Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology

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Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology

• Introduction

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• The Bible - A Brief Introduction
• - The term Bible from the Greek word Biblia
  meaning books
• The Bible is a library of books, written over a
  period of 1100 years, rather than one book
• The term has different meanings for a Jew, a
  Protestant Christian, and a Roman Catholic
  Christian (see list of books in your Bible)
• The Jewish Bible is called the Hebrew
  Scriptures/TANAK.
• The Christian Bible consists of two major
  segments
• Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures
• New Testament.

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• Various views on the nature of the Bible
• A depository of divine revelation
• A reflection both of Gods progressive
  self-revelation and of humankinds ever
  increasing understanding of that revelation
• A human record and interpretation of Gods
  activity in history and of the human response to
  that activity
• A human representation of the origins and early
  life of two ancient communities Ancient Israel
  and Early Christianity
• An anthology of the literature produced by
  ancient Israel and early Christianity.

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• Difficulties in the Study of the Bible
• The sheer bulk and diversity of the material
• The historical and geographical remoteness of
  the biblical world
• The thought world of the Bible is in many ways
  quite foreign to contemporary westerners
• Many have certain preconceived ideas about the
  Bible that can make a realistic and objective
  study of its exceedingly difficult.

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• Method in the study of the Bible
• Biblical-Critical Approach to the study of the
  Bible
• Lower Criticism or Textual Criticism
• Its Goal the recovery of the actual words
  written by various authors
• Higher Criticism or Literary-Historical
  Criticism
• Deals with questions about the origin and
  history of the biblical materials
• Deals also with the preliterary or oral form of
  these materials, that is, form criticism, which
  attempts to trace the history and development of
  the biblical traditions before they were reduced
  to writing.

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• Overall Goal of Biblical Criticism
• To place the various parts of the Bible in their
  concrete historical and cultural setting
• To help the modern reader of the Bible put
  herself/himself back in the position of the
  ancient communities, that is, Ancient Israel and
  Early Christianity, that produced and used the
  biblical materials and, thus, to determine what
  these materials meant to those communities.

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• Summary
• The Bible may be viewed as a collection of
  historical, theological, and instructional
  materials which were produced, utilized,
  preserved, and eventually Canonized (declared
  authoritative) by Ancient Israel and the Early
  Christian Church
• The Bible is actually a library of books
• A modern approach to the study of the Bible is
  called Biblical Criticism /Textual Criticism
  and Literary-Historical Criticism.

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• The Bible as a Historical Source
• - The Debate Between
• - The Consertative/Maximalists Position
• (See Textbook, pp. 5, 10-12, 101, 107, 160.) and
• The Minimalists Position
• (See Textbook, pp. 5,12-14, 101, 160).
• A Centrist Position
• Finkelstein (See Textbook, pp. 9, 14) and
• Mazar middle of the road (See Textbook, pp.
  20, 29-31).

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• Biblical Archaeology
• archaeological activity that pertains to the
  world of the Bible and as upholding what he views
  as the essential relationship between artifact
  and text (See Textbook, p. 7, 21-33, especially
  pp. 32-33).
• The question of the historical relevance of the
  biblical text for reconstructing early Israels
  history (p. 7).
• Mazar sees this issue as lying at the heart of
  the current controversy over the modern quest for
  the historical Israel (p. 7).
• Finkelstein cites three examples of
  archaeologys contribution to the quest for the
  early historical Israel (pp. 6-7, 17-18).

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• Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts
• - Documents from Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and
  Mesopotamia
• See Hallo and Younger, The Context of Scripture
  (1997-2001)
• Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World
• Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World
• Archival Documents from the Biblical World.
• Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to
  the Old Testament (1050, 1965, 1969).

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The Tel Dan Inscription
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Mesha/Moabite Inscription