ON ARCHAEOLOGY , BIBLICAL HISTORY, AND BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
T he aim of these essays is to examine some of the currently debated issues pertaining to the relationship between the Hebrew Bible, archaeology, and recent historical reconstructions of the history of ancient Israel. For example, to what extent can the biblical narratives on the early history of Israel be utilized in writing a history of early Israel? Are they historically reliable or are they national sagas created with little or no historical basis, centuries later than the assumed historical time of the events that they describe? Such questions have been raised by scholars for the entire biblical narrative; from the Patriarchal stories, to Israel’s slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the Conquest, the period of the Judges and, more recently, the time of the first three kings—Saul, David, and Solomon. Even the period of the divided monarchy is debated. When did Israel and Judah emerge as states? What did the historical and cultural developments of these states look like?
Questions have also been raised concerning the history of Israel’s religion. When did Israelite belief in Yahweh as one god emerge? Was the belief in this particular god identical with the emergence of monotheism? Such subjects, and many related ones, have been central turning points in biblical-historical scholarship as well as topics of immense interest to the general public for over a century and a half. Over the course of a generation, we have seen a new wave of debate among scholars worldwide concerning these issues. This has been followed by a growing interest on the part of the public and the media. In the more recent stages of this debate, archaeology has been playing an ever-increasing role. The opportunity to present these essays are but another expression of the increased interest in these subjects in which the main question to be addressed is to what extent archaeology can contribute to the resolution of the issues at hand.
The branch of archaeology that relates to the Hebrew Bible has been traditionally coined “biblical archaeology.” Yet, this term has become increasingly problematic. Is it a legitimate designation, or, as some would pose the question, is it the aim of archaeology to “excavate” the Bible? Can this aspect of archaeology be better defined as an independent branch of scholarship? If we continue to use this term, how should we qualify it? Let us first examine very briefly the two components of the term, namely, “archaeology” and “Bible.”
ARCHAEOLOGY
Archaeology is one of the fields of research that emerged during the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth century it developed into a mature, full-blown social-scientific discipline with its own research methods and theoretical frameworks. The goal of modern archaeology is to study various aspects of past societies by reconstructing spatial and temporal social changes as well as a wide range of economic, technological, political, and religious phenomena. Archaeological research is undertaken internationally using a variety of methods developed for fieldwork and for the accurate processing and interpretation of recovered data. The scope of this field of research is wide scale and relates to every aspect of human activity that can be recovered by the spade. The questions asked and the answers given are sometimes complicated and often interpretations of the same body of archaeological phenomena may differ and thereby become the subjects for extended scholarly debate.
The first task of the archaeologist is to locate ancient settlement sites. The study of the spatial distribution of sites over time is essential for reconstructing transformations in settlement patterns, for establishing hierarchic relationships between types of settlements, for evaluating the settlement areas in the various periods, and for estimating the resultant demographic changes over time. This is achieved through the use of field surveys combined with the study of ancient geographic, ecological, and environmental factors. Modern research tools like the computerized Geographical Information System (GIS) help in analyzing the settlement map in relation to the topography, geology, soil types, land uses, water resources, ancient roads, and so on. When such studies are combined with the results of excavations at various sites, archaeologists can reconstruct an integrated picture of the ancient settlement system. Detailed settlement maps, tables, and graphs enable them to follow changes in settlement and demography through time in a given region and to gather information about such topics as the response of human societies to environmental challenges. As we will see, this aspect of the archaeological endeavor is essential for the study of the emergence or origin of early Israel.
In the land of Israel, this aspect of ancient settlement is closely related to the research field known as the historical geography of the Bible, an independent area of research that can be defined as part of the broader field of biblical archaeology. Its goal is to explore the vast geographical data in the Bible and in other ancient written sources such as Egyptian and Assyrian texts, as well as epigraphic documents from the southern Levant. The identification of place-names preserved in written sources with actual archaeological sites was the first major achievement of this field following the exploration of the Holy Land by various pioneers over the centuries. I have in mind such notable figures as Eusebius, the head of the Christian church of Caesarea during the fourth century C.E., Ashtori Haparchi, the Jewish scholar who lived at Beth-shean in the fourteenth century, and nineteenth century scholars like the noted American Edward Robinson who, in 1838 and 1852, carried out the first extensive pioneering exploration of the country in modern times.
All these scholars were aware of the remarkable preservation of ancient biblical names in the place-names of their own times and in particular, in the Arabic names used throughout the region. Some examples include Beth-shean (Arabic Beisan), Bethel (Arabic Beitin), Shiloh (Arabic Sailun), Gibeon (Arabic Jib), and so forth. Historical geography also deals with many other aspects of ancient geography, such as biblical lists of tribal plots and tribal borders, administrative divisions like those of the kingdom of Solomon, political and cultural boundaries, road systems, and much more. Thus, the combined efforts of field surveys and analytical historical geography enables the archaeologist to draw important conclusions regarding the ancient settlement systems and demography in the Holy Land and to relate various ancient texts to the available geographical and archaeological realia.
Archeological excavations explore the inner structures and developments of various types of settlements over time—from small hamlets of desert dwellers to well-planned, fortified cities. The larger sites of the ancient Near East are buried in ancient mounds, which are commonly known as “tells.” These sites were located in the most suitable locations for human habitation and were settled and resettled over hundreds or even thousands of years, and thus they often preserve dozens of occupation levels, which archaeologists refer to as “strata.” The exploration of a single tell or mound might require long-term and large-scale planned projects that may take several years to complete and even then only small, randomly selected areas can be excavated. In many cases, only the uppermost occupation levels can easily be approached, while deeper levels can only be examined in deep probes or in step trenches along slopes of mounds, and thus remain largely unknown. Furthermore, each excavator has to address what might seem to be an endless number of questions regarding his or her site. What were the environmental resources, such as water and land, available to the site? When exactly was the site settled? Was the population of the site stable or were there population changes or fluctuations? How many occupation phases do the various “strata” reflect and can we define gaps in the occupation? Which part of the site was settled in each period? What reasons brought an end to each occupation phase? What was the town plan in each of those occupation periods? What were the building materials and techniques used? What kind of subsistence strategy was employed in each settlement period? If there were violent destructions—who or what caused them? Can we relate such destructions to historical events known from other sources? These are only a few of the many questions that the archaeologist might ask.
Reliable answers to such questions can be achieved only by methodical, well-controlled excavation methods and a thorough understanding of many phenomena and features in each excavation. The decipherment of depositional processes and the stratigraphy of a site are the most challenging tasks of the field archaeologist. The depositional processes are the result of diverse and sometimes unexpected human decisions and activities of a distant past. The image of a tell as a cake composed of horizontal layers (or “strata”) that can be peeled off, one by one, by the archaeologist was a common one in the early stages of research, but the reality proved to be much more complicated. The correct understanding and documentation of complex, multilayered sites both mentioned in the Bible and archaeologically attested, such as Hazor, Megiddo, Beth-shean, Lachish, as well as many others, are absolutely crucial to an accurate interpretation of Israel’s early history.
Less complex, yet no less informative, are many other types of sites reflective of human activity, such as isolated farms, hamlets, citadels, agricultural and industrial installations, cemeteries, ancient roads, and ports. Many of these sites have been recovered by chance during salvage operations related to intense development in modern times, and others have been explored within the framework of more formalized research projects. Desert archaeology and underwater archaeology are two specialized branches of archaeological investigation. Both contribute unique types of data to the archaeological enterprise. For example, cultic sites in the deserts of Sinai and the Negev have informed us immensely about the origin of the biblical “standing stones” or masseboth. The Phoenician merchant shipwrecks discovered just a few years ago at great depths below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea have provided us with our first archaeological encounter with an actual Phoenician ship that probably looked like the Tyrian ship described in Ezek 27.
The combined evidence from these diverse sites provides archaeologists with a panoramic view of various modes of human life. In my career over the past thirty years, I have excavated two multilayered medium-sized towns (Tell Qasile and Tel Batash [Timnah]), two multilayered major cities (Beth-shean and Tel Re
ov), as well as a series of smaller, single-period sites: an early-Israelite village settlement, a citadel, a watchtower, a cultic site, and a desert farm
or road station. Each of these sites had a different story to tell about ancient Israel’s material culture, society, and life ways.
Returning to the excavation process itself, the finds that archaeologists typically recover include pottery vessels, various artifacts made of metal, stone, bone, and other materials, seals, inscriptions, art objects, and cult objects of various kinds, burial remains and funerary goods, and, in rare cases, we may also find organic materials like wood and textile items. Detailed study of these objects is essential for defining temporal and spatial changes in the material culture. We can define regional cultures as well as study the origins and diffusion of cultural features. We can detect foreign influences, local and international trade networks, processes of colonization, and immigration. Such detailed research provides the basis not only for relative dating, but, together with the aid of firmly dated objects, for absolute dating and chronology.
There are many examples of the successful results of such meticulous studies in biblical archaeology. For example, the study of the Philistine culture as a culture of immigrant peoples became possible only thanks to precise analysis of pottery and other artifacts and comparative study with artifacts from Greece and Cyprus. Moreover, the identification of what is thought to be Israelite material culture in the period of the Judges became possible only with the meticulous comparison of that cultural data with the Canaanite culture known from the lowlands.
Another important aspect of modern archaeology is the wide-scale cooperation with scientists from various fields such as botany, zoology, physical anthropology, geology, geomorphology, chemistry, physics, geography, metallurgy, computer science, statistics, remote sensing, and more. This kind of cooperation has opened many new horizons of research as exemplified by recent published studies. By way of example, in the summer of 2005 at Tel Re
ov, we uncovered the remains of several beehives from the tenth century B.C.E.
, the only ones so far discovered from any site in our region. After we suggested the identification of the hives, a scientist from the Weizmann Institute analyzed their clay walls and indeed identified the remains as beeswax residue.
The use of radiometric dating, that is, measuring the isotope 14
C in organic materials, particularly in seeds, has become a very important tool for dating. For example, at Tel Re
ov, we managed to gain a precise series of dates from seeds spanning the twelfth to ninth centuries B.C.E.
, which have become an important factor in the current debate over Iron Age chronology.
Archaeological projects require much technical work, including drafting and drawing of architectural plans and artifacts, spread photography, restoration, and conservation of objects and structures. Wide use of computer software is needed in order to handle ever-growing databases, to process quantitative analyses of various kinds, to help in creating typological seriations, and to create three-dimensional images, just to mention a few of the applications now used in field archaeology.
The collection, processing, integration, interpretation, and publication of these numerous data are not simple tasks, and the integration of finds from various individual sites into a comprehensive regional picture can be compared to the assembling of a huge jigsaw puzzle. It is a complex and expensive enterprise. As an excavation director, I imagine myself sometimes standing in the center of a huge intersection, surrounded by radiating branches of study and research. And although archaeological fieldwork has its glamor and great moments of discovery, the daily routine involves lengthy, tiring stages of documentation, processing of finds, integrating results, and preparing final publications. The actual work of the archaeologist extends well beyond the popular image of Indiana Jones, the treasure hunter.
A higher level of the archaeological enterprise is that of interpretation, synthesis, and explanation. This so-called armchair stage of archaeology deals with the reconstruction of the broader aspects of social, political, economic, and ethnic changes in a given region or country. The subjects of research and interpretation cover all aspects of life, several of which I mentioned above: the human response to the environment; agricultural and industrial technologies; demography; comparative studies of architecture and domestic artifacts; warfare; daily life, including diet, cooking, baking, spinning, and weaving, as well as metallurgy; religious practices and beliefs; art; iconography and symbolism; paleography; transportation and trade; and burial customs. This is only a partial list of the many subjects that constitute human activity. The goal is to reconstruct as much as possible a complete portrait of ancient society, from the life of the poorest peasant to that of the king or priest.
As such, various questions emerge as to the modes of life within the society explored. Were the people nomadic, semi-nomadic, or sedentary? Were they ranked or egalitarian? Was it a tribal society with family lineage as a major component? Archaeologists try to reconstruct the emergence of social and political systems such as states and empires in order to understand colonization, immigration, assimilation, and symbiosis of different groups. The ancient economy is reconstructed by studying modes of agricultural and industrial production, ancient technologies and evidence for short- and long-range trade systems. Gender archaeology attempts to study the roles of women in society; religious beliefs and cult practices are reconstructed on the basis of temples, cult objects, and burial practices; cognitive aspects of life that may be deduced from the finds are also addressed in modern research. Most of these subjects concern long-term social and technological changes. Yet, in many cases we can detect certain events, typically those that are the more
dramatic or crisis-oriented events for ancient peoples like earthquakes and military conquests. Such events, though tragic for an ancient population, are rewarding for the archaeologist who excavates them, since they “freeze” certain moments in the life of a society and can yield abundant finds. Examples from my own experience are the destruction layers dated to the Iron II period, which I excavated at three sites, Tel Re
ov, Beth-shean, and Timnah (Tel Batash). These could be attributed to certain Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military conquests between the ninth and late-seventh centuries B.C.E.
The specific evidence for such conquests is thick, burnt conflagration layers in which whole households were buried. Such “time capsules” enabled my team to reconstruct rather extensively the material culture of a certain site during a particular time period.
A variety of theoretical frameworks have been developed over the past few decades in archaeological interpretation. One of the best-known trends is the so-called processualist archaeology or “New Archaeology,” which dominated scholarship from the 1960s to the 1980s. This approach emphasized ecological and environmental determinism and gave less weight to human decisions and actions. Since the early 1990s, post-modern modes of thinking have inspired archaeological interpretation; “post-processualist” archaeology, as it is known today, has opened the door for much more varied and flexible interpretation; various possible explanations for the same archaeological phenomena are acceptable, and the role of human decisions and of the individual in history is taken into consideration more than in the previous period. These trends have direct implications on our subject. They can, for example, offer alternative solutions to the debate over the historicity of David and Solomon.
In sum, archaeology is a much more complex discipline than most people think. Its methods of analytical research and deduction provide the only way to reconstruct an outline of historical periods and lost cultures where there are no written records, while for periods where we have written sources, archaeology gains significant importance as a complementary tool for historical reconstruction, even counter-balancing texts that may be biased or loaded with propaganda and ideology.
Because it is the Holy Land, the land of Israel has continuously been the focus of archaeological research from the beginning of the modern era. In the nineteenth century, it suffered from the infancy of the new discipline. In fact, early archaeologists inflicted much damage on sites like Jerusalem in the early years, that is, prior to World War I. Yet in those years, pioneers like Sir Flinders Petrie developed new concepts and methods that laid the foundation for later advances in research. Between the two world wars, American and European expeditions conducted large-scale excavations at major sites and laid the foundation for the systematic archaeological research of the Holy Land. These were the years when the concept of biblical archaeology took shape under the leadership of the American scholar William F. Albright. His unique personality and wide-ranging knowledge of all aspects of ancient Near Eastern studies inspired a whole generation of scholars; among them are some of the founders of biblical archaeology in Israel, like Benjamin Mazar and Yigael Yadin. This school strived for the integration of archaeology with biblical history, historical geography, paleography, Near Eastern history, philology, and art history into a comprehensive field of knowledge.
After 1948, archaeology in Israel and Jordan developed rapidly. The large-scale excavations at Hazor led by Yadin served as the training ground for a new generation of Israeli archaeologists, who later developed their own projects and methods of research. American, European, Australian, Japanese, and Jordanian teams have continued exploration in Israel and Jordan, and now these countries have become some of the most intensively and dynamically explored in the entire world. But how can this vast amount of ever-accumulating data serve to reconstruct biblical history? To this question, we now turn.
ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE BIBLE
As mentioned previously, our concern in these essays is mainly the questions, to what extent can we extract history from the biblical text? and, what are the methodological problems involved in relating archaeological research to the study of biblical history? After all, the title of the colloquium from which this volume derives was “Digging for Truth.” But can we discover the absolute truth for our field? My answer is “yes” concerning certain matters, but I have serious doubts regarding many others.
A wide spectrum of views exists concerning the process and stages of writing and redaction of the Hebrew Bible, and the evaluation of the biblical text in reconstructing a history of Israel. In particular, the biblical stories from the times of the Patriarchs to the kingships of David and Solomon are the subjects of serious debates. There are those who accept the biblical narrative as true history; they are mostly scholars or authors of religious backgrounds, either Jewish or Christian, who believe in the truth of the Bible and are not ready to give up the biblical stories either as the Word of God or at least as straightforward true history writing. A recent example is the six-hundred-page book by Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament , in which the author vigorously defends the historicity of the details of the Bible using extensive material from the ancient Near East. His concluding sentence is:
The Old Testament comes out remarkably well, so long as its writings and writers are treated fairly and evenhandedly, in line with independent data.
On the other side of the spectrum stand scholars who all but negate the historicity of the entire Hebrew Bible and claim that it was written during the fourth to third centuries B.C.E. as total fiction, reflecting in toto , the intellectual and theological world of the much later writers. Philip Davies, for example, defines biblical Israel as a modern invention of scholars. Niels Peter Lemche, one of the main authors in this group writes,
the Israelite nation as explained by the biblical writers has little in the way of a historical background. It is a highly ideological construct created by ancient scholars of Jewish tradition in order to legitimize their own religious community and its religio-political claims on land and religious exclusivity. (The Israelites in History and Tradition [Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998], 165–66.)
This group of scholars has been dubbed “revisionist,” “minimalist,” or even “nihilist,” though they themselves decline any common general term for their school or “movement” so to speak. In between these two extremes there is wide space for various views that may collectively be defined as “middle-of-the-road” or moderate. Professor Finkelstein and I stand at two different points on the centrist continuum. Our views differ on certain important issues, but we share more in common than we do with either of the two extreme groups described above.
An archaeologist like me, who is an outsider to textual research, must make a choice between divergent views when trying to relate archaeological data and interpretation to the biblical sources. My own choice is to follow those who claim that the initial writing of the Torah (the Pentateuch or Tetrateuch), of the Deuteronomistic History and large parts of the prophetic and wisdom literature took place during the late monarchy (eighth to early-sixth centuries B.C.E. ), while during the exilic and post-exilic periods they underwent further stages of editing, expansion, and change. Yet, I also accept the view of many scholars that the late-monarchic authors utilized earlier materials and sources. These may include:
1. The archives of the Jerusalem Temple library.
2. Palace archives (though the existence of such archives remains disputed).
3. Public commemorative inscriptions, perhaps centuries old (no Israelite ones have been preserved, but potential analogues include those of Mesha of Moab and Hazael of Damascus, two of Israel’s major opponents in the ninth century).
4. The oral transmission of ancient poetry. This may include the Song of Miriam, the Song of Deborah, the Blessings of Jacob, and other ancient poetic texts.
5. Folk stories and aetiological stories rooted in a remote historical past. These include many of the stories in the biblical literature, such as portions of the Exodus and Conquest accounts, stories about the deeds of the Judges, the biographies of Saul, David, and Solomon, the Elijah and Elisha cycles, and so on.
6. Earlier historiographic writings that are referred to in the Hebrew Bible as the “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” and the “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” cited in the books of Kings:
Now the rest of the acts of Ahab: and all that he did, and the ivory house which he built, and all the cities that he built, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel? (1 Kgs 2:39; NRSV).
This sounds as if the author had in front of him some earlier form of written history.
It is generally accepted that many of the stories incorporated in the Deuteronomistic History, though based on folk stories and traditions, were reworked under the influence of late-Judean (that is, southern) theology, ideology, and editorial processes. Nevertheless, such stories may retain valuable historical information that can be accessed with the help of accepted historical methods coupled with external written sources and archaeological finds. As modern interpreters, our task is to extract any reliable historical information embedded in these literary texts, using archaeology as a tool of control and heightened objectivity.
Both Assyrian inscriptions and local inscriptions like the stelae of Mesha, king of Moab, and of Hazael, king of Damascus (better known as the Tel Dan inscription), confirm that the general historical framework of the Deuteronomistic narrative relating to the ninth century was based on reliable knowledge of the historical outline of that century. Our understanding of the periods preceding the ninth century is of course foggier. Israel is not mentioned in any external source following its lone reference in the inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah, which dates to 1206 B.C.E. , that is, until we come to the mid- to late-ninth-century Mesha inscription 350 years or so later.
I imagine the historical perspective in the Hebrew Bible as a telescope looking back in time: the farther in time we go back, the more dim the picture becomes. Considering that the supposed telescope stood somewhere in the late-eighth or seventh centuries B.C.E. , it gives us a more accurate picture when we look at the ninth century than when we view the tenth century, and so forth. Oral traditions and stories embedded in the biblical historiography might preserve more extensive authentic details concerning events or phenomena closer to the time of writing, while the farther away we get from the supposed events, the stories become more imaginative and symbolic, and are perhaps accompanied by greater distortion of earlier information. We also have to recall selective memory and memory loss, censorship, and biases due to ideological, theological, personal, or other motivations. This is true with any history, even of the last century, not just ancient history. Allow me to cite a well known example from the history of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. There is the official history, produced by the Department of History in the Israel Defense Forces, and there are various other versions, among them postmodern narratives that deconstruct various aspects of the official history of this war. When dealing with a period long past and with almost no direct written sources, like the early biblical period, it is extremely difficult to assess the biblical data and so one may ask whether it is possible at all to write an accurate history of early Israel.
In spite of these dangers, the working hypothesis of the view that I represent is that information in the Deuteronomistic History and other biblical texts may have historical value, in spite of the distortions, exaggerations, theological disposition, and literary creativity of the biblical authors and editors.
THE ROLE OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE DEFINITION OF “BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY”
The correlation of archaeological finds and texts is only one aspect of the archaeologist’s work—perhaps one of the most difficult—yet it is a challenge that must be faced. In light of the conflicting views concerning early biblical history, archaeology can provide external, presumably objective, data on realia related to the issues currently under debate. It also has the potential to provide independent judgment of biblical sources by allowing us to examine in certain cases their historical reliability. In addition, it provides numerous observations on many aspects of early-Israelite society that cannot be extracted from the biblical text itself.
However, the interpretation of archaeological data and its association with the biblical text may in many cases be a matter of subjective judgment, since it is often inspired by the scholar’s personal values, beliefs, ideology, and attitude toward the text or an artifact. In many cases, when archaeological discoveries are utilized in order to prove one historical paradigm or another, we are confronted with arguments that are, at their core, circular. This was true for William F. Albright and his followers, and is still true today, and thus it should be recalled that many archaeological conclusions are not certifiably factual, no matter when or by whom they were proposed.
Despite this, the role of archaeology as an invaluable tool for examining various aspects of biblical historiography and of the early periods of Israelite history—the Late Bronze through the Iron age—remains firmly intact. Investigations have shown that there are both many correlations between archaeology and biblical references, as well as many contradictions. This situation is only natural in light of the Bible’s complex process of transmission described above.
But the role of archaeology is well beyond confirming or denying certain biblical events or other references. Archaeology is in fact the main tool for reconstructing many aspects of Israelite society, economy, daily life, and religion, as well as those of Israel’s neighbors. It offers a unique perspective on the Israelites as part of the wider context of the Levant and the entire ancient Near East.
Nevertheless, after more than 150 years of research in this field, there are still debates and discussions concerning the definition of biblical archaeology as a concept and field of research. During the last generation, the term received some bad publicity. It was considered by many as a field of study loaded with theological and ideological agendas, reflecting the religious beliefs of Christianity or Judaism. We often hear that biblical archaeology’s main goal is “to prove the Bible” so to speak. William G. Dever preached for many years that we needed to redefine our field of research as “Syro-Palestinian Archaeology,” thus relocating it in the wider context of Near Eastern archaeology, unrelated to biblical studies. A few years ago, the American Schools of Oriental Research, a nondenominational academic organization, decided after a long debate to change the name of its popular magazine, Biblical Archaeologist , to Near Eastern Archaeology. The change reflected the desire of American archaeologists working in our field to liberate the discipline from any religious framework.
At the background of this change stood the dichotomy between American archaeologists of our region who are faculty members of theological seminaries, divinity schools, or departments of biblical, Jewish, or religious studies, and those in the forefront of American archaeological theory and practice who hold appointments in departments of anthropology and history. In America, the term biblical archaeology continues to be used by conservative Christian researchers, as evidenced in a new book entitled The Future of Biblical Archaeology (edited by J. K. Hoffmeier and A. Millard), which appeared in 2004. Similarly, the Biblical Archaeology Society and its magazine Biblical Archaeology Review , though private and nondenominational, reflect in their names a well-defined targeted public, much of it composed of conservative Christians who are interested in the Bible and its world. There is a broad gap between this approach and the professional approach to archaeology as part of the larger fields of anthropology and history, and this has resulted in the refutation of the term biblical archaeology by many scholars in the United States. Strangely enough, Dever himself calls now for a return to the old term and proposes that we just add the qualifying word “New”—this “New Biblical Archeology” remains the same old woman, but wearing the new dress of current archaeological methodology and more “anthropological” ways of thinking.
In Israel, the term biblical archaeology has been accepted in a more simplistic way as a means of referring to all archaeological activity related to the Bible and its world. In my view, the term biblical archaeology should continue to be used as a generic or broad term, defining all aspects of archaeological research that are related to the world of the Bible. This is a broad definition that includes vast geographical regions from Iran to Greece and from Turkey to Egypt, that is, the entire Middle East and eastern Mediterranean. The archaeology of each of these regions contributes in some degree to our understanding of the biblical world, and as such it contributes to biblical archaeology. According to this definition, biblical archaeology is not an independent scientific discipline, but rather the “shopping cart” that collects data from the various branches of Near Eastern archaeology and utilizes them in studying the Bible in its world.
Though written in what was at the time one of the smallest and most negligible states of the ancient Near East, the Bible is perhaps the most profound product of the ancient Near Eastern world. Many of the achievements of this cultural world, rooted in the third, second, and first millennia B.C.E. are embedded in it. Many ancient local memories can be identified in the biblical text; some of them even seem to be pre-Israelite and adapted by the Israelites as part of their heritage. Archaeology may provide us with a clue to such cases. In this wider framework, the archaeology of the land of Israel has a central role in providing the most direct access to the society that created the biblical text.
Such a “Bible-centered” orientation is criticized by various kinds of scholars: on the one hand there are the “minimalists” who would not accept the Bible as related to the Iron Age, and on the other hand there are the archaeologists who claim that archaeology should be treated as a self-contained discipline and that professional archaeologists should not intervene in the study of biblical history or culture. Yet, to me and many others it appears that removing the connection between archaeology and the Bible would strip our field from its flesh and leave just the dry bones. The relationship between the text and the artifact is the essence of biblical archaeology; it remains for us to cope with the questions that are raised, avoiding on the one hand a naive and fundamentalist approach to the text and, on the other, any excessively manipulative, uncritical, or imaginative interpretations.