The Kitchen Debate - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 2005

The Kitchen Debate

Three Scholars Discuss a Major New Book on History and the Bible

By Ronald S. Hendel, William W. Hallo, Kenneth A. Kitchen

When we received a copy of Kenneth A. Kitchen’s new book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, we knew that we should review it. Kitchen is one of the world’s leading scholars (he specializes in Egyptology), and the subject matter of the book—how historically accurate is the Bible?—is of central interest to many of our readers. We asked Ronald Hendel, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a columnist for our sister magazine, Bible Review, to review it for us.

You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1.

See Siegfried Horn, “Why the Moabite Stone Was Blown to Pieces,” BAR, May/June 1986.

2.

See “‘David’ found at Dan,” BAR, March/April 1994

Endnotes

1.

William W. Hallo, “Biblical History in its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach,” in Carl D. Evans, Hallo and John B. White, eds., Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method, Pittsburgh Theological Monograph Series 34 (Pittsburgh, PA: Pickwick Press, 1980), pp. 1–26, esp. pp. 3–5 and nn. 4, 11f., 23, 55.

2.

Hallo, “New Directions in Historiography (Mesopotamia and Israel),” in M. Dietrich and O. Loretz, eds., dubsar anta-men: Studien zur Altorientalistik. Festschrift für Willem H.Ph. Römer, Alyer Orient und Altes Testament 253) (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1998), pp. 109–128, esp. pp. 110f.; “Polymnia and Clio,” in Tzvi Abusch et al., eds., Historiography in the Cuneiform World, (Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale. Part I) (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2000), pp. 195–209, esp. p. 196.

3.

Hallo, “A Sumerian Apocryphon? The Royal Correspondence of Ur Reconsidered,” (forthcoming), after n. 83.

4.

“Zur Rekonstruktion anderweitig nicht belegter (kultischer) Ereignisse können und sollten die literarischen Texte (indes) nicht benutzt werden”: Thomas Richter, Untersuchungen zu den lokalen Panthea … in altbabylonischer Zeit (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 257) (2nd. ed., Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2004), p. 22.

5.

Hallo and W.K. Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History, 2nd ed. (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998), pp. 115–117; pp. 128f.

6.

Hallo and Simpson, The Ancient Near East (so already in the preface to the first edition, 1971).

7.

In Old-South-Arabian studies, see for example my series of reference works, Documentation for Ancient Arabia, I-II (Liverpool, 1994–2000), volumes III-IV, in preparation; in Ugaritic, papers in Ugaritische Forschungen, 9 and 11. In Syro-Anatolian studies, on Late-Luvian & Aramaic in Revue Hittite et Asianique; on Hurrian poetics, in the recent Festschrift for the late Luigi Cagni; etc. This is all straight, mainline scholarship.

8.

K.A. Kitchen Ancient Orient and Old Testament (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale Press, 1966); Kitchen, The Bible in its World (Bletchely, United Kingdom: Paternoster, 1977).