Controversy: Academic Debate Crosses the Line

020

We all take pride in our for bears and in our traditions. Proud to be Irish. Or proud to be Jewish.

Or proud to be Israeli.

I have long puzzled about the propriety of this pride among archaeologists. Is it wrong—or bad—for an archaeologist to be proud of his tradition—Jew or Christian? The answer is obviously no when the question is put that way. It is not even wrong or bad for people to become an archaeologist because they want to illuminate these traditions. That interest may even determine the site an archaeologist decides to dig. Interest in a particular culture may lead one archaeologist to excavate a Mayan site, another an ancient church or monastery and a third an Iron Age site in Jordan rather than in Israel. Nothing wrong in that.

But when does this interest lead to bias? Will archaeological interpretation be guided by devotion to the tradition rather than a disinterested evaluation of the data?

Most readers of this magazine became interested in archaeology because of their interest in the Bible. I daresay many, if not most, archaeologists digging in Israel, as well as non-Muslim archaeologists digging in Jordan, became archaeologists because of an interest in the Bible.

Of course, other traditions fuel interest in particular aspects of archaeology. Most Muslims digging in Jordan are proud of their country and want to express that pride by illuminating its past. The same is true of many Israeli archaeologists: Their interest is fueled not so much by a religious interest as by a national interest, in every way parallel to the Jordanian interest in Jordan.

Is all this bad or wrong? I like to say that we all have our biases, con as much as pro. All we can do is try to become aware of them and guard against their affecting the scholarly enterprise, which should be neutral and disinterested, and based solely on the evidence, not by how we want the issue to be decided.

It is now widely acknowledged that in the early days of Biblical archaeology researchers were out to prove the Bible true, to affirm The Word. That has rightly been condemned. “We ought to recall with embarrassment,” wrote one of the most prominent American archaeologists, William G. Dever, in the late 1970s, “the attempt to prove the Biblical account[s].” Today all professional archaeologists hold the view that the purpose of Biblical archaeology is NOT to prove the truth of the Bible.

At one point, however, this justifiable reaction against the attempt to prove the Bible true went too far in the opposite direction. Dever, who worked for most of his career in Israel, favored abolishing the term Biblical archaeology.^a “There probably is no such thing,” he said. Instead, he would call his field Syro-Palestinian archaeology. He has more recently altered his position. Palestinian archaeology is not a useful term, he now says. And Biblical archaeology is a good name for a dialogue between archaeologists and Biblical scholars.^b

More recently, there has been a legitimate divide between those who pursue archaeology for the illumination it can bring to the Biblical world and those who see themselves as pure archaeologists, interested in one period as much as another, as much in the Early Bronze Age as in the Iron Age.

In the meantime, national schools have emerged to establish their own glorious history. The possibility of bias exists in all these cases. The possibility of bias is obvious in Biblical archaeology. But it is equally likely in Cypriot or Jordanian or Syrian archaeology. Or in Israeli archaeology—driven by national, rather than religious history. And also by the those who consider themselves pure archaeologists; they may well tend to be anti-Bible—and their bias may affect their product.

All we can do is conscientiously seek out our biases and actively suppress them.

When is it permissible to accuse an archaeologist of bias? I don’t really know the answer to that one. It seems that you must have some evidence. Evangelicals are often accused of bias in their work because of their faith commitment to the literal word of the Bible. I have discussed archaeology with many evangelicals; we both know the rules of the game: We talk about the 021evidence and argue based on the data—and that’s all. Is it fair to ask whether they fudge the field data? Only if you have evidence that they have done so.

A recent case charging bias may be illuminating. It may say more about the accuser, however, than about the accused.

Joseph Blenkinsopp and Ephraim Stern have a rather intense scholarly disagreement. Stern is a leading Israeli archaeologist, current head of Israel’s Archaeological Council, recently retired from Hebrew University and from his position as director of excavations at Tel Dor for 20 years. He is the editor of the New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, the standard reference, and author of Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: The Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian Periods in the Anchor Bible Research series. Blenkinsopp is a leading American Biblical scholar, recently retired from Notre Dame University and the author of Anchor Bible commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel, among other Biblical studies.

Stern has written widely about what he calls the Babylonian Gap: He contrasts the situation after the Assyrian conquest of Israel and Judah in the late eighth century B.C.E. with the situation after the Babylonian conquest in the early sixth century B.C.E. In the period after the Assyrian conquest we find extensive Assyrian-period remains just above the destruction levels. After the Babylonians conquered Judah and destroyed Jerusalem, however, there is almost a complete gap in the archaeological record until the Persians under Cyrus allowed the Exiles from Judah to return to their land. Stern calls this absence of archaeological remains after the Babylonian destruction the Babylonian Gap. During the Babylonian Gap, Stern claims, Judah was largely denuded and depopulated, most major centers having been destroyed by the Babylonians.

All wrong, says Blenkinsopp. The archaeological evidence of Babylonian destruction, apart from Jerusalem and Lachish, is uncertain at best and probably non-existent. Life in Judah went on.

This dispute was aired in BAR.^c Who won the debate is for readers to decide. But it was a fair fight.

Blenkinsopp wanted to carry the fight further, however. He wanted to make his case at greater length. Fair enough. So he wrote an article in a scholarly journal, the Journal of the Study of the Old Testament.^d There he called Stern’s response to his BAR article “dismissive and uninformative.” A little rough, but still OK. Biblical scholars and archaeologists occasionally take their gloves off.

But not satisfied with arguing the merits, Blenkinsopp devotes most of his article to demonstrating that Stern is driven not by scholarship, but by Zionist ideology. Stern’s Babylonian Gap, says Blenkinsopp, provides “a recent example of the ways in which archaeology can serve to substantiate a national-territorial agenda.”

What??? Come again. What is Blenkinsopp saying? How can a contention that Judah and Israel were largely depopulated after the Babylonian conquest and destruction be interpreted in this bizarre way? Stern’s argument is based on archaeological evidence of destruction and, equally importantly, on the fact that immediately above 022the Babylonian destruction level are Persian-period remains—nothing, or almost nothing, from the period following the Babylonian conquest. Blenkinsopp argues that Stern misinterprets the archaeological evidence and that, anyway, most people lived in the countryside, not in cities and towns. How do you get from this from this purely archaeological dispute to an argument that this is a case of archaeology in the service of a modern national-territorial agenda?

Blenkinsopp does it. Here’s how: Stern, says Blenkinsopp, is simply trying to perpetuate the Zionist myth of the empty land. Like other 19th-century nationalist movements, Zionism, Blenkinsopp tells us, “conscripted the archaeologist in the project of recovering and, where necessary, inventing, a national history.” The Zionist invention was “the myth of the empty land.”

Blenkinsopp explains that “the function of the Israeli archaeologist is to validate the Zionist political claim to the land on the basis of the biblical account of the origins of Israel and the creation of the Israelite state.” This, in turn, has a led to “a routine contamination of archaeological with biblical data.” Whoa? This is a broad charge, a taking out of the blunderbuss. How can Blenkinsopp show that Stern’s argument is an underhanded attempt to “validate the Zionist political claim to the land”? Blenkinsopp purports to show how, in Stern’s case, “History can be manipulated and controlled” to support this political claim.

Blenkinsopp recounts how in 1948, when modern Israel was founded, Israel was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” (a term Blenkinsopp adopts from an Israeli author), leading to “the forcible expulsion of indigenous Arabs” (750,000 of them, Blenkinsopp claims). Of the Arab villages that were simply “eras[ed],” Blenkinsopp singles out “Christian-Arab villages” for special note.

This myth of the empty land, Blenkinsopp contends, originated as far back as “the Hellenistic period [4th-3rd centuries B.C.E.], and there can be no doubt that it originated in a Jewish milieu.” Even that early, Blenkinsopp tell us, the Jews were trying to justify their occupation of the land by the myth of the empty land: “The story in circulation in the Hellenistic period about the original occupation of an empty Palestine is a retrojection from the time of the ‘return to Zion’” [emphasis in original].

Where does Stern fit into all this? Just wait.

“It was inevitable that it [the “return to Zion”] would be seen an an anticipation of and model for the Zionist settlement in Palestine in modern times. With equal inevitability, the question would arise whether this empty land myth could find support in the archaeological record of the [post-Babylonian-destruction period].” That’s where Stern comes in: By interpreting this period as an empty land to which the Jews returned from exile by leave of the Persian monarch, Stern is serving as a loyal soldier in the Zionist army. And not only Stern. “There is the danger, often verified in the region, that [archaeological] levels or types of data not selected [to uphold the Zionist thesis] will be irreparably damaged or destroyed.” What those Zionist archaeologists won’t do to prove a point!

“Claims of almost total destruction of urban settlements throughout Judah and neighbouring lands are therefore only part of a large and more complex picture,” Blenkinsopp explains. “But they can provide clues to the ideological basis on which the history of Judah in the [post-Babylonian-destruction period] is constructed. Professor Stern is not the only archaeologist who has advanced such claims, but his is more often quoted than most.” (Blenkinsopp mentions no one else.)

In short, Stern’s analysis provides “a recent illustration of the ways in which archaeology can serve to substantiate a national-territorial agenda.”

Does Blenkinsopp’s argument seem as farfetched and baseless to others as it does to me? It appears that Blenkinsopp’s position is grounded in simple anti-Zionism. He is determined to find a Zionist basis for Stern’s Babylonian Gap argument. By making such an outlandish argument, however, Blenkinsopp only indicts himself.

Blenkinsopp comes across as unwilling to argue the archaeological merits or demerits of the Babylonian Gap, instead charging his opponent with Zionist bias.

If he wishes to show how Zionist bias has infected the archaeological enterprise, why doesn’t Blenkinsopp focus on scholars with whom he is not involved in a bitter scholarly dispute? It would appear to an outsider that he is using the old trick: When you can’t win an argument on the merits, call the other guy names.

One wonders whether he would accuse an American evangelical scholar of Zionist bias in the same circumstances. Or is it only Israeli scholars who are guilty of a Zionist bias?

And dare we ask: When does anti-Zionism cross the line into anti-Semitism?

Verdict: No easy answers.

We all take pride in our for bears and in our traditions. Proud to be Irish. Or proud to be Jewish.

Or proud to be Israeli.