Archaeology and the Hebrew Bible

[OCaptain]

I've tried jumping into some existing threads in the past few months, thinking that I could contribute to a lively debate in a constructive way. However, I found quickly that, for lack of better descriptions, ideological battlelines had already been drawn, the well had been poisoned, and the earth scorched (to borrow the last phrase from a fellow JREFer).

The main mistake I made was in running onto a battlefield where neither "side" was interested in conversing with someone who was carrying neither one of their standards. I paid for it in verbal scars, to say the least. There is a lot of passion in those threads, which is admirable. But what I'd like to do here is to offer something a bit calmer, looking at evidence as it is, without grand proclamations, without conclusion-jumping, and without verbal abuse.

I think there is a chance that this thread might become a haven for those of us skeptics who consider all sides. In the case of archaeology, this becomes easier because we have physical objects to which we can refer to make a point.

This won't be so much me presenting a theory for deconstruction (although I've no doubt that will happen) as it will be for all who participate to throw out their suggestions, observations, and questions. In the end, I trust that all discussion will take us back to something in the dirt. I love archaeology, and the study of human development within the context of the Hebrew Bible is of particular fascination for me.

So, is there anything I would consider outside the bounds of the topic? Yes, we'll make Abraham our beginning point, and the close of the Babylonian return narratives our ending point. Discussions of the supernatural are not part of this thread. Further, I don't consider religious self-identification or lack of it to be admittable, nor a topic for demeaning someone (i.e, "you only believe that because you're an atheist", or "such a fundie idiot"). That's not cool. So, please don't attack the messenger, attack the message, if you feel the need, but do it with more than just passion.

I know sometimes it's hard to be the first one to post with a topic, so I'll post a loose suggestion. Fair enough?

Regarding Finkelstein & Silberman's The Bible Unearthed and the follow-on David and Solomon, for those who have read parts or all, the question that enters my mind when I read both of them is this: doesn't this present a Israelite cultural reality that is just as stilted and artificially homogeneous as the biblical accounts it challenges? Very often Finkelstein & Silberman criticize the biblical accounts for deigning to speak on behalf of ALL Israel, yet construct their theory of a pastoral-to- sedentary evolution that - wonder of wonders - accomplishes the same goal. If gross oversimplification is a flaw inherent in the biblical texts, cannot the same be said about the theories of Finkelstein & Silberman?

 

[Marduk]

long time

 

[OCaptain]

long time

Wait a minute.... Is this who I think it is??

 

[I Ratant]

Didn't those guys diminish Solomon's temple to a slightly more pretentious pile of rocks on an insignificant hill in an area the powers-that-were considered just a PITA?
Pretty much like Jerusalem has always been.

 

[marplots]

Regarding Finkelstein & Silberman's The Bible Unearthed and the follow-on David and Solomon, for those who have read parts or all, the question that enters my mind when I read both of them is this: doesn't this present a Israelite cultural reality that is just as stilted and artificially homogeneous as the biblical accounts it challenges? Very often Finkelstein & Silberman criticize the biblical accounts for deigning to speak on behalf of ALL Israel, yet construct their theory of a pastoral-to- sedentary evolution that - wonder of wonders - accomplishes the same goal. If gross oversimplification is a flaw inherent in the biblical texts, cannot the same be said about the theories of Finkelstein & Silberman?

Yes and no. History as a subject matter looks for simplification and general categories (more especially so for ancient history) so that's always in the mix. But their point (I think) was that the Biblical account has a national identity associated with it and suffers from selective description. Now, you would then say that archeology suffers the same flaw because not all sites have been explored and there is evidence missing from even those sites that have. This is so, but the pattern that emerges isn't drawn from a nationalistic (or theistic) bias -- at least it isn't supposed to be.

If they've done it properly, their taxonomy of who the Israelites were and what the group did is based on measurable things (like pot shards or technology or cultural artifacts) rather than a need for identity or some kind of myth-derived coherent purpose (with undertones of nobility).

 

[joobz]

I have not read those books, but they look interesting. I am not too shocked by the approach or arguments being made.

I think it is clear that the bible represents a complex mixture of fact, myth and author's desires. It is in this way that it is quite an interesting insight into the values of the cultural subsets that they arose from.

 

[OCaptain]

Yes and no. History as a subject matter looks for simplification and general categories (more especially so for ancient history) so that's always in the mix. But their point (I think) was that the Biblical account has a national identity associated with it and suffers from selective description. Now, you would then say that archeology suffers the same flaw because not all sites have been explored and there is evidence missing from even those sites that have. This is so, but the pattern that emerges isn't drawn from a nationalistic (or theistic) bias -- at least it isn't supposed to be.

If they've done it properly, their taxonomy of who the Israelites were and what the group did is based on measurable things (like pot shards or technology or cultural artifacts) rather than a need for identity or some kind of myth-derived coherent purpose (with undertones of nobility).

During the Late Bronze A-Early Iron transition, their proposal is that waves of pastoral nomads settled down, then became nomads again, then settled down again, and finally remaining settled. This would have occurred over a 2500 years, from 3500 to 1100 BCE. Finkelstein argues that the circular shape of the settlement indicates the nomadic origins of the populace, suggesting that they would have preferred such a settlement morphology. Further, there were a great amount of bovine bones during this period of settlement, and their small number plus the large number of sheep and goat bones between the periods of settlements indicates this fluctuation.

He argues also that the final settling down and building cities was caused by the collapse of the large Canaanite city-states, the timing of which also has the side-effect of downdating certain Israelite settlements, by about 50 years. Tel Rehov is key to his theory.

 

[MG1962]

I have not read those books, but they look interesting. I am not too shocked by the approach or arguments being made.

I think it is clear that the bible represents a complex mixture of fact, myth and author's desires. It is in this way that it is quite an interesting insight into the values of the cultural subsets that they arose from.

From an anthropological point of view the old testement is definately interesting. The conquest of Jericho is a point of reference.

The Bible pretty much gets the event right, in respect of breaching the walls, however the apparent timing is out by 100's of years. So did the Bible incorporate and old legend, or is the timing of events in the Bible wrong

 

[OCaptain]

From an anthropological point of view the old testement is definately interesting. The conquest of Jericho is a point of reference.

The Bible pretty much gets the event right, in respect of breaching the walls, however the apparent timing is out by 100's of years. So did the Bible incorporate and old legend, or is the timing of events in the Bible wrong

Well, it certainly is, and Kenyon did such a definitive job of putting what she found into a historical context that it's pretty much remained the default view ever since then. Even Kitchen doesn't touch it in his tome, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, where he takes a crack at just about every issue argued about over the past 100 years - except for Jericho.

When you look at that impressive list of LB IIB Cananite cities, from Azekah to Makkedah, Lachish, Gezer, Hebron, Debir, Hazor, Qadesh and Shechem - most of them don't show conflagration levels consistent with the Biblical stories, to coincide with LB IIB. Now, granted, not all of them were in the stated route given, so it's certainly not an all or nothing proposition.

If the Biblical writers co-opted an earlier legend as their own, it certainly wouldn't have been the first time ancient writers did so, so that is always a possibility.

Also, as you suggest, it could be a scribal error, or a redactor error, or something remembered wrongly.

Interesting angles, all.

 

[welshdean]

From an anthropological point of view the old testement is definately interesting. The conquest of Jericho is a point of reference.

The Bible pretty much gets the event right, in respect of breaching the walls, however the apparent timing is out by 100's of years. So did the Bible incorporate and old legend, or is the timing of events in the Bible wrong

JOSHUA 6
20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Do you really believe that MG? Really? Are you really more concerned about a hundred years or so than some foolish fairytale claiming that goat herders were running around the place demolishing walls with rams horns?

 

[Border Reiver]

Are you taking it as a literal story, or rather a rather typical exaggerated story of an important and very successful siege?

An interesting take on the Biblical tale was presented in an episode of the TV series "Battles BC" episode on Joshua as a military commander.

 

[Brainache]

Are you taking it as a literal story, or rather a rather typical exaggerated story of an important and very successful siege?

An interesting take on the Biblical tale was presented in an episode of the TV series "Battles BC" episode on Joshua as a military commander.

I thought Joshua was considered a bit of a fake and wiki agrees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Joshua

Almost without exception scholars agree that the book of Joshua holds little historical value.[4] Rather than being written as history, the Deuteronomistic history - Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings - was intended to illustrate a theological scheme in which Israel and her leaders are judged by their obedience to the teachings and laws (the covenant) set down in the book of Deuteronomy.[5] Although tradition holds that it was written by Joshua, it is probable that it was written by multiple editors and authors far removed from the time.[6] The earliest parts of the book are possibly chapters 2-11, the story of the conquest; more certain is that this section was then incorporated into an early form of Joshua that was part of then original Deuteronomistic history, written late in the reign of king Josiah (reigned 640-609 BCE); it seems clear that the book was not completed until after the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians in 586, and possibly not until after the return from the Babylonian exile late in the 6th century.

So I don't know if we need to really worry about all that business with trumpets and walls...

But:

I would be interested to see an Archeologist's opinion of this thing I found online about "the Copper Scroll" from the Dead Sea Scrolls:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mistic/scroll_qumran.htm

From as early as 3000 BCE right up to 1200 BCE, Egypt had maintained an armed presence in Canaan, often as a stepping stone to further conquests to the east. Egypt’s shadow had obviously been cast over the early Hebrew’s experience, and yet, like other blind spots, modern theology shies away from considering the Egyptian connection too closely.

Yet, all the major characters of the Bible, from Abraham and Sarah, to Jesus and Mary, had strong links to Egypt. Joseph, Jacob, all the founders of the 12 tribes of Israel, as well as Moses, Aaron and Miriam, Joshua, Jeremiah and Baruch, all lived for long periods in Egypt and were influenced by its culture and religions.

After a lengthy analysis I came to the conclusion that Joseph had interacted with a pharaoh by the name of Akhenaten – a monotheistic pharaoh – and many of the basic tenets of Judaism, and by extension Christianity and Islam, came out of Egypt. The river that branches from the Nile at Amarna (ancient Akhetaten), Pharaoh Akhenaten’s capital city, is to this day know as ‘Bahr Yusuf’, ‘Joseph’s River’, and there are many other clues.

When I started comparing descriptions of the treasure locations given in the Copper Scroll with sites at Amarna, it soon became apparent there were many close parallels. Not only that, some of the locations have already yielded archaeological finds of treasures that match very closely the descriptions and weights given in the Copper Scroll.

Many of these treasures can be seen in Museums in Britain and Egypt. Having made a connection for the Copper Scroll to Akhenaten’s Holy city in middle Egypt, it was not surprising a most powerful piece of evidence emerged when I looked again at the strange Greek letters scattered in the Scroll. When the first 10 are put together they spell out the name Akhenaten!

The validity of this conclusion is re-enforced by the opinion of Professor John Tait, of University College London, who considers the reading of the Greek letters as quite plausibly the name of the Pharaoh in question.

Is this guy just another internet kook, or what? Could there be anything in this link between Akhenaten (the one in Egypt, not Broadford) and Judaism?

 

[MG1962]

Do you really believe that MG? Really? Are you really more concerned about a hundred years or so than some foolish fairytale claiming that goat herders were running around the place demolishing walls with rams horns?

And not for one second does it occur to you, the horns and the parading might be cover for a tunneling operation. That unfortunately does not lead to such an appealing story.

 

[Robrob]

What does it matter if, any or all of the OT (or NT) stories have an archaeological basis? Because the town of Nazareth existed doesn't mean one way or the other that Jesus existed. Likewise, because Jericho simply existed or even was besieged and its walls knocked down - that doesn't mean a magic horn/flute/tuba was involved.

New York City is real. That doesn't mean Spider-Man lives there.

 

[Akhenaten]

Is this guy just another internet kook, or what? Could there be anything in this link between Akhenaten (the one in Egypt, not Broadford) and Judaism?

Just one quick point that leaps out at me. The Bahr Yusuf is not a river that branches off the Nile near Akhetaten. It's a man-made canal that was made to connect the Fayyum to the Nile. It's only about 15 km long, it's at least 160 km from Amarna and it was developed from a natural flood-time waterway during Dynasty XII - long before the time of Akhenaten.

 

[Brainache]

Just one quick point that leaps out at me. The Bahr Yusuf is not a river that branches off the Nile near Akhetaten. It's a man-made canal that was made to connect the Fayyum to the Nile. It's only about 15 km long, it's at least 160 km from Amarna and it was developed from a natural flood-time waterway during Dynasty XII - long before the time of Akhenaten.

I hoped you'd chime in on this.

OK, but does that mean that the Yusuf that they named the canal after couldn't be the Biblical one? Do we know who first called it Bahr Yusuf?

I know there are lots of different CTs surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I'm wondering if this fellow might be on to something.

The fact that it is a long list of buried treasures also makes it kind of fun to think about...

 

[Akhenaten]

I hoped you'd chime in on this.

First up, I have to point out an error in my previous post. I'd believed that the name Bahr Yussuf only applied to that part of the canal running from Heracleopolis (modern-day Ihnasiyyah al-Madinah) into Lake Moeris (modern-day Lake Qarun) but it's actually given to the entire canal (not river) that runs parallel to the Nile from its beginning at Assyut, approximately 70 km South of Tell el Amarna (Akhetaten).

OK, but does that mean that the Yusuf that they named the canal after couldn't be the Biblical one? Do we know who first called it Bahr Yusuf?

It most definitely is named after the biblical Joseph (the technicolour coat one - not Jeebus' step-dad), but the name was given to it by Muslims some time after 1245 CE. Prior to that (in 'modern' times) it was known as the Bahr Munha (I have no idea what this means) and I'm unaware of it having any particular name at all in ancient times.

The idea that the canal was built by and named for Joseph is just part of the fairytale that began (I think) in Genesis 45 when Joseph was supposed to be BFF with Pharaoh Senusret II, the bloke who actually did the hard yards on the canal. The biblical story has Joseph as being the Pharaoh, but strangely enough, there's no Egyptian record of this being the case. What a surprise.

Long story short: The names match because the canal name came from the Bible, not because the Bible recorded the name that the canal already had. There's a difference of about 3,000 years between the canal being built and its being named Bahr Yussuf.​

I know there are lots of different CTs surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, but I'm wondering if this fellow might be on to something.

The fact that it is a long list of buried treasures also makes it kind of fun to think about...

One man's trash is another man's treasure, as they say. I consider everything found at Amarna to be a treasure.

More realistically, the biggest 'hoard' of gold so far found there was during the Egyptian Exploration Society expedition of 1930, conducted by a bloke named John Pendlebury.

Here's an actual film of that excavation being carried out:

​

Here's a list of what they found:

• Fragment of group of monkeys in limestone;
  
  
• Two-legged clay vase;
  
  
• Limestone statuette of a monkey playing a harp;
  
  
• Broze stamp;
  
  
• Copper ring;
  
  
• Fragment of pierced blue faience decorated with spirals and two cartouches of Nephertiti;
  
  
• Vase in which the gold was found (24 cm high, lid 15 cm in diameter);
  
  
• Figure of Hittite god in silver with a gold cap, 2.7 cm high, 11 grammes (the composition of the silver, with about 10% of gold, was estimated by prof. Rostovtzeff to correspond to known specimens of s.c. "Hittite Silver");
  
  
• 23 bars of gold which were formed by running the molten metal roughly into grooves in the sand (thus conforming to no weight system at all). The lightest bar weighs 66.55 grammes, the heaviest one 286.53; the whole set in total weighs 3375.36 grammes. An analysis revealed that the silver percentage in the gold ranged between about 14% and 29%, corresponding to carats between about 17 and 21 (Electrum, in other words);
  
  
• A number of silver fragments and small silver objects (an analysis on one item revealed 92.1% silver, 2.7% gold and 3.3% copper).

I'm not sure how well this lines up with the 'inventory' in the copper scroll from Qumran, but 3½ kilos of gold and some bits of silver hardly seems to be a great treasure, at least by Egyptian standards. In fact, these items were found in the remains of a rough shack, which tends to suggest that they were part of a thief's cache of goodies, and could have come from Isis knows where.

Still, let's not forget that Akhetaten was the setting for the coronation of Tutankhaten (Tutankhamen), and that's bound to invoke some nice golden, glittery imaginings of what might turn up one day.

 

[Brainache]

First up, I have to point out an error in my previous post. I'd believed that the name Bahr Yussuf only applied to that part of the canal running from Heracleopolis (modern-day Ihnasiyyah al-Madinah) into Lake Moeris (modern-day Lake Qarun) but it's actually given to the entire canal (not river) that runs parallel to the Nile from its beginning at Assyut, approximately 70 km South of Tell el Amarna (Akhetaten).





It most definitely is named after the biblical Joseph (the technicolour coat one - not Jeebus' step-dad), but the name was given to it by Muslims some time after 1245 CE. Prior to that (in 'modern' times) it was known as the Bahr Munha (I have no idea what this means) and I'm unaware of it having any particular name at all in ancient times.
...

I suspected something like that.

Here's a list of what they found:

• 
  ...
  
  I'm not sure how well this lines up with the 'inventory' in the copper scroll from Qumran, but 3½ kilos of gold and some bits of silver hardly seems to be a great treasure, at least by Egyptian standards. In fact, these items were found in the remains of a rough shack, which tends to suggest that they were part of a thief's cache of goodies, and could have come from Isis knows where.
  
  Still, let's not forget that Akhetaten was the setting for the coronation of Tutankhaten (Tutankhamen), and that's bound to invoke some nice golden, glittery imaginings of what might turn up one day.

• 
  
  This guy Robert Feather, is apparently a Metalurgist, so I would hope he knows what he is talking about here:
  
  http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/mistic/scroll_qumran.htm
  
  

  ...
  There were other ‘anomalies’ for which there appeared to be no satisfactory answers. No other Dead Sea Scroll was engraved on copper, nor any known Hebrew texts from anywhere else, prior to the period.
  
  Why should this be?
  
  Why should a non materialistic community go to such trouble to preserve the information on the Copper Scroll?
  
  Where did they get the extremely pure copper (99%) from?
  
  How could they afford its very high cost?
  
  When my metallurgical background attracted me to the subject, these questions were not being confronted.
  
  When I looked closely at the numbering units and weights used in the scroll, it soon became clear they were not of Canaanite or Judaean origin, where the Qumran Essenes resided, but Egyptian! Indeed, the numbering system in the Copper Scroll is typical of that in use in Egypt around 1300 BCE. The Egyptian system used repetitive single vertical strokes, up to the number 9, combined with repetitive decimal units for larger numbers.
  
  If the numbering system was Egyptian, why not the weight terms also? The ancient Egyptians had developed a system of weights specifically designed for weighing precious metals, and this system was based on the ‘Kite’, a unit weighing approximately 10g, but sometimes used as a double unit (KK) of 20.4g. I believe it is no coincidence the ‘hard ch’ sound of the weight term used in the Copper Scroll text equates to the Egyptian ‘K’ in ‘Kite’!
  
  When these ancient Egyptian weight units are applied, typical of the period prior to 1000 BCE, to calculate the quantities of gold, silver and jewellery mentioned in the Scroll, rather more realistic weights are obtained than those given earlier.
  
  The approximate totals of precious metals mentioned in the scroll now become:
  
  Gold – 26 kg
  
  Silver – 13.6 kg
  
  Mixed precious metals – 55.2 kg
  
  We were now looking at weights which are a fraction of those given in modern translations of the Copper Scroll, but they are at least plausible values, quite consistent with the amounts of gold and silver in circulation for the period. For example, if we look at the Harris Papyrus, an ancient text in the British Museum, dating to about 1180 BCE, it gives the total gold holdings accumulated over a 31 year period by Egypt (by far the most wealthy country in the ancient Middle East), as 387 kg.
  
  The downside is that the value of our treasure has diminished somewhat! However, we are still talking about hundreds of millions of dollars in real terms.
  
  The strange thing is that, although the type of numbering system used in the Copper Scroll might have persisted in Egyptian temple writing for some time after the Greek conquest of Egypt (in 330 BCE), its use was always specific to Egypt and it was not in use outside Egypt, except in the period of Egypt’s campaigns in Canaan from 1400 to 1100 BCE. The use of the ancient Egyptian system for weighing metals died out around 500 BCE and had previously always been specific to Egypt.
  
  Why would a document, ostensibly written by a devout, unorthodox Jewish community living near the Dead Sea in Judaea around the time of Jesus, have so many Egyptian characteristics?
  
  And why would the writing material, numbering system and system of weights used, be typical of Egyptian usage from a period at least 1,000 years earlier?

  
  I just don't know enough ancient History to know if this bloke is nuts or not.

 

[OCaptain]

Do you really believe that MG? Really? Are you really more concerned about a hundred years or so than some foolish fairytale claiming that goat herders were running around the place demolishing walls with rams horns?

I would say that, if you put it alongside a Pharonic account from 3500 years ago, it is more comparable than it is dissimilar in construction.

Give me a bit and I'll put together some examples.

 

[Aepervius]

The main mistake I made was in running onto a battlefield where neither "side" was interested in conversing with someone who was carrying neither one of their standards.

No. Your main mistake was to run into a thread, speak of some obscure list as if it was self evident which one it was (it was very obviously not) and then snipped when people pointed that out to you.

Now you are starting with "poisonning the well" accusation, which I find funny.

You still don#t seem to be able to start a discussion without snapping and biting.