The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (4 page)

While some of the main locales of Biblical history, such as Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, Beth-shean, and Gaza, had never been forgotten, hundreds of additional places mentioned in the Bible were unknown. By using the geographical information contained in the Bible and carefully studying the modern Arabic place-names of the country, Robinson found it was possible to identify dozens of ancient mounds and ruins with previously forgotten biblical sites.

Robinson and his successors were able to identify the extensive ruins at places like el-Jib, Beitin, and Seilun, all north of Jerusalem, as the likely sites of biblical Gibeon, Bethel, and Shiloh. This process was particularly effective in regions that had been inhabited continuously throughout the centuries and where the site’s name had been preserved. Yet subsequent
generations of scholars realized that in other places, where the modern names bore no relation to those of biblical sites in the vicinity, other criteria such as size and datable pottery types could be utilized to make identifications. Thus Megiddo, Hazor, Lachish, and dozens of other biblical locations were gradually added to the evolving reconstruction of biblical geography. In the late nineteenth century, the British Royal Engineers of the Palestine Exploration Fund undertook this work in a highly systematic manner, compiling detailed topographical maps of the entire country, from the sources of the Jordan River in the north to Beersheba in the Negev in the south.

More important even than the specific identifications was the growing familiarity with the major geographical regions of the land of the Bible (
Figure
2
): the broad and fertile coastal plain of the Mediterranean, the foothills of the Shephelah rising to the central hill country in the south, the arid Negev, the Dead Sea region and Jordan valley, the northern hill country, and the broad valleys in the north. The biblical land of Israel was an area with extraordinary climatic and environmental contrasts. It also served as a natural land bridge between the two great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Its characteristic landscapes and conditions proved in virtually every case to be reflected quite accurately in the descriptions of the biblical narrative.

During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, repeated attempts were made to establish a standard chronology for the events described in the Bible. Most were dutifully literal. Outside sources were needed to verify the Bible’s inner chronology, and they were eventually found among the archaeological remains of two of the most important—and most literate—civilizations of the ancient world.

Egypt, with its awesome monuments and vast treasure of hieroglyphic inscriptions, began to be intensively explored by European scholars in the late eighteenth century. But it was only with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics (on the basis of the trilingual Rosetta Stone) by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion in the
1820
s that the historical value of Egyptian remains for dating and possibly verifying historical events in the Bible became apparent. Although identification of the specific pharaohs mentioned in the stories of Joseph and of the Exodus remained uncertain, other direct connections became clear. A victory stele erected by Pharaoh Merneptah in
1207
BCE
mentioned a great victory over a people named Israel. In a slightly later era, Pharaoh Shishak (mentioned in
1
Kings
14
:
25
as having come up against Jerusalem to demand tribute during the fifth year of the reign of Solomon’s son) was identified as Sheshonq I of the Twenty-second Dynasty, who ruled from
945
to
924
BCE
. He left an account of his campaign on a wall in the temple of Amun at Karnak, in Upper Egypt.

Another rich source of discoveries for chronology and historical identifications came from the broad plains between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the ancient region of Mesopotamia. Beginning in the
1840
s, scholarly representatives of England, France, and eventually the United States and Germany uncovered the cities, vast palaces, and cuneiform archives of the empires of Assyria and Babylonia. For the first time since the biblical period, the main monuments and cities of those powerful Eastern empires were uncovered. Places like Nineveh and Babylon, previously known primarily from the Bible, were now seen to be the capitals of powerful and aggressive empires whose artists and scribes thoroughly documented the military campaigns and political events of their time. Thus references to a number of important biblical kings were identified in Mesopotamian cuneiform archives—the Israelite kings Omri, Ahab, and Jehu and the Judahite kings Hezekiah and Manasseh, among others. These outside references allowed scholars to see biblical history in a wider perspective, and to synchronize the reigns of the biblical monarchs with the more complete dating systems of the ancient Near East. Slowly the connections were made, and the regnal dates of Israelite and Judahite kings, Assyrian and Babylonian rulers, and Egyptian pharaohs were set in order, giving quite precise dates for the first time.

In addition, the much earlier Mesopotamian and Egyptian archives from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (c.
2000
–
1150
BCE
) at ancient sites such as Mari, and Tell el-Amarna and Nuzi, shed important light on the world of the ancient Near East and thus on the cultural milieu from which the Bible eventually emerged.

Scattered inscriptions would also be found in areas closer to the land of Israel that offered even more specific links. A triumphal description by the
Moabite king Mesha, discovered in the nineteenth century in Transjordan, mentioned Mesha’s victory over the armies of Israel and provided an outside testimony to a war between Israel and Moab that was reported in
2
Kings
3
:
4
–
27
. The single most significant inscription for historical validation was discovered in
1993
at the site of Tel Dan in northern Israel, apparently recording the victory of the Aramean king Hazael over the king of Israel and the king of the “house of David” in the ninth century
BCE
. Like the Moabite inscription, it provides an extrabiblical anchor for the history of ancient Israel.

By far the most important source of evidence about the historical context of the Bible has come from more than a hundred years of modern archaeological excavations in Israel, Jordan, and the neighboring regions. Closely tied to advances in archaeological technique worldwide, biblical archaeology has been able to identify a long sequence of readily datable architectural styles, pottery forms, and other artifacts that enable scholars to date buried city levels and tombs with a fair degree of accuracy. Pioneered by the American scholar William F. Albright in the early twentieth century, this branch of archaeology concentrated mostly on the excavation of large city mounds (called “tells” in Arabic, “tels” in Hebrew), composed of many superimposed city levels, in which the development of society and culture can be traced over millennia.

After decades of excavation, researchers have been able to reconstruct the vast archaeological context into which biblical history must be fit (
Figure 3
). Beginning with the first evidence of agriculture and settled communities in the region at the very end of the Stone Age, archaeologists have gone on to delineate the rise of urban civilization in the Bronze Age (
3500
–
1150
BCE
) and its transformation into territorial states in the succeeding period, the Iron Age (
1150
–
586
BCE
), when most of the historical events described in the Bible presumably occurred.

By the end of the twentieth century, archaeology had shown that there were simply too many material correspondences between the finds in Israel and in the entire Near East and the world described in the Bible to suggest that the Bible was late and fanciful priestly literature, written with no historical basis at all. But at the same time there were too many contradictions between archaeological finds and the biblical narratives to suggest that the Bible provided a precise description of what actually occurred.

Figure
3
: Main archaeological periods and the chronology of Judahite and Israelite kings.

So long as the biblical textual critics and the biblical archaeologists maintained their basically conflicting attitudes about the historical reliability of the Bible, they continued to live in two separate intellectual worlds. The textual critics continued to view the Bible as an object of dissection that could be split up into ever tinier sources and subsources according to the distinctive religious or political ideas each was supposed to express. At the same time, the archaeologists often took the historical narratives of the Bible at face value. Instead of using archaeological data as an independent source for the reconstruction of the history of the region, they continued to rely on the biblical narratives—particularly the traditions of the rise of Israel—to interpret their finds. Of course, there were new understandings of the rise and development of Israel as the excavations and surveys proceeded. Questions were raised about the historical existence of the patriarchs and on the date and scale of the Exodus. New theories were also developed to suggest that the Israelite conquest of Canaan may not have occurred, as the book of Joshua insists, as a unified military campaign. But for biblical events beginning at the time of David—around
1000
BCE—
the archaeological consensus, at least until the
1990
s, was that the Bible could be read as a basically reliable historical document.