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The Bible unearthed : archaeology's new…
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The Bible unearthed : archaeology's new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts (original 2001; edition 2002)

by Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman

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1,3112414,381 (3.96)31
I found this book through a referral on, of all places, /r/AskHistorians on reddit, and, more to the point, the "How Much of the Bible is Historical" question linked to in the subreddit's FAQ where it was referred to as a decent reference. Having not read much Biblical Archeology in a while and finding the book in Amazon's Kindle Store, I downloaded it to my Kindle.

The Bible Unearthed is a dry, fairly technical text dealing with matching Archeology with books of the Old Testament, mainly Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and pieces of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and lesser Prophets. Working from the beginning with Abraham and concluding at the Exile into Babylon, the authors methodically dissect the Old Testament chapter by chapter and, in some places, verse by verse and compare it to the known archeological evidence to prove their core supposition: the Old Testament and the Torah were compiled, and in no small part written, in the mid-to-late 7th Century BC in Judah for a combination of political and religious aims by likely two Kings: Hezekiah and, later, Josiah. These are not historical recordings of mid-Bronze Age wanders but of Iron Age Kings under the Assyrian yoke who were trying to forge a national identity through myths, tales, stories of various tribal peoples, and political propaganda, stamp out the local religions and create a theocratic state.

Although the book is a little out of date, as it was written in 2000, the evidence presented is pretty plausible stuff if one can slog through chapters based on the settlement patterns of Iron Age bedouins and their village layouts or read 100 pages on pottery sherds at different strata.

The authors present:

* No historical record of the patriarchs in any form;
* Moses's Pharaoh is far more the Pharaoh of Late Period 26th Dynasty and not a New Kingdom Monarch;
* Joshua conquers cities that do not exist in the 12th century BCE but certainly do in the 7th, and those that did exist likely collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse at different times over a hundred years;
* No sign exists of David's Kingdom and all that remains is that of a small hill fort and David's name in secondary sources;
* No sign exists of Solomon or his works;
* The Omrides, who kindly left heaps of archeological evidence and secondary sources, were likely quite good Kings;
* Israel was likely a victim of its enduring financial success making it a tempting target for a sack;
* Deuteronomy written in the format of an Assyrian legal document to a vassal describing the rules and rights therein;
* Etc... it goes on like this for ~400 pages.

All signs point to a 7th century BC compilation of books, tales and sources into one unified whole, smoothing over the lumps and presenting the people -- many suddenly pouring into Judah from the sack of Samaria -- a new complete identity with their One God. One shouldn't besmirch the power of an enduring document that managed to forge a people, see them through the Babylonian Exile, and then become the root of three major world religions. But no archeological evidence points to the Old Testament being a reliable historical document, either.

For me, it's fascinating book showing the pressures and the prejudices of a people who were living in uncertain times with two crazed superpowers (the Assyrians and the Late Egyptians) on their borders and smaller enemies all around them and just before the Phoenicians would become "a thing." These were Kings who wanted to reconquer Israel back from Assyria and return it to its once financial glory, and they saw the way forward was to unite all these people pouring into their tiny kingdom filled with bedouins under One God and One Temple. The plan didn't work out because sticking a finger into the side of a crazed kingdom loaded with mercenaries and a religion that tells them to kill and bathe in blood _never_ works out well but the legacy of that time endures.

It's doubly fascinating to think this: in the 7th Century BCE, the great Egyptian Kingdom of Ramesses II, the Hittites, the fall of Sumeria and founding of Assyria, were as far away from them as the /Fall of Rome is from Modern Day/. The time of great civilizations and great kings was destroyed by the Bronze Age Collapse and left huge mounds where cities once stood -- and no one of Iron Age II knew why. No one read those languages. No one did satellite-based archeology. This is something to think about -- the time of Moses and Joshua and Judges were all distant myth at a time when real 7th century enemies were on the doorstep. Why _wouldn't_ there be stories about how those ancient dimly remembered cities? Why _weren't_ there be ancient kings and great heroes and an explanation of how those civilizations of the great antiquity fell? Why wouldn't those stories be forged in one narrative of one God who destroyed them in the past and will destroy them now?

Not for the highly religious, obviously. Interesting if one wants to read the constant debates on reddit, though.

ALSO: if you have no time to read the book, the BBC did a 4 part series with the authors which is available on Youtube some years ago.



( )
  multiplexer | Jun 20, 2021 |
English (22)  Spanish (1)  French (1)  All languages (24)
Showing 22 of 22
Good intro to a particular view of the real history behind the bible (up to the return from the Babylonian exile). Summary-ish

- Most of the major stories that happened before 800-700BC contain many significant historical errors that make it clear that they're written from a later context - sometimes it's likely the errors are intentional to create a greater parallel with the current story of Judah, other times it's simply ignorance (eg the story of Abraham is attempting to write about a pastoral history but includes camels which didn't exist for hundreds of years afterwards)
- Therefore the patriarchs didn't exist, at least not in the story the bible suggests. Parts may have been based on folk tales
- The Exodus didn't happen. There's no evidence of anything even vaguely like it and Egypt controlled the areas the Israelites supposedly escaped to the whole time period anyway. It's possible there was an initial basis in particular anti-Egypt experiences due to the occupation and certain conflicts (eg the Hyksos and Apiru) but the story itself is fiction.
- The Israelites were always Canaanites and although the circumstances of the initial separation are murky the bible's insistence on total division is nonsense. Interestingly our first evidence of Israelite cultural separation is the lack of pig bones in their refuse in the ~1200s BC
- There was no invasion as portrayed in Joshua - most of the places supposed to have been destroyed were either destroyed much earlier or later than the timeframe the story demands. Jericho was settled at the time but was a small settlement with no walls.
- The bible is incredibly biased against Israel, which was far richer and more powerful than Judah. Because it's written retrospectively after the Assyrian destruction of Israel it's easy for the authors to present any successes of Israel as a temporary reprieve while the trading and cosmopolitanism that made them wealthy is used as a reason for their destruction, because they didn't keep their purity to God.
- There was likely no United Monarchy of Israel and Judah and this was a later propaganda invention to justify Judah's dreams of conquest of Israel's former territories. If there was any sort of United Monarchy it had a very limited territory.
- The golden age of Solomon is a total myth. Archaeology makes clear things that were previously attributed to Solomon were mostly the product of Israel's Omride dynasty, who were rich and involved in many building projects across a large territory. The Solomonide golden age is again a later propaganda creation likely based on the stories of the great wealth and trade that Israel experienced before the Assyrian destruction (and possibly partly the new status as a wealthier nation Judah gained as an Assyrian vassal on a major trading route during Josiah's reign)
- The first 5 books of the bible and the whole Deuteronomic history of Joshua, Samuel and Kings was likely first compiled in the reign of King Josiah. Most of the historical details in it match up to that era and the whole narrative is presenting Josiah as an ideal messianic character who'll finally restore a great kingdom through devotion to God, who always rewards the truly faithful. Later, there were edits that changed the emphasis somewhat to the holiness of the whole *nation* of Israel to recover from his unceremonious death in an obscure meeting with an Egyptian army, paving the way both for the dominance of the priesthood as well as helping retain the faith among the whole people even after the major losses. (Worth nothing he only touches on the composition of the Pentateuch in general, which is fair, because it's an absurdly complicated subject)
- The Babylonian Captivity only carried away a small percentage of people, not even all the upper classes, but they later were able to impose their particular views of worship and "pure" identity on those who remained due to being backed by the power of the Persians.

There's obviously stuff in this book that's hotly contested - history always is and especially stuff like this, which is heavily emotive and the evidence is complicated - so to be clear it's just one particular "school"'s idea of what happened from the evidence at the time (the evidence base is constantly moving too, obviously). There's also maybe a bit too much recounting of what the bible says before leading into what the evidence says, which is maybe a bit of a waste if you're already familiar. Sometimes it does get a little bit dry while detailing the various archaeological finds, which are fascinating but very hard to picture and a bit repetitive due to the similar architectural styles. However, if you have an interest in the topic you'll definitely be fascinated anyway and I can recommend it if the topic of the actual history behind the bible and the region is interesting to you. ( )
  tombomp | Oct 31, 2023 |
very interesting, well written scholarly work, yet accessible to a non archaeologist. the idea that the pentateuch is just one of many historical artifacts that we can use to reconstruct the bronze and iron age near east. the idea that the pentateuch was primarily a propaganda piece for king Josiah, and it was setting him up to be the Savior, creating and embellishing the older stories just to point to Josiah. fascinating and very different point of view of the Bible.
remember that there are historical, semi historical, and non historical verses in the Bible, sometimes right next to each other, so you can neither take the entire thing to be absolute history, nor can you throw it all out as fable. ( )
  zizabeph | May 7, 2023 |
"The Bible Unearthed" compares the earlier books of the Old Testament of the Bible with the many archeological findings in the Mideast, and infers what the differences may teach us about what actually happened there and also about the sources, motivations, and times of the writers of those books. This is the best exposition I have read on this subject. It is also a way to learn a little Bible without having to wade through some duller stuff in it such as details of rituals and lists.

The account seems balanced and without any intention either to justify or to undermine any religious ideology. Previous historical criticism assumed that the biblical narrative is true and then used archaeological investigation as a tool to prove the narrative. Practices over the last 40 years, based on more recent and extensive findings, constrain the Bible to serving as one of the artifacts to be examined.

Two reflections. The more un-historical the biblical accounts are, the more we learn thereby about the motives of the (mostly seventh-century BCE) writers, who were intending to fashion not an accurate history but rather, retaining the wisdom of the ancient laws but freely adapting the echoes of a history long past, a foundation tale in support of political aims. Knowledge of the true nature of the development of the Old Testament is surely more important to the western world today than the corresponding historical facts themselves, even as the former rests upon the latter.

The book has been well received by biblical scholars. Limited professional disagreement with the authors appears to emerge from fundamentalist tendency.

Highly recommended. Wikipedia has an excellent summary of this book. If you don’t have time for the book, then check out the article.
( )
  KENNERLYDAN | Jul 11, 2021 |
I found this book through a referral on, of all places, /r/AskHistorians on reddit, and, more to the point, the "How Much of the Bible is Historical" question linked to in the subreddit's FAQ where it was referred to as a decent reference. Having not read much Biblical Archeology in a while and finding the book in Amazon's Kindle Store, I downloaded it to my Kindle.

The Bible Unearthed is a dry, fairly technical text dealing with matching Archeology with books of the Old Testament, mainly Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings and pieces of Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and lesser Prophets. Working from the beginning with Abraham and concluding at the Exile into Babylon, the authors methodically dissect the Old Testament chapter by chapter and, in some places, verse by verse and compare it to the known archeological evidence to prove their core supposition: the Old Testament and the Torah were compiled, and in no small part written, in the mid-to-late 7th Century BC in Judah for a combination of political and religious aims by likely two Kings: Hezekiah and, later, Josiah. These are not historical recordings of mid-Bronze Age wanders but of Iron Age Kings under the Assyrian yoke who were trying to forge a national identity through myths, tales, stories of various tribal peoples, and political propaganda, stamp out the local religions and create a theocratic state.

Although the book is a little out of date, as it was written in 2000, the evidence presented is pretty plausible stuff if one can slog through chapters based on the settlement patterns of Iron Age bedouins and their village layouts or read 100 pages on pottery sherds at different strata.

The authors present:

* No historical record of the patriarchs in any form;
* Moses's Pharaoh is far more the Pharaoh of Late Period 26th Dynasty and not a New Kingdom Monarch;
* Joshua conquers cities that do not exist in the 12th century BCE but certainly do in the 7th, and those that did exist likely collapsed in the Bronze Age Collapse at different times over a hundred years;
* No sign exists of David's Kingdom and all that remains is that of a small hill fort and David's name in secondary sources;
* No sign exists of Solomon or his works;
* The Omrides, who kindly left heaps of archeological evidence and secondary sources, were likely quite good Kings;
* Israel was likely a victim of its enduring financial success making it a tempting target for a sack;
* Deuteronomy written in the format of an Assyrian legal document to a vassal describing the rules and rights therein;
* Etc... it goes on like this for ~400 pages.

All signs point to a 7th century BC compilation of books, tales and sources into one unified whole, smoothing over the lumps and presenting the people -- many suddenly pouring into Judah from the sack of Samaria -- a new complete identity with their One God. One shouldn't besmirch the power of an enduring document that managed to forge a people, see them through the Babylonian Exile, and then become the root of three major world religions. But no archeological evidence points to the Old Testament being a reliable historical document, either.

For me, it's fascinating book showing the pressures and the prejudices of a people who were living in uncertain times with two crazed superpowers (the Assyrians and the Late Egyptians) on their borders and smaller enemies all around them and just before the Phoenicians would become "a thing." These were Kings who wanted to reconquer Israel back from Assyria and return it to its once financial glory, and they saw the way forward was to unite all these people pouring into their tiny kingdom filled with bedouins under One God and One Temple. The plan didn't work out because sticking a finger into the side of a crazed kingdom loaded with mercenaries and a religion that tells them to kill and bathe in blood _never_ works out well but the legacy of that time endures.

It's doubly fascinating to think this: in the 7th Century BCE, the great Egyptian Kingdom of Ramesses II, the Hittites, the fall of Sumeria and founding of Assyria, were as far away from them as the /Fall of Rome is from Modern Day/. The time of great civilizations and great kings was destroyed by the Bronze Age Collapse and left huge mounds where cities once stood -- and no one of Iron Age II knew why. No one read those languages. No one did satellite-based archeology. This is something to think about -- the time of Moses and Joshua and Judges were all distant myth at a time when real 7th century enemies were on the doorstep. Why _wouldn't_ there be stories about how those ancient dimly remembered cities? Why _weren't_ there be ancient kings and great heroes and an explanation of how those civilizations of the great antiquity fell? Why wouldn't those stories be forged in one narrative of one God who destroyed them in the past and will destroy them now?

Not for the highly religious, obviously. Interesting if one wants to read the constant debates on reddit, though.

ALSO: if you have no time to read the book, the BBC did a 4 part series with the authors which is available on Youtube some years ago.



( )
  multiplexer | Jun 20, 2021 |
2012 (my brief review can be found on the LibraryThing post linked)
http://www.librarything.com/topic/138560#3562435
  dchaikin | Sep 26, 2020 |
Much of the archeological speculation is out of date (published 2001), having been superseded by new discoveries that fill in the lacunae that the authors attempt to patch with speculation and imagination.
Since their over-arching purpose appears to be denial that David and Solomon had anything to do with the artifacts of the "real" empire of northern Israel during the Omride dynasty, they consistently dismiss anything that doesn't match their preconceived ideas of what the unified monarchy MUST have been like.

The book has bibliographies for each chapter, but no footnotes or direct citations that allow a reader to actually follow the scholarly arguments or evidences.

Maps and tables are only moderately useful. There is no listing of figures, maps, and tables in the Contents, and they are seldom directly referenced in the text, sometime appearing after all of the narrative they pertain to is concluded, thus requiring readers to page back or forward several chapters to find them. ( )
  librisissimo | Apr 1, 2019 |
The Bible, in the books of Samuel and Kings, tells the story of a Jewish kingdom that was created around 1,000 BC with the anointment of King David. The kingdom prospered with David and his son Solomon, but after the death of Solomon, the fortunes of the Davidic empire turned sour. The kingdom was split in two: The northern half of the kingdom became Israel, while the southern half became Judah.

In the years that followed, Israel became the more powerful kingdom, but then around 700 BC, the Assyrian empire overran Israel, and carried away the inhabitants, and created the story of the 10 lost tribes.

The southern kingdom of Judah survived a bit longer, and enjoyed an era of prosperity around 600 BC.

This book examines the recent archaeological work that has been completed in the Holy Land, and concludes that the archaeological evidence does not match the Old Testament story. What the archaeological evidence says is that at the time when David would have been king, Jerusalem was a small insignificant village. In fact, the entire area of Judah was sparsely populated, and there is no evidence of a central administration, writing or professional soldiers.

The authors conclude that there never was a united monarchy of David or Solomon. While David and Solomon may have existed, they never governed a mighty nation. There stories are about as real as the stories of King Arthur. “There is good reason to suggest that there were always two distinct highland entities, of which the southern was always the poorer, weaker, and more rural, and less influential—until it rose to sudden spectacular prominence after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.”

The authors conclude that the Old Testament was written from scratch during the reign of kind Josiah, around 620 BC. It is the skillful weaving of different tribal legends intended to unite the Hebrew people living in Judah and the old northern country of Israel.

“To the people of Judah at the time when the biblical epic was first crafted, a new David had come to the throne, intent on resorting the glory of his distant ancestors. This was Josiah, described as the most devoted of all Judahite kings. And Josiah was able to roll history back from his own days to the time of the legendary united monarchy. By cleaning Judah of the abomination of idolatry—first introduced into Jerusalem by Solomon with his harem of foreign wives (1 Kings 11:1-8)—Josiah could nullify the transgressions that led to the breakdown of the Davidic ‘empire.’ What the Deuteronomistic historian wanted to say is simple and powerful: there is still a way to regain the glory of the past.

“So Josiah embarked on establishing a united monarchy that would link Judah with the territories of the former northern kingdom through the royal institutions, military forces, and single-minded devotion to Jerusalem that are so central to the biblical narrative of David. As the monarch sitting on the throne of David in Jerusalem, Josiah was the only legitimate heir to the Davidic empire, that is, to the Davidic territories. He was about to ‘regain’ the territories of the now destroyed northern kingdom, the kingdom that was born from the sins of Solomon. And the words of 1 Kings 4-25, that ‘Judah and Israel dwelt in safety from Dan even to Beersheba,’ summarize those hopes of territorial expansion and quest for peaceful, prosperous times, similar to the mythical past, when a king ruled from Jerusalem over the territories of Judah and Israel combined. ( )
  ramon4 | Sep 15, 2016 |
The authors of The Bible Unearthed successfully collate new findings and information that has been known for awhile to present clear and concise rethinking of The Old Testament at the time of kings and Biblical archaeology in general. Once the confirmation bias of the Bible in one hand and a trowel in the other has been removed,and modern scientific techniques applied, the Old Testament can be set in the context of politics and nation building rather than a history in the traditional sense.

The authors themselves characterise the book as :
"our attempt to formulate a new archaeological vision of ancient Israel in which the Bible is one of the most important artifacts and cultural achievements [but] not the unquestioned narrative framework into which every archaeological find must be fit."

Well worth reading.


( )
  dylkit | Feb 3, 2014 |
A controversial Book, dedicated to the present stage of archaeological investigations in Israel. This book will probably not be on the reading lists at Oral Roberts University. The main theme is that there is little or no evidence of a great deal of the historical account of the origin of the Hebrew kingdom in Palestine, prior to Ahab, the Northern king in the 880's BCE. If the account in the historical books of the old testament is somewhat true, it must relate to events a great deal more modest in scope than the biblical account. Finkelstein and Silberman appear to have a lot of evidence for their reconstruction. A very careful book. ( )
  DinadansFriend | Jan 28, 2014 |
This is an excellent and well presented overview of the relationship between the archaeology of Israel/Palestine and the Bible. The conclusions are challenging for those who desire to take the OT at 'face value' but not particularly surprising for those already familiar with the current state of historical-critical Biblical studies.

The book is targeted at a non-technical audience, and even goes so far as to summarise the relevant biblical narratives (those familiar with the story can skim over these bits!). That being said, it could do with more extensive referencing to enable those who wish to go deeper into particular questions.

The Kindle edition unfortunately lack the page numbers, which makes it difficult to correlate references with the print version. ( )
  TonyMilner | Jan 4, 2014 |
A nice survey of the current state of archaeology associated with the Tanakh, avoiding both extremes of the current debates.

None of the findings would be all that surprising to readers who approach it with the continental biblical criticism (most notably, that associated with Von Rad and Noth and their successors) in mind. Like the internal documentary criticism, the external evidence points to composition by one or more Deuteronomistic authors, with embedded material of varying degrees of historical value. Nothing exciting or new, but a good deal of internal evidence being confirmed by external evidence.

The major area which would be new is the relative weakness (but not absence) of evidence for the Davidic line and the evidence that many of the achievements were, at best, exaggerated by the later writers (either in enhancing earlier sources or in creating stories based on "current" conditions).

This is supplemented by the positive findings regarding the likely origins of the Isarelite identity in hill country culture, much of which seems to be reasonably recent work. ( )
  jsburbidge | Dec 4, 2013 |
The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. Age: adult. Library section: 7 A: The Church in the World: World Religions. This fascinating book shows how archaeological finds of the last 30 years have revolutionized thought about ancient Israel and the origin of the Old Testament. Who wrote the books of the Bible? When and where were its various books written? Were books of the OT written as the events took place or were they written long afterward? Were Biblical writings visions of what the writers wished had happened rather than what really happened? Or were the writings predicting the future? What happened when those predictions came to pass, and also when they did not come to pass? Did the ancient Hebrews lose their faith and turn away from God?
Archaeologists help us answer more and more of these questions as more and more excavations take place throughout Israel. What’s fascinating though, is that the Bible’s integrity and historicity do not depend on “proof” of any of its particular events such as the parting of the Red Sea or David’s slaying of Goliath with a single slingshot. The power of the Bible lies in its being a compelling and coherent narrative of the timeless themes of a people’s liberation, continuing resistance to oppression, and quest for social stability. It eloquently expresses the deeply rooted sense of shared origins, experiences and destiny that every human community needs in order to survive. This is why the Bible still feels so relevant to our struggles today. And we are not Jews, but Christians. That’s a pretty impressive thing for a collection of books to be able to do.
This book gave me a good overview of how the ancient Hebrews arrived in Canaan from the eastern wastes of desert (the later Biblical writers claimed that Abraham came from Ur, a city reknowned and respected for its educated elite, but no one knows for sure where he and his clan originated); and how the ancient Israelites first formed a strong kingdom of Israel in the north of what we know as the area west of the Sea of Galilee. After this kingdom declined, the southern kingdom of Judah, always considered the “poor cousin” to the north -- a motley group of isolated hill villages – grew quickly in population and the small backwater of Jerusalem became a mighty city. Archaeologists tell us that the ancient temple was not built in Solomon’s day, but much later. This book tells how Israel/Judah was a buffer zone between the powerful nations of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon, and it kept being overrun by these powerful nations which plundered the Hebrew kingdoms at will over the centuries, carrying off booty and Hebrews to exile in these other kingdoms.
No wonder the Hebrews needed a book that would remind them of who they were, to make holy their covenantal relationship with their one God; a family, national and religious narrative with which every Jew could identify. The Bible as we know it today, which first crystallized during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (639-609 BCE), provided the world’s first fully articulated national and social compact, including men, women and children, rich, poor and destitute of an entire human community.
So if we bicker about whether the earth was made in six days or six eons, whether Abraham came from Ur or Haran, whether Solomon built the temple, whether Moses wrote the first five Biblical books – none of that really matters. It’s a smoke screen that hides the real importance of the Bible. And there are questions we will NEVER have answers to – archaeology cannot answer them all! What matters is that the Bible served as a tool to unify the early Hebrews, and it became a sacred expression of their covenant with God. It helped them retain and deepen their faith, and survive in a dangerous place and time. It still speaks to us in the same way today. ( )
1 vote Epiphany-OviedoELCA | Aug 26, 2011 |
The authors discuss the archaeological explorations in the Holy Land, and what has (and hasn't) been discovered. This book is not going to be popular with those who are convinced that archaeology has confirmed the Biblical stories, as the authors, free from the usual censorship which surrounds most books about Holy Land digs, demonstrate that the very best you can say is that there is no evidence for many, if not most, of the familiar Biblical stories. ( )
3 vote Devil_llama | Apr 16, 2011 |
An archaeological investigation of the Old Testament from ancient times to the return to Israel after Greek rule.
  Folkshul | Jan 15, 2011 |
It's a fascinating book, and for all its iconoclasm it's evident that the authors really do have a passionate regard for the Tenakh, they just don't see it as history. What slightly disappointed me, though, was that it didn't really live up to its title - it doesn't discuss the whole Bible, just the Torah and the Deuteronomic history. There are occasional references to Chronicles and to the Prophets, but these turn out quite frustrating in their brevity. ( )
  Ricardus | Jan 14, 2011 |
This is an iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaelogical reserch.
1 vote HanoarHatzioni | Jun 9, 2009 |
This is a fascinating non-scholarly overview of the current state of biblical archaeology. The author's main issue revolves around when the Deuteronomistic books (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings 1 and 2) were written. They show these narratives, describing the early history of the Hebrews, were written centuries later than traditional beliefs, during the reign of Judahian King Josiah, who initiated a reform movement just before the Babylonian invasion.

Because of this, the reliability of the Hebrew Bible (as a historical document) is brought into question especially in light of current archeological evidence. Finkelstein and Siberman pick apart some key portions of the Hebrew narrative including the Patriarchs, the Exodus story, the conquest of Canaan, the unified kingdom of David and Solomon and more. ( )
1 vote zenitsky | Jan 9, 2009 |
This book's thesis is that the Old Testament, though shaped by true events and traditions, was constructed in its current form as a common bond and political instrument in support of the short-lived resurgence of the kingdom Judiah and the subsequent Yahedic society that appeared after its collapse in the 7th century b.c. More hopeful archaeology from the previous 30 years was driven significantly by those who accepted the historic date range of 2100-2500 B.C. as fact and looked for supporting evidence. The authors use archaelogic evidence to refute this and form a different theory. Some of their supporting evidence is very basic. For example, while the progenitors were camel traders, camels were not found in the region until 1000 years later. It also shows how some of the oldest stories both explained the various peoples in the region and established the superiority of the Israelites (e.g. Lot's daughters as the roots to Moam and Ammon; Jacob and Esau establishing the legitimization of Israel as having bestowed the birthright). The Exodus story is explained as an explanation of how the people reached their current lands, but the actual events are judged as not fitting against the time, Egyptian span of control, or place names. The authors later argue that the Exodue story's numerous parallels to the later resurgence of Egypt demonstrate that it was the basis for people seeing what they should and can do at present.

The authors also show where archaelogy supports what we do know. For example, the highlands settlements thought to have been Isaelite indeed are the only in the are lacking pig bones. David and Solomon are portrayed as tribal chieftains sans the great empires and wealth but still of note. A slab from c. 853 mentions the destruction of the "House of David" Perhaps most notably in support of the political argument, Josiah, who lived in the current era, was prophesied by name as being someone to be followed. The archaeology aside, this book provides a great political history of the relationships between the northern Israelite and southern highland Judahite peoples -- their differences, Israel's rise and fall, and Judah's fortunate timing to emerge as Israel's Assyrian conquerers fell. Judah was less developed and attracted less attention. Following it's emergence, kings were deemed good or bad based on their enforcement of strict laws, particularly around a monotheistic, YWHE-est worship. With the strong and continuous saga of historical reminders, one can see how Israel today maintains such unity and success. As for the history of the texts, the authors show that how references to the "Book of the Law" were later modified by new found scripts and formed into Deutoronomy, and then later a final redaction was made (perhaps by Ezra). The final text has elements of Greek epic, Assyrian vassal contract, and Egyptian style. It also coincided with the first spread of literacy. ( )
2 vote jpsnow | Apr 14, 2008 |
I found this book less radical than I expected from reading some of the debate about it. It does deny the historicity of Abrham and of Joshua's conquest of Canaan, but it accepts the House of DWD inscription proves the historicity of David. Conservative scholars
can find legitimate grounds to criticize it , but it is a more moderate and credible state,ent of a liberal position than I anticipated, though I do not entirely accept it. ( )
  antiquary | Aug 16, 2007 |
The subject matter of this book is fascinating: modern archaeological finds, and how they support / don't support stories in the Bible. The treatment is too scholarly - in the hands of a different set of writers, I really think this could be a real eye-opener. Instead, it's dense and extremely hard to digest. It also really should have included pictures to bring the finds to life. ( )
  aliciamalia | Jul 7, 2007 |
Non-fiction about the arhaeology of the bible. Amazing compilation of recent discoveries and excavations in middle east. ( )
  hlselz | Feb 4, 2007 |
Les Nouvelles révélations de l'archéologie
  guyotvillois | Oct 15, 2018 |
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4 49
4.5 8
5 41

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