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B. C.: Archaeology of the Bible Lands
The Archaeology of the Bible by James K. Hoffmeier. Lion Pub,2008
239 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
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24 people want to read
About the author
Magnus Magnusson
101 books29 followersMagnus Magnusson, KBE, was an Icelandic television presenter, journalist, translator and writer. He was born in Iceland but lived in Scotland for almost all of his life, although he never took British citizenship. He came to prominence as a BBC television journalist, and was best known as the presenter of the BBC television quiz programme Mastermind, which he hosted for 25 years.
Under Icelandic naming conventions, his name would have been Magnús Sigursteinsson (Magnús, son of Sigursteinn), but his family adopted British naming conventions and he took his father's surname. Although born in Reykjavík, Magnusson grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul.
Under Icelandic naming conventions, his name would have been Magnús Sigursteinsson (Magnús, son of Sigursteinn), but his family adopted British naming conventions and he took his father's surname. Although born in Reykjavík, Magnusson grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 23, 2025
A SOMEWHAT SKEPTICAL/MINIMALIST PERSPECTIVE OF THE SUBJECT
Icelandic/Scottish journalist Magnus Magnusson wrote in the first chapter of this 1977 book, “So how does our growing recognition of how we began… match the image presented in the Bible? In the last century, and particularly in the last decade, archaeology has done… a great deal to clarify and illuminate our understanding of the Bible as a document. From being our sole source about the origins and development of civilization in the Middle East, the Bible can now be set in the much broader context of our growing knowledge about the human revolution that helped to shape our world. Our purpose in this book is to explore the literary, historical, social, economic, theological and political perspectives throughout the Middle East that gave rise to the Bible… To this end, we must study the peoples and civilizations AROUND ancient Israel and not just the story of the ‘Holy Land’ alone. Not only do they, directly and indirectly, tell us more about the history of Palestine than the Bible does; their idea of prehistory, their mythology, their legends, their world view, all informed and helped to mould the Biblical picture of the past.” (Pg. 7-8)
He notes, “The story of the Great Flood has always haunted man’s imagination, and tempted archaeologists and adventurers alike. When Sir Leonard Woolley was excavating the Sumerian city of Ur in the 1920s… he came across a two-metre layer of pure alluvial clay sandwiched between occupation levels, and sent an electrifying cable back to London: ‘We have found the Flood.’ Later archaeological discoveries showed that many sites had suffered destruction by flooding, but the dates varied widely, from 4000 to 2500 BC.; they were the results of different local floods, not evidence of the Great Flood of Sumerian and Biblical tradition.” (Pg. 22)
He continues, “Similarly, the search for the remains of Noah’s Ark has taken a number of optimistic expeditions and individuals to Mount Ararat [in Turkey]… The quest for Noah’s Ark is self-evidently futile because the Flood story in the Bible is obviously a legend, and a borrowed and garbled one at that (in Genesis there are apparently two Flood stories which have been conflated into one).” (Pg. 22-23)
He explains, “‘Ur of the Chaldees’ has always been one of the magic names in the Bible. Actually, it is a misnomer; Ur was originally one of the ancient city-states of Sumer, and did not become associated with the Chaldeans until the first millennium BC, more than a thousand years after Abraham is thought to have been born there. So the name ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ in Genesis is clearly an anachronistic reference.” (Pg. 31)
He reports, “despite strenuous efforts by archaeologists … no trace at all has ever been found of the Biblical cities of the Vale of Siddim, either in the ground or under the waters of the Dead Sea. Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s wife in her pillar of salt, remain forever petrified in the realm of legend.” (Pg. 41) He continues, “despite the mass of contemporary records that have been unearthed in Egypt, not one historical reference to the presence of the Israelites has yet been found there. Not a single mention of Joseph, the Pharaoh’s ‘Grand Vizer.’ Not a word about Moses, or the spectacular flight from Egypt and the destruction of the pursuing Egyptian army.” (Pg. 43)
He asserts, “Fundamentalists who regard the Old Testament as literal truth try to slot the Joseph episode into the Hyksos period because it was the one time when an immigrant Semite might conceivably have risen to high office in Pharaonic Egypt; and they point to the apparent familiarity with the details of life in Egypt in ancient times. However… [the] Director of the Akhenaten Temple Project in Egypt, disagrees… he argues that the Egyptian elements in the story … reflect not the 17th century BC but the 7th century BC at the earliest; it has no independent historical validity. It is a late adaptation of a common folk-tale motif…” (Pg. 51)
He explains, “The Biblical scenario in Exodus continues with the birth of … a man with the uncompromisingly Egyptian name of Moses… The story is quite obviously a folk-tale, for it echoes almost word-for-word the birth legend of King Sargon the Great, who founded the dynasty of Akkad a thousand years earlier.” (Pg. 58) He continues, “there is absolutely no objective proof, no contemporary evidence, that the Bondage or the Deliverance ever happened at all as particular, identifiable episodes in history.” (Pg. 59)
He observes, “There is also the problem of the scale of the Exodus. According to [Numbers ch. 1], the Twelve Tribes of Israel which took part in the Exodus… [included] 603,550 males of military age; this implies that the host of refugees must have numbered at least two million---a figure that stretches even the most sympathetic credulity. It is simply not believable that a host of this size could have survived in the wilderness for forty years, as the Bible claims… indeed, it is doubtful if the total population of Egypt in the New Kingdom period exceeded that figure.” (Pg. 62-63) Later, he adds, “Manna is in fact produced on various plants that flourish in the desert… There is really nothing miraculous about manna at all, except in the amount that the Bible suggests was available to sustain two million people for forty years.” (Pg. 65-66)
He recounts, “On the assumption that the Pharaoh of the Bondage was Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was presumed to be Rameses’ successor, Merneptah… Merneptah was a singularly bad candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus… On the stela with which he commemorated his exploits he listed the foes he had defeated: Canaan, Ashkelon… and so on… in it we find… the only instance of the name ‘Israel’ in ancient Egyptian records: ‘Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.’ … he could hardly have claimed victory over ‘Israel’ in Palestine if he had drowned in a vain attempt to stop them reaching Palestine in the first place.” (Pg. 63-64)
He points out that “Crystal Bennet, Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, started excavating… Her intention… was to find evidence to confirm the Biblical account … [of the] Edomite royal city... [of] Bozrah… But after four seasons of excavation, the conclusions she was forced to come to… surprised herself no less than other archaeologists and Biblical scholars. She found that there had been no city there… before the end of the 8th century BC---at least 500 years later than the presumed date of the Exodus…. The implications … were unavoidable; the kings had simply been tribal sheiks, and their towns were tents.” (Pg. 73-74)
He states that Israeli archeologist “Dr. [Yigael] Yadin “has written that he approaches a dig with a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other. The Bible account of the fate of Hazor in Joshua is plain and specific… Dr. Yadin argues that all the evidence at Hazor matched the Biblical account perfectly. The date matched the presumed date of the Israelite incursion into Canaan… It is a strong case, and a plausible one, but not all scholars are prepared to accept it uncritically. For one thing, the city could well have been burned by someone else… there is no distinctive artifact with which archaeologists can conclusively label a site as being Israelite.” (Pg. 87-89)
He argues, “But the real bone of contention is… the capture of Jericho… Jericho indeed has been a target for archaeologists for over a century now… in the 1950s… Kathleen Kenyon excavated Jericho again… She found that there had been a considerable Early Bronze Age gate at Jericho… whose walls had fallen and been rebuilt no fewer than seventeen times between 3000 BC and 2300 BC… These had been [John] Garstang’s celebrated walls that Joshua and the earthquake had apparently destroyed---except for the fact that they had been destroyed a thousand years before Joshua came on the scene.” (Pg. 91-93)
Of the story of Samson pulling down the Temple and killing all the Philistines within it, he comments, “the only snag… is the size of the temple itself. It is unexpectedly small… By no stretch of the imagination could one pack 3000 festive Philistines … inside or on top… and although this is the only Philistine temple that has yet been discovered, there is no reason to suppose that any others will turn out to be larger.” (Pg. 113)
Of the settlement of Tell el-Jurn, he asserts, “it was clear that the settlement was not founded until late in the 7th century BC---almost four centuries after the period of David’s exile. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some, at least, of the traditions about David were furnished with anachronistic environmental details that date from the period of the writing up of the story … several centuries after the alleged event.” (Pg. 123)
This is a well-photographed and clearly-written book, but biblical conservatives will certainly not care for it.
Icelandic/Scottish journalist Magnus Magnusson wrote in the first chapter of this 1977 book, “So how does our growing recognition of how we began… match the image presented in the Bible? In the last century, and particularly in the last decade, archaeology has done… a great deal to clarify and illuminate our understanding of the Bible as a document. From being our sole source about the origins and development of civilization in the Middle East, the Bible can now be set in the much broader context of our growing knowledge about the human revolution that helped to shape our world. Our purpose in this book is to explore the literary, historical, social, economic, theological and political perspectives throughout the Middle East that gave rise to the Bible… To this end, we must study the peoples and civilizations AROUND ancient Israel and not just the story of the ‘Holy Land’ alone. Not only do they, directly and indirectly, tell us more about the history of Palestine than the Bible does; their idea of prehistory, their mythology, their legends, their world view, all informed and helped to mould the Biblical picture of the past.” (Pg. 7-8)
He notes, “The story of the Great Flood has always haunted man’s imagination, and tempted archaeologists and adventurers alike. When Sir Leonard Woolley was excavating the Sumerian city of Ur in the 1920s… he came across a two-metre layer of pure alluvial clay sandwiched between occupation levels, and sent an electrifying cable back to London: ‘We have found the Flood.’ Later archaeological discoveries showed that many sites had suffered destruction by flooding, but the dates varied widely, from 4000 to 2500 BC.; they were the results of different local floods, not evidence of the Great Flood of Sumerian and Biblical tradition.” (Pg. 22)
He continues, “Similarly, the search for the remains of Noah’s Ark has taken a number of optimistic expeditions and individuals to Mount Ararat [in Turkey]… The quest for Noah’s Ark is self-evidently futile because the Flood story in the Bible is obviously a legend, and a borrowed and garbled one at that (in Genesis there are apparently two Flood stories which have been conflated into one).” (Pg. 22-23)
He explains, “‘Ur of the Chaldees’ has always been one of the magic names in the Bible. Actually, it is a misnomer; Ur was originally one of the ancient city-states of Sumer, and did not become associated with the Chaldeans until the first millennium BC, more than a thousand years after Abraham is thought to have been born there. So the name ‘Ur of the Chaldees’ in Genesis is clearly an anachronistic reference.” (Pg. 31)
He reports, “despite strenuous efforts by archaeologists … no trace at all has ever been found of the Biblical cities of the Vale of Siddim, either in the ground or under the waters of the Dead Sea. Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s wife in her pillar of salt, remain forever petrified in the realm of legend.” (Pg. 41) He continues, “despite the mass of contemporary records that have been unearthed in Egypt, not one historical reference to the presence of the Israelites has yet been found there. Not a single mention of Joseph, the Pharaoh’s ‘Grand Vizer.’ Not a word about Moses, or the spectacular flight from Egypt and the destruction of the pursuing Egyptian army.” (Pg. 43)
He asserts, “Fundamentalists who regard the Old Testament as literal truth try to slot the Joseph episode into the Hyksos period because it was the one time when an immigrant Semite might conceivably have risen to high office in Pharaonic Egypt; and they point to the apparent familiarity with the details of life in Egypt in ancient times. However… [the] Director of the Akhenaten Temple Project in Egypt, disagrees… he argues that the Egyptian elements in the story … reflect not the 17th century BC but the 7th century BC at the earliest; it has no independent historical validity. It is a late adaptation of a common folk-tale motif…” (Pg. 51)
He explains, “The Biblical scenario in Exodus continues with the birth of … a man with the uncompromisingly Egyptian name of Moses… The story is quite obviously a folk-tale, for it echoes almost word-for-word the birth legend of King Sargon the Great, who founded the dynasty of Akkad a thousand years earlier.” (Pg. 58) He continues, “there is absolutely no objective proof, no contemporary evidence, that the Bondage or the Deliverance ever happened at all as particular, identifiable episodes in history.” (Pg. 59)
He observes, “There is also the problem of the scale of the Exodus. According to [Numbers ch. 1], the Twelve Tribes of Israel which took part in the Exodus… [included] 603,550 males of military age; this implies that the host of refugees must have numbered at least two million---a figure that stretches even the most sympathetic credulity. It is simply not believable that a host of this size could have survived in the wilderness for forty years, as the Bible claims… indeed, it is doubtful if the total population of Egypt in the New Kingdom period exceeded that figure.” (Pg. 62-63) Later, he adds, “Manna is in fact produced on various plants that flourish in the desert… There is really nothing miraculous about manna at all, except in the amount that the Bible suggests was available to sustain two million people for forty years.” (Pg. 65-66)
He recounts, “On the assumption that the Pharaoh of the Bondage was Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Exodus was presumed to be Rameses’ successor, Merneptah… Merneptah was a singularly bad candidate for the Pharaoh of the Exodus… On the stela with which he commemorated his exploits he listed the foes he had defeated: Canaan, Ashkelon… and so on… in it we find… the only instance of the name ‘Israel’ in ancient Egyptian records: ‘Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.’ … he could hardly have claimed victory over ‘Israel’ in Palestine if he had drowned in a vain attempt to stop them reaching Palestine in the first place.” (Pg. 63-64)
He points out that “Crystal Bennet, Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, started excavating… Her intention… was to find evidence to confirm the Biblical account … [of the] Edomite royal city... [of] Bozrah… But after four seasons of excavation, the conclusions she was forced to come to… surprised herself no less than other archaeologists and Biblical scholars. She found that there had been no city there… before the end of the 8th century BC---at least 500 years later than the presumed date of the Exodus…. The implications … were unavoidable; the kings had simply been tribal sheiks, and their towns were tents.” (Pg. 73-74)
He states that Israeli archeologist “Dr. [Yigael] Yadin “has written that he approaches a dig with a spade in one hand and a Bible in the other. The Bible account of the fate of Hazor in Joshua is plain and specific… Dr. Yadin argues that all the evidence at Hazor matched the Biblical account perfectly. The date matched the presumed date of the Israelite incursion into Canaan… It is a strong case, and a plausible one, but not all scholars are prepared to accept it uncritically. For one thing, the city could well have been burned by someone else… there is no distinctive artifact with which archaeologists can conclusively label a site as being Israelite.” (Pg. 87-89)
He argues, “But the real bone of contention is… the capture of Jericho… Jericho indeed has been a target for archaeologists for over a century now… in the 1950s… Kathleen Kenyon excavated Jericho again… She found that there had been a considerable Early Bronze Age gate at Jericho… whose walls had fallen and been rebuilt no fewer than seventeen times between 3000 BC and 2300 BC… These had been [John] Garstang’s celebrated walls that Joshua and the earthquake had apparently destroyed---except for the fact that they had been destroyed a thousand years before Joshua came on the scene.” (Pg. 91-93)
Of the story of Samson pulling down the Temple and killing all the Philistines within it, he comments, “the only snag… is the size of the temple itself. It is unexpectedly small… By no stretch of the imagination could one pack 3000 festive Philistines … inside or on top… and although this is the only Philistine temple that has yet been discovered, there is no reason to suppose that any others will turn out to be larger.” (Pg. 113)
Of the settlement of Tell el-Jurn, he asserts, “it was clear that the settlement was not founded until late in the 7th century BC---almost four centuries after the period of David’s exile. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that some, at least, of the traditions about David were furnished with anachronistic environmental details that date from the period of the writing up of the story … several centuries after the alleged event.” (Pg. 123)
This is a well-photographed and clearly-written book, but biblical conservatives will certainly not care for it.
June 29, 2020
Silly me, thinking while I pulled this book off my grandma's shelf that this book would be written from a Christian perspective. Far from it. I believe the author tries to remain unbiased, however his prejudice often comes through when he outright rejects the historicity of some biblical events simply because there is no evidence for them. Surely a good archaeologist knows not to discount anything he reads so quickly. All it would take is another Dead Sea Scrolls happenstance discovery to turn all his suppositions on their heads.
That said, this is still an excellent overview of Old Testament discoveries up until the time it was written. Reading this alongside my daily Bible passages has increased my ability to visualize the layout of things back in the old days. It has inspired me to look further into the subject and to see what further developments have been made since the late 70s.
That said, this is still an excellent overview of Old Testament discoveries up until the time it was written. Reading this alongside my daily Bible passages has increased my ability to visualize the layout of things back in the old days. It has inspired me to look further into the subject and to see what further developments have been made since the late 70s.
June 4, 2024
Now this is quite an old book written in 1977 so I'm presuming there will have been considerable advances in biblical archaeology since then! I did enjoy this book but it comes with a big caveat - it presumes the Old Testament is a reliable historical source. The biblical Old Testament narrative, whilst entertaining, comes up again and again as fallible. Magnusson examines the available archaeological evidence in surrounding cultures - ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia etc but often these cultures and the available evidence in them, and in Israel itself leaves yawning gaps in the narrative. There is little evidence for the Old Testament patriarchs, and it is not until the later chapters where we get to 900 to 800 BCE that verifiable evidence begins to emerge. A really interesting book which confirms the search for tantalising glimpses and proof of Abraham, Moses, Solomon and David goes on.
March 5, 2020
OK it might be 43 years old. OK it might be academically behind. But the digs listed were sound, the evidence ie maps, photographs etc are still relevant so I can now trace the change in thought, practice and the new digs that have led to further thinking. As a starting point of a collection it is quite a good, easy book. It is non judgemental (as far as I can tell anyway) over view, a broad brush approach that lets everyone in to such a big subject and lets you explore further as you what to investigate more. An easy start for beginners.
Toast
Toast
September 7, 2024
Great examination of biblical stories in the context of archaeological finds, with a healthy dose of heavy scepticism from Magnus M, on both biblical authors and archaeological interpretations and biases/motives. I liked touches such as his soft spot for the Philistines... excellent photos too.
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April 29, 2009221.9
April 22, 2012
While this book was good for when it was published in 1977 it is rather out of date now, hence the 3 stars.
April 16, 2013
Bias views that try to disprove people from Bible times ever existed because no archaeology of them is found. Neddle and haystack come to mind.
August 14, 2016
Shows you can be rational and critical without sweepingly rejecting of any of the Old Testament characters being real like his more unreasoning rival John Romer did.
May 23, 2018
Digging in holy ground is a way of understanding beyond knowledge
June 30, 2019
An interesting summary of the history and archaeology of the Middle East.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews