History or legend? Digging into Israel's origins

Christian Century, Feb 24, 2004 by J. Maxwell Miller

WHAT DID THE biblical writers know and when did they know it? That question formed the title of a recent book by William G. Dever. At issue is the historical veracity of the so-called historical books of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the early parts of the narrative that begins in the Book of Genesis with creation and concludes in the Book of 2 Kings with the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem.

Quite apart from controversies connected with the Genesis account of creation, historians have puzzled over the story of 12 brothers who go into Egypt and lather 12 tribes, and then under miraculous circumstances free Egypt, wander for 40 years in the wilderness, invade Canaan, conquer the land and settle down. Given that Solomon is not mentioned in any other known sources from ancient times, a modern historian also has to wonder about what to make of the Bible's description of his extensive empire, fabulous wealth and renowned wisdom. Are we dealing here with authentic historical memory, or with legends and folk tales that circulated centuries after ancient Israel would have come and gone and may have little to do with actual historical events? What did the biblical writers know and when did they know it?

Claiming archaeological support, Dever argues that "they know a lot; and they knew it early, based on older and genuinely historical accounts, both oral and written." But many scholars disagree, and also appeal to archaeological evidence. Thomas L. Thomas, for example, in Early History of the Israelite People: From Written and Archaeological Sources, contends that the texts from Genesis to 2 Kings were compiled in the Persian Period or later--more than a half millennium after Solomon would have lived, and after even doe Babylon destruction of Jerusalem would have largely faded from memory. The biblical writers had virtually no authentic historical information about early Israel at their disposal, according to Thompson, and they were not particularly interested in that anyhow. They present us instead with a theologically driven story of Israel's distant past as they thought it should have happened.

LARGELY DUE to their aggressive rhetoric and tendency to sensationalize their arguments, Dever and Thomas are perhaps the best-known combatants of what has come to be known as the "maximalist-minimalist debate." A maximalist is one who is prepared to write a relatively full history of early Israelite history by beginning with the Genesis--2 Kings narrative and filling it out with information from oilier written sources and from archaeology. Minimalists, on the other hand, place little confidence in the veracity of the Bible and want to know what can be learned about ancient Israel from other written sources and archaeology alone, without any prompting from the Bible (what is learned, they would say, is not much). If a true minimalist were to try to write a history of early Israel, it would be a short one.

Unfortunately, much of the rhetoric surrounding the debate is misleading. A few clarifications: First, the debate is not new, but has roots going back to the 19th century and tentacles that go back even further. Second, while the debate may seem to be about the relevance of archaeology for understanding ancient Israel's origins and early history, the divisive issue is not the relevance of archaeology but the way archaeological evidence is interpreted. Third, few mainstream biblical scholars and Middle Eastern archaeologists could fairly be tagged as maximalists or minimalists, and most are put off by the rhetoric surrounding the debate.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries scholars began to employ the historical-critical method; philologists made the first major breakthroughs toward deciphering the languages and reading the documents of ancient Israel's neighbors; and archaeologists began to probe the ruins of cities from biblical times and developed techniques for dating their findings. Close on the heels of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), German scholar Julius Wellhausen published Prolegomena to the History of Israel (1883; tr. 1885), which had a corresponding impact on the study of the history of ancient Israel.

Wellhausen argued that the material from Genesis through 2 Kings was compiled from several different sources, the oldest of which postdated Solomon and the latest of which postdated the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. This raised the question of whether the Genesis through 2 Kings material could be regarded as a reliable source of information for Solomon's period or earlier. Few present-day scholars accept Wellhausen's views as originally presented, but most of those teaching in major universities and seminaries would regard him as on the right track.

At fist scholars had high hopes that inscriptions and other written documents from ancient times ("epigraphical" sources) would confirm the biblical account and add further information. These scholars were reassured when, in 1896, Egyptologists discovered a reference to Israel in an inscription from the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah (1212-1262 BC). Philological research continued through the 20th century, and there were other important epigraphical discoveries. In 1993-94, for example, archaeologists excavating at Tell Dan in modern Israel discovered two fragments of an inscription that refers to "the house of David."