Is the Biblical Text a Historical Source?

A Dichotomous Approach

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. Dever, William G. “The Western Cultural Tradition Is at Risk”. Biblical Archaeology Review 32, No 2: 26 & 76. March/April 2006

The archaeologist William Dever [1] , discussing the role of his discipline in interpreting the Biblical record, has pointed out that there are in fact multiple histories within the Bible, including the history of theology (the relationship between God and believers), political history (usually the account of “Great Men”), narrative history (the chronology of events), intellectual history (ideas and their development, context and evolution), socio-cultural history (institutions, including their social underpinnings in family, clan, tribe and social class and the state), cultural history (overall cultural evolution, demography, socio-economic and political structure and ethnicity), technological history (the techniques by which humans adapt to, exploit and make use of the resources of their environment), natural history (how humans discover and adapt to the ecological facts of their natural environment), and material history (artifacts as correlates of changes in human behavior). Dever notes that the role of archaeology increases as one goes down this list, and that archaeologist’s interpretations of the written record can differ markedly from the record itself.

Most importantly for the historian, the authors were not engaged in writing what we would now recognize as an objective and balanced history, but rather they were engaged in writing a polemic in defense of a specific people, and of one particular religious point of view held by a literate group of people of these states. Within these documents the history of humankind is seen through the particular lens of the relation of the individual and the state to the god Yahweh.

Many though not all of the events, names of monarchs, and identification of places can be found confirmed by non Biblical Iron Age sources, texts found through archaeological excavations in neighboring states, and by archaeological surveys and excavations within the area of historic Judah and Israel, though materials dating to the previous Bronze Age are very few. But there has been, even within this material, major discussion, debate and argument. Religiously conservative historians, as seen below, are accused by religiously liberal historians of forcing the interpretation of historical facts to fit into one or more particular Biblical interpretations. Liberal historians are criticized by religiously conservative historians for not placing greater faith in the Biblical record as a reliable source for history.

The Dispute between Biblical Maximalist versus Biblical  Minimalist

The splitting of Biblical Scholarship into two opposing schools is strongly resisted by non-fundamentalist Biblical scholars, as being an attempt by so-called “conservative” Christians to portray the field as a bipolar argument, of which only one side is correct [2].  Examination of the so-called “liberal/secular” views in detail shows many differences of opinion, clearly demonstrating that to portray Biblical scholarship in such “us” against “them” terms reflects a particular sectarian point of view, not supported by the evidence. After the book ”The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel” by Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar and Brian B. Schmidt [3] , argues that Post-processual archaeology enables us to recognize the existence of a middle ground between Minimalism and Maximalism, and that both these extremes need to be rejected. Archaeology offers both confirmation of parts of the Biblical record and also poses challenges to the naive interpretations made by some. The careful examination of the evidence demonstrates that the historical accuracy of the first part of the Old Testament is greatest during the reign of Josiah and that the accuracy diminishes, the further backwards one proceeds from this date. The authors claim that this would confirm that a major redaction of the texts seems to have occurred at about that date. This is not to claim that there are no earlier survivals drawn either from oral traditions or earlier archives, but that these materials are less and less accurate the earlier the period that is examined. Within the academic community, the main discussion revolves around how much weight to give the text of the Bible against counter-evidence or lack of evidence. Generally those giving more weight to the text of the Bible, assuming its correctness unless proven otherwise, and tending to interpret it literally, are called Biblical maximalists, while the opposing view is Biblical minimalism. The debate between the two sides is inextricably tied to how one views historiography: they disagree over how much weight documentary and indirect evidence should be given. Biblical maximalists view the Biblical narrative as a starting point for constructing the history, and correct or reinterpret it where it is contradicted by archaeological evidence. Biblical minimalists start purely from the archaeological evidence, and only consider Biblical accounts of value if they are corroborated by the archaeological evidence.

One of the reasons for the conflict between the maximalist and minimalist schools of thought is the amount of archaeological data found and the estimates of the potential amount of archaeological material found and worked on [4]. Conservatives estimate that only about 2% of the potential archeological material has been found and worked on.  The Biblical conservative historian, Edwin M. Yamauchi [5]  in his work “The Stones and the Scriptures” summed up the conservative point of view when he wrote, “Historians of antiquity in using the archeological evidence have very often failed to realize how slight is the evidence at our disposal. It would not be exaggerating to point out that what we have is but one fraction of a second fraction of a third fraction of a fourth fraction of a fifth fraction of the possible evidence“.[6]  Yamauchi estimated in The Stones and the Scriptures that a generous estimate would be that 1/1000 of the archaeological material that once existed has actually been published. Minimalists, on the other hand, argue that what has been found so far is an unselected and fairly typical representative sample of what remains to be discovered, and argue a higher amount of archaeological material that once existed contradict the literal inerrant interpretation of the Biblical evidence, than would confirm it. They argue that Biblical conservatives argue from the point of view of the absence of evidence. Conservatives argue that this does not mean evidence of absence. (Egyptologists excavating the Port city of Mendes, the village of Deir al-Medinah and the Valley of Kings estimate around 10% of sites have been excavated. In Israel, sites excavated greatly outnumber those in any other region of the ancient Near East). Such low figures indicate minimalist and maximalists basing their arguments on the “final evidence,” rather than on the “focus”, of archaeology are both arriving at very hasty conclusions. Minimalist and maximalist both agree, however, that although the number of parties interested in Biblical archaeology has increased, the political instability and commercial development of the Biblical lands is hampering the collection of relevant archaeological material.

As for any other written source, an educated weighting of the Biblical text requires knowledge of when it was written, by whom, and for what purpose. For example, most academics of both persuasions would agree that the Pentateuch was in existence some time shortly after the 6th century BCE. One popular hypothesis points to the reign of Josiah (7th century BCE). This topic is expanded upon in dating the Bible. This means that the events of, for example, Exodus happened centuries before they were written down, so one should be prepared – indeed one should expect – that telling and retelling through the centuries accentuated the tale, perhaps merged originally unrelated stories, and so on. Analysis of the text suggests that it was written in the Kingdom of Judah, and probably reflects the political ambitions of the kingdom or of the temple. Thus, for example, within this interpretation one should keep in mind that representing Judah and Israel as a unity throughout history, separated only “recently”, fitted in with Josiah’s political plans for the unification of Judah with the remnants of the Kingdom of Israel.

Finally, an important point to keep in mind is the documentary hypothesis (not the originally Wellhausen’s one!), which using the Biblical evidence itself, can demonstrate that our current version was based on older written sources that were lost. Although it has been modified heavily over the years, most scholars accept some form of this hypothesis (the Vatican estimates 90% of scholars). There have also been and are a number of scholars who reject it, for example Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen[7]  and the late Umberto Cassuto and Gleason Archer, although most scholars rejecting it do so for religious reasons – Archer and Kitchen are devout conservative Christians (Archer was also a Pastor), while Cassuto was Chief Rabbi of Florence.

Biblical minimalism. Biblical minimalists generally hold that the Bible is principally a theological and apologetic work, and all stories within it are of an etiological character. The early stories are held to have a historical basis that was reconstructed centuries later, and the stories possess at most only a few tiny fragments of genuine historical memory—which by their definition are only those points which are supported by archaeological discoveries. In this view, all of the stories about the Biblical patriarchs are fictional, and the patriarchs never legendary eponyms to describe later historical realities. Further, Biblical minimalists hold that the twelve tribes of Israel were a later construction, the stories of King David and King Saul were modeled upon later Irano-Hellenistic examples, and that there is no archaeological evidence that the united kingdom of Israel, which the Bible says that David and Solomon ruled over an empire from the Euphrates to Eilath (Elat), ever existed.

“It is hard to pinpoint when the movement started but 1968 seems to be a reasonable date. During this year, two prize winning essays were written in Copenhagen; one by Niels Peter Lemche, the other by Heike Friis, which advocated a complete rethinking of the way we approach the Bible and attempt to draw historical conclusions from it.” [8]

In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as Biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell’Israele antico (1986) [9], translated into English as History and Ideology in Ancient Israel  (1988) [10]. In his footsteps followed Thomas L. Thompson with his lengthy Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written & Archaeological Sources (1992) [11] and, building explicitly on Thompson’s book, P. R. Davies’ shorter work, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’ (1992) . In the latter, Davies finds historical Israel only in archaeological remains, Biblical Israel only in Scripture, and recent reconstructions of “ancient Israel” are an unacceptable amalgam of the two. Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from 539 BCE onward. Niels Peter Lemche, Thompson’s fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen, also followed with several titles that show Thompson’s influence, including The Israelites in history and tradition (1998) [12]. The presence of both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term “Copenhagen school“.

The “Copenhagen School”. The Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies, also known as The Minimalist School is a school of biblical exegesis, developing out of Higher Criticism, emphasizing that the Bible should be read and analyzed primarily as a collection of narratives and not as an accurate historical account of events in the prehistory of the Middle East. This means that the theologians of the Copenhagen School read the Bible primarily as a source to the times and circumstances under which it was written. Members of the Copenhagen School are typically theologians or literature specialists, rather than archaeologists or specialists in related fields such as cuneiform, Assyriology or Egyptology. They offer commentary on how they interpret archaeological findings in accordance with their established views on Biblical and other ancient literature. As a result Copenhagen theologians have frequently argued for a later dating of parts of the Bible than archaeologists or specialists in fields related to the study of the Ancient Near East.

It was these types of discrepancies between what the Bible said and what archaeologists said that started the development of the Copenhagen School of thought, colloquially called as “Minimalism”. The approach taken by the Minimalist school start by treating the Bible as a text, with a “plot” and with a set of “characters”. It aims to establish a theological view, concerning the nature of the covenant between the historical people of Israel and their God. They claim that the events were not written as historiography, nor as a newspaper account of contemporary events, but were written as a story, similar to the story of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. The latter has similarities to what we find out about history through e.g. archaeology and surviving documentary evidence because it was itself based upon the historical accounts available to Shakespeare; but the dialogue and dramatic development of the plot were dependent not on a historically aware analysis of the records of late-Republican Rome, but on the concerns of Elizabethan England.

“Minimalist” scholars say that most other scholars have tended to put the evidence of the Bible account as superior to what archaeology shows, in situations when they contradict. That is, they look at the archaeological evidence from the perspective of justifying the Bible as an exact history. They charge conservative scholars like Bright and Albright of letting their religious convictions and preferences take priority over unbiased, objective historical research. They accuse fundamentalist scholars of having a hidden, sometimes subconscious agenda of wanting to prove that the Bible is right, and that this bias affects the way they do history. Philip Davies claims scholars have created a false Ancient Israel, that fails to fit into the archaeologically established context of Iron Age Syria and Palestine. The Ancient Israel that scholars have reconstructed, says Davies, is false – it is not the real historical Ancient Israel from Syria-Palestine but is rather a figment of conservative scholars’ imaginations.

The Minimalist approach attempts to put the archaeology in primary place and to consider in what way the history of Palestine would have been written without the presence of the Biblical text. For example Thomas L. Thompson considers this area to be part of a cyclic history of the Mediterranean mixed economy environment. For example, the highly diverse region comprises subsistence horticultural production, extensive grain growing, commercial production of dates, olives, wine and nuts, and nomadic pastoralism in drier areas. In cooler, drier periods, there is a decline in commercial cropping and an increase in nomadic pastoralism, in warmer, wetter periods, commerce grows with merchants opening up markets in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean, an increase in urbanization, and then an expansion of neighboring states so that Palestine becomes a tributary part of a regional empire. The Biblical period was a full cycle – beginning in the Middle Bronze Age urbanism, leading to the Egyptian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. A collapse into pastoralism and a beginning of a new cycle in the Iron Age, with Palestine incorporated again into regional Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Arab Empires, before a worsening of climates, increased pastoralism and a repeat of the cycle yet again.

Biblical maximalism. The term “maximalism” is something of a misnomer, and many people incorrectly relate this to Biblical inerrancy. Most maximalists, however, are not Biblical inerrantists [13]. Most Biblical maximalists accept many findings of modern historical studies and archaeology and agree that one needs to be cautious in teasing out the true from the false in the Bible. However, maximalists hold that the core stories of the Bible indeed tell us about actual historical events, and that the later books of the Bible are more historically based than the earlier books. Archaeology tells us about historical eras and kingdoms, ways of life and commerce, beliefs and societal structures; however only in extremely rare cases does archaeological research provide information on individual families. Thus, archaeology was not expected to, and indeed has not, provided any evidence to confirm or deny the existence of the Biblical patriarchs. As such, Biblical maximalists are divided on this issue. Some hold that many or all of these patriarchs were real historical figures, but that we should not take the Bible’s stories about them as historically accurate, even in broad strokes. Others hold that it is likely that some or all of these patriarchs are better classified as fictional creations, with only the slightest relation to any real historical persons in the distant past.

Biblical maximalists agree that the twelve tribes of Israel did indeed exist, even though they do not necessarily believe the Biblical description of their origin. Biblical maximalists are in agreement that important biblical figures, such as King David and King Saul did exist, that the Biblical kingdoms of Israel also existed, and that Jesus was a historical figure. Note, however, there is a wide array of positions that one can hold within this school, and some in this school overlap with biblical minimalists. As noted above, historical opinions fall on a spectrum, rather than in two tightly defined camps. The first generations of Biblical archaeologists from Flinders Petrie to William Albright and John Bright, seemed to find confirmation of the Bible in their work. The most important  findings of the “maximalist” are:

• Leonard Woolley’s excavations at Ur seemed to show the appearance of West Semites Amorites (or Martu) coming to rule in Southern Iraq close to the time spoken of for Abraham’s supposed residence in the city.
• The discovery of the Code of Hammurabi led to the suggestion of similarities with the Laws of Moses. Hammurabi of Babylon was identified with Amraphel of Shinar, one of the four kings confronting Abraham in Genesis.
• Excavations in Egypt confirmed the existence of the “store cities” of Ramesses (Per Ramses) and Pithom (Per Atum), and suggested that ‘cApiru (Hebrews) had been engaged in building projects for Rameses II.
• The discovery of the Israel stele mentioned a battle between Egypt and Israel in Canaan, in seeming confirmation of the settlement of the country after the Exodus by the Children of Israel.
  John Garstang’s excavations at Jericho found large walls split by cracks that seemed confirmation of Joshua’s attack as reported in the Bible.
• William F. Albright claimed to have found the city of Ai conquered by Joshua during the settlement of Canaan by the Israelites shortly after the Battle at Jericho
• Yigael Yadin and others found what was claimed to be Solomon’s stables, enclosed by ashlar walls of fortress cities at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer.

Other Views (minorities and marginal). Popular writers such as Immanuel Velikovsky, Donovan Courville and others believe that the lack of archeological attestation of biblical figures is due to errors in the traditional chronology or the dating of archaeological strata. Velikovsky’s theories were rejected outright by the scientific community and refuted in detail. More recent theories, notably those of Egyptologists David Rohl and Peter James are viewed with cautious interest by the scientific community but have not gained widespread acceptance. Indeed, a re-dating on the order of 300 years, as they proposed, is strongly rejected by leading Egyptologists and Assyriologists, notably Prof. Kenneth Kitchen.

NOTES:

[1]  William G. Dever celebrated  American archaeologist, specializing in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times and Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology, and Gaber, Professor of Archaeology and Judaic Studies at Lycoming College. Dever was Director of the Harvard Semitic Museum-Hebrew Union College Excavations at Gezer from 1966-71, 1984 and 1990; Director of the dig at Khirbet el-Kôm and Jebel Qacaqir (West Bank) from 1967-71; Principal Investigator at Tell el-Hayyat excavations (Jordan) 1981-85, and Assistant Director, University of Arizona Expedition to Idalion, Cyprus, 1991, among other excavations
[2]  Spong, John Shelby “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism” (Harper) 1992
[3]  Schmidt, Brian J (Ed) “The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel”  Bible Society Press 2007
[4]  Hoerth, Alfred. Archaeology and the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1998.
[5]  Dr. Edwin Maseo Yamauchi, born in 1937 in Hilo, Hawaii, is Professor of History at Miami University, Ohio, United States, and has served in that capacity since 1969.
[6]  Yamauchi, Edwin, The Stones and the Scriptures. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1972.
[7]  Kenneth Anderson Kitchen (born 1932) is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies, University of Liverpool, England. Kitchen is one of the leading experts on Biblical History and the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period having written over 250 books and journal articles on these and other subjects since the mid-1950s. His book, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100–650 BCE), is regarded by historians as the standard and most comprehensive treatment on this era.
[8]  George Athas, ‘Minimalism’: The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies, edited transcript of lecture, 3rd ed., University of Sydney, April 29, 1999.
[9]  Garbini, G. History and Ideology in Ancient Israel. New York: Crossroad, 1988
[10] Thompson, Thomas L. Early History of the Israelite People: From the Written and Archaeological Sources Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992.
[11]  Davies P.R., In Search of “Ancient Israel”.. JSOT Press, Sheffield, 1992
[12]  Lemche, Niels Peter. The Israelites in History and Tradition Westminster/John Knox, 1998.
[13]  Biblical inerrancy is the conservative evangelical doctrinal position that in its original form, the Bible is totally without error, and free from all contradiction; “referring to the complete accuracy of Scripture, including the historical and scientific parts.” Inerrancy is distinguished from Biblical infallibility (or limited inerrancy), which holds that the Bible is inerrant on issues of faith and practice but not necessarily history or science.