Archaeology and History of Israel

Old Testament 1 Essay

Do you agree with this claim, "Archaeology does not provide any significant help in the history of Israel"? Support your answer with at least three archaeological examples.

The history of Israel is one in which gives the nation of Israel its uniqueness and its people an identity, similar to how the history of every other nation serves to give them their distinctiveness; yet, unlike many of such national histories, the history of Israel is intricately tied to religious beliefs - namely, Christianity and Judaism - that about 1/3 of the global population profess faith in. The Christian and Hebrew Bibles, in contrast to many other religious texts, are not just collections of 'instructional' writings on theological and ethical teachings but they also include large portions detailing accounts of how God interacted with the people of Israel in its 'ancient history' ; and for many belonging to the Christian and Jewish faiths, it is through this 'history' that reveals not only much of the nature of their God but also how they should respond to this God. Thus it is not surprising to find that when modern archaeology in the land of Israel started in earnest in mid-to-late 19th century, many attempts have been made to link archaeological findings as evidences that verify the historicity of the Christian and Hebrew Bibles.

Archaeology, as a related discipline to history, can be simply defined as "the study of the past by finding the remains left behind by people who lived in the past" and archaeologists are involved in the twofold work of "the discovery and reclamation of the ancient remains" which typically comprises working on the excavated site (or 'field work'), as well as, the "analysis, interpretation and publication" of these remains. In the century following the commencement of modern archaeology in Israel, while improvements made to excavation and retrieval techniques are, perhaps, largely welcomed, even if not always fully accepted , interpretations of retrieved data, especially in the past three to four decades, have been generally controversial. This is mainly due to the fact that, after World War II and especially from 1970s onwards , comparatively more archaeologists are no longer willing to accept the Christian and Jewish Bibles, uncritically, as an accurate historical - at least how history is understood today - account of Israel ; this often leads to conflicting judgements made on archaeological findings between those who lean towards seeing the Bibles as more of a 'a-historical' theological literature and those who are slanted to seeing it as both historically and theologically accurate. With such controversies of interpretation, is it still possible to use archaeology data, with confidence, in reaffirming and reconstructing Israel's ancient history?

In this paper then, by looking into the archaeological findings of three events that played crucial roles in ancient Israelite history, my aim is to discuss the validity of the claim that "Archaeology does not provide any significant help in the history of Israel".

The 'Exodus' From Egypt

If one were to ask a Jewish person to name the single most significant event in the ancient history of Israel, it would likely be that of the Exodus. The Bible (hereafter used to refer both Christian and Jewish Bibles) records Exodus as that miraculous episode when God delivered the Hebrew people, who were tortured slaves in Egypt, from the hands of the Egyptian Pharaoh; this was done firstly, by parting the 'Red Sea' which allowed the Hebrews a path of escape from Egypt and secondly, by drowning the pursuing Egyptian army when God 'closed up' the path with the waters of the 'Red Sea' after the Hebrews had successfully crossed over from Egypt.

Among archaeologists, however, there are a number who doubts if the exodus event, as portrayed in the Bible, ever existed; prominent archaeologist, William Dever, is quoted as saying "the historicity of Exodus is a 'dead issue'" while respected historian/archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, who is a Jew himself, deems that "90% of scholars do not believe there was ever an Exodus from Egypt" . From their point of view, some of the main problems are the lack of physical evidences that, during the time of Moses, a big group of Israelites running into the millions :

i) Existed in Egypt;

ii) Caused a large depopulation to the land of Egypt which is estimated to be inhabited by 3 million Egyptians during the time of the Exodus ;

iii) Have wandered in the Sinai desert.

Furthermore, for some, it is problematic trying to imagine, in a 'logical' manner, such a big group of Israelites "crossing bodies of water or moving through narrow Sinai passes in any reasonable amount of time" .

Yet despite these problems, there are others who believe that the Exodus actually happened even among those who are skeptical over the accuracy of the Bible history relating to early Israel. Steinberg, who holds this position, quotes Bright, "there can really be little doubt that ancestors of Israel had been slaves and had escaped in some marvelous way. Almost no one today would question it" and argued that "it is unlikely that any nation would make up a tradition that its founders had suffered shameful servitude in a foreign land" ; Steinberg, however, believed that a radically smaller number of people took part in the Exodus than the 600,000 thousand men that the Bible mentions which he believes was a mistake and contradiction to other Bible passages . Such an approach would then allow one to accept the existence of the Exodus while minimizing the problems of the lack of archaeological evidences since the inability to find physical remains left behind by a group in the very low thousands, which Mendenhall argues for , is more acceptable than one in the millions. Furthermore, for proponents of the Exodus event's historicity, like Free who cited some historical examples, argues that the lack of written records for this event by the ancient Egyptians was because of the latter's practice of omitting records of events that were uncomplimentary to them; the Exodus being an event, as recorded in the Bible, that is connected with mass number of deaths through divine plagues and extermination of the Egyptian army would then, to such proponents, fall under the uncomplimentary label . It must be mentioned however, others questioned such reasoning since,