Down-to-earth biblical history.

• Author: Rainey, A.F.
• Position: What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? - Book Review

THE MONOGRAPH UNDER REVIEW is William G. Dever's response to the "revisionist" movement in biblical scholarship. That "school" is best represented by Philip R. Davies in the UK. and N. P. Lemche and T. L. Thompson in Copenhagen. For the past several years Dever has been actively engaged in debate with those scholars, whom I prefer to call the "minimalists" (double entendre). His contributions have been in various journals and in papers and addresses in public and professional forums. Now, the reader can peruse carefully the arguments and the evidence in a convenient, well written volume.

It was no surprise that this reviewer concurs 100% with Dever's critique of the "revisionists." Furthermore, I am delighted that someone of Dever's stature in the profession has finally put it all together. In a previous forum (November, 2000), I said that as far as these "minimalists" are concerned, I personally have no more pearls to cast. A problem with responding to the minimalists is the frustration of having to argue against non-arguments, baseless statements, and distortions of facts. This could drive one to excessive ad hominem statements about the individuals themselves. Of course this must be avoided; ad hominem attacks are only a substitute for substantive arguments.

As a reviewer of Dever's book, I find much in common with the author. We have been friends for many years. There is also a certain parallelism in our careers. Dever explains in his "Foreword" that he had come from a conservative Protestant background, just as I had. In Dever's own words, "We were not defrocked, we were just unsuited." Both of us have traveled a long road towards a much more critical view of the Bible as an ancient source. Both of us have had some thirty seasotis of field excavation, although I never aspired to be an excavation director. I do not consider myself an academic archaeologist, just a dirt archaeologist. Both of us now find ourselves with Jewish identity. Therefore, many readers, and especially the minimalists, will see here a sort of Hegelian dialectic through which both of us have passed, and will doubtless accuse us of being "closet fundamentalists." However, while our careers developed in parallel, they were not convergent. Unlike Dever, I have devoted most of my research and te aching to the ancient written sources for Near Eastern history and to their respective languages. On issues where I find myself in disagreement with Dever, mainly in regard to method or details about biblical-archaeological coordination, more will be said below.

Chapter 1, "The Bible as History, Literature, and Theology" places the subject in its semantic context and reflects the three main approaches to the Bible. Dever brings each topic up to its present status, more or less, and helps us to see how the theological approach to the Bible stands apart from the historical. There are, nevertheless, theologians for whom a basic tenet in their system is the literal truth of Scripture. In this regard, one may note that only in recent years has the Catholic Church corrected its official attitude to Galileo! The earth is not flat and the sun does not revolve around the earth. Cf., e.g., Psalms 19:5-7 (Eng. 4-6):

[LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

He has placed a tent for the sun among them, And it is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber; It rejoices as a strong man to run (his) course. Its rising is from one end of the heavens, And its daily rotation to the other end of them; And there is nothing hidden from its heat. The ancient Israelites viewed the heavens like their Near Eastern neighbors and from a literal, exegetical point of view, Galileo's judges and critics were correct. How one explains the clear statements that the sun does come forth in the morning and go in at evening is a matter of individual compromise.

The use of archaeology to "prove" the literalness of the Bible is not a fruitful approach. In subsequent chapters Dever brings some valid contacts between archaeological finds and allusions in the Hebrew Bible, which do show that the passages in question must originate from the pre-exilic period. Such "confirmations" are extremely valuable, but they do not, in themselves, provide support for a thoroughly literal interpretation of every verse in the Bible, even as a theoretical possibility.

Chapter 2, "The Current School of Revisionists and their Nonhistories of Ancient Israel," is a thoroughgoing critique of the "revisionist" (minimalist) dogmas about the Bible and about the history of ancient Israel. Dever is devastating in his attack and rightly so. He duly exposes the minimalist nonsense for what it is: an empty, vacuous fruit of unbridled and undisciplined imagination. Dever places the minimalist school properly in the context of postmodernism and exposes its philosophical, political, and social weaknesses. Every student of the Bible and of the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean littoral should have this chapter as required reading.

Chapter 3, "What Archaeology is and What it can Contribute to Biblical Studies' gives a careful survey of the history of archaeology as a discipline, in particular with reference to the study of the "biblical lands." The various phases through which we have passed are discussed in chronological order. Most readers of this review are already familiar with this history. It only remains to note that Dever's survey is mainly from an American stance although European, especially British, scholars are mentioned. Dever reflects in many respects the outlook of his mentor, G. E. Wright. Of course when he comes to the question of "Syro-Palestinian" archaeology, he is dealing with a trend that he himself fostered as a reaction to the "biblical archaeology" of his teacher. The new trend was healthy in itself, but the Americans sometimes have the notion that it was exclusively their idea. When Yohanan Aharoni reorganized the department of Tel Aviv University in 1968, the local regional major was called "Eretz-Israel...