Is archaeology read from the bible, or read into the bible?

Do christian/jews in the past simply take a religious stance and lie, so archaeolgogy seems to fit the bible?

Best Corleone

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Is archaeology read from the bible, or read into the bible?

My take on it is that, in the past, archaeologists tended to take the Bible as a starting point for their archaeological explorations on the assumption that there was at least some truth to what the Bible presents as historical fact. There may have been an attempt on the part of a few apologetically inclined archaeologists to read into the Bible, to make the facts fit the biblical narrative, but it looks to me as if present-day archaeologists are far more interested in discovering what they can about whatever it is that they are investigating, letting the facts fall where they may whether those facts support or refute the biblical narrative.

I subscribed for many years to <a href="http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/indexBAR.html" target="_blank">Biblical Archaeology Review</a> and it didn't seem to me as if there was any reluctance on the part of archaeologists to let the facts fall where they may. The same is true of the two books on the subject of biblical archaeology which I have in my library: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393012859/InternetInfidelsA" target="_blank">Archaeology in the Holy Land</a> by Kathleen Kenyon and Archaeology of the Bible by Magnus Magnusson. [Note: Both are now out of print, but the former is available through Amazon by clicking on the preceding link.]

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In the past, have Christians and/or Jews simply taken a religious stance and lied so as to make archaeology seem to fit the bible?

My take on it is that there has not likely been more than a little bit of that, though I do think (as I said) that there was a tendency in years past to accept the biblical narrative as historically accurate, thus archaeological "findings" would have been somewhat tainted by this tendency. Certainly in recent years, there has been little--if any--of this, although I have seen statements from Christian apologists (as opposed to archaeologists) to the effect that archaeology alwayssupports the Bible as historical; apparently these aplogists haven't done even the little reading that I have done on the subject of biblical archaeology.

--Don--

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[Moved here from Feedback as a matter of interest. Hopefully Corleone will become a registered user and take part in the discussion. --Don--]