Nmherman on Sat, 19 May 2001 18:46:28 +0200 (CEST)


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[Nettime-bold] This is interesting, and a little sad 

 




[email protected] wrote:

> A Battle of Biblical Proportions
>
>
>   Scripture as fiction? A series of lectures in L.A. will air
>   controversial view.
>
>   Los Angeles Times via Dow Jones
>
>   Publication Date: Friday May 11, 2001 Page E-1 Los Angeles
>   Times (Home Edition) Copyright 2001 / The Times Mirror
>   Company By TERESA WATANABE TIMES RELIGION
>   WRITER
>
>   Corrected May 17, 2001
>
>   **** Start of Correction **** May 17, 2001 Home Edition
>   Page A-2 Section: A2 Desk FOR THE RECORD Misspelled
>   name--In a story in the May 11 Southern California Living
>   section, the name of the editor of Biblical Archeology Review
>   was misspelled. He is Hershel Shanks. **** End of Correction
>   ****
>
>   The ancient tales present glorious scenes of a united
>   monarchy of Israel familiar to every Bible reader: King
>   David, so brave that he slew a giant. Solomon, so wise that he
>   ruled a vast empire and built the first Jerusalem temple. But
>   3,000 years after the great monarchs are thought to have
>   lived, their epic stories are at the center of a vitriolic debate
>   today over how much is actually history.
>
>   On one side are most archeologists and modern biblical
>   scholars, who believe that the Bible contains historical
>   truth--although exactly how much is a matter of decided
>   disagreement. On the other side is a small but emergent group
>   of scholars who are gaining increasing public attention for
>   their provocative views that the Hebrew Bible, also known as
>   the Old Testament, is all or mostly fiction.
>
>   Based mostly in Europe, the revisionists have recently been
>   joined in their skepticism by such well-respected Israeli
>   archeologists as Israel Finkelstein and Ze'ev Herzog at Tel
>   Aviv University. While these Israelis do not deny the
>   existence of David and Solomon as some Europeans do, they
>   argue that tales of a vast united kingdom are exaggerations
>   and that the rulers were at best local tribal chieftains.
>
>   The controversy will be aired in Los Angeles beginning
>   Monday, when the California Museum of Ancient Art
>   presents the first of a four-part lecture series, "The
>   Archeology of Ancient Israel." William Dever, one of North
>   America's leading archeologists, will kick off the series with a
>   lecture rebutting the revisionists and presenting the
>   archeological evidence for the biblical portrait of David and
>   Solomon.
>
>   "The revisionists have become ideologues who repeat their
>   astounding claims without any evidence," said Dever, a
>   professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the
>   University of Arizona. "They are dangerous because they are
>   dishonest, and they're not going to go away."
>
>   Finkelstein calls the attacks on him "an orchestrated attempt,
>   when people have no ammunition, to disqualify my scientific
>   observations with name-calling."
>
>   Herzog defends the revisionist positions as a willingness to
>   analyze the evidence uncolored by any religious agenda to
>   prove the Bible's historical veracity. "It is part of a scientific
>   revolution, and younger scholars are more willing to accept
>   revolution than older ones," he said.
>
>   Devout believers who view the Bible as the literal word of
>   God may be aghast at any suggestion that the Good Book is
>   not entirely historical. But Dever expressed concern that
>   revisionist challenges to the Bible's historical veracity will
>   only build, buoyed by the recent publication of the first
>   popular book on the subject, "The Bible Unearthed" by
>   Finkelstein and archeological journalist Neil Asher
>   Silberman.
>
>   The book argues that the Hebrew Bible is a collection of
>   ancient memories, fragmentary histories and rewritten
>   legends. When it comes to the united monarchy, supposed
>   archeological evidence for it is "no more than wishful
>   thinking," the authors say.
>
>   The book has hit the top of archeological bestseller lists, is a
>   selection for four book-of-the-month clubs and has inspired
>   television documentaries now in the works by at least three
>   national media organizations.
>
>   Although many scholars have questioned the Bible's veracity
>   for decades, the foundation for the latest revisionist challenge
>   to ancient Israel's history emerged in 1992. That's when
>   Philip R. Davies of the University of Sheffield in Britain
>   published a provocative book, "In Search of 'Ancient Israel,' "
>   that argued that the Hebrew Bible was composed long after
>   the fact and contains no real history.
>
>   Finkelstein, director of Tel Aviv University's Institute of
>   Archeology, said he valued the work of Davies and others for
>   stimulating the field with challenging questions.
>
>   "Even if they are wrong, the questions they raise are not only
>   right but positive because it has made us think again," he said.
>   The work has been resoundingly rejected by mainstream
>   scholars and has deeply disturbed many people.
>
>   Jerome Berman, executive director of the ancient art museum,
>   likened the revisionists to Holocaust deniers who are
>   discounting a century of archeological evidence to try to erase
>   Israel's ancient past.
>
>   At least some of the revisionists appear to have political
>   agendas, Dever said, evident in such works as the 1996 book
>   by Keith Whitelam of the University of Stirling in Scotland,
>   "The Invention of Ancient Israel: the Silencing of Palestinian
>   History." Those who raise questions about the biblical stories
>   have been attacked for supporting enemies of Israel, but
>   Finkelstein called such charges "absolutely appalling."
>
>   "I think there is room enough for all of us to be in the field
>   and have scientific debates," he said.
>
>   Herschel Shan, editor of Biblical Archeological Review,
>   dismisses the revisionists as a tiny group of scholars whose
>   minimal influence is already starting to wane. But Dever is
>   less sanguine. He wants to sound the alarm that their views
>   are having an impact, creating a "storm of controversy" in the
>   scholarly literature, national professional meetings and on the
>   Internet.
>
>   Dever recounted one 1996 Society of Biblical Literature
>   meeting where a leading revisionist, Thomas L. Thompson of
>   Copenhagen, triumphantly announced that there was no
>   ancient Israel or Judaism until the second century.
>   Thompson's remarks were greeted with applause, Dever said,
>   drowning out his protests.
>
>   "Everywhere I go, I find young Bible scholars taken in by
>   their nonsense, and I'm just appalled," said Dever, who has
>   taken them on directly in his new book, "What Did the
>   Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?" The
>   book, published this week, will be available for signing at the
>   lecture.
>
>   Waging War Over David and Solomon
>
>   The time of David and Solomon in the 10th century BC has
>   emerged as the raging battleground between the two sides.
>   For earlier periods, many archeologists have given up trying
>   to find material evidence supporting such stories as the
>   Creation, the Flood, the Exodus and Joshua's conquests--and
>   even Dever believes that they are at best a mix of myth and
>   probably unrecoverable history. (Some researchers continue
>   to search for evidence and have recently reported findings of
>   an ancient, cataclysmic flood in the Black Sea, for instance, or
>   coral-encrusted remains of what they believe are chariot
>   wheels of a pharaoh's vanquished army in the Red Sea.)
>
>   The later periods are indisputably historical because of
>   clear-cut archeological evidence and corroboration in
>   nonbiblical records. Beginning with King Ahab, who lived
>   around 850 BC, a century after David and Solomon, the
>   Israeli kings are consistently mentioned in Mesopotamian and
>   other Near Eastern records, according to Steven Feldman,
>   managing editor of Biblical Archeology Review.
>
>   The middle period between the two has become what
>   Finkelstein called "the last bastion" of scholarly dispute.
>   "What we have with the united monarchy is enough evidence
>   to make it plausible but not quite enough to make it
>   convincing," Feldman said. "It is just ambiguous enough to
>   leave room for doubt."
>
>   In his lecture and slide presentation Monday, Dever said he
>   intends to discuss the revisionists and detail the evidence
>   supporting the united monarchy. Among other things, he said,
>   three massive and similar entry gates excavated at the ancient
>   biblical sites at Gezer, Hazor and Megiddo dated to Solomon's
>   time support biblical stories of his vast central bureaucracy
>   and building programs.
>
>   Finkelstein, however, argued that the gates cannot be tied to
>   Solomon because similar structures have been found outside
>   his territory and after his reign, and that his own analysis
>   indicates that they were built at different times at least a
>   century later.
>
>   Solomon's temple, which some revisionists regard as fiction,
>   will most probably never be found, since it is believed to lie
>   directly under the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic holy site
>   known by Jews as the Temple Mount. But Dever said that the
>   temple's every detail as described in the Bible can be
>   corroborated through the discovery of sites with similar
>   features in Syria and elsewhere.
>
>   In the second lecture, on May 21, William M. Schniedewind,
>   chairman of UCLA's department of Near Eastern languages
>   and cultures, will explore how the discovery of ancient
>   inscriptions has shed light on Israel's past. The most famous is
>   the 1993 discovery at Tel Dan in northern Galilee of a 9th
>   century BC inscription that refers to the "House of David"
>   and 'King of Israel." The inscription created a sensation as the
>   first extrabiblical reference to David and proof of his
>   existence, but some revisionists have refused to accept that
>   view and argue the inscription could be read as a place-name.
>
>   Other lectures will feature Lawrence Geraty of La Sierra
>   University in Riverside, who will speak about a possible
>   Israeli tribe at Tell 'Umayri east of the Jordan River, and John
>   Monson of Wheaton College in Illinois, who will detail how
>   an ancient temple at 'Ain Dara in northern Syria shares
>   several common features with descriptions of Solomon's
>   temple in Jerusalem.
>
>   The California Museum of Ancient Art, founded in 1983 with
>   a focus on Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Levant, has sponsored
>   130 lectures on everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to
>   women of the ancient world to ancient Egypt. The upcoming
>   lecture series will focus on the period of 1200 to 600 BC.
>
>   "The three kings of the united monarchy--Saul, David and
>   Solomon--are the people that formed the state that produced
>   the Bible," Berman said. "Certainly for any Christian, Jew or
>   Muslim, it is important to know how this lineage started and
>   how these rulers came about."
>
>   *
>
>   The first lecture will be held Monday from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at
>   Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., Los
>   Angeles. Full series is $52 for museum members, $64 for
>   nonmembers; single tickets are $15 for members, $18 for
>   nonmembers. (818) 762-5500.
>
>   PHOTO: Jerome Berman, head of California Museum of
>   Ancient Art, says revisionists are trying to erase Israel's past.;
>   ; PHOTOGRAPHER: CLARENCE WILLIAMS / Los
>   Angeles Times