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Bible Archeology

Bible Archeology is the name that is sometimes given to a branch of study whose object is to elucidate the Jewish and Christian Scriptures by means of the archaeological remains of ancient Israel and Judah and of other peoples mentioned in the Bible. In the strictest sense archaeology deals only with such remains as material objects, and not with the epigraphical material, which belongs to the domain of philology and history. But as the inscribed monuments have, as a rule, been brought to light through archteological research, and the meaning of the texts has often been first discussed by archaeologists, the distinction has not always been closely drawn, and archaeology is popularly understood as having to do with the inscriptions as well as with the character of the monuments. It was once customary to include in biblical archaeology a great variety of subjects, such as the religious, social, and political conditions, the arts and sciences, manners and customs, geography and topography, flora and fauna of Palestine in early days and of other lands and nations referred to in the biblical books.

The similarity between the Sumerian and Akkadian legends concerning chaos, creation, paradise, and deluge and the stories in Genesis, seemed at first to indicate a direct borrowing and a very late date when Israel and Judah had been invaded by Assyrian armies, or exiles lived in Babylonia. When it was found, however, that such narratives had already spread from Babylonia to Egypt and probably also to Syria in the Tell el Amarna period (fourteenth century BC), the arguments for a late date and a direct derivation were considerably weakened.

As most of the inscriptions are original autographs, their statements were often been accepted without criticism as of more authority than those found in records of which there are only late copies, when a more searching examination has revealed their untrustworthiness or improbability. Conclusions were drawn, from one side or another, which were subsequently seen to be without validity or in need of modification. Sometimes the evidence tended to strengthen the positions which critics had been led to assume; sometimes it has been more favorable to the traditional views; not seldom it has only offered new problems for which new solutions must be found.

William Foxwell Albright [1891—1971] was a master of so many disciplines linked to the study of the ancient Near East, in particular the world of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), that he is considered one of the last great orientalists. Having its origins as far back as the 12th century, orientalism was the study of the synthetic and simultaneous study of the history, languages, and culture ofthe peoples of Asia. Rightly, he has become known as the last of the "universals," those men who were very competent across a wide range of fields. Albright was an expert in many fields including, Semitic epigraphy and paleography, history, philology, and archaeology.

In 1921, Albright became the acting director of ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research), and soon after he became the director of the same institute. Founded in 1900 as the American School of Oriental Research (ASOR), it was renamed in 1970 after its most distinguished director, William Foxwell Albright. The W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (AIAR) in Jerusalem is the oldest American research center for ancient Near Eastern studies in the Middle East.

William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) was born to American parents who served as missionaries in Chile. He was an Orientalist, who left his mark in various fields of research including philology, ancient history, epigraphy, paleography, and archeology. His background in linguistics and language learning began while in Chile. From his birth, Albright was bilingual, fluent in English and Spanish. He continued learning languages in his classical studies of Greek and Latin in college, and he also studied German and French. Along the way, he taught himself Hebrew and Assyrian, and published articles in these fields.

Albright challenged the then dominant paradigm of Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) studies established by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), the German biblical scholar who developed the documentary hypothesis to understand the development of the written Bible and Herman Gunkel’s form criticism that aimed at clarifying the oral traditions in the Hebrew Bible that preceded its codification.

To W.F.Albright, archaeology did not have an independent role; rather, it was expected to provide supporting evidence for a “history” prewritten according to an uncritical reading of the biblical text. Every mention of Bethel in the biblical record, uncritically dated (e.g., the Patriarchs in the Middle Bronze Age, the Conquest in the late-13th century, etc.), was supposed to be represented at the site. And since Bethel is mentioned in a plethora of biblical sources, which cover the entire biblically narrated sequential history of ancient Israel, the finds were perceived as reflecting a continuous occupation starting in the Middle Bronze Age (the Patriarchal Age according to Albright and his followers) and continuing through the Late Bronze Age (the conquest of Canaan), the Iron Age I (the Israelite settlement) and the entire Iron Age II (with special emphasis on the Jeroboam I shrine and Josiah’s reform).

Albright’s scholarly authority in ancient Near Eastern studies was so profound that the intellectual paradigm tha the helped create, Biblical archaeology rooted in a fairly literal interpretation of the history embedded in the Old testament, was unchallenged during his lifetime. While archaeology in the English-speaking world — primarily the United states and the United Kingdom — was undergoing a major paradigm shift in the 1960s, with the birth of the new archaeology, archaeologists working in Syro-Palestine insulated themselves from this fundamental intellectual change. This was due in great part to Albright’s authority based on the way he single-handedly shaped the archaeology of the Bible lands during his long career. It was only long after Albright’s death that scholars began to challenge the paradigm he established.