Is the Bible Historically Reliable? Part III

Or should we just talk about something else?

The tomb of Rekhmire in in Egypt, c. 1470-1420 BCE showing New Kingdom slaves making mud bricks for Pharaoh’s building projects. Image by Heidi Kontkanen

So glad to see you back for this last installment of an important conversation. In Parts I & II we’ve learned that the words history, historicity, and historiography have specific definitions that must be attended to when asking about the historical reliability of the Bible. We’ve learned that ancient history-writing and modern history-writing have different running rules, and if we’re going to examine the Bible as an historical document, we are going to have to play by the rules of ancient history-writing. We’ve also learned that not every book in the Bible claims to be history-writing, but for those that do (specifically the Deuteronomistic History and the Chronicler’s History), the Bible has proven itself historiographically respectable.

This brings us to the biggest question —how do we in the 21^st century go about critically assessing these ancient histories for their historicity? How do we determine what is real historical memory versus what is not?As you can imagine, these events happened so long ago that assessing them can be quite complicated.

We work with what I call internal and external evidence and the intersection of the two. Internal evidence is what the Bible has recorded for us—the narratives of Abraham and Isaac, Deborah and Samuel, Saul and David, Omri and Hezekiah. External evidence is what we have managed to recover from the ancient world: archaeology and epigraphy. Archaeology is the “stuff” that a society leaves behind: buildings, fortifications, terracing, storage silos, weapons, tools, pottery, etc. Epigraphy is the writing that a society leaves behind: building inscriptions, treaties, contracts, votive inscriptions, victory stelae, letters, receipts, etc. And because the bar for demonstrating biblical historicity is very high (arguably higher than any other record of ancient history), the rules of the game are that until a scholar can demonstrate an event or person named in the Bible by means of external evidence, that event or person is assumed fictional. We call this the “hermeneutic of suspicion.” People and events in the text are assumed guilty (of being non-historical) until they are proven innocent (historical) by means of a collaborating artifact or inscription.

And so for someone like me, I work with two categories of data: (1) A careful reading of the text (deploying all of my linguistic and literary skills); and (2) a careful reading of the archaeological record. And it is when these two bodies of data intersect that I am allowed to use the word “historical.”

Yours truly, excavating at Tel Rehov, Area C in 2012. Image by Lawson Stone

Ok, let’s talk external evidence.

The first category is archaeology, and it is way easier to find. Every society leaves stuff behind. “Stuff” as big as palaces and as small as jewelry and spindle whorls. But one of the perennial problems in Syro-Palestinian archaeology, is that cities are way easier to find than … most anything else. So the bulk of archaeological effort has been focused on urban centers. Palaces, fortifications, temples, storage facilities are by far the easiest (and sexiest) things to locate and excavate.

But think this through with me, cities require not only urbanization but centralization. Centralization that creates a federal government, that creates a tax base, that makes the construction of temples and palaces and public works systems possible. So whereas one would expect to be able to locate a major urban center and the palace and temple gracing its acropolis, one would not expect to be able to locate a smallish kinship group of nomadic pastoralists living in goat-hair tents with acacia wood poles following the seasonal pasturage of Canaan with their rekûš (the Hebrew term for “moveable property”) piled on the backs of their donkeys. You see the problem.

What about Epigraphy? Well, first know that finding any inscription is a very big deal. And it does not happen as frequently as finding “stuff” (which is why I am still bitter about the esteemed Dr. David Schreiner pictured below who found an inscription on the first day of his first dig while washing pottery for the first time … all on a scholarship that his esteemed professor had knocked down doors to secure on his behalf). I digress.

David Schreiner, Tel Rehov 2008 with the “Elisha Ostracon”

An example of how challenging (and important) an inscription can be would be the man pictured below, Avraham Biran—an absolute luminary in Israeli archaeology. Biran dug the city of Dan for 30 (count them) 30 years from 1966-1999. And he waited for 24 of those years to find the most significant inscription of his career.

It was July 21, 1993. Biran and his associate Gila Cook were exiting the tell. And just outside the Iron Age gate complex Cook paused over a chunk of cut stone—she paused because she saw script. Paleo-Hebrew script--an epigraphic find that would transport king David out of the land of fiction and fairytales into the cold hard light of history.

Drawing of Tel Dan stele, c. 840 BCE

It was a chunk of an old victory stele, erected by the king of Aram-Damascus bragging about defeating both “the king of Israel” and the “house of David.” And as up until July 21, 1993, the academic world had declared the United Monarchy and its most famous king fictional (see in particular Phil Davies’ 1992, In Search of ‘Ancient Israel’: A Study in Biblical Origins with T&T Clark), this was a very big deal. Does this inscription confirm every detail of David’s life as we know it in 1 & 2 Samuel? Of course not, but it does confirm that he and his dynasty are indeed historical.

So what sorts of inscriptions might an archaeologist find that could help us with questions of historicity?

1. Building inscriptions are the largest category—a king’s dedicatory celebration of the completion of his palace, defense wall, or the temple of his deity.

2. Votive inscriptions, found on gifts and statues placed in the temple as a gift to the gods.

3. Administrative texts: letters, contracts, bills of sale, boundary stones, treaties, etc.

4. Religious texts: songs and poems and ritual legendary tales.

Each native and necessary to a complex government and economy. But each of these texts (like the urban archaeology discussed above) require a centralized government to be produced and preserved.

And herein lies the problem with our Bible and “external evidence.” Much of the biblical narrative happened before Israel was a state. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the twelve. The sojourn in Egypt. The Exodus and the wilderness wanderings. The Conquest & Settlement and even the early emergence of the monarchy under Samuel & Saul … no centralized government. So no tax base, no monumental architecture—palaces, temples, fortifications. No federal storage facilities. Not because our people weren’t there, but because we can’t locate them in the archaeological record.

As for epigraphy. What permanent records does a non-landholding pastoralist keep? What building inscriptions or foundation deposits, boundary stones, treaties, or official correspondence? And if one has no national boundaries or professional army, what reason would another nation have to celebrate defeating this not-yet-a-nation who has no army?

So although it is true that we have very little “external” evidence for example, of the patriarchs, as historians we should expect very little “external” evidence. But AFTER the formation of the monarchy, with its tax base, building projects, and professional army, well, surprise, surprise, so much “external” evidence it would take me hundreds of pages to offer you the most cursory introduction. As a result there are very few scholars who question the veracity (historicity) of the Biblical narrative after the Divided monarchy begins in 931 BCE. And as the rules of the game are that I must be able to verify the biblical narrative (internal evidence) with external evidence (archaeology and epigraphy) before I am allowed to name it “historical,” then very predictably, I’m not going to do very well until after 931 BCE.

So as I tell my students, when we look at the timeline of the biblical narrative (please find my teaching timeline below, and please know that all of the dates prior to 931 BCE are up for debate), any events prior to the monarchy live “under the shadow.” The shadow of “I don’t have enough external evidence to prove historicity.”

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And although we have some very reliable evidence, both archaeological and epigraphic, to reconstruct the era of the patriarchs ... so much so that esteemed Israeli archaeologist, Amihai Mazar states that, “I find the similarities between the MB II culture and that illustrated in the Genesis stories too close to be ignored” (Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 1990). And the Mari Archive removes any doubt that there were Semitic pastoralists moving between Haran and Canaan in this era. And the Amorite Onomasticon give us their names (Abram, Sarai, Isaac, and Jacob—or at least names just like theirs). And we know that these same Amorites traveled to Egypt in times of drought and famine … reality is that I can’t prove Abraham’s existence. And it is very unlikely that we will ever find direct evidence of our Abram and his personal story.

The same is true of the Exodus. I can easily demonstrate that Semites were migrating into Egypt in the Middle Bronze Age, settling in the Wadi Tumilat (you know it as Goshen), and were elevated to high administrative posts by the end of that era. It is no secret that with the rise of New Kingdom Egypt foreigners were enslaved for massive building campaigns, and that the eastern defense system made it as hard to get out of Egypt as it was to get in—Jim Hoffmeier has spent his career accumulating this data. Manfred Bietak, one of the greatest Egyptologists of all time, states point blank that he is not nearly as pessimistic about the historicity of the Exodus as biblical scholars are (“Comments on the Exodus” in Egypt, Israel, Sinai: Archaeological and Historical, 1987). But I can’t “prove” an exodus with external evidence.

But when we at last arrive at Israel as a nation-state, well, then the shadow lifts. David and his dynasty are named. Monumental architecture of massive proportions appears in Jerusalem and Solomon’s strategic military cities. Samaria (the northern kingdom’s capital) is transformed under Omri into one of the most luxurious cities of the ancient world. Omri is named in the Meshe Stele, Jehu is named and portrayed on the Black Obelisk. We have found the ivory that decorated Ahab’s “ivory house” (cf. Amos 3:15; 6:4 and 1 Kgs 22:39). We have Hezekiah’s seal (think “signature pad”), Isaiah’s seal, even Jeremiah’s scribe Barak-yahu’s seal. And the wars that brought both the northern and southern kingdoms to their knees are so well documented out of the archaeological and epigraphic record that … well, we could write a movie script.

So all told, yes, there are significant challenges in demonstrating the historicity of the biblical text prior to 931 BCE. It is ancient history-writing and there is still much work to be done. But the evidence clearly demonstrates that the historical stages upon which the characters of our early narratives live out their lives can be reconstructed in compelling detail. And the national histories recorded in your Bibles? The events and the people they describe are, by any ancient standard, “history.” Come on with the questions!

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