Has Archæology Buried the Bible?
William G Drever
Eerdmans 2020
Hb, 160pp, £20.99, ISBN 9780802877635
Armed with crude science and religious zeal, the early Victorian archæologists headed for the Holy Land determined to unearth the evidence that would prove the Bible was a factually accurate historical document. All they needed to find was some clinching piece of evidence like the flattened walls of Jericho!
Well into the 20th century there were American teams digging away with the aim of demonstrating, by science, that the main stories of the Old Testament were literally true: that Moses led an Exodus from Egypt, that there was evidence of their desert wanderings and conquest of the land flowing with milk and honey. For if the facts didn’t stand up, then the religious faiths, both Judaism and Christianity, based on these stories fell apart. In 1933 one enthusiast even exclaimed that every find by archæologists confirmed scripture and confounded its enemies.
However, as scientific methods advanced, one by one the claims of irrefutable proof were overturned. Then along came sceptics who, influenced by late 20thcentury post-modernism, claimed
that nothing in the Bible would or could ever be proved. There are no facts, only interpretations and conjectures.
In Has Archaeology Buried the Bible? William Drever searches for the middle way between two opposed positions. Prof Drever is an anthropologist who has spent 30 years working in the field as an archæologist in the Near East. If the Bible is read with a critical and well-stocked mind and through the eyes of faith, he concludes, archæology is an invaluable asset, but perhaps not in the way the Victorians hoped.
What modern archæology appears to show is not that specific biblical events can be proven, but that the descriptions of life in the Iron Age Middle East, in which the events of the Hebrew scriptures are set, is backed up by the archæology. While the Bible focuses on the founding myths of a specific group of people, the Israelites, the region at the time was home to a number of tribal groups each of which had their own religious practices – and there’s a lot of evidence from these to be discovered. If once it was thought that the description of King Solomon’s temple was fanciful, today there is evidence that it was one of at least a dozen such religious buildings built to a similar tripartite design, probably used as royal chapels.
There is corroborative evidence that David was a real person and not a kind of mythical King Arthur figure, although the biblical stories of Kings Saul, David and Solomon may be tall tales. Equally significant is that the archæology confirms much of the detail of biblical accounts of life in Old Testament times. Excavations at one royal palace discovered hewn stones and ivory inlays as described by the prophet Amos in his railing against the idle rich of Samaria.
Drever has, perhaps unwittingly, written a rather fortean book. He is rightly wary of orthodoxies and seeks understanding in the balance between proven facts, legend and faith.
Ted Harrison
★★★★