Historicity
of the Old Testament – 1. Overview, History of the Issues, and General
Principles
Recently,
there have been many great books defending the historicity of the Old
Testament. Kenneth Kitchen’s On the Reliability of the Old Testament,
Hoffmeier and Magary’s Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?, and
Provan, Long, and Longman III’s A Biblical History of Israel all provide
great evidence that the Old Testament is indeed true history.
For
a layman like myself to try to produce anything new in this area would really
be utterly foolish, bordering on sinful pride. On the other hand, many people
may find it difficult to access these books, since they are expensive and often
go into the issues with very much detail. As such, here I’ll be trying to
provide a basic summary of important points arguing for the
overall historicity of the Old Testament.
I wrote an earlier draft for this which was lost because of a
computer problem, but this has sort of been a blessing. Before rewriting, I got
access to a huge set of books online that I can pull from, including
Finkelstein and Silberman’s The Bible Unearthed. This book is similar to
Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted, in that
they are books coming from a skeptical line of scholarship written at the
popular level. If you were to encounter an a skeptic who has read biblical
scholarship, these three books are the most likely ones they will have read. It
is important to be able to provide a response to their key claims in the spirit
of Peter’s famous words on the defense of the faith – “But sanctify the
Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a
defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you,
with meekness and fear;” (1 Peter 3:15 NKJV).
One
kind word must be given to Finkelstein and Silberman, which is that their book
was really well formatted, and so I will try to follow a similar basic pattern
to what they did. So these posts will be standalone articles on Old Testament
history, but also a type of long review and response to their book.
The
order of discussion will be like so:
1.
Overview, History of the Issues, and General
Principles
2.
The Patriarchs
3.
The Exodus
4.
The Conquest and Judges
5.
The United Monarchy
6.
The Divided Monarchy, Exile, and Return
7.
Ending Points
History
the Issues
It
is often thought that Higher Criticism is in some way a novel development from the
Enlightenment Era. This view is helped by the fact that introductions to the
study of the Old Testament will usually begin either with Medieval Biblical
interpretation or Spinoza’s writing against Mosaic Authorship, but they rarely
ever will go to times before then. One example of this can be found in John J.
Collins’ Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. In all fairness, what he
gives is a basic chronology of modern Biblical Scholarship. However, his
depiction of pre-modern Biblical interpretation does not mention early
controversies that give an interesting context to the more modern ideas.
While
it is possible to look at the history of Old Testament study from the 18th
century onward, one will be missing much important content, especially the 3rd
Century controversies between Early Christians and pagan writers. Not to look at
this period will lead to a great loss of context for later developments. This
is because many of the conclusions of modern scholarship like those of Dr.
Collins, Dr. Finkelstein, and Dr. Silberman are not very different from those
of the Pagan critics of Christianity. This is not to disparage any of these
scholars, but more show that these objections are not new. More than that, a
look at the history of these developments in scholarship will usually reveal
that certain philosophical presuppositions developed before the conclusions
we see being drawn. This should allow us to not be misled to think that
critical scholarship’s conclusions are certain or unbiased, and it should
motivate us to look at the evidence for ourselves.
Throughout
the first three centuries AD, the Christian faith was expanding very quickly
and threatening to overturn much of the old pagan world. Many pagan writers
such as Porphyry of Alexandria and Celsus began to write anti-Christian
polemics while authors such as
St.
Irenaeus, Origen, and Tertullian, took it upon themselves to offer defenses. Porphyry
of Alexandria was a student of Plotinus, whose writings he compiled in the Enneads.
He sought to defend a more intellectual and philosophical Pagan worldview over
the Christian one. He was famous for his criticism of the Bible, especially for
denying the traditional authorships of the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and
of Daniel:
“The books of Moses, Porphyry re- marked, could not be by Moses,
because the data were recorded after the temple fire during the reign of Ezra,
i.e., 1180 years after the death of Moses. Consequently the words of Jesus,
"Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me," were, in
Porphyry's view, no better than an appeal to a false document. The most famous
of his historical observations concerned the Book of Daniel. He was the first
to demonstrate the Hellenistic provenance of several texts, and in this regard
his historical criticism has become the common property of all contemporary
exegetes, whatever their sympathies may be. But his conclusions might prove
destructive of any faith in the prophetic character of the documents of
salvation. For if it were established that a given prophecy had been invented
post eventum and from historical experience, it would lose, for a mind that was
inspired by an interest in history, all historical value and, above all, its
value as unimpeachable revelation. In the conviction that he had established
the charge of post eventum, the historian triumphantly pointed to the swindle
of which the faithful were in his view the victims.” (Den Boer, 200)
This
is more than a thousand years before Higher Criticism. That these arguments are
quite old should allow us to recognize that the time before the Enlightenment
was not a time where there was no critical inquiry into the Bible and its
origins. Further, that Christians and Pagans debated these issues shows well
that issues of Biblical origins and authenticity were considered to be
important issues by the early Church, not just the concern of anachronistic
Fundamentalists. Just as importantly, this shows that these arguments did not
start as objective scholarship, but as polemics against Christians.
Of
course, in the end, the Christianity grew so much that pagan Rome was no more,
and by the early 4th Century, this new faith had become the major
one in the Empire. Attacks like those of Porphyry and Celsus would not reemerge
in force until the 17th century.
From
the end of Antiquity to the beginning of the modern period, inerrancy and
acceptance of traditional authorships was the norm among both Christians and
Jews. Theologians and Church Fathers like St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas all held to inerrancy and to the historicity
of the Bible. In the 17th century, this changed radially. Thinkers
such as Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza began to challenge the truth of
revealed religion on philosophical grounds, and along with this, they
criticized ideas traditional views of the Bible:
“Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah.
The references in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration of
his death and, particularly, of events following his death; and the fact that
some places are called by names that they did not bear in the time of Moses all
“make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt” that the writings commonly referred to
as “the Five Books of Moses” were, in fact, written by someone who lived many
generations after Moses. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history
and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the
Pentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as as other books of the
Hebrew Bible (such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) were written neither by
the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them.
Spinoza believes that these were, in fact, all composed by a single historian
living many generations after the events narrated, and that this was most
likely Ezra the Scribe. It was the post-exilic leader who took the many
writings that had come down to him and began weaving them into a single (but
not seamless) narrative. Ezra’s work was later completed and supplemented by
the editorial labors of others. What we now possess, then, is nothing but a
compilation, and a rather mismanaged, haphazard and “mutilated” one at that.”
What
was radical was Spinoza’s conclusion that the majority of the Pentateuch was
not Mosaic in origin. Even this however would have meant little if it were not
for his religious and philosophical ideas, which could be by no means called
orthodox:
“The solution to this state of affairs, Spinoza believes, is to
examine the Bible anew and find the doctrines of the “true religion”. Only then
will we be able to delimit exactly what we need to do to show proper respect
for God and obtain blessedness. This will reduce the sway that religious
authorities have over our emotional, intellectual and physical lives, and
reinstate a proper and healthy relationship between the state and religion. A
close analysis of the Bible is particularly important for any argument that the
freedom of philosophizing—essentially, freedom of thought and speech—is not
prejudicial to piety. If it can be demonstrated that Scripture is not a source
of “natural truth”, but the bearer of only a simple moral message (“Love your
neighbor”), then people will see that “faith is something separate from
philosophy”. Spinoza intends to show that in that moral message alone—and not
in Scripture’s words or history—lies the sacredness of what is otherwise merely
a human document. The Bible teaches only “obedience [to God]”, not knowledge.
Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and
exclusive spheres, and neither should tread in the domain of the other. The
freedom to philosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm
to true religion. In fact, such freedom is essential to public peace and piety,
since most civil disturbances arise from sectarian disputes.”
What
we see here is that Spinoza’s views on scripture were complementary to his
philosophy, they were even maybe necessary for his other conclusions. This
trend continued with Enlightenment figures such as David Hume, and grew stronger
in the 19th century. Many theories began to develop and combine,
leading to two important ideas in the origin of the Old Testament: the
Deuteronomistic History, and the Documentary Hypothesis:
“About fifty years after Astruc a much more radical proposal was
put forward by W. M. L. de Wette, who in his dissertation of 1805, and in
another work (1806-7), argued that Deuteronomy was written in the time of
Josiah (i.e. about seven centuries after Moses) and that the book of Chronicles
gives a quite unreliable account of the history of Israel’s worship. Both these
ideas became central in the view of Pentateuchal origins that emerged later in
the century.” (Wenham, 48)
Julius
Wellhausen suggested that the Pentateuch was made up of four sources – J, E, D,
and P. Each was written at a different time and was brought together from 850
to 500 BC. His view was that the religion of Israel had developed quite a bit
over time evolutionarily:
“Wellhausen painted a picture of Israel’s religious development
that seemed natural and inevitable without the need for miracle or divine
revelation. In the earliest stages, he argued, Israelite religion was
relatively unregulated. People offered sacrifice when they liked and where they
liked, without any priestly interference. This is the situation Wellhausen saw
reflected in the books of Samuel and Kings At the end of the monarchy period
King Josiah intervened, limited all worship to Jerusalem, thereby greatly enhancing
the power of the priests, who were now able to control the details of worship.
Once the priests had this power, they consolidated it, and during the exile
(587-537 BC) they invented all sorts of rules and regulations about the details
of worship, the status of the priests, their entitlement to tithes and
sacrificial portions and so on.” (Wenham, 48)
Like
with Spinoza, Wellhausen and his theory did not come in an intellectual vacuum:
“If few of his ideas were new, the way they were presented by Wellhausen was
brilliant and appealed very strongly in an era when the theory of evolution was
new and believed by many to explain not just biological change, but many other
historical developments.” (Wenham, 48) When his theory came out, it was
relatively well accepted even among Christians. Indeed, the Documentary
Hypothesis as proposed by Wellhausen became a consensus theory for the majority
of the 20th century. This was helped by the fact that at the time
many archaeologists thought that their findings largely confirmed the
historicity of Abraham through Moses. (Wenham, 49) For example, William Foxwell
Albright, considered to be one of the main biblical archaeologists of the 20th
century, argued that while the texts were written late, Abraham and Moses could
be placed in real history.
For much
of the 20th century, this view that the Pentateuch furnishes much
useful information was a consensus view. In the 1980s, scholars such as Thomas
L. Thompson, John Van Seters and R. N. Whybray shifted this consensus dramatically
in the opposite direction. They argued that the aim of the authors was not to
portray history and that the milieu in which Abraham was said to have lieved
was just as much like the Iron Age as the Middle Bronze Age. As such, it was
suggested that Abraham through Moses were not historical figures. Israel
Finkelstein and Neil Silberman say this on the matter:
“So long as the biblical textual critics and the biblical
archaeologists maintained their basically conflicting attitudes about the
historical reliability of the Bible, they continued to live in two separate
intellectual worlds. The textual critics continued to view the Bible as an
object of dissection that could be split up into even tinier sources and
subsources according to the distinctive religious or political ideas each was
supposed to express. At the same time, the archaeologists often took the
historical narratives of the Bible at face value. Instead of using
archaeological data as an independent source for the reconstruction of the history
of the region, they continued to rely on the biblical narratives – particularly
the traditions of the rise of Israel – to interpret their finds. Of course,
there were new understandings of the rise and development of Israel as the
excavations and surveys proceeded. Questions were raised about the historical
existence of the patriarchs and on the date and scale of the Exodus. New
theories were also developed to suggest that the Isrealite conquest of Canaan
may not have occurred, as the book of oshua insists, as a unified military
campaign. But for Biblical events beginning at the time of David – around 1000
BCE – the archeological consensus, at least until the 1990s, was that the Bible
could be read as a basically reliable historical document.” (Finkelstein and
Silberman, 38)
As
they point out later, now even belief in the historicity of the United Monarchy
is being contested quite a bit. The majority of biblical history today is seen
as either mythical or greatly embellished by many if not most critical
scholars. Of course, there are many reputable scholars who continue to give
reasons to view the Bible as true history, and here I will try to look at some
of them, but it is worth taking note of how much of a move against Scripture
there has been in recent years. Hopefully this short look at the history of the
study will make it clear that scholars do not operate in a vacuum, and that
presuppositions often play a great role in their conclusions.
General
Principles
While
questions of evidence are important, questions of method are as well. Indeed,
the approach with which one examines evidence will influence one’s conclusions
greatly. While some attempts at reconstructing the history of ancient Palestine
have worked heavily from textual evidence such as Provan, Long, and Longman’s A
Biblical History of Israel, others have been more led by archaeology,
especially Finkelstein and Silberman,’s book.
In
modern times where science has been an extremely effective source for
knowledge, many will be naturally inclined toward the approach that Finkelstein
and Silberman advocate. Indeed, archaeology being held as the “Queen of the
Battle” seems self evident at face value. It does run into certain pitfalls
however. As James Hoffmeier points out, many events in ancient history are
agreed to have happened despite a lack of firm archaeological evidence:
“The reality is that historians of the ancient Near East have often
accepted the witness of written documents without corroborating archaeological
data. During the fall of 2010, I participated in a conference in Germany on the
exodus and conquest. In a panel discussion, a distinguished German colleague
repeated the mantra that there is no Egyptian evidence for the exodus, which
raises questions about the historicity of the biblical tradition. I asked if he
believed that Thutmose III invaded Canaan in the mid-fifteenth century BC,
besieging and taking the city of Megiddo. He responded, “Of course.” Then I
pointed out that this military campaign is one of the best documented reports
from the ancient Near East as it is recorded both in royal sources (e.g.,
Annals of Thutmose III, Gebel Barkal Stela, Armant Stela, Buhen Temple Text,
Karnak Toponym lists) and in private documents and biographies of officers who
accompanied the king. Despite all this textual evidence (from a variety of
genres of literature) for the battle of Megiddo in 1457 BC and a seven-month
siege of the city (according to the Barkal Stela), I reminded him, there is
still no archaeological evidence from Megiddo for the Egyptian attack! Megiddo,
as it turns out, is probably the most excavated site in ancient Israel, having
been investigated with regularity since 1903 and work is ongoing.” (Hoffmeier,
2012)
Further,
as Kenneth Kitchen points out, late documents may often be very historically
reliable:
“Broadly, from Abram the patriarch down to such as Ezra and
Nehemiah who guided the Jerusalem community in the fifth century, as given, the
entire history (if such it be) does not precede circa 2000 B.C., running down
to circa 400 B.C. Those who most decidedly dismiss this whole story point to
the date of our earliest discovered MSS of its texts, namely, the Dead Sea
Scrolls of the second century B.C. onward. They would take the most minimal
view, that the biblical books were originally composed just before the time of
the Dead Sea Scrolls, i.e., in the fourth/third centuries B.C. (end of
Persian, into Hellenistic, times). With that late date they would couple an
ultralow view of the rea lit y of that history, dismissing virtually the whole
of it as pure fiction, as an attempt by the puny Jewish community in Pillistine
to write themselves an imaginary past large, as a form of national propaganda.
After all, others were doing this then. In the third century B.C. the Egyptian
priest Manetho produced his Aegyptiaka, or history of Egypt, probably
under Ptolemy 11,1 and by then so also did 13erossus, priest of Marduk at
Babylon, his Clwldaika, for his master, the Seleucid king Antiochus J.2
Comparison with firsthand sources shows that these two writers could draw upon
authentic local records and traditions in each case.” (Kitchen, 2)
It
seems that if we accept both of these points, textual evidence should be used sometimes even where archeological evidence is lacking, and that
even late documents may have a high level of historical veracity. As such, a
current absence of archaeological evidence cannot be conclusive proof that an
event has not taken place. In looking at the historicity of the Old Testament,
we ought to take the texts seriously and to use them in a similar way to other historical documents of the time without a
hermeneutic of suspicion.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AJA8ikZGqO-qaXid04xjFhAY9KuKz26iIYeOOUvYNl4/edit?usp=sharing
Works
Cited:
Den
Boer, W. “A Pagan Historian and his Enemies: Porphyry Against the Christians.”
Classical Philology, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Jul., 1974), pp. 198-208. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/268492, Accessed
7/26/18
Finkelstein,
Israel, and Silberman, Neil. The Bible Unearthed, Prologue,
Introduction, Scribd, Free Press, 2001. pp. 9-41.
Hoffmeier,
James. “Why a Historical Exodus is Necessary for Theology,” Do Historical
Matters Matter to Faith?, edited by James Hoffmeier and D. Magary,
Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, pp. 2012, 109-110.
Kitchen,
K. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids,
2003, p. 2.
Nadler,
Steven, "Baruch Spinoza", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/spinoza/>.
Wenham,
J. “The Pentateuch.” New Bible Commentary, edited by D. A. Carson R. T.
France, J. A. Motyer, G. J. Wenham, 4th Edition, InterVarsity Press, Downers
Grove, 2010, pp. 48-50.
