I first heard of this book through a review in 2014
in the pages of
Biblical Archaeology Review. The title piqued my
interest, but it wasn’t until a month or so ago that I actually acquired the
book to read it. My overall take on the book is that it is a very impressive
shot across the bow of the biblical minimalists. Though it has been several
years since the book was first published, from what I can tell from my vantage
point outside the field, most of the arguments the author presents still hold
water today.
In Excavating the Bible, author Yitzhak Meitlis
drives home the point that what is presented in archaeological publications is
generally not raw, objective data, but rather interpretations of the data. As he
writes, “Interpretation stems from a broad knowledge of the field and the
experience of the interpreter…Certainty and uncertainty are often interwoven
and defy attempts to unravel them.” He begins the book by showing that over the
last few decades an assumption has settled into scholarly circles that the
Bible offers little accurate historic information and that it is not reliable
in any way when it speaks of history. This reminded me of an interview with Dr.
Lawrence Stager back in 2010. Dr. Stager was discussing 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 continued,
“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.”
Contrary to these critics, Meitlis argues that the Bible is
overwhelmingly accurate when it speaks of historic matters, and sets about in
this book to show that many of the arguments made against the biblical record
do not rest firmly on data but rather depend on a particular interpretation of
the data. Meitlis offers his own interpretations that he believes better fit
the facts and also line up with the Bible.
He continues in the next chapter by offering an in-depth
geographic survey of the Judean hill country. This is key to his overall
argument in the book, as he believes that the Intermediate Bronze Age lasted
longer in the Judean hill country than in the plains and coastal regions and
that the Iron Age began earlier there while the lowlands were still in the Late
Bronze Age. Further he argues that settlements in different areas of the Judean
hills developed at different times due to geography and population.
After a review of past studies and excavations in the
relevant areas, he begins his study of the Bible, and the main goal of his
arguments for differing cultural developments in different regions becomes
apparent. He argues that the archaeological findings in the Judean hills for
the time of the patriarchs fit the Biblical data very closely despite the
argument of many secular academics that the descriptions in Genesis seem to fit
more closely with the Iron Age than the Middle Bronze Age. He argues that
evidence of intermingling between a widespread nomadic culture and a more
settled culture of towns and rulers only exists during the Middle Bronze Age,
the age of the patriarchs, which is pictured in the Bible as a time of just
such mingling. He argues that the widespread literacy of later Jewish eras
contrasts sharply with the limited evidence of writing in the time of the
patriarchs, suggested that at the time writing was restricted to a small group
of professional scribes. This too fits what we know from archaeological
excavation of Middle Bronze Age sites.Many
archaeologists discredit the idea of the nomadic patriarchs playing a large
role in the region during their purported time as
The next section of the book deals with the conquest of the
land. He shows that archaeological evidence suggests that the Iron Age began in
the Judean hill country sooner than it did in the western areas of Israel, and
that a new culture apparently penetrated the land from the east during the 14th
century BC. This, of course, fits not only with the Biblical picture of the
conquest but also with the biblical date for the conquest, the early 14th
century rather than early 12th century as many scholars prefer.
He then turns to the period of Israelite monarchy and in
great detail describes the archaeological record of various sites throughout
the northern and southern portions of Israel, reconstructing what we can learn
of the political situation from these finds. The most interesting information
in this part of the book for me was his lengthy discussion of how population
estimates are customarily arrived at and how he believes this process should be
altered to account for the presence of nomadic groups and undiscovered towns
and villages outside the major cities. His arguments for a different method for
the calculation are extremely persuasive, and his population estimates are far
larger than those of his colleagues and more in line with the numbers given in
the Bible.
Finally he ends with a chapter on excavations and findings
in Israel and how they relate to the thesis of his book. This section is dense
and data-focused. For those readers who have already been convinced of the
thesis of the book and who aren’t interested in the heavy lifting, this section
could probably be skipped. However, if you skip this section you are missing
out on some fascinating information. In particular, his discussion of settlement
patterns and what they can tell us about the system of government in a region
and the relationships between settlements and the nearest cities presents a
compelling argument for the idea that Jerusalem has long been an important city
in the region, earlier than many archaeologists have believed. It is in this
section, likewise, that he goes into detail about the contradictions between
Egyptian sources, Babylonian sources, and excavation data from the 15th
century BC. In the many years I’ve been following archaeology as an interest, I
had never actually heard these discrepancies so clearly pointed out, let alone
discussed in detail. It is here that Meitlis offers one of his most radical
propositions in the book, that currently accepted chronology for the area be
shifted about 90 years bringing it in line with both the Bible and the
archaeological data.
Though Meitlis writes with great clarity, this book is not
written at a popular level or for a popular audience. For one thing, the book
was originally written in Hebrew, and in the English interpretation many of the
place names retain their Hebrew form rather than the forms English readers are
more used to: Bet-El for Bethel, Hatzor for Hazor, Be’er-Sheva for Beersheba, Menashe
for Manasseh, and so on. This is something you get used to quickly as you’re
reading. Secondly, to read this book is to push through a dense forest of
information and footnotes: surface survey results, pottery studies, burials,
dwelling structures, settlement distribution, population statistics. It’s easy
to become overwhelmed with the sheer volume of data Meitlis utilizes to come to
his conclusions. It would be easy to breeze through this book picking out the main
points, but a slow reading with attention to detail is helpful for seeing the
full force of the author’s arguments.
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