Below is a revised version of a post I submitted to the earlywritings forum. It is the first in a series setting out the foundational arguments for the Old Testament books being written as late as only 300 years before Christ, no earlier. The case being proposed is that our earliest books of the Bible did not have a heritage traced back to Bronze Age times, not even as far back as the kingdoms of Israel and Judah — nor even the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Judeans who were transported to Mesopotamia by Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BCE. Rather, the proposition advanced here is that they were the creations of a time after Alexander the Great swept across “Asia” and just prior to the Hasmonean and Maccabean eras. The argument to be advanced is that the earliest books of the Bible originated in the Greek era, only a couple or so centuries before the Roman conquest and time of Jesus.
When we apply the fundamentals of historical methods as practised by historians in fields other than biblical studies we quickly see logical flaws at the heart of the conventional understanding that the sources for various biblical books (in particular the stories in Genesis and Exodus) go back as far as the times of David and Solomon.
Multiple sources and circularity
Several times I have engaged in the EarlyWritings Forum on the question of the how the Hebrew Bible came about over long centuries of accumulated writings and editings [i.e. the Documentary Hypothesis] and every time, it seems to me, the argument submitted to prove that the stories came about over long spans of time is the same: the evidence clearly shows us that different stories were combined into one. The classic illustration of this is the Flood story of Genesis. There can be little doubt that two different flood narratives are combined here. Sometimes the account says Noah brought in the animals two by two but in another place it tells us that there were seven of each kind! There are many more indicators to verify the point.
My response has been each time that I have no doubt that different sources were mixed to create the Genesis Flood account, but it does not necessarily follow that those different stories arose and came together over a long time period.
Think of it for a moment: An editor sees before him a story which says that the animals went into the ark two by two. That editor has in mind another story that he has acquired, one that says there were seven of each kind of animal. Now what is that editor likely to do if he wants to create a new single narrative? Would he be likely to keep the two by two account alongside the new one with the sevens? Or should we rather expect that he would delete the two by two references and replace them with what he prefers as the more valid story about the sevens?
What we have is a case of the editor deciding to combine details, even though contradictory, into one new narrative.
To me, that sounds like the editor had two different stories before him and he saw his role as being required to blend the two together, preserving the details of each, to create a single new authoritative story.
If that was the case, there is no reason at all to suppose that the Flood story as we have it is evidence of composition involving the accumulation of different sources over a long time span. It is no less reasonable to think that two interest groups created their own account and an editor was tasked with the job of making them one so that there was one narrative that all could respect as reflecting their own views. Such a project is conceivable as taking place from start to finish within months or even weeks, not necessarily centuries or even decades!
So how did the conventional notion of a centuries long evolution of the Bible come about? Biblical scholars, it is no secret to anyone, not even to themselves on the whole, do have interests that go beyond pure historical research. Even Julius Wellhausen, to whom we tend to attribute the modern notion of the “Documentary Hypothesis”, has been criticized for allowing his Protestant (anti-legalistic) bias to subconsciously influence his model of the “Documentary Hypothesis”. (The criticism has been directed at the widespread idea that “legalistic” texts were a late addition to the original “spiritual” and “prophetic” narratives found in the biblical canon.)
When hypotheses become facts
So much in biblical studies that passes for facts are actually hypotheses, or “theories” of a certain kind. But they are repeated so often it is hard to notice that they have no basis in the hard evidence. Look at this passage from Wellhausen:
With regard to the Jehovistic document [i.e. one proposed “early source” in the Bible], all are happily agreed that, substantially at all events, in language, horizon, and other features, it dates from the golden age of Hebrew literature, to which the finest parts of Judges, Samuel, and Kings, and the oldest extant prophetical writings also belong, the period of the kings and prophets which preceded the dissolution of the two Israelite kingdoms by the Assyrians. About the origin of Deuteronomy there is still less dispute; in all circles where appreciation of scientific results can be looked for at all, it is recognised that it was composed in the same age as that in which it was discovered, and that it was made the rule of Josiah’s reformation, which took place about a generation before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldaeans.
That’s from
- Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (originally published 1882)
His assertion of relative dating is grounded entirely in scholarly consensus, not in the evidence itself. No doubt those scholars who make up the “consensus” believed they had serious evidence for dating the book of Deuteronomy to the days of King Josiah — but we will see that really they did not. They relied entirely upon “what the Bible says”.
There does happen to be archaeological evidence indicating that prior to the Hellenistic era Judeans and Samaritans had no knowledge of the biblical laws. I am referring to the finds in a Judean colony in Egypt, the Elephantine papyri. (I have not posted nearly enough about this find and what various scholars have had to say about it, but hope to make up for that lack very soon.) The Documentary Hypothesis, it has been pointed out by at least one scholar in the biblical field, might well never have got off the ground had the Elephantine remains — indicating that Persian era Jews knew nothing of the Pentateuch — been discovered earlier and had more time to gain traction and wider and more focused attention than it had before the time of Wellhausen’s work.
None of this is to say that biblical scholars are unprofessionally “biased” or “unscholarly”. Of course they are scholarly and their biases are generally known and admitted and taken into account. But their work tends to be picked up by others and over time taken for granted as fact.
Independent evidence is critical
The fact remains that there is no independent evidence that the OT was composed prior to the Hellenistic era. That datum alone does not prove it was a Hellenistic product. But it does at least allow for the theoretical possibility that it was created in the Hellenistic era, and given that our earliest independent evidence for a knowledge of the Pentateuch is situated in the Hellenistic era, it is entirely reasonable to begin with that era when searching for the Pentateuch’s origins.
It also is a fact that scholarship has only cursorily (by comparison) begun noting echoes of Hellenistic literature and thought within the Pentateuch itself. Those are facts. Another fact is that Documentary Hypothesis is not without its inconsistencies and problems – another point I can post about in more depth.
Those facts do not prove that the Pentateuch was created in the Hellenistic era. But they do at least make it possible to ask the question. It makes it all the more necessary for anyone proposing an earlier date to ground their reasons in supporting independent evidence of some kind.
The meaning of “Hellenistic”
The Hellenistic provenance of the Pentateuch does not deny any use of pre-Hellenistic literature or sayings or concepts. Hellenization even means a uniting of Greek and Asian cultures, not a replacement of one by the other. So one should expect in any Hellenistic era hypothesis for the Pentateuch clear allusions to non-Greek (i.e. local Canaanite and Syrian) sources. Yes, we can identify where passages in the Pentateuch are borrowed from ancient Ugaritic (Canaanite) or Syrian sources, but employing local literature does not contradict the Hellenistic era hypothesis for the Old Testament.
The fateful year of 1992
My own understanding of the history of the scholarship in this area informs me that the floodgates to a more widespread acceptability in questioning the “deep antiquity” (pre-Persian era) origin of any of the OT books were opened by Philip R. Davies in 1992 with his publication of In Search of Ancient Israel. The irony was that Davies was only collating various criticisms and doubts about the conventional wisdom of “biblical Israel” that had been available to scholars for some decades. But by bringing these questions and doubts all together in one short publication (only about 150 pages of discussion) Davies’ work started something of an academic “kerfuffle”. [The above sentences are a paraphrase from memory of a review of Davies’ book but, apologies, I cannot recall their source.] Davies himself argued at length for a Persian era provenance of many of the OT books, but those who followed the evidence he set out could see that the way was also open for an even later period. Some scholars identified stronger links between the Pentateuch and Primary History (Genesis to 2 Kings) and Hellenistic literature than to anything earlier. One French scholar has even argued that the entire Primary History was composed by a priest in the Hasmonean era.
Davies certainly established the circularity of the arguments that much of the OT literature was composed in the times of King Josiah and the Babylonian captivity. He also brought together the archaeological evidence that indicates the very notion of “biblical Israel” (along with a kingdom of David and empire of Solomon) is as fanciful as King Arthur and Camelot.
The basics of historical inquiry
I opened this post with a reference to the methods of historians in nonbiblical fields. In short, those methods are nothing other than any journalistic or forensic or “common sense” method of trying to find out “what happened” — minus the theological provenance from which the quest is embarked upon. Start with what we know to be the most secure “facts” on the basis of collating independent evidence and working from there. Assuming that what we read in the Bible is a pathway to “the historical facts” is not safe: we need the support of independent evidence. Unfortunately, our cultural heritage has taught us too well that certain narratives about the past are “facts” (or at least based on facts) so that we find it very difficult to remove these from our minds when trying to see clearly the material evidence before our eyes.
Neil Godfrey
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The easiest path I see for the creation of the written scriptures is that the project began during the Babylonian exile. The priests had little to do with no temple available, but they felt an obligation to help hold the people together and remind them where they came from.
The job then was to harmonize all of the different stories so that no one felt left out and hence the contradictions. Once they realized that they could create scripture (either as a training aide for future priests or for general dispersal), the clamps came off and full on fictive backstory was developed, so that an oppressed, defeated people could feel proud of their glorious past.
This effort continued after “the Return” including the staged “discovery” of the “scrolls” during the reign of King Josiah(?).
This effort took a few hundred years to complete because the effort to convert Judaism into a monotheistic version only reach a crescendo under King Josiah and was not complete for quite a few centuries (vide all of the references to “altars in the hills”, etc.) So the Hebrew Bible being close to being complete by 300 BCE makes sense.
Davies expressed criticism of the Babylonian Captivity scenario: https://vridar.info/bibarch/arch/davies3.htm
I am trying to locate another scholar from the early part of the twentieth century who expressed the same criticism of “romantic nonsense divorced from reality”. The realities of deportations were that the exiles were not given the luxury to reflect on their past life and imaginatively recreate it. They were preoccupied with new tasks in new situations that required an entirely day to day focus. One of the reasons for deportations was to rob the captives of their old identities. They were certainly not taking their libraries of scrolls with them.
>This effort continued after “the Return” including the staged “discovery” of the “scrolls” during the reign of King Josiah(?).
But the King Josiah in the Hebrew Scriptures is said to have lived before the exile. Aside from that, your theory is interesting and as far as I know, not impossible.
It would seem the earlier document that is referred to in Kings and Chronicles “Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” is a clue to how these books were put together.
I imagine this book did once exist, and the writers of Kings and Chronicles seem to think their readers should not have trouble getting hold of it if they wanted to find out more.
It does seem strange that it was not preserved? What event could have interrupted the preservation of the longer form?
Why assume that it really existed or, if existing, was still available to be consulted? Fictional documents to which information in fictitious works are attributed in order to give the fictitious information verisimilitude are a real phenomenon; for example, “The Princess Bride” claims to be an abridgement of a novel by S. Morgenstern, but S. Morgenstern and his ur-text are both fictional.
Do you think that might be the case?
Is there any archeological evidence for any of the pre-Babylon-exile Kings of Judah and Israel that is not tainted by apologists?
I had thought I had read about some evidence which was trust-worthy, but google brings up a huge list of apologist-archeology articles. If only google had a ‘filter out apologists’ setting!
To quote Wikipedia as a summary, “The Mesha Stele, the first major epigraphic Canaanite inscription found in the Southern Levant,[5] the longest Iron Age inscription ever found in the region, constitutes the major evidence for the Moabite language, and is a “corner-stone of Semitic epigraphy”,[6] and history.[7] The stele, whose story parallels, with some differences, an episode in the Bible’s Books of Kings (2 Kings 3:4–28), provides invaluable information on the Moabite language and the political relationship between Moab and Israel at one moment in the 9th century BCE.[3] It is the most extensive inscription ever recovered that refers to the kingdom of Israel (the “House of Omri”);[8] it bears the earliest certain extrabiblical reference to the Israelite god Yahweh.[9][8] It is also one of four known contemporaneous inscriptions containing the name of Israel, the others being the Merneptah Stele, the Tel Dan Stele, and one of the Kurkh Monoliths.[10][11][12] Its authenticity has been disputed over the years, and some biblical minimalists suggest the text was not historical, but a biblical allegory. The stele itself is regarded as genuine and historical by the vast majority of biblical archaeologists today.[13]”
To quote Wikipedia as a summary, “Sennacherib’s Annals are the annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. They are found inscribed on a number of artifacts, and the final versions were found in three clay prisms inscribed with the same text: the Taylor Prism is in the British Museum, the Oriental Institute Prism in the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Prism is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The annals themselves are notable for describing Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem during the reign of king Hezekiah. This event is recorded in several books contained in the Bible including Isaiah chapters 36 and 37; 2 Kings 18:17; 2 Chronicles 32:9. The invasion is mentioned by Herodotus, who does not refer to Judea and says the invasion ended at Pelusium on the edge of the Nile Delta.[2]”
To quote Wikipedia as a summary, “The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is a black limestone Neo-Assyrian sculpture with many scenes in bas-relief and inscriptions. It comes from Nimrud (ancient Kalhu), in northern Iraq, and commemorates the deeds of King Shalmaneser III (reigned 858–824 BC). It is on display at the British Museum in London, and several other museums have cast replicas. The stele describes how Jehu brought or sent his tribute in or around 841 BC.[10] The caption above the scene, written in Assyrian cuneiform, can be translated:[4] ““I received the tribute of Iaua (Jehu) son of (the people of the land of) Omri (Akkadian: 𒅀𒌑𒀀 𒈥 𒄷𒌝𒊑𒄿): silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears.””[4]”
I get the impression that they may have had a court records to help them construct their narrative, but it may have also been committed to memory during the exile. If the latter, then a patchy historical reconstruction would be expected?
If Jehu existed, then other Kings likely existed as well, but these writers probably padded the lists to get the number of generations to fit their time-lines I suspect.
The ‘poor’ who were left behind seem to have been put back in their place when the aristocrats returned, so I do not think their history was used at all – however it is one of my pet theories that these ‘poor’ who inherited the earth for a short time did become symbolic of a counter-culture movement and may be related to a cult that called themselves the Ebionites much later. (Yes, not much to go by, but pet theories are fun!).
What do you make of Josiah? do you think there is any archeology to support the story?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_Kings_22#Archaeology
“but these artifacts did not come from regular excavations, so there is a suspicion of modern forgery”
The history of religion is the history of forgeries!
I enjoyed this very much and cannot help but agree that there isn’t much truth about the Hebrew bible. It starts with the world being created by a god in 6 days and man was created from dust and woman from man’s rib. This opinion is among three others I’m aware of. Gmirkin, Adler, and Harwood give some interesting opinions on the matter. John McHugh’s “The Celestial Code of Scripture gives a very compelling case for where the stories come from. If one has the eye, the stories can be seen as written from the stars and constellations as practiced by the Babylonians. Either the stars in the heavens arranged to match the stories on earth or the stories on earth are inspired by the stars in the heavens.
My interest in the Bible is a search for understanding its origins and what it meant to its creators and first audiences. I take for granted that it is not “true” and assume most serious (non-apologist) researchers have the same view.
Neil Godfrey wrote:
“The Hellenistic provenance of the Pentateuch does not deny any use of pre-Hellenistic literature or sayings or concepts. Hellenization even means a uniting of Greek and Asian cultures, not a replacement of one by the other. So one should expect in any Hellenistic era hypothesis for the Pentateuch clear allusions to non-Greek (i.e. local Canaanite and Syrian) sources. Yes, we can identify where passages in the Pentateuch are borrowed from ancient Ugaritic (Canaanite) or Syrian sources, but employing local literature does not contradict the Hellenistic era hypothesis for the Old Testament.”
I don’t understand how much pre-Hellenistic literature is allowed in the OT according to the Hellenistic era hypothesis. Is it like 1% pre-Hellenestic and the rest 99% is Hellenistic? Or is it 10% vs 90%? Or could it be 50% vs 50%? I think it’s important to have at least some estimates because if it doesn’t matter I could say that the OT has 99.999% pre-Hellenistic material and 0.001% Hellenistic and it would still count as this Hellenistic era hypothesis.
The god Yahweh was worshiped long prior to the Hellenistic era. And the stories told about him are all set in pre-Hellenistic times. What makes the stories Hellenistic is that they are told in new ways. Yahweh in the Bible no longer has a wife. In different places he becomes Plato’s perfect Demiurge, but in other places he is no different from the immoral gods Plato also condemned. The Passover was a pre-Hellenistic harvest festival but it was invested with new meaning in Hellenistic times. We don’t have to propose a measurable proportion of Hellenistic material in the Bible — it is all pervasive. The pre-Hellenistic material is wrapped up in Hellenistic thought and genres.
See
https://vridar.org/series-index/plato-and-the-biblical-creation-accounts-gmirkin/
https://vridar.org/2011/03/14/the-bibles-roots-in-greek-mythology-and-classical-authors-isaac-and-phrixus/
https://vridar.org/2012/10/19/old-testament-based-on-herodotus-acts-on-the-myth-we-read-in-virgil/
So my next question is how accurate are the historical events in the OT? For example, there is some accuracy regarding the “House of Omri”. The OT’s names, locations, and dates do seem to match up with archaeology and other extra-biblical sources. So do other main events in the OT have some historical kernel of truth? I’m thinking of events like the Babylonian exile, the Kingdom of David, the Judges, the Conquest of Canaan, or the Exodus.
That is quite a different question from whether or not the Hebrew Bible was a product of the Hellenistic era.
We have archaeological evidence to verify certain kings and events in the Bible’s later period of history. Where records existed of the past the biblical authors used them. But the archaeological evidence testifies against the possibility of the events of the Patriarchs as they are narrated in Genesis, the conquest under Joshua, the united kingdom of David and Solomon, and yes, the Exodus.
But even when the used names of historical persons it is another question again whether the narrative details they applied to them were historically true. We have records where historical figures were included in fictional narratives acting out entirely fictional events. So the simple fact that a name had a historical reference does not of itself verify what is said about that person.
https://vridar.info/bibarch/arch/davies5.htm
I understand that the historicity of the OT might be another question but I think it’s somewhat connected. If archaeological evidence supported all major OT events, I think that would lessen the probability of the Hellenistic influence.
I will now argue for the historicity of some of the OT’s events:
Josephus identifies Hyksos with the Israelites and archaeology tells us that both groups spoke West Semitic. So the Exodus might have been connected to the expulsion of Hyksos in the 16th century BCE. The Plagues of Egypt and the Crossing of the Red Sea might have been connected to the Minoan eruption in the 16th century BCE.
The mighty walls of Jericho were destroyed in the 16th century BCE according to mainstream archaeology. The archaeological destruction layer matches the description described in the Book of Joshua (it was in the Spring, there was no long siege, the walls collapsed almost everywhere). Other cities were destroyed in the late 16 BCE in Kanaan (it was the end of the Middle Bronze Age).
Regarding monotheism/monolatrism, Hyksos ruler Apepi is recorded as worshiping Seth in a monolatric way: “King Apophis chose for his Lord the god Seth. He didn’t worship any other deity in the whole land except Seth.” Later, of course, the Israelites were under the influence of Canaanites so Yahweh could have a wife. But then again, there might have been later reforms, like the reforms of Josiah, that might have redacted the Bible to be monotheistic / monolatristic.
I’m not saying this is proof of the historicity of these events but I personally don’t see any archaeological evidence refuting the mere possibility of their historicity. It might be heavily embellished historicity but historicity nevertheless.
I’m lost, sorry. Josephus is telling us what some persons in the first century CE thought. That tells us nothing about the historicity of events centuries earlier.
Ditto for the West Semitic dialect. I don’t see how that relates to the question of the historicity of the Exodus.
But we have no evidence for the historicity of the plagues of Egypt, let alone the crossing of the Red Sea. How does a Minoan eruption make the absence of evidence for these events any more plausible? There is simply no evidence that they happened.
How does any of this point to the historicity of Israelites conquering Canaan? No doubt there were wars and catastrophes all over the Levant at different times. But we have to connect something specific to a group of “Israelites” “conquering” Canaan.
There is no evidence that I know of that identifies the Hyksos historically with the Israelites. We know of monolatry in Egypt but despite many speculations I know of no way to connect those developments with the Hebrew Bible. Monolatry is not monotheism, anyway.
I can provide you with a list of readings of more mainstream scholarship, if you wish — I mean mainstream as opposed to apologists. I only know of apologists who publish in “prove the Bible true” type venues who argue for the historicity of the Exodus and the Israelite conquest of Canaan. Everything I have seen in the non-apologist arena denies the historicity of the Exodus and Israelite conquest of Canaan. And many of these are by devout scholars, Christian included. They seek other ways to interpret the Biblical narrative so that the can maintain their faith.
If archaeologists aren’t off by considerable amounts, I have always wondered how we have this detailed itinerary of the middle bronze age ‘Hebrews’ before the proto-sinaitic alphabet was really off the boards.
The first ostracons with legible proto-hebrew phrases all seem to date to 1000-1100 or so…and only cuneiform.hieratic seem to predate it. If that became ‘Hebrew’ how do we have detailed stories of Moses’ conquests in Cush and his negotiations with other nations unless it was handed down via oral history. That would account for lots of the ‘correct’ things that line up with archaeology and still leave the composition of the OT open to a late date.
..and then you have stuff like the 104th psalm and the Hymn to the Aten…I still remember lyrics to songs in french that I sung in preschool and I don’t even speak french!
I guess what I am getting at is I think the late composition makes sense and the things that line up correctly with archaeology are just a testament to the powers of human memory….and cultures living next to cultures with an earlier written history…..both Noah and Gilgamesh remembered to bast their Arks with Pitch even though the duration of their floods were vastly different.
I plan to discuss a range of views addressing the development of the Hebrew script and dialects and their relationship with the Hebrew Bible.
It seems there is some miscommunication. I was arguing for a mere possibility of the historicity because you wrote before “… the archaeological evidence testifies against the possibility of the events …”. But I haven’t seen arguments that disprove the possibility of identifying Hyksos with the Israelites or destroying Jericho by Israelites or other things. So my question still stands, is it possible or not?
I read your link “…/davies5.htm” and there is written this: ‘The name “Israel” first appears in a text at Ugarit … and dates around 1500 BCE. It is the name of a chariot warrior!’ Well, Hyksos are connected with chariots, too. Not a proof but I think it’s interesting.
We have Tempest Stele of Ahmose I. who completed the conquest and expulsion of the Hyksos. One interpretation of this stele is connected to the Minoan eruption. Maybe Ipuwer Papyrus describes the same event (“the river is blood”).
I don’t think there is monotheism in the Pentateuch, only monolatry. Pure monotheism in the Bible (Isaiah) might be from Babylonian or Persian influence (Zoroastrianism).
Well “possible” is of no interest to me. I’m not the person you would want to discuss such things with. Sorry, but this is the wrong place for that inquiry. Historical research as I understand it works with evidence, not mere possibilities. It’s possible that there is a Dog who made man and his best friend God, and that there are parallel universes where we live alternative lives, etc etc. My primary interest is to address hard, physical evidence, not possibilities. Sorry. There are many apologist websites out there that will tell you everything in the Bible is not only possible but, because it is all possible, it is therefore true — unless the reader is on his way to hell.
As for the Hyksos being the Israelites — why not follow through on that. Check what the evidence says. If you can’t find anything on google get back to me and I’ll help.
Interesting how? How many peoples over thousands of years past had “chariots”? How can such a word even bring us to within a 100 mile radius of Israel as distinct from Hittites, Nabateans, Assyrians…. this is not a serious proposition.
Did Moses’ staff really hit the Nile at the time of the “Minoan eruption”? This is all fantasy speculation. It is not historical research.
I am willing to discuss actual evidence but not fantastical speculations spinning off other speculations.
The antiquity of the Hebrew Bible has been questioned since it was first “translated” into Greek, and even the asserted date of that translation, which Gmirkin accepts, rests on a 2nd century BCE forgery (Letter of Aristeas) that claims to have been written in the time of Ptolemy II. While we no longer have the anti-antiquity arguments that were made at the time, Joesphus’ Against Apion (early 2nd century CE) and Eusebius’ Preparation for the Gospel (early 4th century CE), both of which rely on forgeries like the Letter of Aristeas, indicate that scholars took the anti-antiquity argument seriously two thousand years ago, and they had more then contemporary information available to them then we do now. For example, if some modern scholars see the Primary History as having a literary form based on Herodotus’ Histories, ancient scholars surely saw the same at the time. Similarly, the Homeric references in the story of David and Goliath would have been noticed immediately by ancient scholars.
Indeed. Justin even explained similarities by saying Homer learned from Moses
Now I’m confused. First, you wrote ‘… the archaeological evidence testifies against the possibility of the events …’ but then you wrote ‘… “possible” is of no interest to me’. I just wanted to discuss the archaeological evidence that testifies against the possibility of those events. What is exactly this archaeological evidence?
You wrote: ‘Did Moses’ staff really hit the Nile at the time of the “Minoan eruption”? This is all fantasy speculation.’ But I’m not saying everything in the OT must have happened. It is certainly embellished (as I wrote before). I’m only interested in the historical core behind the story. Something like in the case of Homer’s Iliad.
You wrote: ‘As for the Hyksos being the Israelites — why not follow through on that. Check what the evidence says. If you can’t find anything on google get back to me and I’ll help.’ Well, I can always use some help, even though I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that.
What I wrote was:
The archaeological and other evidence against the possibility of the events of the Patriarchs as narrated in Genesis is set out in
Against the conquest under Joshua in
Against the Jerusalem-based united kingdom and empire of David and Solomon:
In reply to…
….. That’s where we are at opposite sides of the discussion. I don’t see any reason to imagine that “anything in the OT must have happened.” For what happened I begin with the archaeological evidence. If something there happens to correlate with a story in the Bible, then fine, that part of the story was referring to something historical — as often was the case in ancient historical fiction, which of course is why such fictional stories are called historical. It is the background that is historical, not the fictional events.
I don’t see any reason to think that anything in the Bible was an “embellishment” of historical events. Why assume historical events at all to begin with?
I don’t see any reason to assume any “historical core behind the story.” Homer’s Iliad was not based on any particular historical war. It merely uses the legends of past wars with Troy — that we know about from archaeology — as a background for its story of Achilles. There’s nothing “historical” in the Iliad to be uncovered. When Schliemann went looking for Homer’s Troy he was working with an invalid method — assuming historicity in a story which had none — and got lucky. He did not prove the historicity of the Iliad or anything in it — except that Troy existed. “Biblical archaeologists” tried the same thing with the Bible and got just about everything wrong, misinterpreting the evidence to make it “prove” the Bible. Proving Jerusalem existed as a settlement does nothing to support the biblical stories of David and Solomon.
If a story is a story it is just a story. We don’t suspect some “core historical events” behind the epic of Gilgamesh or Virgil’s Aeneid. The stories make no claim to historiography — though they may claim to be inspired by gods or spirits. Historical events are determined first and foremost by what we find in the primary evidence — the archaeological record in most cases, and this can include written records from the time we are investigating.
Where we have our written histories, beginning with Herodotus and Thucydides, we test these against what we know from the archaeological finds and supporting evidence in other literature. Our written histories of Alexander the Great are very late but we read in those histories about the contemporary sources on which they were based, and we find the explanatory value for the events in the real world, outside those written histories, coherent and often validated.
It is not a valid method to begin with a mere story and ask, Is it possible that any of this is true? That approach is likely — as in the case of many “biblical archaeologists” — looking for evidence to “prove”, or demonstrate the “possibility”, of the events and therefore decide that the story has some historical basis. But that is a circular approach because we begin with the assumption of a historical core and therefore interpret our evidence to support our assumption.
A valid approach is to understand the nature of the story itself — that is is a story and what ideology or view it is wanting readers to believe or make-believe — and to keep that analysis separate from what we know of the real world from “hard evidence”.
If one thinks on the basis of archaeological evidence that our reconstructions of the origins of Israel are wrong then one needs to set forth the case for why our contrary interpretation of the evidence is wrong and why the new evidence or interpretation of it is superior. It is not valid to claim that some evidence can be made to fit in with a biblical narrative and that therefore the biblical narrative is “possibly” true — which usually slides into the “possibiliter” fallacy of accepting that it is most likely true.
Thank you for the literature. As I see it, these authors represent the school of Biblical minimalism, and if I’m not mistaken, Biblical minimalism doesn’t represent the majority view in modern scholarship.
For example, regarding the question of the historicity of the Exodus, the Wikipedia article states: “There are two main positions on the historicity of the Exodus in modern scholarship. The majority position is that the biblical Exodus narrative has some historical basis, although there is little of historical worth in it. The other position, often associated with the school of Biblical minimalism, is that the biblical exodus traditions are the invention of the exilic and post-exilic Jewish community, with little to no historical basis.”
And also both Thomas L. Thompson and Israel Finkelstein are heavily criticized, for example, by William G. Dever.
However, my position is open to the arguments of Biblical minimalism, even though it is not my default position. I don’t agree with the premise that if something is not supported by archaeological evidence it should be automatically viewed as invented and ahistorical. Sometimes absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
In my opinion, for the Exodus, there is so much indirect archaeological evidence pointing to the 16th or 15th century, that the possibility of a mere coincidence is low. Each piece of the evidence might be weak and indirect but if there is too much of this evidence, it has some explanatory power.
No, not at all. Finkelstein and Jamieson-Drake are all within the mainstream debates. Thompson’s work on the Patriarchs led to his exclusion from academia for a couple of decades, if I recall correctly, but now its view of the historicity of the patriarchs is pretty much mainstream. (His reputed “minimalist” works are all decades later than 1975.)
The sources I quoted are by no means part of any “minimalist” school by any scholar’s viewpoint.
Have you read Dever’s vicious attacks on his “minimalists”? He is going way beyond scholarly bounds. Also, always check citations and claims that so and so argues such and such and check for yourself. Dever, for example, has attempted to use one line that he has ripped from context in a Finkelstein article to try to say that Finkelstein somehow opposes the view that there was no Jerusalem based united kingdom/empire of David and Solomon.
Finkelstein has much more respect among academia than I think the wikipedia article might lead you to believe.
Your criticism of minimalism seems to be based on how minimalism has been represented by its critics. There is no common school of thought on ancient Israel and the Bible among so-called “minimalists”. I don’t know any of them who say that “because there is no archaeological evidence we should assume a story is fiction”. Not at all. I have never read that line of thought. As you point out, it does not stand to reason. Of course there can be other grounds for accepting the historicity of a narrative work. It is the evidence — the independent evidence of some kind — that helps us determine what is the actual nature of a text. I have never suggested we should treat a story as fiction just because there is no archaeological evidence for it. We treat stories as stories — without predetermining what their relationship is to history until we have clear reason to come down one side or the other. Sometimes we can have independent textual support along with confirmation of provenance, that the author knew certain sources, etc.
Re Dever: Dever himself follows Finkelstein on the evidence against the historicity of an Israelite invasion of Canaan. I quoted from Dever’s Beyond the Texts in my latest post.
As for “mainstream” scholarship in biblical studies I think we surely have a right to be suspicious because there is little doubt that the field is dominated by Christian and Jewish scholars whose interest is in finding meaning for today in the Bible. I have been addressing the Documentary Hypothesis and its related understanding that biblical texts originated from 1000 BCE and were supplemented through to the Babylonian captivity. If we take Wellhausen as the main figure of that mainstream view, and read Wellhausen, it is very clear that he is allowing his Protestant beliefs shape is interpretations — as has often been noted in the literature.
When Philip Davies’ book In Search of Ancient Israel first appeared it created a storm because (as NP Lemche has pointed out) he did not say anything new so much as simply pulled together what had been in the literature for decades and confronted it head on with its implications for the entire field.
Those who were initially disparaged with the term “minimalist” actually have no common view about the origins of the Bible. Davies himself for long argued that it was a product of the Persian era. Lemche was the first, I think, of the so-called minimalists to propose a Hellenistic origin. And Russell Gmirkin who argues for the Hellenistic origin in detail does not accept the term “minimalist” being applied to himself or his approach to the question.
The views and reconstructions of “minimalists” like Thompson, Davies, Whitelam, Lemche have been more of a smorgasbord of different perspectives than a common course. It is not unusual to find their various contributions being accepted and expanded in mainstream literature. The ones who still dismiss them with some contempt are the ones whose apologetic bias shines through their works loud and clear.
As for the Devers and co and their tactics, see https://vridar.org/2010/10/27/the-tactics-of-conservative-scholarship-according-to-j-barr-n-p-lemche/
Forgive me for bombarding you with replies but I am sure your thoughts have a wider interest. Maybe I should do a post rather than a comment. Here is Dever on the Exodus:
and
and
On the fifteenth century date for the Exodus Dever writes:
On the traditional view of Israelites conquering Canaan, Dever…
and
Dever’s disagreements with Finkelstein are over the specific details of the origins of the Israelites within Canaan. He embraces Finkelstein’s findings that agree with other archaeologists that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan and not invaders or immigrants.
On page 230 he has a table of what is proven and what is disproven. He lists “large-scale exodus from Egypt” as disproven and “Canaanite origins” of Israel as “proven”.
For other sources and info on theories about the Exodus Dever writes in a foonote:
Beyond the Texts is publicly available at https://archive.org/details/beyondtextsarcha0000deve so you can follow up those footnote works if you wish — and see more about what Dever has to say about Finkelstein there, too.
Thank you for presenting this book of Dever. It seems like a great start for investigating the historicity of the Exodus. And I agree, his book represents a strong argument against the historical basis of the Exodus. On the other hand, we both disagree with Dever. If he is wrong about Finkelstein, he might be wrong about the historicity of the Exodus as well.
I wish I had time to read this book and follow all the sources in the footnote but I don’t. Hopefully, I will find some free time for it in the near future. Until then, I guess I have not much to say about this topic anymore.
Yeh, time and circumstance do not often fall in our favour.
This post, and the one that follows it, raise(s) so many interesting questions about how we read and interpret ancient evidence (or any literary evidence) that I won’t even try to get into them all; but on the issue of David & Solomon being both legendary figures comparable to King Arthur, I would just like to share with you something you probably already know, which is that Dio Cassius claims a “tomb of Solomon” was destroyed under, I believe, Hadrian, in ca. 132 C.E. My wife asked me if it was “THE” Solomon, and of course I don’t know. Maybe some of your erudite followers know. So there is at least some evidence that a “tomb of Solomon” existed as late as 2d C. On the other hand, there is a “staff of Moses” that exists somewhere in Europe (I forgot which country) in the 21st C., so maybe this approach doesn’t help much!
Thanks for the thoughts. The Cassius Dio remark is that the tomb of Solomon collapsed by itself prior to the Bar Kochba war as an omen to indicate to the Judean population of the disaster that was to come. So for all we know the story and idea of Solomon’s tomb was itself a post-war invention!
When I was in Istanbul I visited a palace museum that displayed the physical remains of parts of John the Baptist’s body, so we can be sure he existed. (Though I understand there are a total of four original John the Baptist’s heads in various displays around the region.)
>So for all we know the story and idea of Solomon’s tomb was itself a post-war invention!
Even if it was not, the fact that a place was believed to be Solomon’s tomb does not mewan that it was; I recall reading that a monument in Jerusalem is alleged to have been Absolom’s tomb but dates from the 4th century CE. Whether this story is true is open to question, but the principle which applies to Absolom’s tomb can also apply to Solomon’s tomb.