Why Is Biblical Archaeology So Focused on the Old Testament?

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Since its beginnings, the academic study of biblical archaeology has been defined almost exclusively as the archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Age worlds of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel. Generations of biblical archaeologists—whether trained in North America, Europe, or Israel—have largely confined their studies and fieldwork to these periods and the often heavily debated cultural and historical questions that arise, such as the nature of ancient Israel’s arrival in Canaan or the historicity of the United Monarchy. Although the term “biblical archaeology” is sometimes used also in connection with Paul’s missionary journeys in Asia Minor and Greece, the […]

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Footnotes

1. See William G. Dever, “Watchamacallit: Why It’s So Hard to Name Our Field,” BAR, July/August 2003.

2. See Thomas W. Davis, “Faith and Archaeology—A Brief History to the Present,” BAR, March/April 1993.

3. See Maynard P. Maidman, “Abraham, Isaac & Jacob Meet Newton, Darwin & Wellhausen,” BAR, May/June 2006.

Endnotes

1. Interestingly, at the popular level, as in the pages of BAR, biblical archaeology has typically been presented more broadly, to include also the world of the New Testament.

2. William Foxwell Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1946), p. 5.

3. William Foxwell Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity: Monotheism and the Historical Process (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1940), p. 306.

4. Ibid., pp. 301–304.

5. William Foxwell Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine: A Survey of the Ancient Peoples and Cultures of the Holy Land (London: Pelican, 1949), p. 238.

6. See Thomas W. Davis, Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 95, 97.