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Shifting Sands: The Rise and Fall of Biblical Archaeology

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Thomas Davis' book discusses the fate of biblical archaeology, concentrating on the figure of William G. Albright. Albright dominated the field of Palestinian Archaeology in the mid-century. He gained a certain popular prominence by arguing that he could show the existence of the patriarchal narratives in Genesis as well as the conquest narratives in Joshua. But by the sixties and seventies people became increasingly skeptical about Albright's methods and arguments. And by the eighties and nineties, a full-fledged "minimalism" had broken out, which argued that the entire biblical narrative before the Persian period was essentially little more than a myth.

People who read this book will assume they will be learning the truth behind the Hebrew scriptures. Actually much of the slim book discusses more prosaic matters. There is a discussion of the origins of modern Palestinian archaeology since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Davis discusses a laundry list of archaeological institutions, collegial squabbles, financial troubles, and problems over the French and British mandates in the interwar period. There is also a history of archeaological techniques. Modern Palestinian archaeology requires the mastery of three techniques: intense recording of archaeological detail, complex understanding of pottery evolution as a guide to dating, and subtle understanding of stratigraphic principles. Albright was a master of the first two techniques, but had problems with the third. Davis goes to some length to argue that Albright was not a crude fundamentalist. He presented himself as a "moderate" between biblical literalists and theological liberals. Indeed, his wife converted to Catholicism, he readily agreed that archaeological dating trumped biblical chronology, and did not waste his life looking for the remains of Noah Ark.

On the other hand his theological parti pris and his intense opposition to the Wellhausen thesis clearly led him to commit a number of striking non-sequiturs. Early in his career he found the remains of urbanization in the area of the fabled "cities of the plains." After exploring the cemetery and finding objects whose ceremonial purpose was unknown, Albright announced that he had found Sodom, no doubt with its licentious practices. Later on Albright sought to vindicate the truth of Abraham. Since he could not prove his existence directly, Albright sought to argue that phenomenon in the patriarchal narratives, like nomadism and certain legal customs, were present at the time in question. But this involved misdating things by several centuries. His discussion of the conquest focused on several destroyed sites that could be dated to the thirteenth century BCE. This would imply that those areas had been destroyed by Joshua and his armies. That did not actually follow. Moreover, it ignored the fact that there were other sites of destruction before and after this period, while later archaeological research found more continuity than the conquest thesis suggested. There was also the fact that there were no such signs of destruction at two of Joshua's most prominent victories, Jericho and Ai. As Davis admits "The archaeology was used to correct the biblical record, which was used to interpet the archaeology, a circular trap."

On the whole though, this book is too slim a discussion of its subject. The debates between maximalists and minimalists are discussed rather cursorily. Certainly if one wanted a thorough discussion of the Exodus, the Conquest, and the United Monarchy one would have to go elsewhere. Except to underplay it, there is little account of Albright's theological beliefs. There is nothing here like Keith Whitelaw's acidulous criticism of Albright for blanding accepting the barbarities of the conquest. Considering this is a book about the history of Israel, there is little discussion of Israeli archaeology and its possible nationalist biases. And although Albright called himself an orientalist, there is no discussion of orientalism. There is however a mention of Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm shift, the sort of thing one expects to find to pad a reheated doctoral dissertation, which is what this book essentially is.

Christian apologists (e.g., Josh McDowell) not infrequently refer to archaeology as "confirmation of the absolute accuracy of the biblical record." With a few carefully-chosen quotations from the dean of "Biblical Archaeology," William Foxwell Albright, as well as other figures such as Jewish archaeologist Nelson Glueck, and William Ramsay, they present a convincing case to the uninitiated.

Davis's 2004 book is a very helpful general overview of the subject; Davis is personally most aligned with the perspective of his teacher and friend William Dever (see books such as What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel), and thus with the "maximalist" perspective (i.e., that the biblical literature CAN tell us some substantial information about these periods of time) rather than the "minimalist" perspective (see books like The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, and The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel). Nevertheless, he is relatively fair and objective in his summary.

Davis states quite bluntly that "Today, biblical archaeology has been weighed in the balance and found wanting," and "Biblical archaeology as understood by Albright and (G. Ernest) Wright is no more." In other words, the days of archaeologists examining the landscape with a spade in one hand, and a Bible in the other are no more. Davis points out the theological presuppositions of many who came to the archaeological data (such as Wright), which colored their interpretation of the evidence. He also admits the lack of archaeological evidence for the patriarchs, the Exodus, etc. Nevertheless, he rejects the views of the "minimalists" who suggest that the Bible is virtually useless as a source of historical information.

Davis's book is only a brief SURVEY, so don't expect more from it than it promises; but it's more up-to-date than a lot of the "apologetic" material floating around out there, and can make a useful counterbalance to it.