Book Review: The Bible Among Ruins

The Bible Among Ruins

In recent decades, biblical scholars have begun to explore topics at the intersections of archaeological, biblical, and anthropological studies. Of special interest are questions relating to memory, like Daniel Pioske’s recent The Bible Among Ruins. The book’s relevance is readily apparent to Bible readers familiar with the repeated use of the phrase “to this day,” which appears no fewer than 80 times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Joshua 8:28; Judges 6:24; 2 Kings 10:27). This expression was deployed to assert that ruins and ancient monuments were still visible to biblical writers, as they remarked upon how they related to Israel’s past. As Pioske notes, biblical traditions were correlated with ruins to lend credibility to the writer’s claims, grounded as they allegedly were in visible facts that could be confirmed on the ground.

While it is relatively easy to recognize that ruins were a part of ancient landscapes, Pioske challenges us to recognize that ruins were perceived quite differently by ancient peoples, who had an entirely different conception of time than do people of the modern world. He highlights, for example, the lack of interest shown in the biblical text for the exploration of the past, despite an awareness of the antiquity of ruins that surrounded ancient writers. Pioske observes that until about 250 years ago, individuals had no ability to gauge their own historical distance from the ruins around them, much less between ruins belonging to different periods. Not only did archaeology not exist, but historical frameworks, as we understand them today, were entirely lacking in daily life. Although there were ancient calendars, they were almost exclusively employed to measure or record events with respect to a single ruler’s reign.

Pioske’s book presents three case studies centered on three biblical sites that explore different aspects of ruins and ruination in the Hebrew Bible: Shiloh, Rachel’s Tomb, and Jerusalem. Shiloh held central cultic importance to early Israel given that it was remembered as having hosted the tabernacle during the pre-monarchic period. Shiloh’s commemoration in early Israel was important, even though—as is easily overlooked—the site was not inhabited during the monarchy, existing only as a ruin, as the prophet Jeremiah (7; 26) and Psalm 78 both underscore. Analysis of the textual tradition alongside the archaeological remains reminds us of the contrast between Shiloh’s significance in biblical tradition and the quite limited contribution of its archaeological remains to our actual understanding of early Iron Age Israel.

The discussion of Rachel’s tomb concerns a monument that, according to the Bible, was constructed in remembrance of an event and therefore functioned to evoke the presence of the past (Genesis 35:20). Pioske notes that the Bible often identifies similar features in the landscape as existing “to this day.” Notably, conflicting traditions around particular ruins emerged in ways that were often contradictory. Was Shiloh home to the tabernacle, an early temple, or both? How did two places come to be identified as Rachel’s resting place? Such inconsistencies were, Pioske notes, perhaps less consequential in antiquity, since the traditions functioned for different purposes and were not compared side by side.

The last locus discussed, Jerusalem, is employed in the context of reflections on future ruination, a theme upon which the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel often reflected to warn their contemporaries of what may come to pass. Here, too, Pioske observes that explanations concerning the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians illustrate variations on the theme of disobedience to Yahweh but also the possibility of restoration.

Perhaps worthy of more discussion in the book would be the greater interest in the past that seems to come about in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, not just in Judah, but also, as Pioske opens with, Nabonidus of Babylon’s early excavations and Herodotus’s historical work. The alleged discovery of the book of the law (possibly Deuteronomy) during Josiah’s reign, just as much as the passages from Jeremiah discussed by Pioske, all point to the past being more important in the closing centuries of the Iron Age. What shared circumstances might have made this phenomenon so widespread?

The Bible Among Ruins is a thoroughly researched and exceptionally well written book. For scholars, it offers a great deal for future consideration, particularly regarding many additional places mentioned throughout the Bible that remain to be discussed in a similar fashion. All readers, however, will benefit from the discussions of social memory, landscape, and ruin studies as they pertain to the biblical, Near Eastern, and Mediterranean worlds.

In recent decades, biblical scholars have begun to explore topics at the intersections of archaeological, biblical, and anthropological studies. Of special interest are questions relating to memory, like Daniel Pioske’s recent The Bible Among Ruins. The book’s relevance is readily apparent to Bible readers familiar with the repeated use of the phrase “to this day,” which appears no fewer than 80 times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Joshua 8:28; Judges 6:24; 2 Kings 10:27). This expression was deployed to assert that ruins and ancient monuments were still visible to biblical writers, as they remarked upon how they related to Israel’s […]