In the highest, most sophisticated levels of professional Biblical archaeology, there is a certain prejudice against the Bible.
I take as my text a passage from a new book of which (full disclosure) the Biblical Archaeology Society, publisher of BAR, is a copublisher with the Israel Exploration Society. The book, written by my good friend Ronny Reich of Haifa University and excavator of the City of David,1 is titled Excavating the City of David (reviewed in this issue). It is a magnum opus that will be read and studied a hundred years from now; but it does treat dismissively the excavation of another good friend, Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University. (Ronny even accuses Eilat of acting “unethically,” but that is another matter.2)
One of Eilat’s crimes, according to Ronny, is using the Bible as a guide to where to excavate. Let me unpack this: As Eilat read the Bible, it seemed to indicate just where King David’s palace might be buried in the City of David—at least, it did to her. On this basis, she decided to dig there.
This was highly improper and unscientific, according to Ronny. When he heard that Eilat was using reasoning like this to find King David’s palace, he knew immediately that, proceeding in this way, “she would certainly find that building” (emphasis in original).
According to Ronny, that is the wrong way to proceed. Eilat, in my vernacular, has it bass ackwards. Ronny refers to “minimalists,” who do it properly, “correlat[ing] their teachings first and foremost to the archaeological findings” and only then looking at the Bible. Ronny counts himself as one of these “minimalists,”3 who permit the use of the Biblical text “only if it is supported by another historical source (for example, Assyrian documents) or clearly supported by appropriate, unambiguously dated archaeological data (for example, an inscription found on a site).”4
I would have thought that Eilat would have been praised for proceeding quite scientifically—according to the vaunted scientific method that has produced so much for our civilization. As I understand it, you formulate a hypothesis and then you proceed to test it, either proving or disproving it. Eilat had a hypothesis and she wanted to test it by digging.
But you can’t do that in the case of the Bible, according to Ronny.5 The reason appears to be that you can’t trust the archaeologist to test his or her hypothesis in an unbiased way once he or she formulates a hypothesis based on the Bible. If the archaeologist proceeds in this way, he or she will “certainly” find what was hypothesized. Besides, in archaeology you can’t repeat the experiment; once a particular area of a site has been excavated, it cannot be re-excavated.
Ronny, of course, is not the only archaeologist to espouse these views. Indeed, in many archaeological circles, it is the prevailing view (see “In Their Own Words”). It is OK, they say, to bring in the Bible after you have your archaeological results, but you can’t use the Bible to formulate a hypothesis or decide where to dig.
I wonder if this rule would apply to other ancient Near Eastern texts. If, for example, an archaeologist working in ancient Babylon thought a cuneiform text indicated that a city extended beyond the limits hitherto accepted and decided to test this hypothesis by digging outside what was then thought to be the city wall, would anyone question proceeding in this way?
And I wonder what poor Eilat should have done when it occurred to her on reading her Bible that the text seemed to indicate the very spot in this small 12-acre site where David’s palace was located. Drive it from her mind? Perish the thought! Or perhaps she should formulate the hypothesis and then enlist some other archaeologist, untainted by her bias, to excavate the site.
Once Eilat has excavated the site, everyone agrees, her results can and should be questioned—and they certainly have been! Essentially, there are two kinds of questions: (1) Has she correctly interpreted archaeologically what she has found? And (2) do the archaeological results substantiate or disprove her hypothesis?
It is perfectly proper to question her conclusions on both bases—whether her archaeological conclusions and her hypothesis have been substantiated—but it seems to me improper to condemn the hypothesis a priori as well as her decision to excavate in order to test it.
I can find no basis for doing so except a certain prejudice against the Bible.6
We all know that the results of excavations and their interpretation are constantly being revised with each new discovery and with each new insight. And this is as it should be. This is accepted and even laudable—unless the Bible is involved.
And this indeed raises another question: When is it OK to speculate—to express your conclusion uncertainly, as a “maybe” or “perhaps” or “likely” or “probably”? When is it OK to say that this “might be” 070David’s palace? Or, at an adjacent site, that this “might be” the palace of Queen Helena? But this is a subject for another First Person.
In the highest, most sophisticated levels of professional Biblical archaeology, there is a certain prejudice against the Bible.
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Ronny’s partner in the direction of the excavation is Eli Shukron.
2.
The accusation is made on page 267 of Reich’s book. Reich and Shukron had discovered a wall on the eastern slope of the City of David (their Area J) that they dated to Iron II. Mazar, however, suggested “in more than one article.” that the wall dates to the Middle Bronze II period. At this time, Reich and Shukron had not yet published the potsherds that in their view would date the wall. Mazar, Reich charges, “lacked the patience to wait for the publication of the sherds we discovered a few years earlier.” Thus, “Mazar’s proposal has no basis.” To speculate in this way, as Mazar did, was in Reich’s view “unethical.” Reich and Shukron answered Mazar’s contention that the wall is Middle Bronze II in “The Date of City Wall 501 in Jerusalem,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008), p. 114, where they present the pottery sherds in support of their case. “An archaeologist challenging the date of a find as presented by the excavators must come forward with concrete evidence upon which to anchor his/her interpretation,” they say. “Mazar had no such data when she suggested that the wall was constructed in the Middle Bronze Age II.”
3.
Reich, p. 266.
4.
Reich, p. 291. At one point, where Reich does turn to the Biblical text, he introduces the discussion by saying that “at this point we may dare turn to the biblical text” (p. 311). How daring can you get?
5.
Except in the case of the Bible, however, it is perfectly appropriate, according to Ronny. As he reports, “We reached [this discovery] through a proper process of logical reasoning, in which a question for study was proposed, then a theory or method for its solution was offered, and finally it was tested by means of an experiment, which in our scientific discipline is an archaeological excavation.” pp. 166–167.
6.
Reich’s book often refers in a subtly derogatory way to those who conjecture a relationship between archaeology and the Bible. An example: “There were those who jumped right away to the Book of Books, seeking and finding the biblical concept of the ‘gate between the two walls’ (Jeremiah 39:4) and connecting to our discovery” (Reich, p. 181). So far as I could tell, Reich never bothers to consider the specific matter conjectured here.
