Biblical & Theological Issues

by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. –

Once again, the fairly new discipline of Biblical Archaeology (or as the secularists of our day prefer to call it, the “Near Eastern/Syro­ Palestinian Archaeology”) has provided some of the most exciting new finds that relate to the biblical text. But first, before announcing some of the sensational recent finds, it is best to get some idea of the origins and development of Biblical Archaeology.

THE ORIGIN AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Some of the earliest research conducted in the Holy Land came early in the nineteenth century as two Americans named Edward Robinson, a biblical scholar and geographer, and a Yale educated Congregational minister, named Eli Smith, began their work in 1838. They discovered and identified over one hundred biblical locations, including “Robinson’s Arch,” which once supported a major walkway to the temple mount in  the  days of Jesus and King Herod, but now was merely a broken stub left on the south-western corner of the Temple mount wall.

But the modern discipline of archaeology got its real impetus from Sir William F. Petrie, a British archaeologist and Egyptologist, who worked in the southern desert of present-day Israel at Tel el-Hasi in the early 1890s. To him we owe thanks for pioneering the application of ceramic typology as an indicator for dating the ruins (whose broken shards of pottery used for cooking and the like reflected constant ceramic changes as much as today ‘s styles in clothing or the yearly changes in automobile design do for us today). These ceramics and ostraca became the basis for dating the archaeological levels. He also pioneered the use of stratigraphy (i.e., using the built-up layers of accumulated dirt and debris that tended to form an artificial mound because the encircling walls of mound’s fortification tended to prevent any erosion of those layers thereby laying down strata in sequence).

But the scholar who really put the subject of “Biblical Archaeology” on a new level of respectability from the end of World War I until his death in 1971 , was the son of Methodist missionaries, William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971). His excavations at Jericho, Samaria, Shechem, Beth-Shan and Tell Beitin, which he identified with Bethel, set the pace for others for years to come. This professor of Semitic Languages at Johns Hopkins University argued that in discovery after discovery, the accuracy of many of the details of Scripture were borne out by archaeology. Other prominent researchers of that same era were: Rabbi and biblical scholar Nelson Glueck, Yale University’s Millard Burrows, Harvard University’s G. Ernest Wright, University of Michigan’s David Noel Freeman, French biblical scholar Pere Roland deVaux and my own teacher Cyrus Herzfeld Gordon of Brandeis University.  These men formed, as it were, the golden era of archaeology.

However, a change was coming and got fully underway  in the early  1970s called the “New Archaeology.” This New Archaeology wanted to move away from focusing on the Bible to a less parochial approach that majored in issues of climate, flora, fauna, zoology, and geology of the site rather than beginning with the biblical narrative. This called for a change in the name of the discipline from “Biblical Archaeology” now to “Near Eastern/ Syro-Palestinian Archaeology.” One of the leaders in this new approach was University of Arizona ‘ s William Dever. In many ways, he represents a transitional person who was trained and for a while was part of the Biblical Archaeology group, but now tended more and more to side with the New Archaeology group in some of their conclusions.

THE RISE OF THE MINIMALISTS SCHOOL

Despite the enormous number of archaeological finds in the twentieth century, there remained large gaps in our information, especially outstanding was the lack of direct evidences for such biblical note worthies as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. This lack of direct evidence, along with other philosophical movements of the day, gave rise to what became known as the “Minimalists School” of thought. Two of the most prominent men came from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, Niels P. Lemche and expatriate American Thomas L. Thompson. From England came Philip Davies and Keith Whitelam of the University of Sheffield. These minimalists contended that the text of the Hebrew Bible was written only in the Hellenistic period (332- 63 B.C.) and that the biblical descriptions of David and Solomon were purely literary, as real, they argued, as King Arthur. Other Israeli archaeologists, Israel Finkelstein, and his associate Eli Piasetzky, contributed more fuel for the fire by arguing for a low chronology that placed David and Solomon’s times as being a time that was characterized by an agrarian society rather than an urban and centralized state organization. This would make David and Solomon, if they even existed, coming not in c. 1000 – 965 B.C. and c. 965 – 931 B.C. respectively, as the traditional chronology argued, but about seventy-five years later. This became the new tension point among archeologists as we entered the twenty-first century. We shall return to this discussion later in the article.

KEY ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS IN MAJOR BIBLICAL ERAS

► The Pre-Patriarchal Age

The time span represented in Genesis 1-11 covers as much time as is found in the rest  of the Old Testament. None of the events in this era can be dated before the times of Abraham. The only approximate date given is ” In the beginning,” in Genesis 1:1, which argues for an absolute beginning to the start of the universe.

The one outstanding archaeological contribution is a Sumerian and Cuneiform account of what appears to be the same flood found in Genesis 6-9. Even though Sir Leonard Wooley unadvisedly claimed he had found evidence for the Noahic flood in the flood layers in Babylon, it turned out that there were evidences for a number of floods rather than the one great one of Noah.

But the discovery of Tablet 11 of the 12-tablet Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, which named, not “Noah ” but another principal character, “King Gilgamesh,” who is said to have ruled the Mesopotamian city of Uruk around 2600 B. C., gave new impetus to the study of the flood. This story, though written in Sumerian and later in Babylonian cuneiform, exhibits several striking similarities to the biblical story of Noah, but it also has as many striking differences.

Austen Henry Layard had uncovered some tens of thousands of tablets from Nineveh, which he shipped back to England up to 1851. But it was George Smith, as Assistant to the British Museum’s Assyrian Department, who in 1872 decided to go back to Nineveh and there he surprisingly discovered the missing tablet 11 of the Gilgamesh Epic . The tablet was broken with still another part missing, so Smith once more returned to the excavation site and once more, five days later on May 14, 1873, he astonishingly found another  piece of the Babylonian/Akkadian flood story with the missing lines that had been broken off the first find of Tablet 11.

In the Akkadian epic, Gilgamesh is told about the flood by a man named Utnapishtim, who had safely passed through a flood because he had been warned by a creator god called Ea. He was told to build a boat (much as the biblical Noah in Gen 6:2, 13-17). In this Babylonian version, the flood and storm wiped out the rest of mankind, ending on the seventh day, and all emerged from  Utnapishtim’s boat on the  twelfth day on Mount Nisirin Kurdistan (contrary to Gen 7:24, where Noah’s landing was on the sides of Mt. Ararat in Turkey), whereupon Utnapishtim sent out a dove, a swallow , and finally a raven (cf. Gen 8:3-11, where the order instead was a raven, dove, and a dove in Noah’s case). When Utnapishtim’s boat landed, everything left the Babylonian boat and he offered a sacrifice to the gods (cf. Gen 8: 12-22).

Both accounts possibly seem to reflect a similar or even the same event, but the Babylonian version has more legendary additions along with a tone that is vastly different from the Biblical account. Both accounts, however, are similar enough to suggest strong echoes of the real event.

Neither has the tower of Babel been identified, but we do know of some 70 ziggurats (tower-like structures) in   Mesopotamia that possibly illustrate what Genesis 11 is describing. These towers were multi-stored structures that often reached some 300 feet above the desert floor with multiple stairways leading to a temple that rested at its peak. None have been fully preserved, but a few currently exist up to a level of 70 feet or more. The interesting point is that Genesis 11:3 says that they used “tar for mortar,” which agrees with what we find in this oil rich area of the world. Obviously, however, the possible archaeological connections with this period are indeed slim.

The Patriarchal Age (c. 2000-1750 B.C.)

It is to be conceded again that while there is no direct material evidence for the patriarchal age either, we are not without any tell-tale signs of the culture and the times. For example, one such indicator was given by Kenneth Kitchen,¹ retired Egyptologist from the University of Liverpool in England. He noted that Joseph was sold by the other ten sons of Jacob, according to Genesis 37:28 for twenty pieces of silver, which price matches the going rate for slaves in that region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries B.C. Had the story been composed, as some claim, as “fiction written around the middle of the first millennium “² the cited price would have been wrongly inflated, for the price of slaves had in the meantime steadily risen over the centuries so that in the Persian period, where some think this story may have first appeared, slaves were going for 90 to 120 shekels. That would have been a dead give-away that the story had been falsely created and projected back in time. That is why we say, if the story of Joseph was indeed a late invention, why did Joseph not fetch between 90 to 120 shekels instead of a measly 20 shekels of silver?

Some of the most spectacular archaeological finds came from ancient Ur in southern Iraq (ancient Babylonia), known as Tell el-Muqayyar. Sir Leonard Woolley’s sensational find could be found in the Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty of Ur (c. 2600 B.C.). The advanced level of society and the wealth displayed in the jewelry were surprisingly advanced to say the least. A famous “standard of Ur” decorated with yellowish shell set against a blue lapis lazuli background depicted the king and his court in a war scene on one side and peace scene on the other side. Somewhere between 2100 and 2000 B.C. Ur enjoyed its greatest period of influence, approximately in the days of Abraham.  The standard of living during that time was really advanced with a real show of wealth.

Over in Egypt, there is a famous wall painting on the tomb of the Egyptian governor Khnumhotep II in Beni Hasan, Egypt. It showed a group of West Semitic traders or artisans, probably from Canaan sometime around 1862 B.C., arriving in Egypt. In this wall painting, donkeys carry the West Semitic traders’ supplies, as adults and older children walk in the caravan in their bright clothing styles. The men wear a type of sandal while the women have ankle-high leather moccasin-like shoes. The women wear their hair over their shoulders with white headbands. The men are armed with bows, spears, axes, and throw sticks, and another man appears to be playing a lyre as they together move along. Both men and women are in very colorful dress sporting several different patterns. From this scene we might easily imagine the appearance of the patriarchs’ ancestors as they too came into Egypt not too long after this date.

The Mosaic Period of the Exodus

Once again, we have no direct evidence to corroborate the man Moses, the plagues of dated Jericho’s destruction to 1570 B.C. Only recently has the technical report of the Kenyon excavation of Jericho Egypt, or the mention of Hebrew slaves in Egypt, but what we do have are inscriptions from the tomb of Rekhmire, vizier of Pharaoh Thutmose 111, mid-fifteenth century B.C., showing prisoners from Canaan and Syria making mud bricks with overseers who wield sticks to keep the labor force working on the construction of a temple at Karnak. Once again, the practice of using forced labor for construction projects in Egypt was limited to the period of 1450 to 1200 B.C.³ This fits the time Israel was in Egypt.

But top honors in this period will need to be given to the “Ketef Hinnom Amulets,” for they represent the oldest Old Testament texts known to us. These two silver amulets were discovered underneath a rocky escarpment on which St. Andrews Church of Scotland stands,  across the Hinnon Valley from the old city of Jerusalem. They were found in cave 25 by Gabriel Barkay. These silver plaques, measuring 4 inches by 1 inch and the other 1.3 by .5 inches, were rolled up to form two amulets. They are dated to the 7th or 6th century B.C. and represent words from Numbers 6:24- 26 on one and Deuteronomy 7:9 on the other. The wording on both has an extraordinary correspondence to the wording and spelling found in the Pentateuch, which some have argued came much later from a post-exilic time and not from the time of Moses. But here they are several hundred years prior to the post-exilic period with the text already in existence!

► The Period of the Judges-Jericho

It was possible in the 1930s to point to Jericho as cause celebre that vindicated Joshua’s campaign into Canaan. The British archaeologist, John Garstang, found evidence of a collapsed mud-brick wall that had fallen outward. But another British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, later showed the wall collapsed around 2400 B.C, so it could not be in Joshua’s time (c. 1400 B.C.). Instead, she dated Jericho’s destruction to 1570 B.C. Only recently has the technical report of the Kenyon excavation of Jericho been released. Bryant Wood, director of Associates for Biblical Research in Pennsylvania, found evidence in her report that contradicted her own conclusions. For example, one type of pottery Kenyon unearthed appeared for only a limited time 150 years after Kenyon’s 1570 date for Jericho’s destruction. Moreover, there were scarabs for several pharaohs spread from 1570 to as late as 1349, the year Pharaoh Amenhotep III died. Therefore, it is possible that Jericho’s destruction could be placed somewhere around 1400 B.C. where most conservatives would place it, instead of where Kathleen Kenyon placed it.

In another reexamination of Jericho, there appeared evidence for a fiery destruction. The upper mud-brick wall of the city fell outward, piling up at the base of a lower wall, forming as it were a ramp  of  debris  that  allowed the invading Israelite army, which had been encircling the city, to go “straight before” each one (Josh 6:20) up into the city of Jericho. Inside the walls, the floors were blackened with fire, along with burned grain. Rather than there being evidence that the grain had been plundered, it had been left as the biblical account required for a Springtime offensive. ⁴ What is more, a carbon-14 analysis of a piece of charcoal found in the Jericho destruction dated to about 1410 B.C., which did not favor Kenyon’s 1570 date, for it was closer to a 1400 date.

Burned Tells. Others, such as William Dever, claimed that sixteen of the sites the Israelites listed as conquered were not destroyed in the Late Bronze epoch as the traditional account would require. The reason is that these cities show no sign of having been burned. However, the Biblical record carefully asserted that only three sites were specifically said to have been burned: Jericho, Ai, in the center of the country, and Hazor in the north (see e.g., Josh 11 :11). Israel wanted to inhabit these cities, so when they captured them, it did not mean that they left a burning destruction-level on any but the three listed here. The other captured cities the Israelites simply occupied.

► The United Monarchy-King David and King Solomon

Prior to the discovery of the Basalt Stelae at Dan, it was fashionable in some minimalistic scholarly circles to dismiss the Bible’s stories about King David as being late fabrications, since we have no direct confirmation of his historicity. However, in 1993 and again in 1994 that changed. Avraham Biran, of the Hebrew Union College, was excavating in northern Israel at the site known as Dan when an exposed wall of stones revealed a 12 inch basalt fragment with an inscription on it. One year later, in the same wall, two smaller pieces of the same original inscription came to light. When the paleo-Hebrew words were translated, here was the first extra-biblical reference to “the house [=dynasty] of David. ”

Another basalt monument called the “Mesha Stone,” commemorating a military victory by Moabite King Mesha over Israel from the ninth century B.C. (hewn in 830 B.C.) had a partial broken line, which read ” b[_J wd. ” This was quickly identified as ” btd wd, ” or “house of David.” ⁵ In fact, this reference may appear not just once, but twice in this inscription.⁶ David’s name has also turned up in fourth reference in a list at the great temple of Amon at Karnak, Egypt, not more than fifty years from David ‘s lifetime.

Even more fascinating may be the work of Eilat Mazar in 2005. She may have discovered David’s palace in Jerusalem near the Stepping­ stone structure. It has not been fully excavated as yet, but it certainly is someone’s fortress or palace from the early Israelite period in the city of David south of the Temple area.

Add to all of this the exciting identification of a fortified city from David ‘s time by the professor Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University. ^7•8 What is significant about this find is that it is from the Iron Ila period, or about 1000 B.C. The New Archaeology argued that Iron Ila did not appear until about 900 B.C. According to this lower chronology there was little centrally organized society in the days traditionally given over to David and Solomon around 1000 B.C., for it was, on the evaluations of the minimalists, an agrarian society and not what one would expect in an urban centralized state such as David and Solomon represented in the biblical record. But here is a city that had casemate walls and at least two gates, which was a rather unique feature for Israelite cities, perhaps the ancient city of Sa’arayim, meaning in Hebrew city of the “[Dual] Gates” (1 Sam 17:52).

Khirbet Qeiyafa, Garfinkel wrote, is a heavily fortified site in Judah on the Israelite/Philistine border. It is essentially a one-period site (except for a small occupation in the Hellenistic age with a Byzantine fortress on the top of the site) and dates to Iron Ila, which places it squarely in the early tenth century B.C. when David and Solomon ruled. Radio-carbon also confirmed the approximate time with that of David and Solomon. So convincing was this site as an answer to the minimalists’ arguments that the minimalists have now replied that Qeiyafa was a Philistine site since it was so close the border. But Garfinkel responded that  such a counterclaim was impossible for several reasons:

1. There were no pig or dog bones found at this site as were found at Philistine sites such as Gath (Tell es-Safi). Israelis did not eat pork and did not keep dogs as pets.
2. The main gate entrance to Qeiyafa faced Jerusalem and not Philistia.
3. Qeiyafa has a double casemate wall, which construction is unattested in Philistia, but is rather common to Judah.
4. No field settlement, such as Qeiyafa was, is found in Philistia’s Pentapolis of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Gath, and Ekron with the type of fortification seen here. These five cities were fortified, but no other Philistine cities showed such fortifications.
5. An inscription called the Qeiyafa Ostracon is inscribed with “Proto­ Canaanite letters in the Hebrew language whereas a recently published inscription from the Philistine city of Gath is also in proto-Canaanite script, but the language is Indo-European or a Philistine language.

Garfinkel went on to note:

Some modern scholars try to reverse the sequence indicated in the Bible. They claim that because the Biblical narrative was edited and perhaps written hundreds of years later, it cannot be taken as historical evidence. Therefore, they argue, our historical understanding must be based on inscriptions from Mesopotamia and Egypt.⁹

►The Divided Monarchy: Israel and Judah

From the end of Solomon ‘s reign in 931 B.C., the ten northern tribes split off from the two southern tribes; the north lasting until 721 and the south making it to 586 B.C. Several of the kings of Judah and Israel, from Omri and Ahab to Hezekiah and Manasseh, appear in the Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions.

It is difficult to choose which find best epitomizes this era, for we have among those to choose from the following: (1) the Karnak List of Palestinian cites Pharaoh Shishak captured (1 Kgs. 11 :40), also known as Sheshonq or Shoshenq, who invaded Judah in 925 B.C.; (2) the ninth century Black Obelisk, depicting “Jehu, son of Omri,” bowing down and paying tribute (2 Kgs. 9-10); (3) Hezekiah’s tunnel built to conduit water some 1,750 feet through limestone bedrock under Jerusalem in case of siege (2 Kgs. 20:20; 2 Chron. 32:30) ; (4) Assyrian wall reliefs of the capture of Judean Lachish, along with the description of its capture in the Annals of Sennacherib; (5) the Babylonian Ishtar Gate reconstructed in the Berlin Museum; or (6) the Jehoiachim Tablet, excavated in the Ishtar Gate listing the ration allowances each day for the captured Judean king and family .

Two dramatic examples , not yet mentioned, must take pride of place  in  this  epoch:  (1) The Babylonian Version of the sacking of Jerusalem,  which  closely  parallels 2 Kings 24:10-17; and (2) the 25-ton winged-bull-man­ god of Sargon 11, which originally guarded the entrance to his throne room at Khorsabad, a site and a monarch who were both lost to history except for the biblical reference in Isaiah 20:1 until this discovery. Paul Emile Botta had gone to a virgin site 12 miles northeast of Nineveh in 1843, where he located Sargon II and his new capital. Now, one of these 25-ton winged bulls with a human head stands in the Oriental Museum of the University of Chicago.

► The Epoch of the Exile

With the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., tens of thousands of Judeans were settled  in Babylon, which today is known as Iraq. The remnant that was left in Judea, fled to Egypt fearing what the Babylonians would do after the governor that Babylon had set in place, Gedaliah, had been assassinated (2 Kgs. 25:26). Based on Jeremiah’s assessment of the situation at the time of his arrival in Egypt in 582 B.C., Judeans were living all over Egypt, for he mentions Jews in Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis, and Pathros.

At Elephantine Island, at the first of five cataracts on the Nile, now known as Aswan, a discovery of  hundreds of  mainly fifth century B.C.  Aramaic  documents  included contracts, letters, and even a wisdom text, The Wisdom of Akihar, along with a copy of the Persian emperor Darius I’s original text of the Behistun monument.

The Babylonian empire reached its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.), but it then began to fall apart. After a few short-reigning kings, Nabonidus took the throne in 556 B.C. and reigned until the Fall of Babyon in 539 B.C. The book of Daniel, however, listed the final king of Babylon as Belshazzar (Dan 5:1). This was no historical blunder, for the Babylonian Chronicle reported that the crown prince actually ruled Babylon while Nabonidus resided in Arabia during those final years. That is why Belshazzar offered to make Daniel the third ruler in the Babylonian kingdom (Dan 5:7), because Belshazzar was in reality only the second ruler.

The outstanding archaeological find in this era has to be the “Cyrus Cylinder” (discovered in 1879 in Babylon), which records the Persian King Cyrus ‘s edicts that are also found in Ezra 1:2-4 and 2 Chronicles 36:22-23. Cyrus credits his god Marduk for selecting him and giving him rule over the world, even though the prophet Isaiah viewed that same matter a little differently (Isa 45: 1). The cylinder, however, announced Cyrus’ policy to allow exiled persons to return to their homeland where he would also help establish permanent sanctuaries , exactly as Isaiah the prophet had predicted several hundred years prior to Cyrus’ appearance on the scene of history.

CONCLUSION

This hardly tells even part of the story, but Biblical Archaeology has had an enormous effect on the case for the reliability and relevancy of the Old Testament. In case after case, where skeptics had sounded a discouraging note about the truthfulness of the Bible, there has come unexpectedly confirmation time and again. Much awaits us in the future, for according to some estimates, less than 1 or 2 % of the possible sites have been excavated in Israel. Often the problem is that a modern site currently sits over top the ancient deposit. But for all that has been found, Bible readers all over the world are deeply grateful. May they be granted even greater success in days to come.

Periods in Old Testament History

• Antedeluvian Period (Creation to Noah’s Flood)
• Post-deluvian Period (Noah’s Flood to Abraham)
• Patriarchal Period (Abraham to Exodus: 2000BC-1446 BC)
• Exodus, Conquest & Judges (Exodus to Saul: 1446 BC – 1050 BC)
• United Monarchy (Saul – Solomon: 1050 BC – 922 BC)
• Divided Monarchy (Rehoboam – Zedekiah: 922 BC – 586 BC)
• Exile & Return (586 BC – 400 BC)

Walter C. Kaiser; Jr. is President Emeritus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary)) Hamilton, MA. He is the author of numerous articles and books including The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? (InterVarsity, 2001) and The Promise-Plan of God: A Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Zondervan, 2008).

N OT E S

1 Kenneth A. Kitchen, “The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?” Biblical Archaeology Review (March / April, 1995): 52.

2 As cited by Kevin D. Miller, “Did the Exodus Never Happen?” Christianity Today (Sept 7, 1998): 44.

3 A Lecture given by James K. Hoffmeier as cited by Kevin D. Miller, Christianity Today (Sept 7, 1998):  48.

4 Bryant Wood, ” Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A   New   Look   at   the   Archaeologic al Evidence,” Biblical Archaeology Review (March/ April 1990): 53. Also see Hershel Shanks, The Rise of Ancient Israel (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1993), 15-16.

5 Andre LeMaire, “House of David Restored in Moabite Inscription,” Biblical Archaeology Review (May/June 1994): 30-37.

6 See the most recent work by Anson F. Rainey, “Syntax, Hermeneutics and History,” Israel Exploration Journal 48.3-4 (1998): 244-51.

7 Yosef Garfinkel, “The Birth & Death of Biblical Minimalism,” Biblical Archaeology Review 37 May/ June 2011, pp. 46 – 53.

8  Hershel Shanks,  “Newly Discovered:  A Fortified City from King David’s Time ,” Biblical Archaeology Review 35.1 (January 2009): 38-43.

9 Yose f Garfinkel, “The Birth & Death of Biblical Minimalism, ” 52.

(First published in Areopagus Journal Vol. 11 No. 3 – Biblical Archaeology)