Digging Through the Bible: Modern Archaeology and the Ancient Bible

by Richard A. Freund

Many of our religious beliefs are based upon faith alone, but archaeology gives us the opportunity to find evidence about what really happened in the past-evidence that can have a dramatic impact on what we believe and how we understand the Bible today. Archaeologist and rabbi Richard Freund takes readers through many of his own excavations in the Holy Land, searching for information about key biblical characters and events.

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting stuff about biblical archaeology—the attempts to ascertain the veracity of biblical material (e.g. was there really an Exodus from Egypt? Could this be the spot where Mary, mother of Jesus, drew water from a well?) and the attempts to use the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to help understand archaeological discoveries. Skimmable if this sounds interesting to you, and if you’re willing to overlook the many typos (e.g. BCE mixed up with CE), sentences where the author forgot to include a verb, and rambling and repetitive discussions. The book may have had an editor, but it sure doesn’t read like it. As if to hammer home that point, the last two words of the last chapter are “bibilical [sic] text.”

[Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought a signed copy of the book at Limmud SA 2010 JHB. The book is interesting enough (especially the chapter on The Search for Sinai), but I would have probably been better off buying a book giving a broader overview of the state of biblical archaeology today. Search for Sinai is a necessary corrective for the increasingly common belief that the Exodus did not take place at all.

The book is unfortunately riddled with spelling and grammatical errors (more so than any other published work I can ever recall reading), and would have benefited from a thorough editing/review process.