Debate: In This Corner: William Dever and Israel Finkelstein Debate the Early History of Israel - The BAS Library
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Debate: In This Corner: William Dever and Israel Finkelstein Debate the Early History of Israel

By Hershel Shanks

“Israel Finkelstein has achieved an archaeological first. To my knowledge, there is no precedent in the entire literature of our field for such a full-scale attack on a senior colleague and his life’s work.” So begins William Dever’s response to an article in the archaeological journal Tel Aviv by Israel Finkelstein entitled “Gezer Revisited and Revised.” The excavation of Gezer is Dever’s proudest archaeological accomplishment. Dever originally called his response to Finkelstein, published in the same journal, “Gezer Reviled,” but was persuaded to change it to the less flamboyant, “Visiting the Real Gezer: A Reply to Israel Finkelstein.”1 Dever […]

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Footnotes

1.

See “A ‘Centrist’ at the Center of Controversy,” BAR, November/December 2002.

2.

See “A ‘Centrist’ at the Center of Controversy,” BAR, November/December 2002.

Endnotes

1.

Finkelstein’s article appeared in Tel Aviv 29, no. 2 (2002), pp. 262–296; Dever responded in Tel Aviv 30, no. 2 (2003), pp. 259–282.

2.

Technically G. Ernest Wright was the director in 1964 and 1965 and Professor Joe D. Seger from 1972 to 1974, but Dever has always been the excavation’s dominant figure and spokesman.

3.

New York: Free Press, 2000.

4.

Dever, “Excavating the Hebrew Bible or Burying It Again?” BASOR 322 (May 2001), pp. 67–77.