What Archaeology Can Contribute to an Understanding of the Bible

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Although Professor Dever objects to the use of the term “Biblical archaeology” (see “Should the Term ‘Biblical Archaeology’ Be Abandoned?” BAR 07:03), few are as articulate as he in describing what archaeology, and particularly Syro-Palestinian archaeology, can contribute to our understanding of the Bible and the Biblical periods.

Professor Dever has made available to BAR the following excerpt from a paper which will be published sometime in 1982 in a volume being edited by D.A. Knight and G.M. Tucker entitled The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (Scholars Press and Fortress Press). This excerpt from Professor Dever’s paper describes in some detail the potential contribution of archaeology to a better appreciation of the Biblical text and Biblical world. BAR is pleased to publish it.—Ed.

Near Eastern archaeology in general, and Syro-Palestinian archaeology in particular, can make an extremely important contribution to Biblical studies. What follows are examples only. They could be multiplied many times over.

Archaeology recovers a broad spectrum of ancient Near Eastern peoples and places. This not only provides a general setting for Biblical events, but offers limitless possibilities for cross-cultural comparisons. One has only to think what Ugarit (where a 14th century B.C. Canaanite archive was discovered) and Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found) have done to revitalize Biblical studies—and now Ebla brings to light the whole prehistory of Canaanite culture. A generation ago the Philistines were barely known outside the Bible, but now we can characterize their material culture almost more confidently than we can that of their early Israelite contemporaries.

Archaeology provides a specific spatial-temporal-cultural context for events, much of which the Biblical narratives do not supply. Thus we are more and more able to reconstruct in detail the complex cultural milieu out of which the early Israelite state arose in Canaan and the impact of the Assyrian-Babylonian campaigns that precipitated its downfall. We are now able to do the same for the social, economic, and religious sitz im leben in which the Hebrew prophets proclaimed their message, for the cultural cross-currents to life in cosmopolitan Jerusalem and in the Galilean diaspora in Jesus’ time, as well as for the sophisticated world of Late Antiquity in which church and synagogue flourished.

Archaeology continues to provide rich remains of the material culture to supplement and complement the literary remains—town-planning and administration, defenses, weapons and utensils, royal and domestic architecture, sanctuaries, bizarre cult objects, tombs, pottery, luxury goods and imports, artistically executed ivories and seals, and a phenomenally-expanding corpus of ostraca (potsherds containing inscriptions) and other epigraphic materials. All this not only illuminates daily life in Biblical times in a manner impossible to reconstruct from the Biblical texts, but also sheds light on the broader cultural context of political and socio-economic conditions, religion and philosophy, arts and letters, technology, trade, and international relations.

Archaeology increasingly provides an alternate perspective from which to view narratives and events in the Biblical texts—not necessarily contradictory, but in some senses corrective. In astonishing discoveries like the eighth-century syncretistic sanctuary at Kuntillet Ajrud in Sinai (see Ze’ev Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” BAR 04:03), archaeology brings to light folk religion, a glimpse of the “counter-culture” barely suspected heretofore. The Bible usually gives us the official version—what was viewed as normative behavior; archaeology occasionally may be able to reconstruct what really happened.

Finally, archaeology may provide corroborative detail for particular Biblical texts, either corrupted in transmission or simply obscure until an unexpected discovery yields the clue to interpretation. Of course, extra-Biblical texts are most welcome, as for instance the Ugaritic 041liturgical texts that have recently elucidated early Hebrew poetry; stratigraphic and artifactual evidence may be and frequently is just as eloquent in providing a clue to Biblical interpretation.

On the other hand, in its present state of development, and even less so in the past, Syro-Palestinian archaeology cannot be expected to make definitive contributions to several basic problems, which unfortunately include many of those with which Biblical scholars have been preoccupied. These include the determination of chronology, beyond certain broad limits established by, for example, ceramic sequences or radiocarbon 14 dating. For the Biblical period, chronology may depend more upon the interpretation of texts.

Thus far, we have also not been able to solve the whole question of “ethnicity” as reflected in the archaeological record. For instance, how should “Philistines” or “Israelites” be recognized and compared in ceramics or architecture?

Political history is another problem to which archaeology cannot, in the present state of knowledge, make a definitive contribution, at least insofar as the Biblical scholar would seek to relate such archaeological phenomena as destruction levels directly to events described in the literary sources.

Finally, archaeology cannot provide “confirmation” of the meaning of texts, either in their historical or religious dimensions.

Despite these limitations, archaeology—in the broad sense of the deliberate or chance recovery of ancient remains, including epigraphic evidence—is obviously our only possible source of new factual data capable of elucidating the Bible, without which we are reduced to endless manipulation of the received texts, or application of ingenious but frequently inconclusive hypotheses. In that sense Albright’s confidence in the “external evidence” provided by archaeology was not misplaced, merely premature. It may be that the future of Biblical studies will rest largely with the increasing sophistication of archaeology—especially in its use of social and anthropological theory and its growing “explanatory” potential—in combination with improved historical and text critical studies.

Yet the uncompleted agenda is long. In the future, Syro-Palestinian archaeology, in particular, must concentrate on broadening our knowledge of the “world of the Bible,” especially in the recovery of Bronze and Iron Age Syria and Transjordan. Insufficiently known periods, like that of the Israelite settlement in Canaan, and the post-Exilic horizon, must be explored with renewed vigor and new techniques. Expanded regional surveys, ecological analyses, demographic studies, and examination of human skeletal remains could yield invaluable information on the population of Palestine in the Biblical period.

The illumination of the cult of ancient Israel is potentially one of the most promising aspects of the “new archaeology,” especially with its systematic view of culture, yet research here is still in its infancy. Nearly intact Canaanite temples are now known in Palestine from a dozen sites such as Hazor, Beth-shan, Megiddo, Shechem, Tell Kitan, Mevorach, Lachish and elsewhere, but there is no penetrating study of the material remains as evidence for cult practice. Well-preserved Philistine temples have been uncovered in Palestine, especially the 12th–11th century series at Tell Qasile, with an extraordinary wealth of data, but again the preliminary publications hardly go beyond architectural descriptions. For the Iron Age, numerous local shrines have come to light, along with material from domestic areas and tombs, such as altars, braziers, incense stands, “Astarte” figurines, and other obviously cultic items, yet the implications of these are curiously left unexamined.

“New Testament archaeology” scarcely exists as a field of inquiry, much less an academic discipline. But by analogy to the progress and potential of Syro-Palestinian archaeology outlined above, a separate branch of archaeology should now be cultivated, perhaps as the “Archaeology of Late Antiquity,” or of “Early Judaism and Christianity,” and related to the study of classical archaeology.

As Albright long ago observed, placing the Bible in its original setting makes it more intelligible and therefore more “credible.” The Bible may thus seem more human and less divine, but that need not preclude faith. And, finally, the interpretation of both texts and artifacts is a matter of faith—that is, of intuition and empathy, as well as of knowledge.

In the end, the primary datum is the witness of the Biblical text itself. As the late Père de Vaux—whose masterly balance of faith and criticism in the use of archaeology has never been surpassed^a—observed:

One will always have to reconstruct biblical history by starting with the texts, and the texts must be interpreted by the methods of literary criticism, traditional criticism and historical criticism. Archaeology does not confirm the text, which is what it is; it can only confirm the interpretation which we give it.

Although Professor Dever objects to the use of the term “Biblical archaeology” (see “Should the Term ‘Biblical Archaeology’ Be Abandoned?” BAR 07:03), few are as articulate as he in describing what archaeology, and particularly Syro-Palestinian archaeology, can contribute to our understanding of the Bible and the Biblical periods. Professor Dever has made available to BAR the following excerpt from a paper which will be published sometime in 1982 in a volume being edited by D.A. Knight and G.M. Tucker entitled The Hebrew Bible and Its Modern Interpreters (Scholars Press and Fortress Press). This excerpt from Professor Dever’s paper describes […]