The Marzeah Amos Denounces—Using Archaeology to Interpret a Biblical Text

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Archaeologists often accuse Biblical scholars of ignoring archaeological materials that could significantly illuminate the Biblical texts that scholars are studying. As one archaeologist recently put it: “Most [Biblical] commentators do not even make use of archaeology where it can contribute best, namely in illustrating the material culture of a given period, either in general or in terms of a specific reference in the [Biblical] text.”1 For the most part, archaeology remains the great untapped resource in Biblical studies, despite the fact that the Bible and archaeology are so closely related. As BAR readers know, there is a great deal […]

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Footnotes

See the following BAR articles by Hershel Shanks: “Should the Term ‘Biblical Archaeology’ Be Abandoned?” BAR 07:03; “Whither ASOR?” BAR 09:05; “Dever’s ‘Sermon on the Mound,’” BAR 13:02; and see the letters by William G. Dever in Queries & Comments, BAR 07:05, and Queries & Comments, BAR 13:04.

William F. Albright, who died in 1971, was the doyen of an earlier generation of Biblical archaeologists. He was a master of both Bible and archaeology.

This example is adapted from my forthcoming volume, Amos, Hosea, Micah—An Archaeological Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1988).

On this clause, see David Noel Freedman, “But Did King David Invent Musical Instruments?” Bible Review, Summer 1985.

See Hershel Shanks, “Ancient Ivory—The Story of Wealth, Decadence and Beauty,” BAR 11:05.

See Bathja Bayer, “The Finds That Could Not Be,” BAR 08:01.

Endnotes

H. Darrell Lance, The Old Testament and the Archaeologist (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), p. 48.

William F. Albright, “The Impact of Archaeology on Biblical Research—1966,” in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, ed. David Noel Freedman and Jonas Greenfield (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), pp. 3–4.

Jonas Greenfield, “The Marzeah as a Social Institution,” Acta Antiqua (Budapest) 22 (1974), pp. 451–455; Marvin Pope, “A Divine Banquet at Ugarit,” in The Use of the Old Testament in the New, ed. J. Efird (Durham, NC: Duke Univ., 1972), pp. 170–203; Pope, “The Cult of the Dead at Ugarit,” in Ugarit in Retrospect, ed. G. Young (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981), pp. 159–179.

I. Winter, “Ivory Carving” in Ebla to Damascus: Art and Archaeology of Ancient Syria, ed. H. Weiss (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), pp. 343–344.

See Vassos Karageorghis, Salamis in Cyprus (London: Thames and Hudson, 1969), pp. 76–98, and Excavations in the Necropolis at Salamis, vol. 3 (Nicosia, Cyprus: Dept. of Antiquities, 1973).

John S. Holladay, “The Stables of Ancient Israel,” in The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies, ed. Lawrence Geraty and Lawrence Herr (Berrien Springs, MI Andrews University, 1986), pp. 103–165.

Lawrence E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260 (1985), pp. 1–35.

Nahman Avigad and Jonas Greenfield, “A Bronze phiale with a Phoenician Dedicatory Inscription,” Israel Exploration Journal 32 (1982), pp. 118–128.

Stager, “The Finest Olive Oil in Samaria,” Journal of Semitic Studies 28 (1983), pp. 241–245.