This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? Excessive Violence Sexual Content Political / Social
Email Address:
Article Id: WHEBN0001480596 Reproduction Date:
Biblical archaeology involves the recovery and scientific investigation of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the periods and descriptions in the Bible, be they from the Old Testament (Tanakh) or from the New Testament, as well as the history and cosmogony of the Judeo-Christian religions. The principal location of interest for this branch of the archaeological sciences is what is known in the relevant religions as the Holy Land, which from a western perspective is also called the Middle East. Even though the main reference points of biblical archaeology are mainly theological and religious, the study of these references is a methodical science. The scientific techniques used are the same as those used in general archaeology, such as excavation and radiocarbon dating among others. In contrast, the archaeology of the ancient Middle East simply deals with the Ancient Near East, or Middle East, without giving any especial consideration to whether its discoveries have any relationship with the Bible.
Biblical archaeology is polemical as there are a number of points of view regarding the nature of its purpose and aims, and what these should be. A number of points of view from important archaeologists are included in the section on Expert Commentaries.
In order to understand the significance of biblical archaeology it is first necessary to understand two basic concepts: archaeology as a
The following is a summary of important excavations and surveys:
“Really, it’s a myth,”... “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem.”[34]
Regarding the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said:
Professor [33]
This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.[31][32]
Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog wrote in the Haaretz newspaper:
Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The biblical narratives about Abraham, Moses, Joshua and Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence....[29] I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information...[30]
Dever also wrote:
"Archaeology certainly doesn't prove literal readings of the Bible...It calls them into question, and that's what bothers some people. Most people really think that archaeology is out there to prove the Bible. No archaeologist thinks so."[27] From the beginnings of what we call biblical archaeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archaeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. William Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archaeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archaeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.[28]
Dever has also written that:
Dever found that Syro-Palestinian archaeology had been treated in American institutions as a sub discipline of bible studies. Where it was expected that American archaeologists would try to "provide valid historical evidence of episodes from the biblical tradition". According to Dever "the most naïve [idea regarding Syro-Palestinian archaeology] is that the reason and purpose of "biblical archaeology" (and, by extrapolation, of Syro-Palestinian archaeology) is simply elucidate facts regarding the Bible and the Holy Land".[26]
One of the world's leading biblical archaeologists, William G. Dever contributed to the article on "Archaeology" in The Anchor Bible Dictionary. In this article he reiterates his perceptions of the negative effects of the close relationship that has existed between Syro-Palestinian archaeology and biblical archaeology, which has caused the archaeologists working in this field, particularly the American archaeologists, to resist adoption of the new methods of "processual archaeology". In addition he considers that: "Underlying much scepticism in our own field [referring to the adaptation of the concepts and methods of a "new archaeology"], one suspects the assumption (although unexpressed or even unconscious) that ancient Palestine, especially Israel during the biblical period, was unique, in some "superhistorical" way that was not governed by the normal principles of cultural evolution".[25]
In a statement on biblical archaeology Robert I. Bradshaw has commented: "It is virtually universally agreed that the purpose of biblical archaeology is not to ‘prove’ the Bible. However ... in as much as archaeology sheds light on that history it is important to biblical studies."[24]
Bryant G. Wood notes the consensus of archaeologists on the following point: "The purpose of biblical archaeology is to enhance our comprehension of the Bible, and so its greatest achievement, in my view, has been the extraordinary illumination of the . . . time of the Israelite monarchy".[23]
[...]"the purpose of biblical archaeology is the clarification and illumination of the biblical text and content through archaeological investigation of the biblical world." — written by J.K. Eakins in a 1977 essay published in Benchmarks in Time and Culture and quoted in his essay "Archaeology and the Bible, An Introduction", [4].
Since this time archaeology has been considered to provide valuable assistance and as an indispensable tool of the biblical sciences.
[...] the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology, ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak, the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use. [...]Let those who cultivate biblical studies turn their attention with all due diligence towards this point and let them neglect none of those discoveries, whether in the domain of archaeology or in ancient history or literature, which serve to make better known the mentality of the ancient writers, as well as their manner and art of reasoning, narrating and writing.[...] — Pius XII, Encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, paragraphs 35 and 40
In 1943, Pope Pius XII recommended that interpretations of the Scripture take archaeological findings into account in order to discern the literary genres that the Scriptures used.[22]
Archaeological investigations carried out with scientific methods can offer useful data in fixing a chronology that helps to order the biblical stories. In certain cases these investigations can find the place where these narratives took place. In other cases they can confirm the veracity of the stories. However, in other matters they can question events that have been taken as historical fact, providing arguments that show that certain stories are not historical narratives but belong to a different narrative genre.
The majority of excavations and investigations carried out in the area where the biblical narratives are set mainly have the objective of casting light on the historical, cultural, economic and religious background to the texts, therefore their main objective is not usually proving the veracity of these stories. However, there are some groups that take a more fundamentalist approach and which organize archaeological campaigns with the intention of finding proof that the Bible is factual and that its narratives should be understood as historical events. This is not the position of the official Catholic Church.[20][21]
The objects in the following list generally come from private collections and were often purchased in antique’s markets. Their authenticity is highly controversial and in some cases they have been proved to be fakes.
Biblical archaeology has also been the target of several celebrated forgeries, which have been perpetrated for a variety of reasons. One of the most celebrated is that of the James Ossuary, when information came to light in 2002 regarding the discovery of an ossuary, with an inscription that said "Jacob, son of Joseph and brother of Jesus". In reality the artifact had been discovered twenty years before, after which it had exchanged hands a number of times and the inscription had been added. This was discovered because it did not correspond to the pattern of the epoch from which it dated.[15]
Detailed lists of objects can be found at the following pages:
The Walls of Jericho: A stratum of burnt matter relating to the City-IV destruction has been dated to 1617–1530 BC at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. It contains remains of The Walls of Jericho, which were destroyed either by an earthquake or a siege. Opinions are divided as to whether this destruction corresponds to that described in the Bible. According to the biblical account the Israelites destroyed the city after its walls fell down in around 1407 BC. Excavations led by John Garstang in 1930 dated the destruction of Jericho to 1400 BC, which would confirm the biblical story. However, the site was re-excavated by Kathleen Kenyon in the 1950s and the destruction of the walls was redated to around 1550 BC. Bryant G. Wood later reviewed Kenyon’s field notes and made a number of criticisms of her work. Wood found a number of ambiguities in the investigations and he also pointed to results of carbon 14 tests on a burnt stratum that dated the layer to 1410 BC, with a margin of error of 40 years. Wood’s conclusions therefore confirmed Garstang’s original estimates. However, the carbon dating result was a consequence of an incorrect calibration. In 1995 Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht used a high precision radiocarbon dating test on 18 samples from Jericho, including six samples of carbonized cereal from the burnt stratum. The results of these tests gave the age of the strata as 1562 BC, with a margin of error of 38 years. These results therefore confirm Kenyon's estimate and cast doubt on the biblical story.[12][13][14]
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered by Bedouins in the caves of Kiryit Qumran in 1947 and subsequent excavations were initially led by Roland de Vaux. The Scrolls comprise some 800 documents in tens of thousands of fragments. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, they contain biblical and apocryphal works, prayers and legal texts and sectarian documents. Another piece of papyrus that has proved polemical is the so-called 7Q5, which is a small piece of papyrus whose origin is difficult to identify. The Spanish papyrologist Josep O’Callaghan Martínez, backed by the German biblical exegesist Carsten Peter Thiede, has concluded that it was a portion of a New Testament text, although this opinion remains controversial.
Archaeology in the Holy Lands has made a number of important findings. Perhaps the most important of these include:
A summary of the excavations carried out in this area is included at Table I at the end of this article.
Biblical archaeology is the subject of permanent debate. One of the sources of greatest dispute is the period when kings ruled Israel and more generally the historicity of the Bible. It is possible to define two loose schools of thought regarding these areas: biblical minimalism and maximalism, depending on whether the bible is considered to be a non-historical, religious document or not. The two schools are not separate units but form a spectrum, making it difficult to define different camps and limits. However, it is possible to define points of difference, although these differences seem to be decreasing over time.
The development of biblical archaeology has been marked by different periods:
The study of biblical archaeology started at the same time as general archaeology and obviously its development relates to the discovery of highly important ancient artifacts.
The following list of periods for Syro-Palestinian archaeology is based on the table provided in Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, pp. 33-34[9] up to the end of the Iron Age, and from the definitions provided by the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible, p. 55, for later periods.[10]
In the same way that the spatial criteria vary according to the various points of view of the different researchers, there are also a variety of dates that are of interest. Kaswalder comments that:
The geographical area that circumscribes the area of interest for biblical archaeology is obviously the biblical lands, also known as the "Holy Land". There are many points of view regarding the exact extent of this area, however, biblical archaeology specifically concentrates on the Land of Israel, Palestine and Jordan, the area called the southern Levant. Many researchers are also interested in other areas that are mentioned in the biblical tales and which have a great importance for their connecting thread: Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia which are of interest to scientists interested in the Tanakh. Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome have greater connections with the stories from the New Testament.
The raison d’etre of biblical archaeology derives from the fact that it allows an understanding of the peoples that inhabited the Holy Land. It allows an understanding of their history, culture, identity and movements. This makes it possible to know the exact location of the stories and compare them with fact. Regarding this, Kaswalder has noted that previously the American and Israeli school of biblical archaeology saw archaeology as proof of the veracity of the biblical stories,[6] as can be seen in the work of authors of the stature of William F. Albright, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin However, today archaeologists are not trying to prove that the stories in the Bible are true, they are trying to discover the historical world upon which the books of the bible drew and from which they derive their meaning. Using this approach, introduced by P. Kaswalder,[7] it is possible to shed light on the following, according to the classification presented by the Catalan papyrologist Joan Maria Vernet:[8]
Biblical archaeology is the discipline occupied with the scientific investigation and recovery of the material remains of past cultures that can illuminate the times and descriptions of the Bible. A broad swathe of time between 2000 BC and 100 AD.[5] Other authors prefer to talk about the "archaeology of Palestine" and to define the relevant territories as those to the east and west of the River Jordan. This indicates that "biblical archaeology" or that of Palestine is circumscribed by the territories that were the backdrop to the biblical stories.
It might be thought that archaeology would have to disregard the information contained within religions and many philosophical systems. However, apart from the great deal of factual material that they provide such as places of worship, holy objects and other scientifically observable things, there are other aspects that are equally important for scientific archaeological investigation such as religious texts, rites, customs and traditions. Myths are commonly used by archaeologists and historians as clues to events or places that have become hidden in the background, a process that Rudolf Bultmann calls "demythification" – the most notable example being Homer’s poems and the mythical city of Troy. This contemporary perception of the myth, mainly developed by Bultmann, has encouraged scientists such as archaeologists to examine the areas indicated by the biblical tales.[3][4]
[2] as a relatively recent modern science, and as Benesch has said, it is a science that is barely 200 years old but that has, however, completely changed our ideas about the past.[1]
Israel, Bible, Jordan, Syria, Pottery
Bible, Egypt, Iran, Cyprus, Biblical archaeology