The Double Standard

There is an excellent interview with Lawrence Stager in the current issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Among other things, Dr. Stager discusses the problem of a younger generation of archaeologists who “either ignore Biblical material completely or don’t really have the facility or ability to deal with it.” He also says, “There are some archaeologists who don’t want to deal with the Bible at all, even though it contains the most important group of texts we have.”

This makes sense from a secular perspective. After all, secularists believe the Bible is only a collection of Ancient Near Eastern texts, which, as history, are hardly reliable. They probably don’t trust any ancient texts to give an accurate account of history, right?

Not so. According to Stager, “Scholars are much more gullible about nonbiblical texts than they are about Biblical texts. They are much more suspicious of Bibilical texts. Quite often, if it’s said in an Assyrian annal, it’s taken literally.”