Queries & Comments

008

Minimalists vs. Maximalists

Could Think of Nothing Else

I found your issue concerning “The Search for History in the Bible,” BAR 26:02, to be especially captivating. I have been able to think about little else for the past three or four days.

Fought to a Draw

BAR’s recent articles on the reliability of the Bible as a historical document and on the views of Philip Davies and William Dever are why I subscribe to the magazine. When the finger-pointing is over and done with, I think both contributors offer credible and thoughtful positions.

If either side in the tenth-century United Monarchy controversy is looking for an archaeological knockout punch, it hasn’t happened, and maybe it never will. Short of a stele or potsherd that claims “King David slept here,” the pursuit of supporting evidence will continue and likely reveal the kind of surprises that to me make Biblical archaeology irresistible.

Breaking Free of the Text

William Dever (“Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey,” BAR 26:02) dodges the central tenet of the minimalist camp: Biblical archaeology must be archaeology, not a pseudo-archaeological apologia for the Old Testament. Let the dirt and stones speak for themselves, rather than forcing them to fit the text. If I were to declare the Icelandic sagas divinely inspired and insist on reinterpreting all archaeological sites from Russia to Newfoundland so that they were consistent with the texts, every legitimate archaeologist, including Dever, would put me beyond the pale and declare my efforts pseudo-scholarship. Yet that has been the traditional approach of Biblical archaeology. It is the approach that the “postmodern malarkey” seeks to correct, because the minimalist camp correctly maintains that text-dependent archaeology cannot be considered archaeology at all.

Dever: Thompson and Davies Are Intellectually Dishonest

I find it curious that Thomas Thompson, in his letter to the editor (Queries & Comments BAR 26:01), and now Philip Davies (“What Separates a Minimalist from a Maximalist? Not Much,” BAR 26:02) are both arguing that “not much” separates them and the other revisionists from me and other mainstream scholars.

First, why are they backtracking? Have the vigorous attacks on their position given them second thoughts? Are they beginning to look, after all, at the overwhelming archaeological evidence for an “early” and “ancient” Israel? Alas, I fear not. Typically, they are talking out of both sides of the mouth.

010

Your readers might find it enlightening to compare Davies’s compliments about me and his ingratiating efforts to appear moderate with his response to the papers given at the Northwestern University symposium. Davies stated that our position was “not a mainstream consensus or a reasonable caution but largely an irrational and emotive protest.” He then ignored completely the extensive archaeological data that I present, because “it is irrelevant,” and because I “do not understand the main issues.” His conclusion is that Dever should “consider arguing just with himself in future (the two deserve each other).” So much for “sweetness and light,” for honest dialogue. Your readers can decide for themselves which Dever, which Davies, to believe.

As for Thompson’s oft-repeated charge that I have abused archaeological data to prove the “historicity” of the patriarchs, let him provide a single citation. He cannot, because I have always specifically separated this issue from my archaeological research. This is simply another of Thompson’s distortions of the evidence and of the views of other scholars.

The current reincarnation of these leading revisionists as wolves in sheep’s clothing will fool no one who reads carefully. The issue between the two schools is absolutely fundamental. Are the Hebrew Bible’s stories fictitious, simply Jewish propaganda from the Hellenistic era, so that the Bible is in effect a monstrous literary hoax? Or are these stories largely from an Iron Age context, as archaeology demonstrates, and thus contain at least a core of historical events? These are essential questions not only for literary, historical and archaeological research, but also for all who still find beauty and value in the Bible, whether Jews, Christians or secular humanists. Enough Bible-bashing!

The Egyptian Evidence Was Ignored

Philip Davies concludes that “not much” stands between the minimalists and the maximalists. He bases this on the fact that none of the participants at the fall 1999 symposium on the “Origins of Israel” held at Northwestern University defended the historicity of Biblical events earlier than the Israelite monarchy. As one who attended this interesting symposium, I would have to agree with Davies’s observation. He is wrong, however, to think that the fine array of speakers who differed with the minimalists would identify themselves as maximalists just because they disagreed with the radical conclusions of the Copenhagen-Sheffield school. I would suggest, based upon my knowledge of the speakers and their contributions, that they stand somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. However, just because they did not directly defend the historicity of the key events in the books of Exodus or Joshua does not mean that they totally reject them, as Davies avers. There were no self-proclaimed maximalists on the program, only what I would call moderates and minimalists.

This point was not missed by Hershel Shanks. During one of the breaks at the symposium, he asked me why I wasn’t on the program. (He knew that I had recently written a book dealing with Israel’s origins from the Egyptological perspective, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition [Oxford Univ. Press, 1997; rev. ed., 1999].) [Professor Hoffmeier’s book is reviewed on p. 58 of this issue.—Ed.] The answer to Shanks’s question was that I was not invited to participate. Shanks opined that the conference was skewed because the maximalist camp was not represented. Naturally, I agreed with him. Nevertheless, Dever’s hard-hitting response to the radical minimalists was a brilliant critique of their methodology and philosophical assumptions. In fact, most of the participants distanced themselves from the radical conclusions of the Copenhagen-Sheffield school—but that does not make them maximalists!

Hence, for Davies to suggest that the divide between minimalists and maximalists is not that wide is incorrect. Since the moderates at the symposium were so critical of the Copenhagen-Sheffield approach, it is easy to see that an even wider gap exists between minimalists and maximalists! The problem is that maximalists have been largely ignored or marginalized in the recent debate. The composition of the panel at the Northwestern conference is merely one example of this oversight, as Shanks cogently observed.

Perhaps it is not coincidental that this letter is being written from North Sinai, Egypt, where I am currently engaged in directing the excavations at Tell el-Borg as part of the East Frontier Archaeological Project’s work in Egypt. Davies reminds us in his article that no one at the conference presented any evidence for the Israelite presence in Egypt. The reasons for that are simple: 1) There was no Egyptologist on the program to present that perspective; 2) Egyptologists generally have little interest in matters of Biblical studies and Israelite archaeology, and they tend to disregard the controversies in Biblical archaeology; and 3) a number of sites in the northeastern Delta (e.g., Tell el-Dab‘a and Qantir/Pi-Ramesses) that might be fruitful to the current debate are just now beginning to yield helpful data. North Sinai, which contains the northeasterly part of the Delta and Egypt’s frontier with Asia, only began to be excavated in the mid-1980s, after nearly 50 years of war and military control of this key area, which prevented any major scientific investigations from taking place. (Eliezer Oren’s survey across North Sinai during the Israeli occupation of that part of Egypt is a notable exception, but his excavations were limited indeed.) Sites like Tell Hebua I and II, and Tell el-Borg, which were not explored by Oren, are already beginning to shed some light on this militarily strategic region of pharaonic Egypt, so important to Biblical studies but little understood by Biblical archaeologists and Biblical scholars. As this work continues, perhaps the discussion between minimalists and maximalists regarding Israel’s origins can really begin.

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Dever Misunderstands Postmodernism

William Dever describes the minimalist school as postmodern. While his definition of postmodernism is basically sound, his accusation that the arguments of the minimalists are shaped by such an approach is not.

First, as Dever himself admits, the minimalists believe that a history of Israel (or Palestine) can be written. They simply express great skepticism of the role that the Hebrew Bible can play in that effort. Postmodern historians (a term that is itself something of an oxymoron), believing that there are no privileged or value-neutral frames of reference, and that there are no such things as objective facts and truth, would not even concede this much. To them, all historical reconstructions are mere social constructions, and none can be regarded as more true than any others. So the simple fact that Davies, Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche and others in their camp argue in defense of writing any sort of history of Israel at all is enough to show that their approach is not postmodern.

Second, these individuals believe that archaeology and other forms of hard evidence should be the primary basis of any reliable history written about this region. Much of their skepticism toward the Biblical record and its usefulness for constructing a history of Israel rests on their perception that the Biblical record is at odds with this very kind of evidence. Whatever the merits or faults of their arguments, a true postmodernist would never advocate such a position and would instead regard archaeology as yet another kind of social construction and “text” to be deconstructed.

Dever’s confusion here seems to stem from the fact that the minimalists have argued that much of the content of the Hebrew Bible can be best explained by considering the intentions and ideology of its authors. The texts, they suggest, tell us a great deal about the authors and the times in which they lived and less about any alleged past. They thus regard much of the Bible as literary and theological, not historical. But so long as the minimalists argue that a history of Israel is possible and that archaeology and other “facts” derived through some sort of investigation can be marshaled to produce such a history, then what they are doing is anything but postmodern. In fact, their emphasis on archaeology and hard evidence as the basis of such a history, over and against the claims of the Biblical texts, is very much consistent with the demands of good scientific method.

Thomas Thompson

A Call for Fair Play

Aw, come on … give the guy a chance. First you borrow a book excerpt from another publication (“Can You Understand This?” BAR 26:02). Then you introduce the writer as someone with whom you disagree. Then you say that the writer is difficult to understand. This looks like a case of poor editorial work because the editor could not better choose his material.

Thompson’s excerpt is not that hard to understand. He begins by saying that “the historicism implicit in the biblical theology movement of half a century ago is more modern than it is biblical.” So what was that historicism? It was called heilsgeschichte, or salvation history. For Thompson there is a difference between what is now considered history and what is recorded in the Bible. He says that the Bible’s history has nothing to do with writing history in any modern sense. Instead the Bible has what Thompson calls “a tradition.”

“Tradition is important heuristically,” Thompson writes. This latter term is derived from the Greek term heuriskein; it means “to find.” What Thompson means here is that the tradition is a self-teaching technique akin to the adage about learning from your mistakes. “It is a story of the past that seeks to echo—through metaphor—the truth of what is known.”

Ah … It’s clearer now.—Ed.

No Sooner Said …

BAR printed an excerpt from a book by Thomas Thompson, The Mythic Past: 066Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel, under the heading “Can You Understand This?” BAR 26:02.

To answer the question first: No, I couldn’t, after several rereadings and attempts at outlining it and making a précis of it. The excerpt offers many easy targets, so it is not difficult to attack it.

But my final thought was, Is it fair to judge something that is merely an excerpt of a book? So I think that BAR owes its readers—and the author—an in-depth review of the entire book by a qualified and, if one can be found, nonpartisan reviewer.

We published two reviews of this book in ReViews, BAR 25:05.—Ed.

BAR’s Editorial Exploitation

When I read the extract of Thomas Thompson’s Mythic Past, I, too, could not discern the point. The excerpt, however, is not representative of the book as a whole, a fact that seems to have delighted Hershel Shanks, judging by his gloating editorial exploitation of the matter.

Thompson’s Book Is Lucid

Thank you for your collection of articles on the historicity of ancient Israel. I have read Thomas Thompson’s book and found it very lucid. It wasn’t at all difficult understanding what he had to say. As the oldest manuscript evidence for the majority of the Old Testament text is that from Qumran, it is entirely understandable that someone should come up with the theory that the composition, or most recent edition, of the Old Testament should shortly predate Qumran. What is less obvious is why Thompson didn’t make a better shot at proving his case. His book was singularly devoid of evidence or sustained argument. The historicity of the Old Testament account is dismissed, virtually out of hand. Nor does he do much to explain how the present text assists the propaganda purposes of the Maccabean kings.

Self-Description

This reader believes that Thomas Thompson’s statement “true reality is unknowable” reflects his inability to grasp his own subject material.

When Ordinary People Can’t Understand …

About understanding Thomas Thompson’s book—he seems to be saying that the writers of the Bible thought in ways we present-day people cannot understand (except, of course, for people like him!).

C. S. Lewis warned that if you cannot explain your ideas in language an ordinary person can understand, you have not really thought your ideas all the way through (see his essay “Before We Can Communicate,” in God in the Dock [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970]).

Interpretation #1

It seems to me that Thompson is saying:

1. The authors of the books of the Bible were trying to justify or explain their culture and the terrible things that were happening to them. They were also trying to keep the people in line. In doing this, they were using metaphors, allegories—whatever might work (otherwise known as propaganda).

2. He is saying that part of our “reality” is that we pretend the Bible is about one God, when it is really about many different gods. He is saying that the reason God has so many different personalities in the Bible is that different authors were writing about different gods. He presents the God of Kings, for instance, as capricious and cruel, a God who does things on whim.

Interpretation #2

Thompson seems to be arguing that key portions of the Bible are not “salvation history” (that is, legends spun in order to demonstrate to the current generation why you should believe in God), but serve another purpose entirely. They’re still not history in the objective sense, however. Instead, Thompson argues that the selected passages show the viewpoint of a writer who wants to convince people that God pretty much does whatever the heck 067he wants, and pity anyone who gets in his way. The author of these passages is trying to show how great God is, in that he cannot be bargained with or controlled through righteous behavior. You do good because he says it is good, not because he will spare you his wrath if you do good. Pretty far from “salvation history” in that respect … Believe in God and still get toasted.

Interpretation #3

Despite a few ambiguities, the basic message of the selection from Thomas Thompson’s book is clear enough. Although to us moderns accounts of real events are important—accounts we label “history”—to the ancients who wrote the Bible fables are of more value. For the ancients, the only reason for writing fables is to convey a lesson.

The one lesson that interests Thompson is the depiction of Yahweh, a god of “moral disorder.” The first sentence in the selection—“Gods are created, but the true God is unknown”—means that humanity cannot understand Yahweh.

By the end of the selection, the idea that “God is unknown” can be spelled out: Yahweh is capricious and disdainful—“the fate of a man is insignificant in the face of divine will.”

Interpretation #4

Why is there a problem understanding Thomas Thompson? He uses some bigger-than-usual words and a flow of understanding and logic few people these days can fathom. May I try?

“It is evident in the Bible (and elsewhere) that religious human beings make their gods in their own image (anthropomorphism), whereas clearly the one and only God cannot be known (conceptualized, condensed into human language, the ‘Wholly Other’). Historicizing the Bible is an invention of orthodoxy (read ‘fundamentalism’) in reaction to the Enlightenment (science and reason); the Bible is not literal history; it is tradition remembered and passed on; it is ideology interpreting history.”

Interpretation #5

I am astonished by the tone of voice in the March/April 2000 issue regarding minimalism/revisionism in Biblical scholarship. The excerpt from Thomas Thompson’s new book with the heading “Can You Understand This?” is a case in point. What earthly problem could you have had in understanding this passage? You may certainly disagree with it, but you can scarcely pretend that it is unintelligible.

Take this quote: “In the Bible’s many stories and collected songs, written to create a self-understanding among its readers as the saved remnant of Israel, the Bible does not address or try to understand an historical past.” What did you find difficult to understand?

Or, take the pull quote you highlighted, which, I take it, is supposed to be particularly impenetrable. “Unlike events of history, events of tradition do not share in reality because of the uniqueness or singularity of their meaning.” History, as Thompson points out, is an intellectual construct about events of the past and their meaning. Tradition, he suggests—and of course you are free to disagree—is not like history in this respect. It does not single out events because of their unique meaning. In other words, it is not history, trying to understand, in a present intellectual context, the meaning (as the writers could have understood in their time) of past events; rather, it has a completely different focus on the present significance of the people whose tradition it is—that is, “to create a self-understanding among its readers.” Is that so difficult to understand? And did we really expect to find historical writing of a contemporary sort in the Bible?

Perhaps you found the distinction between what is real and what is illusory difficult to understand. Anyone who has read Plato—and I’m sure you have—should be able to understand this. Tradition, according to Thompson, is intended to evoke reality. This has a nice Platonic ring to it. Tradition is the midwife of reality (which transcends the events described), just as Socrates was the midwife of truth. But again, I wonder, why was this so difficult to understand?

To take a last example, Thompson speaks of the “fundamental assumption (and I would say arrogance) of biblical theology [that] had as its core a belief in the inadequacy of the world-view of the ancients. At the same time, it maintained a blind faith that this same primitive world’s religious perception could become a saving perception in our world.” That seems to me, again, perfectly intelligible, and it is also rather helpful to have the conflict of these basic assumptions pointed out.

I think the truth of the matter is that this has ceased to be a scholarly disagreement; this has all the elements of an ideological dispute. And that is sad. The minimalists—and I have to admit to never having read any of them until I read this rather compelling extract from Thompson’s book—are cutting a new furrow. The only thing that non-minimalists seem able to do is insult them, not try to meet them argument for argument. For example, take William Dever’s article in the same issue, “Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey.” He spends a lot of time insulting the minimalists, calling their honesty into question. My, my! Is this how scholarship is done? Of course, I take some of the points he makes about the archaeological evidence, but could this not be done without all the mudslinging?

I think you do a disservice to scholarship by printing an article such as Dever’s. A more coolheaded, rational approach would be much more successful, and could surely have made a much more powerful case. When people are so angry, are questions of power so very far away?

Thompson Only Follows in Dever’s Footsteps

Taking up BAR’s challenge to make sense of the excerpt from Thomas Thompson’s book The Mythic Past, I turned to William Dever for guidance. Dever is himself a champion of “new archaeology” and has been criticized by Hershel Shanks for gratuitously knocking the Bible, vastly overrating the explanatory power of the archaeological evidence and drawing conclusions that are unsubstantiated by that evidence (“Dever’s ‘Sermon on the Mound,’” BAR 13:02). So it is not surprising that while reading Thompson, I kept hearing echoes of Dever’s earlier statements from long-past issues of BAR.

Thompson writes, “The word history does not even exist in Hebrew.” How reminiscent of Dever, who in “Archaeology and the Bible,” BAR 16:03, wrote, “The word ‘history’ does not appear in the Hebrew Bible.”

On the same page, Dever tells us, “The Biblical writers … are concerned not with the question, ‘What really happened?’ but with the larger question, ‘What does it mean?’ … the interpretation … as seen through the eyes of faith.” This is not so different from Thompson’s statement, “Rather than as history, the Bible’s tradition might better be expressed as reiterative and typological aetiology.” By 068“aetiology,” he means “a story of the past that seeks to echo—through metaphor—the truth of what is known.” According to Thompson, since “true reality is unknowable, transcending experience,” it can be grasped only through faith, a faith that is informed by its particular culture, time and place. Thompson is saying pretty much what Dever said.

Again in the May/June 1990 issue, Dever writes, “Concrete events are important in the Bible only as they illustrate God’s action and their consequences for people here and now.” Thompson writes, “The Bible’s history has … nothing to do with writing history in any modern sense.” Instead, Thompson believes it is a kind of groping theology, interested in constructing a human tradition that will make intelligible a god that is otherwise unknowable. According to Thompson, we discover in the various traditions preserved in the text the stages through which the Bible writers passed as they gradually formulated what we have come to call “salvation history.” In other words, the events they describe are important only insofar as they illustrate God’s acts at particular points of time.

We are witnessing a paradigm shift. Dever stands at an earlier moment in that shift, Thompson at a later one, but they are both participants in the same shift. As Philip Davies says, there is really little difference between the two. I note that Thompson, in a letter of protest (January/February 2000, pp. 6–8), makes a similar point.

While I understand that Dever may not like what has happened, I think he and what he represents bear a significant share of responsibility for it. As Hosea might say, he has sown the wind and he is reaping the whirlwind.

Many believe Dever has changed his position in recent years.—Ed.

Boxed In

No, I could not understand the excerpts from Thomas Thompson’s book. It was, however, very easy to tell that (rather than being a true scholar) he has already made up his mind and will make history fit into his little box.

Profile in Courage

Thompson’s dizzying mental gymnastics and exasperating contrarian intellectual contortions prove his courage. And his courage is inspiring, as common sense, logic and reason are formidable foes.

Very entertaining.

Quixotic Endeavor

To my mind, both the “minimalists,” as represented by Philip Davies, and the “maximalists,” as represented by William Dever, are tilting at windmills, each trying to prove the unprovable. And Thomas Thompson’s excerpt is so incomprehensible as to border on deliberate obfuscation.

Both sides are trying to answer questions that the millennia have rendered unanswerable, and no amount of fervor, obscure philosophical writings or vitriol will do anything but further cloud the issue. Those who believe will continue to believe; those who don’t, won’t.

Tel Rehov

On the Sunny Side of the Square

The article on Tel Rehov contains a rather jolting error (“Will Tel Rehov Save the United Monarchy?” BAR 26:02). The word rehov is translated as “street.” That is correct in modern Hebrew, but it is wrong even as recently as medieval Hebrew. That particular meaning only entered the language in modern times. In Biblical Hebrew, as well as in Akkadian, rehov means a public square, a broad open place in a city.

Amihai Mazar responds:

Mr. Weisz is almost totally correct. The English translation of the Biblical word rehov should be “piazza,” since in most references it appears in relation to the city gate and probably refers to the piazzas that we often find inside city gates. However, Biblical Hebrew does not have a separate word for “street,” and in some cases the term rehov perhaps refers to streets rather than to a piazza, as in cases where the word appears in 069the plural (Proverbs 7:12, 22:13, 26:13, etc.). I thus wonder if rehov meant both “piazza” and “street.”

Not Authors’ Title

I should like to record that the title of the article by John Camp and me—“Will Tel Rehov Save the United Monarchy?”—was chosen by the editors, not by us. I believe it is at least overstated and at most inaccurate. Our original title, which I believe is more accurate if less alluring, was “Tel Rehov—A New Site Sheds Light on the Iron Age of Israel.”

Filling in the Blanks

Keep up the great work! I have been a subscriber for many years and am also a mystery reader. The March/April 2000 issue filled in a blank spot regarding one of my favorite authors, John Sanford/John Camp. His article was just wonderful.

Potpourri

SBL Needs Archaeology

I applaud you for “First Person: To SBL: Be a Mentsch,” BAR 26:02. I’ve been a Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) member since 1978 and a joint member of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and SBL for the past several years. Some of the most exciting sessions I’ve attended in all those years—and, as you say, some of the most popular—have been those focusing on archaeology. While scholars who examine literature exegete the same passages over and over again and often come up with new insights, archaeological digs are constantly turning up new data, providing a foil to perspectives exhibited through the literature of the ruling classes.

SBL Will Lose

Thank you for speaking out in your editorial in the March/April issue (“First Person: To SBL: Be a Mentsch,” BAR 26:02).

I fully agree with you that the Bible teachers at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting will be losers, but in the long run, it will be SBL that will lose as people discontinue coming.

Pride and love of money surely may contribute to “a great fall” for SBL in time.

Zitzfleisch and Feetfleisch

If zitzfleisch is a Yiddish expression that refers to the ability to sit through long meetings (“First Person: To SBL: Be a Mentsch,” BAR 26:02), there must also be a Yiddish word that describes the ability to negotiate endless museum exhibits, something I have longed for during visits to Jerusalem, Washington, D.C. and other cities.

Thanks for shedding light on the SBL/ASOR situation. It would have been good to have had a response from SBL in the same issue. Hopefully it will be included in the next issue. I agree that the greater loss is SBL’s and those who are represented by the organization (many more than those who belong to it).

Answer No. 1: How about a neologism, like feetfleisch? Answer No. 2: We invited SBL to respond, but they declined.—Ed.

The Staff of Moses?

Thanks for WorldWide, BAR 26:02, featuring the gold serpentine bracelet excavated in Rome. It is interesting to note that the caduceus, as a symbol of medicine, comes from the Bible.

“And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live” (Numbers 21:8–9).

The caduceus, symbol of the medical profession, consists of two snakes winding about a pole. It has been the symbol of the medical profession only since the 16th century, when it replaced the one-snake symbol of Asclepius, god of medicine. In classical mythology, the two-snake caduceus is the staff of Hermes (Latin Mercury), the messenger of the gods. While a single snake was thus the original symbol of the medical profession, it derives from Asclepius rather than the Hebrew Bible.

The snake appears in many guises in the ancient world. It was worshiped as a god of evil, as well as a god of good. Snakes were kept in Egyptian temples. The Greek god Apollo is associated with snake worship. In Rome a sacred snake was attended by the Vestal Virgins. The ancient Mesopotamians believed snakes were immortal because they shed their skin and appeared in a fresh guise. There is thus no reason to believe that the popular symbol of the medical profession is related to the snake fashioned by Moses.—Ed.

004

A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors, are the alternative designations for B.C. and A.D. often used in scholarly literature.