October 9th, 2020
I just finished reading The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts by Israel Finklestein and Neil Asher Silberman. It was quite a difficult book to get through. It discussed the various archeological finds that related to the Old Testament. The main takeaway that I got from it is that the Old Testament is not as historically accurate as some claim it to be. Various archeological discoveries contradict certain things in the bible, such as the exodus narrative and the united monarchy. It would seem that in the age of enlightenment, there was a concerted effort to critically examine the Bible to understand how, when, and why it was written. The book does not cover this next point, but from what I can gather, this examination threatened the major Christian churches because any sound conclusions that were made would potentially undermine their authority. Their reaction to this was to reject anything that went against their stated doctrinal positions and to deem it heretical. I think this was a mistake. It would seem that it gave rise to a radical Christianity that sought to denounce anything that disagreed with its increasingly rigid interpretation of the Bible. This seems to have led to a rise in the fundamentalist movement in the US in the early 20th century. Henry Emerson Fosdick summed up the issues in his sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win? or The New Knowledge and The Christian Faith preached on May 21st, 1922.
The Fundamentalists see, and they see truly , that in this last generation there have been strange new movements in Christian thought. A great mass of Knowledge has come into man’s possession – new knowledge about the physical universe, its origin, its forces, its laws; new knowledge about human history and in particular about the ways in which the ancient peoples used to think in matters of religion and the methods by which they phrased and explained their spiritual experiences; and new knowledge, also, about other religions and the strangely similar ways in which men’s faiths and religious practices have developed everywhere.
Now, there are multitudes of reverent Christians who have been unable to keep this new knowledge in one compartment of their minds and the Christian faith in another. They have been sure that all truth comes from the one God and is his revelation. Not, therefore, from irreverence or caprice or destructive zeal, but for the sake of intellectual and spiritual integrity, that they might really love the Lord their God not only with all their heart and soul and strength but with all their mind, they have been trying to see this new knowledge in terms of the Christian faith and to see the Christian faith in terms of this new knowledge.
Doubtless they have made many mistakes. Doubtless there have been among them reckless radicals gifted with intellectual ingenuity but lacking spiritual depth. Yet the enterprise itself seems to them indispensable to the Christian church. The new knowledge and the old faith cannot be left antagonistic or even disparate, as though a man on Saturday could use one set of regulative ideas for his life and on Sunday could change gear to another altogether. We must be able to think our modern life clear through in Christian terms, and to do that we also must be able to think our Christian life clear through in modern terms.
There is nothing new about the situation. It has happened again and again in history, as, for example, when the stationary earth suddenly began to move and the universe that had been centered in this planet was centered in the sun around which the planets whirled. Whenever such a situation has arisen, there has only been one way out – the new knowledge and the old faith had to be blended in a new combination. Now, the people in this generation who are trying to do this are the liberals, and the Fundamentalists are out on a campaign to shut against them the doors of the Christian Fellowship. Shall they be allowed to succeed?
Shall the Fundamentalists Win?
His sermon goes on to discuss some very interesting points on the doctrines of the virgin birth, the inspiration of scripture, and the second coming of Christ and how differences in opinion on these matters caused a rift to form between liberal and conservative Christians. From what I understand this split protestant Christian communities into modernist and fundamentalist camps and sparked the beginning of the rise of the modern evangelical movement. This has come to be known as the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. It would seem that the fundamentalists are winning at the moment in their ideological spheres, but that success seems to be driving Christians away in my opinion (See this Article for statistics on the decline of Christianity in the US). Belief in the doctrinal positions also likely gave rise to the young-earth creationism folks and to a lesser extent the Christian nationalism we are seeing today (which I tend to see as detrimental to Christianity and to the world). This Christian fundamentalist position in turn seems to have prompted people such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to openly denounce Christianity (and religion in general for that matter) and say that it is make-believe and harmful and while their critiques are not without merit, I think it is unfortunate and counter-productive to subscribe to the claim that the Bible and Christianity are fake or make-believe. This is something that I will likely want to explore in-depth at some point in the near future, but getting back to The Bible Unearthed, I liked what Finklestein and Silberman had to say pertaining to the exodus from Egypt (the first part of which could be applied to the entire Bible), that it was “neither historical truth nor literary fiction, but rather a powerful expression of memory and hope born in a world in the midst of change”. I feel that it is too simplistic to say that the Bible is fiction or that is is the divinely dictated inerrant word of God. These seem to be easy positions to take and they do not require a person to grapple with the nuance and complexity of the Bible, its stories, and the historical framework in which they developed. The Bible Unearthed helped to provide a more historical framework for the biblical stories as well as the motivations for why they were written. It coupled well with the JEPD Theory that was discussed in Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. This history of Israel and the explanation for the compilation of it’s sacred texts to me makes sense, but understandably, there are some Christians that would find it blasphemous and heretical and point to reasons for why it isn’t true (here is but one example of someone attempting to disprove this). I would prefer to hold in my mind a more nuanced view of the history and origin of the Bible because it doesn’t require me to suspend my intelligence. This would keep me from falling into the trap of blindly following bad arguments when trying to comprehend things I don’t understand, but it would allow me to acknowledge good arguments when I come across them. I liked the conclusion that Finklestein and Silberman made in the epilogue:
The [Hebrew] Bible’s integrity and, in fact, it’s historicity, do not depend on dutiful historical “proofs” of any of its particular events or personalities, such as the parting of the Red Sea, the trumpet blasts that toppled the walls of Jericho, or David’s slaying of Goliath with a single shot of his sling. The power of the biblical saga stems from its being a compelling and coherent narrative expression of the timeless themes of a people’s liberation, continuing resistance to oppression, and quest for social equality. It eloquently expresses the deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences, and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive. In specific historical terms, we now know that the [Hebrew] Bible’s epic saga first emerged as a response to the pressures, difficulties, challenges, and hopes faced by the people of the tiny kingdom of Judah in the decades before it’s destruction and by the even tinier Temple community in Jerusalem in the post-exilic period. Indeed, archeology’s greatest contribution to our understanding of the [Hebrew] Bible may be the realization that such small, relatively poor, and remote societies as late monarchic Judah and post-exilic Yehud could have produced the main outlines of this enduring epic in such a short period of time. Such a realization is crucial, for it is only when we recognize when and why the ideas, images, and events described in the [Hebrew] Bible came to be so skillfully woven together that we can at last begin to appreciate the true genius and continuing power of this single most influential literary and spiritual creation in the history of humanity.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 318
I think a major issue that I’ve seen with Christianity has been that it seems to have reacted to the latest discoveries stemming from logic and reason that were pointed out by Fosdick in his Sermon by applying the same logic and reason to provide “proofs” for the authority of the Bible as pointed out by Finklestein and Silberman. But not all arguments are created equally. I do think that there are some perfectly logical arguments to be made for Christianity, but more often than not it would seem faulty arguments abound. One argument that seems to come up frequently in my opinion is, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the Bible is true because the Bible says the Bible is true. I don’t like taking the approach of doing or believing something because the Bible says to do or believe it (or more accurately because the church leaders say to do or believe it). It seems to me that this leads a person into a sort of cult-like situation. Take the Westboro Baptist Church for instance (Vice did a two part story on them: Part 1 and Part 2). They are certainly fundamentalists as they take the Bible to be 100% literally and this belief coupled with a charasmatic authority figure and indoctrination from childhood has led to the kind of displays and protests they are known for. Do they represent the majority of Christians, certainly not. They are but a small community in Topeka, Kansas yet their impact has been far-reaching and only serves to spread hate and give Christianity a bad name. I would say that the WBC is not the only church that is like this and the multitude of other churches/church members that think the Bible is literally true and inerrant only serve to push people away from Christianity. This is why I remain skeptical. I do not want to fall into the trap of believing something blindly because an authority figure says it. I want to develop the knowledge and skills to push back against that kind of belief and to not be influenced by it. I have avoided this before by not getting involved with Christian groups, but now that I have decided that I should explore my faith and religion, I feel that it is important for me to remember this which is why, it seems, I have dedicated a lot of time to put these thoughts into words. I want to build the foundations of my personal belief and be able to articulate it in a way that helps people understand where I’m coming from. I think Christianity has a lot of merits, but I want to be able to have a healthy relationship with it instead of letting it take over my life.
Getting back to an actual review of The Bible Unearthed I’ve decided to transcribe some passages that resonated with me and that I hope may form a foundation of belief for me.
The biblical scholars Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth, in particular, argued that many of the tales preserved within the book of Joshua were no more than etiological traditions – that is to say, they were legends about how famous landmarks or natural curiosities came to be. For example, the people living in and around the Iron Age town of Bethel undoubtedly noticed the huge mound of Early Bronze Age ruins just to the east. This ruin was almost ten times bigger than their own town and the remains of its fortifications were still impressive. So – argued Alt and Noth – legends might have started growing around the ruins, tales of the victory of ancient heroes that explained how it was possible for such a great city to be destroyed.
In another region of the country, the people living in the foothills of the Shephelah may have been impressed by the sheer size of a stone blocking the entrance of to a mysterious cave near the town of Makkedah. So stories could have arisen that linked the huge stone with heroic acts in their own hazy past: The stone sealed the cave where five ancient kings hid and were later buried, as explained in Joshua 10:16-27. According to this view, the biblical stories that concluded with the obeservation that a certain landmark could still be seen “to this very day” were probably legends of this kind. At a certain point these individual stories were collected and linked to the single campaign of a great mythical leader of the conquest.
In contrast to their estimation of the largely legendary character of the book of Joshua, Alt and Noth regarded the first chapter of the book of Judges as possessing a possible reliable nucleus of memories of ancient victories by widely scattered hill country militias over the various cities that had dominated them. Indeed, the chaotic situation of the destruction of Canaanite cities in some places and their survival in others corresponds more closely to the archeological evidence. Yet there is no reason why the conquest narrative of the book of Joshua cannot also include folk memories and legends that commemorated this epoch-making historical transformation. They may offer us highly fragmentary glimpses of the violence, the passion, the euphoria at the destruction of cities, and the horrible slaughter of their inhabitants that clearly occurred. Such searing experiences are not likely to have been totally forgotten, and indeed, their once vivid memories, growing progressively vaguer over the centuries, may have become the raw material for a far more elaborate retelling. Thus there is no reason to suppose that the burning of Hazor by hostile forces, for example, never took place. But what was in actuality a chaotic sense of upheavals caused by many factors and carried out by many different groups became – many centuries later – a brilliantly crafted saga of territorial conquest under God’s blessing and direct command. The literary production of that saga was undertaken for purposes quite different from the commemoration of local legends. It was, as we will see, an important step toward the creation of a Pan-Israelite identity.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 91
The book elaborates on this change and what was likely occurring in the land at this time period. The archeological evidence suggests that a large portion of the first Israelites were pastoral nomads concerned with protecting flocks in the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age. They readily cooperated with sedentary villagers to trade for items that were needed to survive. With regards to this dynamic, the authors go on to say that:
The two sides of the exchange are not entirely equal: villagers can rely on their own produce for survival, while pastoral nomads cannot exist entirely on the products of their herds. They need grain to supplement and balance their high-fat diet of meat and milk. As long as there are villagers to trade with, the nomads can continue to concentrate on animal husbandry. But when grain cannot be obtained in exchange for animal products, the pastoral nomads are forced to produce it for themselves.
And that is apparently what caused the sudden wave of highland settlement. In the Late Bronze Age Canaan, in particular, the existence of large populations of pastoral nomads in the highlands and desert fringes was possible only as long as the Canaanite city-states and villages could produce an adequate grain surplus to trade. This was the situation during three centuries of Egyptian rule over Canaan. But when that political system collapsed in the twelfth century BCE, its economic networks ceased functioning. It is reasonable to assume that the villagers of Canaan were forced to concentrate on local subsistence and no longer produced a significant surplus of grain over and above what they needed for themselves. Thus the highland and desert fringe pastoralists had to adapt to the new conditions and produce their own grain. Soon, the requirements of farming would cause a reduction in the range of seasonal migrations. Flocks would then have to be reduced as the period of migrations grew shorter, and with more effort invested in agriculture, a permanent shift to sedentarization occurred.
The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not it’s cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside of Canaan – They emerged from within it. There was no mass exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people – the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were – irony of ironies – themselves originally Canaanite!
The Bible Unearthed, pg 118
From what I can gather, The northern kingdom of Israel was able to develop more rapidly due to the environment being more hospitable and farmable. This agro-economic boom attracted the attention of the Assyrians which is why they invaded. When the Assyrians conquered Israel many of the northerners fled south to the southern kingdom of Judah. Judah then rose to prominence and religious texts were compiled from legends, myths, shared history, written literary sources, and oral traditions to provide a theological explanation for the fall of the northern kingdom and the continued existence of the southern kingdom of Judah. From Who Wrote the Bible?, the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 BCE was around the time that the J and the E sources were compiled and combined to form the JE text. Both J and E sources concerned themselves primarily with stories found in Genesis, Exodus as well as some snippets in Numbers. The J text/tradition developed in the southern kingdom while the E text/tradition developed in the northern kingdom. When the northern kingdom fell in 722 BCE the E text/tradition was brought to the southern kingdom and combined with the J text/tradition to form the JE text. In Who wrote the Bible? Friedman posits that this was also around the time the P text was compiled. While the P source can be found in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers, it primarily provided the majority if not all of Leviticus and concerned itself with priestly matters. Friedman asserts that the date of compilation would have been during the time of Hezekiah’s reign from 727 BCE to 698 BCE. Finklestein and Silberman go with the traditional hypothesis that the P text was compiled after the return of the exiles from Babylon in 538 BCE, but I tend to like Friedman’s reasons for it being in the time of Hezekiah better. The D source was likely compiled in the days of Josiah’s reign (639-609 BCE) and consisted of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Friedman suggests that the Deuteronomistic history as it’s called was likely written by Jeremiah to serve as a theological explanation for the rise and fall of Israel as a nation-state by building upon the story of Moses and the exodus and filling in the details from the Israelites time in the desert to the time of Josiah. There are actually two D sources though, Dtr1 and Dtr2. Dtr1 is theorized to have been compiled during the time of Josiah and Dtr2 is theorized to add only a slight amount to the Dtr1 text during or after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and was used to explain this fall. These J, E, P, and D sources were then compiled to form what would be the first Bible consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Friedman suggests that Ezra may have compiled this Bible shortly before or shortly after the return of the exiles in 538 BCE. Finklestein and Silberman go on to say the following:
We can never know how reliable were the traditions, texts, or archives used by the biblical authors to compile their history of the kingdom or Israel. Their aims were not to produce an objective history of the northern kingdom but rather a theological explanation for a history that was probably already well known, at least in its broad details.
The Bible Uneartherd, pg 222
This history is that of the fall of Israel and Judah, but concerning the historicity of the theological explanation that idolatry leads to God’s divine justice:
Evidence suggests that a centralized monarchy and national religion focused in Jerusalem took centuries to develop and was new in Hezekiah’s day. The idolatry of the people of Judah was not a departure from their earlier monotheism, It was instead, the way the people of Judah had worshipped for hundreds of years.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 234
All of this seems compelling enough for me to say that the Old Testament is not as historically accurate as some claim it to be (See the following video for someone claiming it is). Finklestein and Silberman touched on this with regards to the false conclusion that the cities of Megiddo, Gezer, and Hazor were Solomonic. Yigael Yadin was a Biblical archeologist that studied gates found at the three cities listed above and concluded that they were Solomonic, that is since they were similar, the designs must have come from the same royal architect and since the Bible says that Solomon built these cities, it confirmed that Solomon existed and by extension the united monarchy as well. But this was a faulty conclusion as Finklestein and Silberman explained:
Yigael Yadin argued that the identification of the Solomonic cities was based on stratigraphy, pottery, and the Bible. But stratigraphy and pottery provide only relative chronology. It is clear, therefore, that the whole idea of the archeology of the united monarchy, of the blueprint city planning of Solomon’s architects, and of the grandeur of the Solomonic palaces, rests on one verse in the Bible – 1 Kings 9:15. We must repeat this again: The entire traditional reconstruction of the nature of the united monarchy of israel – its territorial expansion, its material culture, its relationship with the neighboring countries – depends on the interpretation of a single biblical verse! And this one verse is quite problamatic, because we do not know if it is based on authentic sources from the time of Solomon or later realities. We do not even understand its exact meaning: Does “built” mean that Solomon founded new cities? Did he only fortify existing ones? Do the three cities mentioned – Megiddo, Gezer, and Hazor – merely symbolize, for the author of Kings, the three main administrative cities of northern Israel? Did the author of Kings project the great construction in these cities in later years back to the days of Solomon?
The Bible Unearthed, pg 342
The author then goes on to provide some evidence for what’s more plausible and asserts that the palaces described were likely built during the reigns of Omri and Ahab (i.e. 884 -873 and 873-852, respectively) as opposed to the reign of Solomon (970-931). The author concludes this assertion with the following:
A word should be said here about the treatment of the biblical materials. Some of our colleagues wonder how we can dismiss the historicity of one verse in the Bible (1 Kings 9:15) and accept the historicity of others – relating to Ahab’s construction of the palace at Jezreel (1 Kings 21:1) and to the construction of the palace at Samaria by Omri (1 Kings 16:24). The answer has to do with methodology. The biblical material cannot be treated as a monolithic book. It does not require a take-all-or-leave-all attitude. Two centuries of modern biblical scholarship have shown us that the biblical material must be evaluated chapter by chapter and sometimes verse by verse. The Bible includes historical, non-historical, and quasi-historical materials, which sometimes appear very close to one another in the text. The whole essence of biblical scholarship is to separate the historical parts from the rest of the text according to linguistic, literary, and extrabiblical historical considerations. So, yes, one may doubt the historicity of one verse and accept the validity of another, especially in the case of Omri and Ahab, whose kingdom is described in contemporary Assyrian, Moabite, and Aramean texts.
The Bible Unearthed, pg 343-344
I like that they said that the biblical material cannot be treated as a monolithic book and that it does not require a take-all-or-leave-all attitude. I think the lesson here is that too often people see the Bible as one book authored by God as opposed to a library of books authored by different human authors and I think it leads to the kind of slippery slope argument that if one part of the Bible isn’t true how can we trust anything else in the Bible (as this video claims). I think making this assertion is a mistake. The Bible’s integrity doesn’t depend on proving it is 100% historically and scientifically accurate and in my opinion being a devoted Christian doesn’t require a belief that it is. There are times that I’ve felt shame for not believing certain stories from the Bible. I think a lot of this shame has come from not understanding certain parts of the Bible. As I learn more about the Bible and actually take the time to read through it and formulate my thoughts and opinions I can feel the shame wash away from me bit by bit. I’m curious to see how my views will change as I read the New Testament as I am fully aware that I’m missing a lot of insight into what the new testament says about God.