Has Archaeology Buried the Bible?
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
Bringing the Bible and ancient Israel into a new and brighter light.
In the last twenty years, archaeological evidence has dramatically illuminated ancient Israel, particularly its religion. However, instead of proving the truth of the Bible, as an earlier generation had confidently predicted, the new discoveries have forced us to revise much of what was thought to be biblical truth.
The new data provokes an urgent question: If the biblical stories are not always true historically, what, if anything, is still salvageable of the Bible’s ethical and moral values? In a postmodern age much of the Western cultural tradition, resting on the biblical worldview, is being challenged.
The Bible, read with a critical and discerning mind, can help us to do right in this world—and archaeology may be the best tool for the task of bringing to light the ethical value of the Bible. Has Archaeology Buried the Bible? simplifies the complex issues and summarizes the new, archaeologically attested ancient Israel, period by period (ca. 1200–600 BCE). But it also explores in detail how a modern, critical reader of the Bible can still find relevant truths by which to live.
- Summarizes the new, archaeologically attested ancient Israel, period by period
- Provides a helpful explanation of the complex issues
- Explores in detail how a modern, critical reader of the Bible can still find relevant truths by which to live
- Digging in the Dirt and in the Bible
- Patriarchs, Matriarchs, and Migrations: Where Is the Promised Land?
- Yahweh versus Pharaoh: Holy War
- Israel Settles in Its Land of Promise—or Peril?
- Yahweh Comes to the Rescue: Divine Kingship
- Israel, a Nation among the Nations: Divine Destiny—and Disaster
- Religion and Cult: How Many Gods?
Top Highlights
“way of reading and comprehending Scripture, namely as allegory” (Page 7)
“The following chapters will begin by summarizing the main events of the biblical stories, then evaluate them critically in the light of current archaeological evidence.” (Page 6)
“Although the stories are apparently set in an early second millennium context, there are a number of references that betray the realities of the much later Iron Age.” (Page 13)
“only about twelve thousand people in the highlands of Canaan in the thirteenth century BCE” (Page 64)
“often than not, it tends to undergird the biblical account, sometimes in striking detail” (Page 104)
- Title: Has Archaeology Buried the Bible?
- Author: William G. Dever
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2020
- Pages: 224
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Archaeology
William G. Dever is professor emeritus of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He has served as director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology in Jerusalem, as director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and as a visiting professor at universities around the world. He has spent thirty years conducting archaeological excavations in the Near East, resulting in a large body of award-winning fieldwork.
Reviews
2 ratings
MYL22
1/25/2024
Lawrence Rafferty
7/24/2023
This book presents few archaeological facts. Instead Dever suggests moral lessons, seemingly for an audience of atheistic Americans who nevertheless consider the Bible literature foundational to modern morality. Dever imagines ancient Israel through a selection of modified biblical stories and interpreted archaeological data. The result is a historical fiction he has found productive.Mike Harris
10/21/2021
