Should the Term “Biblical Archaeology” Be Abandoned?

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One of the best-known and highly-respected archaeologists in the world is urging that the term “Biblical Archaeology” be dropped. He is Professor William G. Dever, chairman of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“The sooner we abandon it [the term ‘Biblical Archaeology’] the better,” he says.

Dever is not without his followers. And at conferences, symposia, lectures and in private conversations the theme is developed and repeated. “We ought to stop talking about ‘Biblical Archaeology’,” Dever urges archaeologists because, he says, “there probably is no such thing.”

Dever’s own stand is clear: “I do dissociate myself from the term ‘Biblical archaeology.’”

For him Biblical archaeology is not “even a discipline at all in the academic sense.”

Seasoned BAR readers are accustomed to some of the tensions and contradictions that beset Biblical archaeology. So it will come as no surprise to these readers to learn that Bill Dever is the editor of a book entitled, of all things, Biblical Archaeology. From 1967 to 1976 he has also served on the editorial board of a professional journal named Biblical Archeologist. (His resignation in 1976 was a personal matter having nothing to do with the journal’s name or subject matter.)

Dever is also author of the entry on “Archaeology” in the new Supplement to the Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. In this article, he states that “archaeology in its broadest sense is the only possible source of material evidence for additional illumination of the Biblical text.”

This is the same Bill Dever that urges the abandonment of the term Biblical archaeology.

Dever’s arguments have aroused heated debate among archaeologists. But it is a debate largely over semantics, not substance. Dever makes a number of good points. But even then, we can agree with him only up to the “therefore.” His conclusion—that the term Biblical archaeology must be abandoned—is all wrong.

One of his points is that the use of the term Biblical archaeology “cannot help but suggest … that there is a particular brand of archaeology whose function is to confirm the Bible.” Here he is simply wrong. This is not the necessary implication of the term.

Dever does have a legitimate concern, however. He is concerned about a tendency, especially in the past, to jump to conclusions or to bias archaeological findings in order to confirm the Biblical text. Says Dever:

“We ought to recall with embarrassment the attempt to prove the Biblical account of the Flood from the sedimentary layers of mounds in lower Mesopotamia; the location of Noah’s Ark on the ice-capped summits of Mt. Ararat in Soviet Armenia; the discovery at Jericho of the walls of Joshua which with more competent investigation turned out to be at least a thousand years before Joshua’s time.”

These are surely not Biblical archaeology’s proudest moments. But it does not mean we should abandon the term Biblical archaeology. Rather it means that we should be more careful, more scientific, more circumspect in reaching our conclusions. We should especially guard against letting our theological commitments affect our archaeological conclusions. To say that this may at times be difficult is perhaps true, but it makes it no less difficult if we abandon the term Biblical archaeology altogether.

On the other hand, while the theologically-oriented archaeologist must guard against a pro-Bible bias, the secular archaeologist must be aware lest he develop an anti-Bible bias, especially as this is becoming increasingly fashionable, even to the extent of representing a supposedly more professional and sophisticated level of scholarship. (See “Piety and Patriotism—Secularism and Skepticism,” by J. Edward Barrett, BAR 07:01)

In short, bias of any sort is to be shunned. Some archaeological findings may present problems for the Biblical text (for example, the lack of a Late Bronze stratum at Jericho at the time the Biblical destruction of Jericho is usually dated). Other archaeological findings 055may simply provide background to a better understanding and appreciation of the Biblical text. Still other findings may tend to confirm the Biblical text (for example, the destruction of Hazor at about the time Joshua destroyed it according to the Bible). But all this has nothing to do with whether we use or abandon the term Biblical archaeology.

“We tend all too easily to forget the conservative or even fundamentalist heritage out of which so many of us have come,” Dever writes. Although this may be a problem for Dever—now a thorough-going secularist—others may not have this same problem. If not, they don’t seem to have the same need to get rid of the term Biblical archaeology.

A second reason Dever rejects the use of Biblical archaeology is that for him it represents a distinct American phenomenon which existed between the 1930s and the 1960s. After that, he says, it died. And if it did not die, it evolved into the now-entirely secular discipline of “Syro-Palestinian archaeology.”

At the end of the 19th century and during the first part of the 20th century, conservative Biblical scholarship, especially in America, was visibly shaken by the attacks of German source-critics, led by Julius Wellhausen, who separated the Pentateuch into four distinct sources which, the source-critics said, were later combined by editors into the form handed down to us. For many believers, this struck at the historicity as well as the diversity of the sacred word.

In this context, Biblical archaeology came to the rescue. Between the 1930s and the 1960s new discoveries seemed to bring the Bible to life and to confirm its essential historical truth. Under the direction of William F. Albright, Rabbi Nelson Glueck and Harvard Professor G. Ernest Wright, grand historical syntheses were constructed and many new finds and archaeological interpretations lent support to fundamentalists threatened by source-criticism. But, especially for the pre-monarchical period of Israel’s history, these grand reconstructions have not held up well under recent scholarly attack. Scholarship regarding the Patriarchal Age and the Age of the Conquest is uncertain and even in disarray. The period is over when Biblical archaeology can easily confirm the historicity of the Bible.

That Biblical archaeologists have failed—at least at the present time—to reconstruct successfully the Patriarchal Age is certainly true. They thought they had done so. But they were wrong. Perhaps in the next two decades a new consensus will emerge from the current turmoil. Perhaps it will not.

But this does not mean we should drop the term Biblical archaeology. No doubt the Albright-Glueck-Wright approach to the Patriarchal Age is dead. But that does not mean that Biblical archaeology is only an historical term applicable to the heyday of the Albright-Glueck-Wright school. We should recognize our failures. We should recognize the limitations of our evidence. But we need not concede that in our search we are doomed at the outset to biased results. Nor must we abandon the enterprise altogether.

In urging the abandonment of the term Biblical archaeology, Dever stresses the fact that the past 20 years have seen a quantum leap in the sophistication of archaeological methodology. Instead of a single scholar directing the labors of a horde of hired workers, the typical excavation team today includes a wide variety of specialists using the latest scientific techniques. A modern excavation staff will include a surveyor, a photographer, ceramic specialists, and draftsmen, as well as a geologist, an ethnologist, and perhaps a paleobotanist and a paleozoologist, to say nothing of “straight” archaeologists. This professionalism, Dever rightly says, has largely replaced a by-gone age of methodological amateurs.

No doubt methods have improved—a fact which is universally applauded. But for this reason, should we stop calling it Biblical archaeology? The logic in his argument remains obscure, to say the least.

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Perhaps Dever means to say that the skills and knowledge now required of a professional field archaeologist are so vast that the Biblical scholar cannot adequately command both the Biblical and the archaeological materials. That argument proves both too little and too much.

Of course there are no more Albrights. No scholar today can command the vast array of subject areas which he dominated for 25 years. Harvard Professor Frank Cross described Albright’s encyclopedic knowledge this way:

“Albright has listed his profession as ‘orientalist.’ The whole of the ancient Near East has been his bailiwick, its geography and archaeology, its languages and literature, its history and religion. I suspect that he is the last such orientalist: a generalist with the specialist’s precision in designated areas of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Syro-Palestinian studies.”

One reason no other scholar can duplicate Albright’s command of so broad a range of scholarship is that Albright was unique. But another reason is that, as Dever argues, there is simply too much for one person to know. Dever is, of course, right. Knowledge has burgeoned and specialization is required, now more than ever.

But this is true even within archaeology itself. Here, too, there is more than one person can command. Dever himself is a specialist in MBI (Middle Bronze I, 2200–2000 B.C.), a period which he finds especially fascinating. He would be the first to admit that he does not speak with the same authority about Hellenistic pottery or Byzantine pottery as he does about MBI pottery. Moreover, he, like other highly competent archaeologists, needs a geologist on his dig, as well as a paleobotanist and perhaps other specialists as well. Someone else—not Dever—must perform the neutron-activation analysis on his pottery, if it is to be done.

True, we live in an age of specialists, but have we specialized to such an extent that there is no room left for a Biblical archaeologist or for an academic discipline called Biblical archaeology? The simple fact is that Biblical archaeology brings to bear an enormous range of scholarship involving material remains in an effort to better understand the Bible.

Perhaps Dever is also concerned that the archaeologist in the field must excavate as carefully and knowledgably in strata that do not have Biblical implications as in strata that do. Again, he is right. Indeed, in the field, the archaeologist is primarily concerned with collecting data, rather than in interpreting it. He is rarely in a position to say what its implications are—Biblical or not. Moreover, archaeologists in the field must bring with them not only a knowledge of excavation methods, but also a knowledge of the history of all the periods in which they are digging. But no archaeologist can be equally knowledgeable in all periods of history. Dever himself will hardly be found excavating an exclusively Hellenistic site. The modern archaeological team, especially at a site covering a wide range of historical periods, is likely to include scholars whose special interests focus on a number of different historical periods. But all this does not mean we should abandon the term Biblical archaeology.

Perhaps Dever would shun the term Biblical archaeology because the line between its subject matter and other adjoining disciplines is indistinct. No one can really say whether a knowledge of MBI pottery or Philistine archaeology is subsumed under the heading Biblical archaeology.

So what? The lines between a thousand specialties are indistinct and overlapping. Although the outer edges of Biblical archaeology are indistinct, its core concerns are clear. Ironically enough, no one has expressed this core concern better than Dever himself:

“Albright long ago described an ‘archaeological revolution’ in the twentieth-century study of the Bible, a phrase not at all exaggerated … [The Bible] can now be seen in its original setting, lost for centuries, but increasingly reconstructed in detail through the evidence supplied by archaeology. There is no reason to believe this revolution is exhausted; on the contrary, it has scarcely begun. With its growing precision in 057retrieving the empirical data and its increasing sophistication in interpreting it, modern archaeology has the potential for even greater illumination of the Bible.”

In the face of this statement, the reader may begin to understand why we believe Dever is arguing about semantics, not substance. Dever does not really want to stop studying Biblical archaeology. He just wants to stop calling it that.

He is simply a little embarrassed at what he considers Biblical archaeology’s unprofessional afflatus acquired from its amateur antecedents:

“We Palestinian Archaeologists have sometimes gotten a very bad name for ourselves because we have insisted upon labeling ourselves ‘Biblical archaeologists.’ For our professional colleagues in New and Old World Archaeology, this has raised the spectre of Fundamentalism, and we have been dismissed not only as hopeless amateurs, but as Biblicists as well.”

Indeed, Dever almost admits that his argument is only semantics. Speaking of his teacher, Harvard Professor G. Ernest Wright, Dever states, “Wright and I do not differ on what our field consists of; he simply wishes to call it all ‘Biblical Archaeology,’ while I prefer a more general name.”

Dever prefers the name “‘Palestinian archaeology’ or, to be more precise, ‘Syro-Palestinian archaeology,’ because Palestine, in most periods of antiquity, was merely a backwoods province of Syria and cannot really be treated independently.”

He recognizes, however, that some scholars may legitimately wish to narrow their focus to what Dever calls “the period of the flourit of the Old and New Testament.” However, Dever goes on to say, “Even here I would not use the term ‘Biblical archaeology,’ but rather the ‘archaeology of the Bible’ or the ‘archaeology of the Biblical Period.’” This is surely drawing some very fine lines—even for scholars!

There is room for scholars of all persuasions in our wide world. For some, like Dever, the illumination of the Bible through material remains, may not be their central concern. The interests of scholars like these may, in certain respects, be broader and, in other respects, narrower than those of the scholar whose primary focus is archaeology as it relates to the Bible. If Dever wishes to be a Palestinian archaeologist, all well and good, even if, as is so often the case, he finds himself talking and writing about Biblical problems. With equal legitimacy others may wish to focus on Biblical archaeology and consider themselves Biblical archaeologists—and they may do so without embarrassment or fear of being considered amateurs or unprofessional.

Whether a particular scholar regards him or herself as a Biblical archaeologist, a pre-historical archaeologist of the Near East, or even a Near Eastern archaeologist, we can only hope that that scholar brings to the profession the same high level of scholarship and competence as does Bill Dever. It is only in a matter of semantics that we disagree with him.

These articles were referred to in the text:

William G. Dever, “Biblical Theology and Biblical Archaeology: An Appreciation of G. Ernest Wright,” Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 73, pp. 1–15 (1980).

William G. Dever, “The Patriarchal Traditions,” pp. 70–120, in J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller, Israelite Judaean History (Westminister, 1977).

William G. Dever, “Archaeology,” Supplementary Volume, The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, (Abingdon, 1976), pp. 44–52.

William G. Dever, Archaeology and Biblical Studies: Retrospects and Prospects (Seabury-Western, 1974).

William G. Dever, “‘Biblical Archaeology’ or ‘The Archaeology of Syria-Palestine,’” Christian News From Israel Vol. 22, pp. 21f. (1972).

William G. Dever and Shalom M. Paul, editors, Biblical Archaeology (Keter Publishing House 1973).

One of the best-known and highly-respected archaeologists in the world is urging that the term “Biblical Archaeology” be dropped. He is Professor William G. Dever, chairman of the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

“The sooner we abandon it [the term ‘Biblical Archaeology’] the better,” he says.