Historicity of the Bible

According to theologian Thomas L. Thompson, a representative of the Copenhagen School, also known as "biblical minimalism", the archaeological record lends sparse and indirect evidence for the Old Testament's narratives as history.

Albright (1891–1971), which sought to validate the historicity of the events narrated in the Bible through the ancient texts and material remains of the Near East,[21] has a more specific focus compared to the more expansive view of history described by archaeologist William Dever (b.

[31] The Jewish philosopher and pantheist Baruch Spinoza echoed Hobbes's doubts about the provenance of the historical books in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (published in 1670),[32] and elaborated on the suggestion that the final redaction of these texts was post-exilic under the auspices of Ezra (Chapter IX).

[33] In response Jean Astruc, applying to the Pentateuch source criticism methods common in the analysis of classical secular texts, believed he could detect four different manuscript traditions, which he claimed Moses himself had redacted (p. 62–64).

[34] His 1753 book initiated the school known as higher criticism that culminated in Julius Wellhausen formalising the documentary hypothesis in the 1870s,[35] which identifies these narratives as the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source.

[43]All of which left the "first man" and his putative descendants in the awkward position of being stripped of all historical context, until Charles Darwin naturalized the Garden of Eden with the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859.

The mainstream scholarly community soon arrived at a consensus, which holds today, that Genesis 1–11 is a highly schematic literary work representing theology/symbolic mythology rather than actual history or science.

Though doubts have been cast on the historiographic reconstructions of this school (particularly the notion of oral traditions as a primary ancient source), much of its critique of biblical historicity found wide acceptance.

[48] Van Seter and Thompson's works were a paradigm shift in biblical scholarship and archaeology, which gradually led scholars to no longer consider the patriarchal narratives as historical.

The narratives refer to camel-based traders carrying gum, balm, and myrrh, which they hold it is unlikely prior to the first millennium, as such activity only became common in the 8th–7th centuries BCE when Assyrian hegemony enabled this Arabian trade to flourish into a major industry.

[59] William Dever stated in 1993 that [Albright's] central theses have all been overturned, partly by further advances in biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he himself gave encouragement and momentum.

[78][page needed] Many scholars believe that the Deuteronomistic history preserved elements of ancient texts and oral tradition, including geo-political and socio-economic realities and certain information about historical figures and events.

[86][page needed] Amnon Ben-Tor (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) believes that recently unearthed evidence of violent destruction by burning verifies the biblical account.

[89] The Books of Samuel are considered to be based on both historical and legendary sources, primarily serving to fill the gap in Israelite history after the events described in Deuteronomy.

The Israel Antiquities Authority stated: "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE.

Amihai Mazar contends that if the Iron I/Iron IIa dating of administrative structures in the City of David are correct (as he believes), "Jerusalem was a rather small town with a mighty citadel, which could have been a center of a substantial regional polity.

An argument in favor of a decent burial before sunset is the Jewish custom, based on the Torah, that the body of an executed person should not remain on the tree where the corpse was hung for public display, but be buried before sunrise.

[133] Similarly, Dale Allison, reviewing the arguments of Crossan and Ehrman, considers their assertions strong but "find[s] it likely that a man named Joseph, probably a Sanhedrist, from the obscure Arimathea, sought and obtained permission from the Roman authorities to make arrangements for Jesus’ hurried burial.

"[148] According to Geza Vermes, "had the accounts been the products of wholesale manufacturing, it is highly unlikely that they would have provided female witnesses who “had no standing in a male-dominated Jewish society.” Moreover, they would have gotten the number of women in the various narratives correct.

[163][164] For example, scholars such as Mike Licona argue that the diversity of different witnesses, such as skeptics Paul and James, are of important value to historians and, writing further, that attempts to downplay such value don't work.

[175] Archaeological inscriptions and other independent sources show that Acts contains some accurate details of 1st century society with regard to titles of officials, administrative divisions, town assemblies, and rules of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

During this year, two prize-winning essays were written in Copenhagen; one by Niels Peter Lemche, the other by Heike Friis, which advocated a complete rethinking of the way we approach the Bible and attempt to draw historical conclusions from it.

[188] In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico (1986), translated into English as History and Ideology in Ancient Israel (1988).

If so, very few are willing to operate like this, not even John Bright (1980) whose history is not a maximalist one according to the definition just given.However, other more mainstream scholars have rejected these claims: The skeptical approaches peaked in the 1990s, with the emergence of the minimalist school which attempted to deny the Bible any relevance for the study of the Iron Age, but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship.In 2003, Kenneth Kitchen, a scholar who adopts a more maximalist point of view, authored the book On the Reliability of the Old Testament.

[203]However, despite problems with the archaeological record, some maximalists place Joshua in the mid-second millennium, at about the time the Egyptian Empire came to rule over Canaan, and not the 13th century as Finkelstein or Kitchen claim, and view the destruction layers of the period as corroboration of the biblical account.

Both Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were really existing persons (not kings but bandit leaders or hill country chieftains)[204][205] from Judah about the 10th century BCE,[206] but they do not assume that there was such a thing as United Monarchy with a capital in Jerusalem.

[208] Gunnar Lehmann suggests that there is still a possibility that David and Solomon were able to become local chieftains of some importance and claims that Jerusalem at the time was at best a small town in a sparsely populated area in which alliances of tribal kinship groups formed the basis of society.

[214] Recently, Finkelstein has joined with the more conservative Amihai Mazar to explore the areas of agreement and disagreement and there are signs the intensity of the debate between the so-called minimalist and maximalist scholars is diminishing.

Megan Bishop Moore and Brad E. Kelle provide an overview of the respective evolving approaches and attendant controversies, especially during the period from the mid-1980s through 2011, in their book Biblical History and Israel's Past.

"1 Assessing the situation in scholarship four decades later, William Dever in 2001 concluded, "After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible 'historical figures.