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The Bible Unearthed
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The Bible Unearthed (2001) (edit title/settings)

Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts

by Neil Asher Silberman (Author), Israel Finkelstein (edit contributors)

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In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at... read more

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  • “Did David and Solomon Exist?This question, put so baldly, may sound intentionally provocative. David and Solomon are such central religious icons to both Judaism and Christianity that the recent assertions of radical biblical critics that King David is “no more a historical figure than King Arthur,” have been greeted in many religious and scholarly circles with outrage and disdain. Biblical historians such as Thomas Thompson and Niels Peter Lemche of the University of Copenhagen and Philip Davies of the University of Sheffield, dubbed “biblical minimalist” by their detractors, have argued that David and Solomon, the united monarchy of Israel, and indeed the entire biblical description of the history of Israel are no more than elaborate, skillful ideological constructs produced by the priestly circles in Jerusalem in post-exilic or even Hellenistic times.”
    Authors
  • “Yet from a purely literary and archaeological standpoint, the minimalists have some points in their favor. A close reading of the biblical description of the days of Solomon clearly suggests that this was a portrayal of an idealized past, a glorious Golden Age. The reports of Solomon’s fabulous wealth (making “silver as common in Jerusalem as stone,” according to 1 Kings 10:27) and his legendary harem (housing seven hundred wives and princesses and three-hundred concubines, according to 1 Kings 11:3) are details too exaggerated to be true. Moreover, for all their reported wealth and power, neither David nor Solomon is mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text. And the archaeological evidence in Jerusalem for the famous building projects of Solomon is nonexistent. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century excavations around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem failed to identify even a trace of Solomon’s fabled Temple or place complex. And while certain levels and structures at sites in other regions of the country have indeed been linked to the era of the united monarchy, their dating, as we shall see, is far from clear.”
    Authors
  • “Jerusalem has been excavated time and again—and with a particularly intense period of investigation of Bronze and Iron Age remains in the 1970s and 1980s under the direction of Yigal Shiloh, of the Hebrew University, at the city of David, the original urban core of Jerusalem. Surprisingly, as Tel Aviv University archaeologist David Ussishkin pointed out, fieldwork there and in other parts of biblical Jerusalem failed to provide significant evidence for a tenth century occupation. Not only was any sign of monumental architecture missing, but so were even simple pottery sherds. The types that are so characteristic of the tenth century at other sites are rare in Jerusalem. Some scholars have argued that later, massive building activities in Jerusalem wiped out all signs of the earlier city. Yet excavations in the city of David revealed impressive finds from the Middle Bronze Age and from later centuries of the Iron Age—just not from the tenth century BC. The most optimistic assessment of this negative evidence is that tenth century Jerusalem was rather limited in extent, perhaps not more than a typical hill country village.”
    Authors
  • “There is absolutely no archaeological indication of the wealth, manpower, and level of organization that would be required to support large armies—even for brief periods—in the field. Even if the relatively few inhabitants of Judah were able to mount swift attacks on neighboring regions, how would they have possibly been able to administer the vast and even more ambitious empire of David’s son Solomon?”
    Authors
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • We now know through archaeological research that camels were not domesticated as beasts of burden earlier than the late second millennium and were not widely used in that capacity in the ancient Near East until well after 1000 BCE.
    Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers
  • The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause.
    Highlighted by 18 Kindle customers
  • for all their reported wealth and power, neither David nor Solomon is mentioned in a single known Egyptian or Mesopotamian text. And the archaeological evidence in Jerusalem for the famous building projects of Solomon is nonexistent.
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • These and other anachronisms suggest an intensive period of writing the patriarchal narratives in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • we now know that the early books of the Bible and their famous stories of early Israelite history were first codified (and in key respects composed) at an identifiable place and time: Jerusalem in the seventh century BCE.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • The historical saga contained in the Bible—from Abraham’s encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses’ deliverance of the children of Israel from bondage, to the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah—was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • The saga of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt is neither historical truth nor literary fiction. It is a powerful expression of memory and hope born in a world in the midst of change. The confrontation between Moses and pharaoh mirrored the momentous confrontation between the young King Josiah and the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • These dramatic changes in religious leadership have prompted biblical scholars such as Baruch Halpern to suggest that in a period of no more than a few decades in the late eighth and early seventh century BCE, the monotheistic tradition of Judeo-Christian civilization was born.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • In that innovation, modern monotheism* was born.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • There is good reason to suggest that there were always two distinct highland entities, of which the southern was always the poorer, weaker, more rural, and less influential—until it rose to sudden, spectacular prominence after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
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First Sentence edit see section history

In the beginning was a single family, with a special relationship to God.

Table of Contents edit see section history

PART ONE: The Bible as History
1. Searching for the Patriarchs
2. Did the Exodus Happen?
3. The Conquest of Canaan
4. Who Were the Israelites?
5. Memories of a Golden Age?

PART TWO: The Rise and Fall of Ancient Israel
6. One State, One Nation, One People?
7. Israel's Forgotten First Kingdom
8. In the Shadow of Empire

PART THREE: Judah and the Making of Biblical History
9. The Transformation of Judah
10. Between War and Survival
11. A Great Reformation
12. Exile and Return

Epilogue: The Future of Biblical Israel

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Free Press
Country: United States of America
Publication Date: January 10, 2001
ISBN: 9780684869124
Page Count: 385

Classification edit see section history

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