Israel Finkelstein > Quotes

“The process that we describe here is, in fact, the opposite of what we have in the Bible: the emergence of early Israel was an outcome of the collapse of the Canaanite culture, not its cause. And most of the Israelites did not come from outside Canaan—they emerged from within it. There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people—the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were—irony of ironies—themselves originally Canaanites!”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“Yet all agree that the Pentateuch is not a single, seamless composition but a patchwork of different sources, each written under different historical circumstances to express different religious or political viewpoints.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“biblical history did not take place in either the particular era or the manner described. Some of the most famous events in the Bible clearly never happened at all.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“What the Deuteronomistic historian wanted to say is simple and powerful: there is still a way to regain the glory of the past.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“The most important of these texts are the Nuzi tablets from northern Iraq, which date to the fifteenth century B.C.E. To cite just a few examples, in Nuzi a barren wife is required to provide a slave woman for her husband to bear his children—a clear parallel to the biblical story of Sarai and Hagar in Gen 16.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

“And the patriarch Jacob declared in his last will and testament that the tribe of his son Judah would rule over them all”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“In 586 BCE , the rising, brutal Babylonian empire decimated the land of Israel and put Jerusalem and its Temple to the torch.

With that great tragedy, the biblical narrative dramatically departs in yet another characteristic way from the normal pattern of ancient religious epics. In many such stories, the defeat of a god by a rival army spelled the end of his cult as well. But in the Bible, the power of the God of Israel was seen to be even greater after the fall of Judah and the exile of the Israelites. Far from being humbled by the devastation of his Temple, the God of Israel was seen to be a deity of unsurpassable power. He had, after all, manipulated the Assyrians and the Babylonians to be his unwitting agents to punish the people of Israel for their infidelity.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts

“from various periods but (since its site was obliterated”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts

“is now evident that many events of biblical history did not take place in either the particular era or the manner described. Some of the most famous events in the Bible clearly never happened at all.”
― Israel Finkelstein, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Sacred Texts