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Columbia Encyclopedia: biblical archaeology,
term applied to the archaeology of the biblical lands, especially those of the ancient Middle East. While the thousands of written texts found in the languages of the ancient Middle East illuminate the Bible itself, the artifacts uncovered by archaeologists help re-create the cultural setting of its time.

Biblical archaeology developed in earnest in the early part of the 19th cent. when the British biblical scholar Edward Robinson traveled across Palestine and opened the way for study of the area. The founding (1865) of the Palestine Exploration Fund in Great Britain further encouraged research; by 1900 biblical archaeological societies had been formed in Germany, France, and the United States. The system developed by Flinders Petrie at Tel-el-Hesy (see Eglon 2) to date pottery is of the greatest importance for the archaeology of Palestine, where spectacular monuments and written material are rarely found. Other important excavations in Palestine were undertaken at Jericho by John Garstang and others, as well as at Megiddo, Samaria, Gibeah 1, Beth-shan, Lachish, Ezion-geber, and Hazor 1. Outside Palestine the important archaeological discoveries in the old lands of Egypt, Sumer (see also Ur), Babylonia (see also Gilgamesh and Hammurabi), Assyria, Byblos, Nuzi, Ugarit, and Jordan (see also Moabite stone) did much to increase knowledge of the Bible.

The Palestine Dept. of Antiquities, founded 1918, encouraged research until the turbulent years preceding the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948; since that time some of the most important archaeological work in Palestine has been conducted by Israeli archaeologists, e.g., the excavation of the ancient tel (an artificial mound formed by the debris of settlements of ancient cities) of Joppa in 1948 and 1955 and the work at Arad from 1962 to 1967. Herod the Great's impressive building projects at Caesarea are being extensively investigated. Outside the borders of Israel, a large cache of clay tablets came to light in 1975 at Ebla (Tell Mardikh in Syria)—the center of a large Caananite empire that flourished c.26th–23th cent. B.C.

After two centuries of biblical archaeology, it is possible to read the Bible in a new light. It has become clear that ancient Palestine was an integral part of the whole cultural area of the ancient Middle East. Archaeology confirms the existence of fertility cults in Canaan and supports the theory that there was not a sudden era of conquest by Hebrew tribes in the premonarchical period. Excavations have also failed to find evidence that would support many of the biblical descriptions of the monarchial period.

Archaeology cannot confirm theological truths or articles of faith. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 and in the subsequent decade and the finds at sites in the vicinity of Qumran have revolutionized the understanding of Judaism in the New Testament era. The discovery of several manuscripts of the Greek New Testament of the 2d and 3d cent. A.D., the finding of the Nag Hammadi corpus of Gnostic scriptures in 1946, and the steady publication of Egyptian papyri in the 20th cent. have enlarged perceptions respectively of the accuracy of the New Testament text, the diversity and vibrancy of early Christianity, and the kind of Greek in which the New Testament was written.

Bibliography

See A. Negev, ed., Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land (1972); H. D. Lance, The Old Testament and the Archaeologist (1981); P. Matthiae, Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered (1981); W. G. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research (1990); A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible 10,000–586 B.C.E. (1990); F. M. Cross, The Ancient Library of Qumran (1995).

 
 
Wikipedia: biblical archaeology

Biblical archaeology is "the archaeology of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament."[1] It was given its theoreticfal framework, and enjoyed its most influential period, in the early to mid 20th century through the influence of William F. Albright; the American "biblical archaeology" school which he founded had a profound influence on both biblical scholarship and evangelical theology of the time, cementing the view that archaeology had demonstrated the essential truth of the Old Testament narrative, especially that part relating to the Biblical Patriarchs, the Exodus, and the conquest of Canaan. This consensus was overturned in the 1970s, when Albrightian "biblical archaeology" was replaced in the field by processual and post-processual archaeology, which sees archaeology as an anthropological rather than a historical discipline. Despite this, the reliance of American field excavation on denominational support has meant that the Albrightian paradigm continues to influence contemporary archaeology in the region.

Background

The foundations of biblical archaeology were laid in the 19th century with the work of scholars such as Johann Jahn, whose manual of biblical antiquities, Biblische Archäologie, (1802, translated into English 1839) was immensely influential in the middle years of the 19th century, and Edward Robinson, whose Biblical Researches in Palestine, the Sinai, Petrae and Adjacent Regions (1841) became a popular best-seller, demonstrating that scientific research could verify the accuracy and trustworthiness of the bible.[2][3] In 1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund was established by a group of English clergymen and scholars "to promote research into the archaeology and history, manners and customs and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of biblical Palestine and the Levant";[4] it was followed by the Deutscher Palästina-Verein (1877), the École Biblique (1890), the American School of Oriental Research in (1900), and the British School of Archaeology in (1919). The research these institutions sponsored, at least in these early days, was primarily geographic; it was not until the 1890s that Sir Flinders Petrie introduced the basic principles of scientific excavation, including stratigraphy and ceramic typology.[5]

William F. Albright and the Biblical Archaeology school

The dominant figure in 20th century biblical archaeology, defining its scope and creating the mid-century consensus on the relationship between archaeology, the bible, and the history of ancient Israel, was William F. Albright. An American with roots in the American Evangelical tradition (his parents were Baptist missionaries in Chile), Director of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), (now the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research) through the `1920s and 1930s, editor of ASOR's Bulletin until 1968, and author of over a thousand books and articles, Albright drew biblical archaeology into the contemporary debates over the origins and reliability of the bible. In the last decades of the 19th century Julius Wellhausen put forward the documentary hypothesis, which explained the bible as the composite product of authors working between the 10th and 5th centuries BC. "This raised the question whether the Genesis through 2 Kings material could be regarded as a reliable source of information for Solomon’s period or earlier."[6]

Post-Wellhausen scholars such as Hermann Gunkel, Albrecht Alt and Martin Noth were suggesting that the written texts studied by Wellhausen rested on a body of oral tradition which reflected genuine history, but which could not themselves be regarded as historically accurate accounts of events. Albright saw archaeology as the search for the physical evidence which would test these theories through the comparative study of ancient texts (notably those from Ebla, Mari, the Tel Amarna and Nuzi) and material finds. In his conception biblical archaeology embraced all the lands mentioned in the Bible, taking in any finds which could "throw some light, directly or indirectly, on the Bible."[7] By the middle of the 20th century the work of Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck, E. A. Speiser, G. Ernest Wright and Cyrus Gordon, had produced a consensus that biblical archaeology had provided physical evidence for the originating historical events behind the Old Testament narratives: in the words of Albright, "Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history."[8] The consensus allowed the creation of authoritative textbooks such as John Bright's History of Israel (1959).[9] Bright did not believe that the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph could be regarded as reliable sources of history, or that it was possible to erconstruct the origins of Israel from the biblical text alone; but he did believe that the stories in Genesis reflected the physical reality of the 20th-17th centuries BC, and that it was therefore possible to write a history of the origins of Israel by comparing the biblcal accounts with what was known of the time from other sources.[10]

Biblical archaeology today

The Albrightian consensus was overturned in the 1970s. Fieldwork, notably Kathleen Kenyon's excavations at Jericho, was not supporting the conclusions the biblical archaeologists had drawn, with the result that central theories squaring the biblical narrative with archaeological finds, such as Albright's reconstruction of Abraham as an Amorite donkey caravaneer, were being rejected by the archaeological community. The challenge reached its climax with the publication of two important studies: In 1974 Thomas L. Thompson's The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives re-examined the record of biblical archaeology in realtion to the Patriarchal narratives in Genesis and concluded that "not only has archaeology not proven a single event of the Partiarchal narratives to be historical, it has not shown any of the traditions to be likely." [11] and in 1975 John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition reached a similar conclusion about the usefulness of tradition history: "A vague presupposition about the antiquity of the tradition based upon a consensus approval of such arguments should no longer be used as a warrant for proposing a history of the tradition related to early premonarchic times."[12] At the same time a new generation of archaeologists, notably William G. Dever, was criticising the older generation for failing to take note of the revolution in archaeology known as processualism, which saw the discipline as a scientific one allied to anthropology, rather than a part of the corpus of the humanities linked to history and theology. Biblical archaeology, Dever said, remained "altogether too narrowly within a theological angle of vision,"[13] and should be abandoned and replaced with a regional Syro-Palestinian archaeology operating within a processual framework.[14]

Dever was broadly successful: most archaeologists working in the world of the Bible today do so within a processual or post-processual framework: yet few would describe themselves in these terms.[15] The reasons for this attachment to the old nomenclature are complex, but are connected with the link between excavators (especially American ones) and the denominational institutions and benefactors who employ and support them, and with the unwillingness of biblical scholars, both conservative and liberal, to reject the link between the bible and archaeology.[16] The result has been a blurring of the distinction between the theologically-based archaeology which interprets the archaeological record as "substantiating in general the theological message of a God who acts in history,"[17] and Dever's vision of Syro-Palestinian archaeology as an "independent, secular discipline ... pursued by cultural historians for its own sake."[18]

Major discoveries

Milestones prior to 1914

Biblical Archaeology began after publication by Edward Robinson (American professor of Biblical literature; 1794-1863) of his travels through Palestine during the first half of the 19th century (a time when the oldest complete Hebrew scripture only dated to the Middle Ages), which highlighted similarities between modern Arabic place-names and Biblical city names.

The Palestine Exploration Fund sponsored detailed surveys led by Charles Warren during the late 1860s (initially financed by Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts in 1864 to improve Jerusalem's sanitary conditions), which culminated with the formal publication of "The Survey of Western Palestine" from 1871-1877.

The highlight of this period was Warren's work around the Temple Mount of Jerusalem, where he discovered the foundation stones of Herod's Temple, the first Israelite inscriptions on several jar handles with LMLK seals, and water shafts under the City of David.

  • 1890 Sir W.M.F. Petrie noticed strata exposed by waterflow adjacent to Tell el-Hesi (originally believed to be Biblical Lachish, now probably Eglon) and popularized details of pottery groups excavated therefrom. F.J. Bliss continued digging there in 1891-2.

Subsequent highlights of major sites mentioned in the Bible where excavations spanned more than one season:

Milestones during 1914 - 1945

Following World War I, during the British Mandate of Palestine, antiquities laws were established for Palestinian territory along with a Department of Antiquities (later to become the modern Israel Antiquities Authority) and the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem (now named the Rockefeller Museum).

John Garstang was instrumental in these accomplishments. W.F. Albright dominated the scholarship of this period and had long-lasting influence on Biblical historians based on his analysis of Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery.

Milestones during 1945 - 1967

Milestones after 1967

Following the Six-day War, archeologists conducted more extensive excavations within the city limits of modern Jerusalem. One highlight in particular came from Ketef Hinnom just southwest of the Old City: two small silver scrolls uniquely preserve Biblical texts older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Both of these amulets contain the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers; one also contains a quote found in parallel verses of Exodus (20:6) and Deuteronomy (5:10 and 7:9). The same verses appear again later in Daniel (9:4) and Nehemiah (1:5).

Confirmed Biblical structures

  • Gibeon pool (at el-Jib)
  • Hezekiah's tunnel under Jerusalem
  • Jericho's walls. John Garstangin the 1930s dated Jericho's destruction to around 1400 BC, but Kathleen Kenyon's excavation in the 1950s redated it to around 1550 BC. Bryant Wood's 1990 proposed redating of Kenyon's work to Garstang has not been supported by subsequent studies.(Radiocarbon Vol. 37, Number 2, 1995.). [1] [2]
  • Lachish siege ramp of Sennacherib
  • Pool of Siloam (unearthed in 2004)
  • Second Temple pre-Herodian Walls. The outline of the walls of the square platform that predates the Herodian expansion and, therefore, dates either form the reconstruciton in the Persian period under Ezra and Nehemiah or is a survival of the pre-exilic first Temple have been located on the surface of the present platform. The northwestern corner was visible (until it was concealed recently by the waqf) as the lowest step in a flight of stairs that parallets the eastern wall of the Mount, the north eastern corner as a protruding stone, the south eastern corner as a slight alteration in the angel of the eastern wall where the older platform joins the Herodian expansion. The courses of stone that form the center of the eastern wall are also pre-Herodian, and match the stone masonry of the north west corner of the original platform, now a concealed bottom step. (Leen and Kathleen Ritmeyer, Secrets of Jerusalem's Temple Mount,Biblical Archaeology Society, Washington D.C., 2006)
  • Second Temple (confirmed by Western/Wailing wall constructed by Herod the Great)
  • Shechem temple (spanning the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age) corresponding to the "House of (the god) Baalberith" in Judges 9
  • 19 tumuli located west of Jerusalem, undoubtedly dating to the Judean monarchy, but possibly representing sites of memorial ceremonies for the kings as mentioned in 2 Chronicles 16:14, 21:19, 32:33, and the book of Jeremiah 34:5
  • Gezer Walls and City Gate. Verification of the site comes from Hebrew inscriptions found engraved on rocks, several hundred meters from the tel. These inscriptions from the 1st century BCE read "boundary of Gezer."

Artifacts from documented excavations

  • Azariah bulla (seal impression) found in 1978 during Yigal Shiloh’s excavation of old Jerusalem. The inscription consists of two lines of writing separated by two parallel lines. It reads “Belonging to Azaryahu, son of Hilkiyahu.” The impression does not mention the title of the owner. Yigal Shiloh, “A Group of Hebrew Bullae From the City of David,” Israel Exploration Journal 36 (1986), pp. 16-38
  • Balaam texts (ink/paint on plaster found at Deir 'Alla in Jordan that parallels Numbers chapters 22-24)
  • Ebla (Tell Mardikh) cuneiform archives. These include a king of Ebla named Ebrum, who some identify as the Biblical patriarch Eber (or Heber), after whom the Hebrews were named.[citation needed] Also reported are references to people with Semitic names and gods similar to those in the Bible. They are also rumored[citation needed] to contain references to the same five cities mentioned in the book of Genesis: Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela/Zoar in the same order as in Genesis 14. The government of Syria continues to withhold complete publication of the texts, and this story remains a rumor.[citation needed] Quoting Paolo Matthiae:

The tablets cover a thousand years before Abraham, and a thousand years, even in the fourth millennium before Christ, was a very, very long time. They tell us much, but what they don't tell us - what they can't tell us - is whether the Bible is true or not. They have nothing to do with the Bible, at least not directly, and what we have here is not a biblical expedition. If we have tablets with legends similar to those of the Bible it means only that such legends existed round here long before the Bible." ( C. Bermant and M. Weitzman, Ebla: A Revelation In Archaeology, Op. Cit., p. 2.)

  • Ekron inscription (discovered in 1993 at Tel Miqne)
  • Gath ostracon
    • Found by A. Maeir while excavating Tell es-Safi in 2005
    • Incised with nine letters representing two names (אלות ולת) etymologically related to Goliath (גלית)
  • Gemariah the son of Shaphan seal impression stamped on bulla
    • Found during Yigal Shiloh's excavations of Jerusalem in 1983, it probably belonged to the person recorded in Jeremiah 36:10
  • "House of David" inscription on Tel Dan Stele
    • It consists of three fragments: the first and largest was discovered in 1993, and two smaller fragments were discovered in 1994.)
  • Izbet Sartah ostracon; 2 fragments excavated in 1976
    • 5 incised lines of 80-83 letters (readings of epigraphers vary), the last line being an abecedary
    • Found in the silo of an unfortified village (possibly Biblical Eben-Ezer, 2 miles east of Philistine Aphek at Antipatris) occupied from 1200-1000 BC
    • See Chapter 3 of In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language (Hoffman 2004) for the linguistic importance of the Hebrew.
    • See plates in The Text of the Old Testament (Wurthwein 1995) for a facsimile of the ostracon
  • Jaazaniah, servant of the king (ליאזניהו עבד המלך) striated agate seal with fighting cock icon
    • Found in Tomb 19 at Tell en-Nasbeh (probably Biblical Mizpah)
    • Possibly belonged to an army captain at Mizpah mentioned in 2 Kings 25:23
  • Jehucal, the son of Shelemiah, the son of Shobi (יהוכל בן שלמיהו בן שבי) seal impression stamped on bulla
  • Lachish ostraca
    • Most of these terse texts, discovered in the 1930s, depict conditions during the end of the 7th century BC shortly before the Chaldean conquest.
    • Letter #3 mentions a warning from the prophet.
    • Letter #4 names Lachish and Azekah as among the last places being conquered as recorded in Jeremiah 34:7.
    • Letter #6 describes a conspiracy reminiscent of Jeremiah 38:19 and 39:9 using phraseology nearly identical to 38:4.
  • Nabonidus cylinder
  • Pontius Pilate inscription found in secondary use in a stairway of the Roman theater in Caesarea
    • "The prefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, erected the Tiberium (in honor of Tiberius Caesar)"
    • Actual text of 3-line inscription (eroded portion in brackets is speculative but undisputed):
TIBERIEUM
[PON]TIUS PILATUS
[PRAEF]ECTUS IUDA[EA]E
  • Sargon II's Conquest of Samaria inscription (ANET 284) found by P.E. Botta at Khorsabad in 1843: "I besieged and conquered Samaria, led away as booty 27,290 inhabitants of it. ... The town I rebuilt better than it was before and settled therein people from countries which I myself had conquered." (2 Kings 17:23-24)

Artifacts not from excavations, but with undisputed provenance

Items in this list mostly come from 19th-century surveys, and undocumented collections whose provenance is not relevant due to the genuine nature of their content. In other words, they were discovered at a time when knowledge was so limited that they could not have been faked.

  • Elephantine papyri
    • Date to the Persian period, from an archive of Jews living in Egypt.
    • One was written by someone in Jerusalem named Hananiah, who may have been the person mentioned in Nehemiah 7:2
  • Hanan's signet ring
    • Owned by a Paris collector, this valuable ring has been known to the scholarly world since 1984. The seal’s origin is unknown, but the shape of the letters indicate that it was used during the seventh century B.C. The seal is inscribed in three lines, each line separated by two parallel straight lines. The band is almost 1/10 of an inch in diameter, suggesting that it was designed for a man’s finger. The inscription reads: “Belonging to Hanan, son of Hilqiyahu, the priest.”
    • This Hilqiyahu is better known to us as Hilkiah, the high priest during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah in the last part of the seventh century B.C. The ending yahu is a theophoric (divine) element often found in ancient Hebrew names in Judah; the names in the Northern Kingdom carried yah as an ending. It seems that this Hilqiyahu was the same high priest who discovered the scroll of Torah in the temple that triggered religious reform in Judah (see 2 Kings 22; 2 Chronicles 34).
    • 1 Chronicles 6:13 and 9:11 indicate that Azariah, not Hanan, succeeded Hilkiah. The explanation could be that Azariah succeeded his father as high priest, while his younger brother Hanan functioned as a priest, just as the inscription on the seal suggests.
  • Siloam inscription
    • Originally situated near the center of the Hezekiah tunnel, where two teams of excavators tunneling toward one another met.
    • Robinson documented the tunnel in 1838, but the inscription was not discovered until 1880. It was removed from Jerusalem the same year, and is presently in the Archaeological Museum at Istanbul.

Artifacts with unknown, disputed, or disproved provenance

Items in this list mostly come from private collections via the antiquities market, but also from chance finds prior to the establishment of antiquities laws. Their authenticity is highly controversial and in some cases has been demonstrated to be fraudulent.

  • Artifacts originating from the antiquities dealer, Oded Golan. In December 2004 he was indicted by the Israeli police, together with several accomplices, for forging the following artifacts:
    • The James Ossuary inscribed James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus suspected of being forged on a genuine ancient ossuary.
    • The Joash tablet (Jehoash inscription) recording repairs to the Temple in Jerusalem suspected of being forged on a genuine ancient stone panel.
    • Various ostraca mentioning the Temple or place names from the Bible.
    • A seven-nozzle stone lamp, bearing decorations of a Temple menorah and the seven species
    • A stone seal with gold rim, attributed to King Manasseh of Judah.
    • A quartz bowl bearing an inscription in ancient Egyptian, indicating that the Minister of the Army of King Shishek conquered the ancient city of Meggido.
    • An ivory pomegranate inscribed Property of the priests of the temple… forged on a genuine ancient piece of ivory.
    • A pottery jug bearing an inscription claiming that it was given as a contribution to the Temple.
    • Numerous bullae including ones which mention Biblical figures including King Hezekiah of Judah, the scribe Baruch and the prophet Isaiah.
  • Shroud of Turin
    • Critics claim it contains a painted image of Jesus forged in the Middle Ages; others maintain the image was formed by some energetic process that darkened the fibers (such as a flash of light the instant the resurrection occurred). Radiocarbon dating seemed to limit its origin to the Middle Ages, but some analysts suggest the tests were erroneously performed using samples taken from patches sewn onto the ancient cloth during the Middle Ages, or contaminated from fires it was exposed to. Other analysts suggest that the dating results are skewed by limestone residue which is present on the shroud.
  • Stone of Scone, also known as Jacob's Pillar
    • For centuries, this rock has been an integral compenent of coronation ceremonies for kings in the British isles. It is believed to be the rock upon which Jacob (later renamed Israel) received a vision, and a crack in it may have resulted from Moses striking it to bring forth water. None of this can be proven, and attempts to link it to Palestine via Jeremiah lack foundation.
  • Veil of Veronica
    • A cloth with an image of a bearded man on it. The faithful believe the cloth was used by Veronica to wipe sweat from the face of Jesus along the Via Dolorosa on the way to Calvary. Critics say it appears to be a man-made image.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Definition from bibarch.com
  2. ^ Ziony Zevit, "Three Debates about Bible and Archaeology", Biblica 83 (2002) 1-27
  3. ^ Jay Williams, "The Times and Life of Edward Robinson", Bible and Interpretation
  4. ^ Palestine Exploration Fund website, Introduction to the PEF
  5. ^ David Noel Freedman and Bruce E. Willoughby, "Biblical Archaeology", MSN Encarta
  6. ^ J. Maxwell Miller, "History or Legend", The Christian Century, February 24, 2004, p. 42-47. From religion-online.org
  7. ^ Peter Moorey, "A Century of Biblical Archaeology", p.54ff
  8. ^ W.F.Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, 1954 edition, p. 128, quoted in Walter F. Kaiser, "What Good is Biblical Archaeology to Bible Readers?", Contact magazine, Winter 05/06, at gctuedu.com
  9. ^ John Bright, A History of Israel, 4th edition
  10. ^ G. W. Ahlstrom, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 95, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1975), review of John Bright's History of Israel (4th edition)
  11. ^ Thomas L. Thompson, "The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham", 1974, p.328, quoted in a review by Dennis Pardee, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1977
  12. ^ John Van Seters, "Abraham in History and Tradition", 1975, p.309
  13. ^ Joel Ng, "Introduction to Biblical Archaeology", 2003 (revised 2004), at Edwardtbabinski.com
  14. ^ Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.16
  15. ^ Don C. Benjamin, "Stones & Stories: an introduction to archaeology & the Bible", 2008, p.7
  16. ^ Ziony Zevit, "Three Debates About Bible and Archaeology: The 'Biblical Archaeology' Debate", Biblica 83 (2002) pp.2-9
  17. ^ Specifically this was the view of Albright's student G. E. Wright and his "Biblical Theology" school which became popular in America in the 1950s. See Andrew G. Vaughn, review of William G. Dever, "What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel" (2001), RBL 2003
  18. ^ William G. Dever, quoted in Ziony Zevit, "The Future of Biblical Archaeology: Reassessing Methodologies and Assumptions", 2001

See also

External links

Further reading

  • William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1940)
  • John Bright, A History of Israel(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959).
  • Chapman, and J.N. Tubb, Archaeology & The Bible (British Museum, 1990)
  • Cornfeld, G.and D.N. Freedman, Archaeology Of The Bible Book By Book (1989)
  • Davies, P.R., In Search of 'Ancient Israel': A Study in Biblical Origins, Sheffield (JSOT Press, 1992). A key resource in the maximalist/minimalist controversy by a leading minimalist scholar.
  • Dever, William G., "Archaeology and the Bible : Understanding their special relationship", in Biblical Archaeology Review 16:3, (May/June 1990)
  • Dever, William G. (2002). What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-2126-X. 
  • Dever, William G. (2003). Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8028-0975-8. 
  • Finkelstein, Israel, and Neil Asher Silberman (2002). The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. Free Press. ISBN 0-684-86913-6. 
  • Frerichs, Ernest S. and Leonard H. Lesko eds. Exodus: The Egyptian Evidence. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997 ISBN 1-57506-025-6 Collection of six essays. Denver Seminary review
  • Keller, Werner, The Bible as History, 1955. A widely-read but very out dated popular account, approximately fifty years old.
  • Kitchen, Kenneth A., On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003)
  • Kuntz, John Kenneth. The People of Ancient Israel: an introduction to Old Testament Literature, History, and Thought, Harper and Row, 1974. ISBN 0-06-043822-3
  • Lance, H.D. The Old Testament and The Archaeologist. London, (1983)
  • Mazar, A., Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (The Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1990)
  • Mykytiuk, Lawrence J. (2004). Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. SBL Academia Biblica series, no. 12. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature.
  • Negev, Avraham, and Gibson, Shimon, (eds.) (2003). Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group. 
  • Ramsey, George W. The Quest For The Historical Israel. London (1982)
  • Robinson, Edward (1856) Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1838-52, Boston, MA: Crocker and Brewster.
  • Thompson, J.A., The Bible And Archaeology, revised edition (1973)
  • Winstone, H.V.F. The Life of Sir Leonard Woolley of Ur, London, 1990
  • Wright, G. Ernest, Biblical Archaeology. Philedelphia: Westminster, (1962).
  • Yamauchi, E. The Stones And The Scriptures. London: IVP, (1973).


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