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The Archaeology of Palestine
Hardcover, no dust jacket. Very good
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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March 14, 2013
How does one justify let alone evaluate such a dated work?
I will need to find out from more recent studies of the subject how well Albrights conclusions,and premises for that matter,have stood the test of over half a century of further investigations in the field. Another problem with this book is that it assumes the reader to have way more background knowledge of the subject than I certainly did when I began reading.
Nevertheless, I found this a fascinating read,filling in a lot of my blanks and encouraging further study.The authors style,when he isnt overwhelmingly technical,is succint and comprhensable in a way that manages to avoid superficial facility. He gives a thrilling precis of the areas history,and his occassional dry humour is refreshing,especially when recounting the blunders of those whose preconceptions led them to a more grandoise presentation of the the facts as they saw them.
A rationalist and careful scholar,his experience in the area perhaps softened his approach somewhat so that there is an immediacecy to this work that has not faded with time, and his writing does not appear as divorced from its subject. This is why I am rating this book so highly, and continuing to refer to it as I cover some of the same ground.
I will need to find out from more recent studies of the subject how well Albrights conclusions,and premises for that matter,have stood the test of over half a century of further investigations in the field. Another problem with this book is that it assumes the reader to have way more background knowledge of the subject than I certainly did when I began reading.
Nevertheless, I found this a fascinating read,filling in a lot of my blanks and encouraging further study.The authors style,when he isnt overwhelmingly technical,is succint and comprhensable in a way that manages to avoid superficial facility. He gives a thrilling precis of the areas history,and his occassional dry humour is refreshing,especially when recounting the blunders of those whose preconceptions led them to a more grandoise presentation of the the facts as they saw them.
A rationalist and careful scholar,his experience in the area perhaps softened his approach somewhat so that there is an immediacecy to this work that has not faded with time, and his writing does not appear as divorced from its subject. This is why I am rating this book so highly, and continuing to refer to it as I cover some of the same ground.
October 2, 2024
THE DEAN OF “BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGISTS” SUMMARIZES (as of 1949) RESEARCH ABOUT BIBLICAL ISRAEL
William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1949 book, “Women often make the best archaeologists, as is attested to by a growing list of eminent women archaeologists. However, it is often wise to separate the sexes in excavating, since the presence of a mixed group in a camp far from a town greatly increases the expense of maintenance… Some of the finest archaeological expeditions in the Near and Middle East have been all-women enterprises… Where expeditions are mixed it is highly desirable to have the director’s wife present, both to provide a feminine social arbiter and to avert scandal---which has brought not a few expeditions to grief.” (Pg. 13)
He observes, “Palestine has a unique place among lands of archaeological significance. It is the Jewish Zion, the Christian Holy Land, and the second holiest country of the Muslims. It was not only the cradle of Judaism and Christianity, but through the influence of both on Islam it also became the ultimate geographical home of the latter… Historians of Western civilization turn to Palestine for data bearing on its origins; cultural anthropologists and archaeologists turn to it because of its importance as a geographical bridge between continents and cultural areas.” (Pg. 23)
He admits, “The Middle Bronze Age corresponds to the Patriarchal Age of the Bible, though it is not yet possible to date the migration of Abram from Mesopotamia or of Jacob into Egypt precisely. In the writer’s present opinion the … movement from Ur to Harran and westward may have taken place in the twentieth to nineteenth centuries, and Jacob’s migration to Egypt may have fallen somewhere in the eighteenth or more likely the seventeenth century.” (Pg. 83)
He says, “Unfortunately, we can date these latter two destructions [in Canaan] only by the fact that they followed a period in which Mycenaean pottery was being imported and imitated. In neither site do we find many scattered sherds to help us with our dating.... The problem of Jericho has become more obscure since Miss Kenyon’s work, which showed that the Late Bronze level was almost completely denuded by wind and rain during the long abandonment after the Conquest.” (Pg. 108-109)
He states with assurance, “The age of Solomon was certainly one of the most flourishing periods of material civilization in the history of Palestine. Archaeology, after a long silence, has finally corroborated biblical tradition in no uncertain way. First came the sensational discovery … of the stables of Stratum IV… It seems certain that the stables go back to Solomon, I accordance with I Kings [9:15, 19]; it is equally certain that they continued in use.” (Pg. 123-124)
He asserts, “Archaeological evidence… does not support the view that the Gospels were written in Aramaic… The danger of making mistakes in trying to reconstruct the original Aramaic of Jesus is thus greater than ever... the new archaeological light on the oral transmission of the Proverbs of Ahiqar strengthens our case. Christians may thus continue to read the Greek Gospels without apprehending serious errors in translation (though there were, of course, many slight changes of meaning in the shirt from Aramaic to Greek).” (Pg. 202-203)
He points out, “It is frequently said that the scientific quality of Palestinian archaeology has been seriously impaired by the religious preconceptions of scholars who have excavated in the Holy Land. It is true that some archaeologists have been drawn to Palestine by their interest in the Bible, and that some of them had received their previous training mainly as biblical scholars. The writer has known many such scholars, but he recalls scarcely a single case where their religious views seriously influenced their results… their archaeological conclusions were almost uniformly independent of their critical views.” (Pg. 219)
He explains, “Turning now to the question of the way in which the Old Testament assumed its present form, we enter into a field where literary criticism based on internal evidence held the field undisputed until recently… we are now able to paint a fairly satisfactory picture of the actual situation. The Hebrews brought with them from their original Mesopotamian home the hallowed cosmogonic stories which they had learned there. To these ancient stories, handed down for uncounted centuries by word of mouth, were added the poetic narratives of the Patriarchs, which were subsequently adapted to the form of the prose saga in which they have survived in the Hebrew Bible. Then came the soul-shaking events of the Exodus and the Wanderings, which were handed down in poetry and prose, together with the teachings and institutions of Moses.
"Gathered together in various compilations, the documents of the Mosaic Age were gradually formed into a single collection, which was completed in approximately its present form before the Restoration at the end of the sixth century B.C. … It is … sheer hypercriticism to deny the substantially Mosaic character of the Pentateuchal tradition.” (Pg. 224-225)
He summarizes, “Biblical historical data are accurate to an extent far surpassing the ideas of any modern critical students, who have consistently tended to err on the side of hypercriticism. Thanks to archaeological determination of the site of most biblical places, it is also possible to establish the age and historical significance of many lists of towns in the Bible. A good case in point is the list of Levitic cities in Josh 21 and I Chron 6… the only time when all the towns mentioned in it were in Israelite possession was under David and Solomon… Palestinian archaeology is much less helpful in throwing direct light on biblical personalities… Actually, more biblical personages are mentioned in inscriptions discovered outside of Palestine than in documents found in the country.” (Pg. 229-230)
He says, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no longer seem isolated figures, much less reflections of later Israelite history; they now appear as true children of their age… In other words, the patriarchal narratives have a historical nucleus throughout, though it is likely that long oral transmission of the original poems and later prose sagas which underlie the present text of Genesis has considerably refracted the original events. This process of handing down the ancient tradition by word of mouth from generation to generation led to the omission of many details which would have interested a modern historian, but it also brought about a recasting of tradition in more dramatic form, emphasizing its religious and pedagogical values.” (Pg. 236-237)
He acknowledges, “It is much more difficult to apply the results of archaeological research in Palestine to the New Testament than to the Old. In the first place, the latter spans a period of over a millennium and a half, whereas the New Testament covers less than a century… The impact of archaeology on New Testament studies has also been much less obvious… yet the importance of archaeology for this period of biblical history is already very great and is growing year by year.” (Pg. 238)
Albright’s works were the foundation stones of the heyday of “biblical archaeology.” If later scholarship has sometimes rejected his conclusions [see 'William Foxwell Albright and the Origins of Biblical Archaeology' and 'Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible,' for example], his books are nevertheless “must reading” for anyone studying this area.
William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1949 book, “Women often make the best archaeologists, as is attested to by a growing list of eminent women archaeologists. However, it is often wise to separate the sexes in excavating, since the presence of a mixed group in a camp far from a town greatly increases the expense of maintenance… Some of the finest archaeological expeditions in the Near and Middle East have been all-women enterprises… Where expeditions are mixed it is highly desirable to have the director’s wife present, both to provide a feminine social arbiter and to avert scandal---which has brought not a few expeditions to grief.” (Pg. 13)
He observes, “Palestine has a unique place among lands of archaeological significance. It is the Jewish Zion, the Christian Holy Land, and the second holiest country of the Muslims. It was not only the cradle of Judaism and Christianity, but through the influence of both on Islam it also became the ultimate geographical home of the latter… Historians of Western civilization turn to Palestine for data bearing on its origins; cultural anthropologists and archaeologists turn to it because of its importance as a geographical bridge between continents and cultural areas.” (Pg. 23)
He admits, “The Middle Bronze Age corresponds to the Patriarchal Age of the Bible, though it is not yet possible to date the migration of Abram from Mesopotamia or of Jacob into Egypt precisely. In the writer’s present opinion the … movement from Ur to Harran and westward may have taken place in the twentieth to nineteenth centuries, and Jacob’s migration to Egypt may have fallen somewhere in the eighteenth or more likely the seventeenth century.” (Pg. 83)
He says, “Unfortunately, we can date these latter two destructions [in Canaan] only by the fact that they followed a period in which Mycenaean pottery was being imported and imitated. In neither site do we find many scattered sherds to help us with our dating.... The problem of Jericho has become more obscure since Miss Kenyon’s work, which showed that the Late Bronze level was almost completely denuded by wind and rain during the long abandonment after the Conquest.” (Pg. 108-109)
He states with assurance, “The age of Solomon was certainly one of the most flourishing periods of material civilization in the history of Palestine. Archaeology, after a long silence, has finally corroborated biblical tradition in no uncertain way. First came the sensational discovery … of the stables of Stratum IV… It seems certain that the stables go back to Solomon, I accordance with I Kings [9:15, 19]; it is equally certain that they continued in use.” (Pg. 123-124)
He asserts, “Archaeological evidence… does not support the view that the Gospels were written in Aramaic… The danger of making mistakes in trying to reconstruct the original Aramaic of Jesus is thus greater than ever... the new archaeological light on the oral transmission of the Proverbs of Ahiqar strengthens our case. Christians may thus continue to read the Greek Gospels without apprehending serious errors in translation (though there were, of course, many slight changes of meaning in the shirt from Aramaic to Greek).” (Pg. 202-203)
He points out, “It is frequently said that the scientific quality of Palestinian archaeology has been seriously impaired by the religious preconceptions of scholars who have excavated in the Holy Land. It is true that some archaeologists have been drawn to Palestine by their interest in the Bible, and that some of them had received their previous training mainly as biblical scholars. The writer has known many such scholars, but he recalls scarcely a single case where their religious views seriously influenced their results… their archaeological conclusions were almost uniformly independent of their critical views.” (Pg. 219)
He explains, “Turning now to the question of the way in which the Old Testament assumed its present form, we enter into a field where literary criticism based on internal evidence held the field undisputed until recently… we are now able to paint a fairly satisfactory picture of the actual situation. The Hebrews brought with them from their original Mesopotamian home the hallowed cosmogonic stories which they had learned there. To these ancient stories, handed down for uncounted centuries by word of mouth, were added the poetic narratives of the Patriarchs, which were subsequently adapted to the form of the prose saga in which they have survived in the Hebrew Bible. Then came the soul-shaking events of the Exodus and the Wanderings, which were handed down in poetry and prose, together with the teachings and institutions of Moses.
"Gathered together in various compilations, the documents of the Mosaic Age were gradually formed into a single collection, which was completed in approximately its present form before the Restoration at the end of the sixth century B.C. … It is … sheer hypercriticism to deny the substantially Mosaic character of the Pentateuchal tradition.” (Pg. 224-225)
He summarizes, “Biblical historical data are accurate to an extent far surpassing the ideas of any modern critical students, who have consistently tended to err on the side of hypercriticism. Thanks to archaeological determination of the site of most biblical places, it is also possible to establish the age and historical significance of many lists of towns in the Bible. A good case in point is the list of Levitic cities in Josh 21 and I Chron 6… the only time when all the towns mentioned in it were in Israelite possession was under David and Solomon… Palestinian archaeology is much less helpful in throwing direct light on biblical personalities… Actually, more biblical personages are mentioned in inscriptions discovered outside of Palestine than in documents found in the country.” (Pg. 229-230)
He says, “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no longer seem isolated figures, much less reflections of later Israelite history; they now appear as true children of their age… In other words, the patriarchal narratives have a historical nucleus throughout, though it is likely that long oral transmission of the original poems and later prose sagas which underlie the present text of Genesis has considerably refracted the original events. This process of handing down the ancient tradition by word of mouth from generation to generation led to the omission of many details which would have interested a modern historian, but it also brought about a recasting of tradition in more dramatic form, emphasizing its religious and pedagogical values.” (Pg. 236-237)
He acknowledges, “It is much more difficult to apply the results of archaeological research in Palestine to the New Testament than to the Old. In the first place, the latter spans a period of over a millennium and a half, whereas the New Testament covers less than a century… The impact of archaeology on New Testament studies has also been much less obvious… yet the importance of archaeology for this period of biblical history is already very great and is growing year by year.” (Pg. 238)
Albright’s works were the foundation stones of the heyday of “biblical archaeology.” If later scholarship has sometimes rejected his conclusions [see 'William Foxwell Albright and the Origins of Biblical Archaeology' and 'Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible,' for example], his books are nevertheless “must reading” for anyone studying this area.
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