‘Minimalism’ is the view that archaeology provides little or no support for the Biblical history.[1] The best known adherents are OT scholars Philip Davies, Lester Grabbe, Niels Lemche, Thomas Thompson, and Keith Whitelam. However, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman are the only two prominent archaeologists associated with minimalist views. Professional archaeologists are typically strongly critical of minimalist claims. What are some leading scholars saying?
Kenneth Kitchen
A. Kitchen (an Egyptologist, Assyriologist, and archaeologist) has raised numerous objections to minimalist claims. He rejects Thompson’s assertions that the Hebrew Tabernacle is a literary fiction, and that the Tel Dan Stele does not refer to a Hebrew ‘House of David’:
In so doing he ignores the whole of the comparative data that show clearly that the tabernacle was a product of Egyptian technology from the overall period 3000 to 1000 B.C. (plus Semitic analogues, 1900-1100), and would be unable to account for such facts.[2]
Contrary to TLT, “House of X” does mean a dynastic founder, all over the Near East, in the first half of the first millennium B.C.; it was an Aramean usage that passed into Assyrian nomenclature, and examples are common.[3]
He also defends the Merneptah Stele as reliable evidence for a people named ‘Israel’ in early 13th century Canaan,[4] and contradicts the minimalist claim that the use of the first person perspective in the Mesha Stele indicates a post-mortem or legendary account.[5]
William Dever
Though far more sceptical than Kitchen, W. Dever, an archaeologist, has nevertheless opposed minimalism vigorously,[6] objecting in particular to their lack of engagement with professional archaeological scholarship.
Davies does not even cite the standard handbook, Mazar’s Archaeology of the Land of the Bible…[7]
Thus he [Thompson] published two years later his revisionist treatment of ancient Israel: The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. Despite its subtitle, this work has next to nothing to do with real archaeology.[8]
Israel Finkelstein
Despite sympathies with some minimalist views, Finkelstein has rejected strongly the minimalist claims concerning the Biblical records of Iron Age Israel.
The assumption is inconceivable that in the fifth, or fourth, or even second centuries b.c.e., the scribes of a small, out-of-the-way temple town in the Judean mountains authored an extraordinarily long and detailed composition about the history, personalities, and events of an imaginary Iron Age “Israel” without using ancient sources.[9]
He has also rejected the minimalist assertions that the ‘lists and details of royal administrative organization in the kingdom of Judah’ are fictional,[10] and that the Hebrew King David never existed.[11] He acknowledges strong archaeological support for certain parts of the Biblical record.[12]
Amihai Mazar
With more in common with Finkelstein than the minimalists, A. Mazar, an archaeologist, takes a moderate though critical view of the Biblical history.
Both Assyrian inscriptions and local inscriptions like the stelae of Mesha, king of Moab, and of Hazael, king of Damascus (better known as the Tel Dan inscription), confirm that the general historical framework of the Deuteronomistic narrative relating to the ninth century was based on reliable knowledge of the historical outline of that century. Our understanding of the periods preceding the ninth century is of course foggier.[13]
When in doubt, readers are advised to weigh minimalist claims against the current scholarly consensus. Although widely publicized (especially by skeptics and atheists who find minimalist claims convenient for their own agendas), minimalist views remain on the fringe of archaeology and Biblical scholarship, and to date almost no professional archaeologists have joined the minimalist ranks; Finkelstein remains the only archaeologist with views significantly supportive of minimalism. A future column in the journal will provide information useful for identifying the various positions of mainstream Biblical scholars and archaeologists on contested issues and identifying which scholars hold which positions.
[1] The ‘maximalist’ view is that archaeology overwhelmingly supports the Biblical history, and the moderate view is that archaeology substantially supports the Biblical history but that not all of the history can be supported directly from archaeology.
[2] K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 450-451.
[3] Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 453.
[4] ‘The Israel of Merenptah’s stela was, by its perfectly clear determinative, a people (= tribal) grouping, not a territory or city-state; rare statements to the contrary are perverse nonsense, especially given the very high level of scribal accuracy shown by this particular monument.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 451 [All emphasis in quotes is mine.]
[5] ‘Use of the first person by a monarch does not belong exclusively to either postmortem memorial texts or to later legends about such kings. A huge army of texts shows up the falsity of his presumption.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, 456.
[6] ‘I want to combat these “minimalist” or “revisionist” views of the history of ancient Israel by showing how archaeology can and does illuminate a historical Israel in the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (roughly 1200–600 B.C.E.)’, W. Dever, “Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey” BAR (26/02), (2000): 28-35, 68-69.
[7] W. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites? and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 138.
[8] Who Were the Early Israelites? and Where Did They Come From?, 141.
[9] I. Finkelstein, “Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible” in The Quest for the Historical Israel (ed. B. B. Schmidt; Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 9-20 (13).
[10] ‘In any event, if they are all contrived or artificial, their coincidence with earlier realities is amazing.’, Finkelstein, “Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible”, 13.
[11] ‘This argument suffered a major blow when the Tel Dan basalt stele was discovered in the mid-1990s.’, “Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible”, 14.
[12] ‘Archaeological excavations and surveys have confirmed that many of the Bible’s geographical listings—for example, of the boundaries of the tribes and the districts of the kingdom—closely match settlement patterns and historical realities in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.e. Equally important, the biblical scholar Baruch Halpern showed that a relatively large number of extra-biblical historical records—mainly Assyrian—verify ninth- to seventh-century b.c.e. events described in the Bible:’, “Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible”, 13-14.
[13] A. Mazar, “On Archaeology, Biblical History, and Biblical Archaeology” in The Quest for the Historical Israel (ed. B. B. Schmidt; Archaeology and Biblical Studies 17; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 21-33 (30).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One