The Birth & Death of Biblical Minimalism - The BAS Library
Login
Home > Magazines > BAR > May/June 2011

The Birth & Death of Biblical Minimalism

By Yosef Garfinkel

“Biblical minimalism,” as it is known, has gone through a number of permutations in the recent past. Its modern career began about 30 years ago, when BAR was still a youngster. Since then it has been part of the ongoing debate regarding the extent to which historical data are embedded in the Hebrew Bible.

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.

Philip R. Davies, “‘House of David’ Built on Sand,” BAR 20:04.

2.

André Lemaire, “‘House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,” BAR 20:03.

3.

See David Noel Freedman and Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, “‘House of David’ Is There,” BAR 21:02; Anson F. Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR 20:06.

4.

See Lily Singer-Avitz, Archaeological Views: “Carbon 14—The Solution to Dating David and Solomon?” BAR 35:03.

5.

Hershel Shanks, “Newly Discovered: A Fortified City from King David’s Time,” BAR 35:01; “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on Philistine Border,” BAR 36:02.

6.

See Avraham Faust, “How Did Israel Become a People?” BAR 35:06.

7.

See “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered,” BAR 36:02.

Endnotes

1.

Émile Puech, “La stele araméenne de Dan: Bar Hadad II et la coalition des Omrides et de la maison de David,” Revue Biblique 101 (1994), p. 215. See also Anson F. Rainey, “The ‘House of David’ and the House of the Deconstructionists,” BAR, November/December 1994.

2.

Niels P. Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson, “Did Biran Kill David? The Bible in the Light of Archaeology,” Journal of the Study of the Old Testament 19 (1994), pp. 3–21.

3.

Ayelet Gilboa and Ilan Sharon, “An Archaeological Contribution to the Early Iron Age Chronological Debate: Alternative Chronologies for Phoenicia and Their Effects on the Levant, Cyprus and Greece,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 332 (2003), pp. 7–80; Ilan Sharon, Ayelet Gilboa, Timothy Jull and Elisabetta Boaretto, “Report on the First Stage of the Iron Age Dating Project in Israel: Supporting the Low Chronology,” Radiocarbon 49 (2007), pp. 1–46.

4.

Sharon et al., “Report on the First Stage of the Iron Age Dating Project in Israel.”

5.

Amihai Mazar and Bronk Ramsey, “14C Dates and the Iron Age Chronology of Israel: A Response,” Radiocarbon 50 (2008), pp. 159–180.

6.

Israel Finkelstein and Eli Piasetzky, “14C and the Iron Age Chronology Debate: Rehov, Khirbet en-Nahas, Dan and Megiddo,” Radiocarbon 48 (2006), pp. 373–386.

7.

See also Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, Khirbet Qeiyafa, Vol. 1: Excavation Report 2007–2008 (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2009).

8.

Nadav Na’aman, “In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8 (2008).

9.

Aren Maeir, personal communication.

10.

For additional discussion, see Amihai Mazar, “The Spade and the Text: The Interaction Between Archaeology and Israelite History Relating to the Tenth-Ninth Centuries B.C.E.,” Understanding the History of Ancient Israel (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), pp. 143–171.