vi...letter=E&pid=0

I understood all he had done was put the boot in a bit more clearly, and is not marginal at all but generally accepted in Judaism! It is everyone else, for example amongst xian scholars, who have not caught up!

David B

I don't usually contribute to threads like this, due to my level of ignorance (basically I know what I've picked up here, and from the odd documentary).

I'm curious about this, though.

My question - and I I think it's on topic - concerns whether archaeology can answer th two questions - when and why - the Mahabarata, and the Vedas et al were written.

David B (sees no reason to grant special status to the Bible, as opposed to other allegedly sacred writings)

neilgodfrey

F and S treat the story of the discovery of the book of the covenant as their central plank yet they nowhere address Philip Davies' challenge that this event has no support beyond the telling.


My Davies notes copied from http://members.dodo.com.au/neilgodfrey/arch/davies3.htm

The other presumed historical period was the discovery of "a book of the covenant" in the Jerusalem Temple that led to the reforms of King Josiah. The only evidence that such a book was ever discovered and that this king ever existed or enacted these reforms is the story itself found in 2 Kings 22-23. The whole point of this story is to explain to the reader that if the laws of book of the covenant had been obeyed then the nation of Judah would never have gone into Babylonian captivity. Furthermore, 2 Kings appears to be strongly influenced by the ideas and language and style found in the book of Deuteronomy, and the book of the covenant in this story is described in a way that makes it look very much like it was really the Book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament. The whole story looks like an attempt to make the book of Deuteronomy appear to have been known in ancient times and to have had authority. In the story good King Josiah is conveniently killed after enacting the laws of Deuteronomy and all his good work is undone by his successors.

Thus alas! the book was unknown both before and after Josiah's time, at least until the time the story was written. It looks very much as if the whole story was written to make a much later book look ancient and requiring obedience to its laws.

If such a story as this were found anywhere except in the Bible it would simply lack credibility. Readers would assume it was a fable.

But let's suppose the story really were true and stop and think about it. Can we imagine an ancient king really using Deuteronomy as his new book of laws. Deuteronomy has only one chapter with commanding a king what to do. (He must not get horses from Egypt and must spend day and night reading the book, etc.) Some scholars have argued that Deuteronomy was actually written at the time of King Josiah, but if this is so it is hard to understand why it has so few commands for kings at a time when kings had all authority over virtually all the activities of their kingdoms. But let's suppose one king really did decide to give up all his ways and begin to rule entirely by the rules of this book. Can we really imagine the many other powerful individuals and groups in the kingdom, those who owed their powers and status to the king, can we imagine them also calmly stepping aside and allowing their king to do this? Possible maybe, but highly improbable.

Now if these stories are untrue we open the floodgate of rethinking all our notions of when the books of Moses and other Bible books were actually written, by and for whom and why.


Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2006/11/...ncient-israel/

Apikorus

The Finkelstein-Dever controversy is somewhat of a tempest in a teapot, I find. To a certain extent it recapitulates the Alt - Gottwald/Mendenhall dichotomy. Finkelstein, like Albrecht Alt 75 years ago, argues that Israelite origins lie with peripatetic nomads -- a transhumant population living on the fringes of Palestine who plopped themselves down in the Judaean highlands during the LBA and early Iron I. Dever, following Norman Gottwald and (minus NG's Marxist slant) George Mendenhall, holds that it was an inside job -- the Israelites were in fact Canaanites who moved from coast to interior for various possible reasons. (Dever often adduces Finkelstein's own site, Izbet Sartah, in support of his views.) Overall I find Dever's picture more compelling. Finkelstein must be credited with seminal contributions, though, especially with his "Land of Ephraim" surface studies (discussed in Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement).

Regarding the more sensational aspects of The Bible Unearthed, again it hardly seems much of a fuss. Hex is absolutely correct that noone (save the usual cadre of fundamentalist crazies) since the mid-70's, after the work Thomson and van Seters, has invested much effort in the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives. The Exodus and the conquest narrative are similarly regarded. The battle lines now are drawn over the United Monarchy (late 11th - 10th centuries BCE). Starting with the 9th century, we start to have a good deal of extrabiblical attestation of names and events, so there's not much left to fight over.

Yadin thought the six-chambered gates at Hazor, Gezer, and Megiddo to be of Solomonic provenance. Finkelstein says they are Omride. He's probably wrong, but even if he's right, it matters little. It doesn't take any of these finds out of their Iron Age context. Even scholars like Baruch Halpern (David's Secret Demons) acknowledge that the David material can't be taken at face value. So David may have been a minor 10th century chieftain. Why should this be surprising?

(Certain minimalists would insist that 2 Sam is a Hellenistic fiction, which I think is ludicrous. The relatively high degree of corruption in the text is itself suggestive of its antiquity. But - they protest - perhaps these corruptions, like Early Biblical Hebrew itself, are mere affectations of a Hellenistic scribe.)

Incidentally, Hex, you claim that Dever has not engaged with Thomson and van Seters, but I'm not sure this is true. In his earlier (1990) volume, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research, he very stridently emphasized the point that the Hebrew Bible is a poor historical source, owing to its late, selective, non-historiographical, elitist nature. I'm away from home at the moment and I can't check, but I would not be surprised if he gleefully invoked Thomson and van Seters therein. It is ironic that today he should be battling against the minimalists. He's staked out and ably defended (on two fronts) what I feel is a very solid middle ground. I could do with less of his polemic, I will admit.

Hex

As an optomistic archaeologist, I can say ...

Maybe?

If you want a 'why' answer that has to do with cultural functioning AND there's data to give a clear picture as to what sctructures are already existant in a society that would then give rise to such a mythological system.

'When' is a much easier question for archaeologists than 'why'. To answer the why you have to -really- understand the culture as a whole. To answer the 'when' you can look for the appearance of items - symbols, special buildings, artifacts that tie in with the works. Note though, that seeing the appearance of some odd object in an archaeological context has long been attributed to the "it must be a religious item" explaination. Just because you find something odd doesn't mean that you know what it -meant- to the people who had it.

Overall, archaeology does well with things. It isn't as good with concepts - guess they just don't fossilize well enough all the time.

Hex

Sorry ... I meant at the time.

Instead of facing these guys right away, he waits a decade or so. And then agrees. Note that what he attacks F&S on is them attacking the 'next' phase, from the Patriarchs to the fall of Jerusalum. He's still holding his middle-ground.

But yeah. One thing I didn't bring up in all this is the size of the 'personalities' involved. It makes for archaeologist drama and feels more like gossip than scholarly discussion ... :blush:

Asha'man

Hex, have you actually read The Bible Unearthed, or are you relying primarily on reviews?

I've read the book, and used quotes from it several times here on IIDB, and am trying to get a better picture of where the 'bad archeology' is within that book (i.e. what parts I can use safely and what to avoid due to potential controversy).

It seems like there are two very different threads running through the book, and some people may be confusing them. One thread is based on what the HB claims happened vs what the evidence indicates. In this thread, the evidence (or lack thereof) is presented that shows that everything from the Patriarchs to the Exodus to the conquest of Canaan are most likely fictional. They follow with the indications that the grand unified kingdom of David and Solomon is probably greatly exaggerated, but the divided kingdom period may be somewhat historical. I consider this thread to be professional conclusions based on evidence, and safe to use in debates at II.

I see a second thread being a much more speculative one, but honestly presented. This is where the authors suggest a plausible path to fill in the holes in the story, holes left by the removal of the clearly fictional material. This is where the suggestion is made for when and why various passages were written, such as the Exodus and conquest of Canaan being used in the 7th century to justify ownership of the kingdom of Israel. This is also where the actual origin of the Hebrews is discussed as coming from waves of nomadic population movement. I consider this thread to be speculative and interesting, but not solid enough to put into a real debate.

It seems that you may be objecting to the speculative portions of the book being taken as well supported, even though I read them as clearly speculative. It would be wrong to overstate the confidence in such conclusions if they were based on weak evidence, but I think it's perfectly fair to offer such speculations as long as it was clear that they were merely speculations.

Am I following this controversy right, or is there more that I haven't grasped yet?

Clivedurdle

That analysis is how I see it, and interestingly, allows further speculation - that maybe the whole cloth - Genesis Deuteronomy, Kings etc is post exile....

Hex

Reviews. Given that this book straddles the Archaeological/ Ideological/ Theological realm from two folks who have had a sort of (in my view) sketchy scholarly past, I didn't see a real need to read it myself. This hit me as another book written for the general public, thus, likely to be more spin and less archaeology.

Silberman, as much as he's an archaeologist, he's more like an ... armchair archaeologist. He's into the history -of- archaeology. Look to his 'Digging for God and Country' where he examines nationalism and ideology and how it works into how archaeology was done throughout it's history. many of his works are collaborations with other archaeologists who seem to provide the framework for Silberman's ... stretches of the evidence to fit a picture he likes. I've hit on my issues with Finkelstein above ...


:huh:

Well, you're not wrong. The speculation is a part of the problem I have - not so much that they do it, but how -far- they take their speculations. That the Patriarch and earlier times in the Bible are fictional? No problems. But, the fact that we have archaeological information about times of and before and they match with the lifestyle of the Semitic peoples likely in Palestine? Well ... :huh:

Also, some of the crunching of the time-line. Why? To fill gaps? Maybe, but, why not just drop some of this stuff -out-?

And, the worst part? From what I've read about the book, without citations, you -can't- know if the evidence is weak or not. I come into the whole thing biased, knowing what I do about the two scholars involved and their particular ... agendas? means of scholarship? When you put the two of them together on a project, one that's untraceable - unreplicable because the sources are hidden?

As to what you can use in an arguement, well, these are two fairly prominant scholars in the field of Middle Eastern, especially Palestinian archaeology. To the lay person, this is probably a fine source to use. Against a real professional ... Well ... Make sure you have a couple of nice scholarly works that back up whatever point you like from F&S ...