the Copenhagen School

The Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies, also known as The Minimalist School is a school of biblical exegesis, developing out of Higher Criticism, emphasizing that the bible should be read and analysed primarily as a collection of narratives and not as an accurate historical account of events in the prehistory of the middle east. This means that the theologists of the Copenhagen School read the Bible primarily as a source to the times and circumstances under which it was written. Members of the Copenhagen School are typically theologians or literature specialists, rather than archaeologists or specialists in related fields such as cuneiform, Assyriology or Egyptology. They offer commentary on how they interpret archaeological findings in accordance with their established views on Biblical and other ancient literature. As a result Copenhagen theologists have frequently argued for a later dating of parts of the Bible than archaeologists or specialists in fields related to the study of the Ancient Near East.

Origins of Minimalism

Minimalist theology arose from the need of scholars to deal with the contradictions that seemed to emerge from the findings of archaeology in ancient Israel and Palestine and surrounding countries, and various literalist interpretations about the Bible. The "Minimalist Method" advocates using archaeology as the primary source for reconstructing the history of Israel and Judea, and suggests that the Bible as text needs to be fitted within the context suggested by historical archaeology. As George Athas^[1] says It arose from "major discrepancies between the Bible and what archaeologists have dug up in Israel and Palestine. Or rather, what archaeologists have failed to dig up in Israel and Palestine. For decades, before biblical scholarship started to sharpen its approach, scholars interpreted archaeology in light of what the Bible said. Everything was seen through the Bible's window. That is, scholars took for granted that what the Bible said, was true - not just morally and religiously, but historically and scientifically. So, as an archaeologist back in the 19th century, you would pick up your Bible and expect to find Noah's Ark somewhere on top of Mount Ararat in Turkey, just as the Bible said; or that you could dig in Jerusalem and find the remains of David's and Solomon's palace."

The first generations of Biblical archaeologists from Flinders Petrie to William Albright and John Bright, seemed to find confirmation of the Bible in their work.

1. Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur seemed to show the appearance of West Semites Amorites (or Martu) coming to rule in Southern Iraq close to the time spoken of for Abraham's supposed residence in the city.
2. The discovery of the Code of Hammurabi led to the suggestion of similarities with the Laws of Moses. Hammurabi of Babylon was identified with Amraphel of Shinar, one of the four kings confronting Abraham in Genesis.
3. Excavations in Egypt confirmed the existence of the "store cities" of Raamses (Per Ramses) and Pithom (Per Atum), and suggested that 'Apiru (Hebrews) had been engaged in building projects for Rameses II.
4. The discovery of the Israel stele mentioned a battle between Egypt and Israel in Canaan, in seeming confirmation of the settlement of the country after the Exodus by the Children of Israel.
5. John Garstang's excavations at Jericho found large walls split by cracks that seemed confirmaion of Joshua's attack as reported in the Bible.
6. William F. Albright claimed to have found the city of Ai conquered by Joshua during the settlement of Canaan by the Israelites shortly after the Battle at Jericho
7. Yigael Yadin and others found what was claimed to be Solomon's stables, enclosed by ashlar walls of fortress cities at Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer.

But Minimalists claim that further research has challenged every one of these findings and shown them to be erroneous interpretations of archeological data caused by a Biblical bias.

At the same time, the development of higher or historical criticism was leading to the search for the various sources of the Biblical traditions, the nature of the genres used as forms of literature and were giving a better understanding of the purposes and intentions of the various authors and editors of the Bible. It was also leading to the suggestion that we required better understanding of the historical, political and social contexts under which the books were written. This had led to deep skepticism about whether Moses had in fact authored the first five books of the Bible as claimed by Ezra (Ezra 3:2; 6:18; 7:6). (For instance, it is difficult for an author to describe his own death and burial, as the Pentateuch does of Moses. Conservative critics claim this was inserted by Joshua, but if part of the Penteteuch was written by another, say the Minimalists, why not other parts too?)

In 1968, an award winning article by Niels Peter Lemche suggested that Biblical archaeologists would have constructed a very different story of the history of ancient Palestine if they had only the archaeological record and if they had not made use of interpretations drawn from readings of the Bible.

The "Minimalist" Approach

It was these types of discrepancies between what the Bible said and what archaeologists said that started the development of the Copenhagen School of thought, colloquially called as "Minimalism".

The approach taken by the Minimalist school start by treating the Bible as a text, with a "plot" and with a set of "characters". It aims to establish a theological view, concerning the nature of the covenant between the historical people of Israel and their God. They claim that the events were not written as historiography, nor as a newspaper account of contemporary events, but were written as a story, similar to the story of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. The latter has similarities to what we find out about history through e.g. archeaology and surviving documentary evidence because it was itself based upon the historical accounts available to Shakespeare; but the dialogue and dramatic development of the plot were dependent not on a historically aware analysis of the records of late-Republican Rome, but on the concerns of Elizabethan England.

"Minimalist" scholars say that most other scholars have tended to put the evidence of the Bible account as superior to what archaeology shows, in situations when they contradict. That is, they look at the archaeological evidence from the perspective of justifying the Bible as an exact history. They charge conservative scholars like Bright and Albright of letting their religious convictions and preferences take priority over unbiased, objective historical research. They accuse fundamentalist scholars of having a hidden, sometimes subconscious agenda of wanting to prove that the Bible is right, and that this bias affects the way they do history.

Philip Davies claims scholars have created a false Ancient Israel, that fails to fit into the archaeologically established context of Iron Age Syria and Palestine. The Ancient Israel that scholars have reconstructed, says Davies, is false - it is not the real historical Ancient Israel from Syria-Palestine but is rather a figment of conservative scholars' imaginations.

The Minimalist approach attempts to put the archaeology in primary place and to consider in what way the history of Palestine would have been written without the presence of the Biblical text. For example Thomas L. Thompson considers this area to be part of a cyclic history of the Mediterranean mixed economy environment. For example, the highly diverse region comprises subsistence horticultural production, extensive grain growing, commercial production of dates, olives, wine and nuts, and nomadic pastoralism in drier areas. In cooler, drier periods, there is a decline in commercial cropping and an increase in nomadic pastoralism, in warmer, wetter periods, commerce grows with merchants opening up markets in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean, an increase in urbanisation, and then an expansion of neighbouring states so that Palestine becomes a tributary part of a regional empire. The Biblical period was a full cycle - beginning in the Middle Bronze Age urbanism, leading to the Egyptian Empire of the Late Bronze Age. A collapse into pastoralism and a beginning of a new cycle in the Iron Age, with Palestine incorporated again into regional Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman and Arab Empires, before a worstening of climates, increased pastoralism and a repeat of the cycle yet again.

Notes

1. ^ ATHAS, George, 'Minimalism': The Copenhagen School of Thought In Biblical Studies, Edited Transcript of Lecture, 3rd Ed, University of Sydney, 1999.

References

• Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1998.
• Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 1988
• Garbini, Giovanni, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, 1988 (trans from Italian).
• Halpern, Baruch, "Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel", BR, Dec 1995, p26 - 35, 47.
• Lemche, Niels Peter, Early Israel, 1985. á Lemche, Niels Peter, Israel in History and Tradition, 1998.
• Provan, Iain W., "Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel", Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p585-606. (a critique of the Copenhagen School of Thought - with responses by Davies (above) and Thompson (below))
• Thompson, Thomas L., Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, 1974.
• Thompson, Thomas L., Early History of the Israelite People, 1992.
• Thompson, Thomas L., "A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?" Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p683-698. (a response to the article by Iain W. Provan - above)
• Thompson, Thomas L., The Mythic Past, 1999.
• Van Seters, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.
• Philip Davies, "The Origin of Biblical Israel". Places the origins of "biblical" Israel in the Neo-Babylonian period.
• Philip Davies, "Minimalism, 'Ancient Israel', and Anti-Semitism". Reviews minimalism and the maximalism/minimalism controversy.

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