Whom Do You Believe—The Bible or Archaeology?

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Is the Hebrew Bible a bunch of tales with no value to a historian? Does archaeology hold the keys to truth instead? What are the limitations of both sources of information? Is it even possible to write a comprehensive and honest history of ancient Israel? Focusing on King David as a case study, eminent archaeologist William G. Dever attempts to marry archaeology and the Bible—giving BAR readers a sneak-peak of his upcoming book.

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Footnotes

1. See Baruch Halpern, “Erasing History,” Bible Review, December 1995; Hershel Shanks, “Face to Face: Biblical Minimalists Meet Their Challengers,” BAR, 23:04; Yosef Garfinkel, “The Birth & Death of Biblical Minimalism,” BAR, 37:03.

2. “‘David’ Found at Dan: Inscription Crowns 27 Years of Exciting Discoveries,” BAR, 20:02; Avraham Biran, “More Fragments from ‘David’ Stela Found at Dan,” BAR, 20:05.

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

4. Eilat Mazar, “Did I Find King David’s Palace?” BAR, 32:01; Avraham Faust, “Did Eilat Mazar Find David’s Palace?” BAR, 38:05; Nadav Na’aman, “The Interchange Between Bible and Archaeology,” BAR, 40:01.

5. Hershel Shanks, “Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on Philistine Border,” BAR, 36:02; Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel and Martin Klingbeil, “An Ending and a Beginning,” BAR, 39:06; Yosef Garfinkel, Saar Ganor and Joseph Baruch Silver, “Rejected! Qeiyafa’s Unlikely Second Gate,” BAR, 43:01.

Endnotes

1. Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Can a ‘History of Israel’ Be Written? European Seminar in Historical Methodology, vol. 1 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1997).

2. Thomas Thompson, “A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?” Journal of Biblical Literature 114 (1995), p. 697.

3. William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001).

4. Michel Foucault, “The History of Sexuality,” in Colin Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 193.

5. Thomas E. Levy, ed., Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism (London and Oakville, CT: Equinox, 2010).

6. William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah(SBL Press, 2017 [forthcoming]).