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Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology

Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology. Introduction. The Bible - A Brief Introduction : - The term Bible: from the Greek word Biblia meaning “books”; The Bible is a library of books, written over a period of 1100 years;

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Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology

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  1. Current Issues in Biblical Archaeology Introduction

  2. The Bible- A Brief Introduction: • - The term Bible: from the Greek word Biblia meaning “books”; • The Bible is a library of books, written over a period of 1100 years; • The term Bible has different meanings for a Jew, a Protestant Christian, and a Roman Catholic Christian (see list of books in your Bible); • The Jewish Bible is called the Hebrew Scriptures/TANAK. • The Christian Bible consists of two major segments: • Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures; • New Testament.

  3. Various views on the Nature of the Bible: • A depository of divine revelation; • A reflection both of God’s progressive self-revelation and of humankind’s ever increasing understanding of that revelation; • A human record and interpretation of God’s activity in history and of the human response to that activity; • A human representation of the origins and early life of two ancient communities: Ancient Israel and Early Christianity; • An anthology of the literature produced by ancient Israel and early Christianity.

  4. Difficulties in the Study of the Bible: • The sheer bulk and diversity of the material; • The historical and geographical remoteness of the biblical world; • The thought world of the Bible is in many ways quite foreign to contemporary westerners; • Many have certain preconceived ideas about the Bible that can make a realistic and objective study of it exceedingly difficult.

  5. Method in the study of the Bible: • Historical-Critical Approach to the study of the Bible: • Lower Criticism or Textual Criticism; • Its Goal: the recovery of the actual words written by various authors; • Higher Criticism or Literary-Historical Criticism: • Deals with questions about the origin and history of the biblical materials; • Deals also with the pre-literary or oral form of these materials, that is, form criticism, which attempts to trace the history and development of the biblical traditions before they were reduced to writing.

  6. Overall Goal of Biblical Criticism: • To place the various parts of the Bible in their concrete historical and cultural setting; • To help the modern reader of the Bible put herself/himself back in the position of the ancient communities, that is, Ancient Israel and Early Christianity, that produced and used the biblical materials and, thus, to determine what these materials meant to those communities.

  7. Summary: • The Bible may be viewed as a collection of historical, theological, and instructional materials which were produced, utilized, preserved, and eventually “Canonized” (declared authoritative) by Ancient Israel and the Early Christian Church; • The Bible is actually a library of books; • A modern approach to the study of the Bible is called “Biblical Criticism” /Textual Criticism and “Literary-Historical Criticism”.

  8. The Bible as a Historical Source: • - The Debate Between: • - The Conservative/Maximalists’ Position: • (See Textbook, pp. 5, 10-12, 101, 107, 160.) and • The Minimalists’ Position: • (See Textbook, pp. 5, 12-14, 101, 160). • A Centrist Position: • Finkelstein (See Textbook, pp. 9, 14); and • Mazar – “middle of the road” (See Textbook, pp. 20, 29-31).

  9. Biblical Archaeology: • “archaeological activity that pertains to the world of the Bible and as upholding what he views as the essential relationship between artifact and text” (See Textbook, p. 7, 21-33, especially pp. 32-33). • The question of “the historical relevance of the biblical text for reconstructing early Israel’s history” (p. 7). • Mazar sees this issue as lying at the heart of the current controversy over the modern quest for the historical Israel (p. 7). • Finkelstein cites three examples of archaeology’s contribution to the quest for the early historical Israel (pp. 6-7, 17-18).

  10. Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts: • - Documents from Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; • See Hallo and Younger, The Context of Scripture (1997-2001): • Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World; • Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World; • Archival Documents from the Biblical ‘World. • Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (1950, 1965, 1969).

  11. Merneptah Stele

  12. Mesha Stele/Mesha Stone/Moabite Inscription

  13. The Tel Dan Inscription:

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