I watched
The Bible's Buried Secrets last night, and my only real complaint is that the so-called "buried secrets" are in fact exposed in mainstream books and articles on Biblical scholarship, and some of it has been common knowledge to anyone who has attended an academic course on the Bible in past century or so. So the big question is how do we deal with the flow of information problem? A key issue is that pastors are in many denominations the "employees" of their congregation, and so although in theory some congregations would say they value challenging sermons from their pastor, if a pastor challenged them with, say, the Documentary Hypothesis, he might find himself needing to seek alternative employment. There, I think, lies a key issue. We can teach pastors about the Bible, but they are then employed by congregations who will fire them for telling them the truth about it. The irony, of course, is that this shows that many congregations think they already know everything they need to about the Bible, and are thus hiring a minister to "tickle their ears" rather than tell them new things. And so one has to turn to PBS rather than the pastor to find out what the pastor learned in seminary.
Here are some other posts from around the blogosphere about the documentary:
Jim West (who live blogged it),
Alan Boyle (HT
Paleojudaica),
NT Wrong,
Biblia Hebraica,
Thaddeus Nelson, ,
The Archaeological Review.
Here's an excerpt, if you missed it:
In other ancient near eastern news, Abnormal Interests and The Punching Bag discuss an interesting stele.
Posts
13 comments:
Re: "So the big question is how do we deal with the flow of information problem?"
As long as members of the academy focus on the academy as their audience, this pattern of cultural irrelevance will continue. I see a need for greater outreach to as many external audiences as possible, even to the point of cultivating controversy to get media attention.
The only groups that I can think of that are even close to doing this are the Jesus Seminar and the Jesus Project. Reqardless of what any of us think about the specific approaches, at least these 2 groups are making an effort to address the public.
How about creating venues in which more collaborative research can be organized?
How about creating alternative education opportunities which allow scholars to teach outside the confines of the academic institution (in addition to the academic institution)?
We need a little out-of-the-box thinking on this!
Thank you, Thank you!
Truth is really liberating, though, at times, can be painful. But, I would rather know truth than fairy tales...
Identity is formed around our traditions. And traditions die hard, as they help to formulate who we think we are...special, chosen by "God", etc. etc.
But, as some of those who commented on the PBS seris, truth doesn't care what we identify with, truth just is...It is not healthy to continue to believe something that maintains a "special identity", as then it creates an "us/them" distinction, as far as God is concerned...and it hinders groups in "coming together" for political causes; maintains childish "identifications" upon "God", which hinder personal growth; and limits our humility when using reason itself, when it comes to "truth"...this is where specialization of the disciplines is needful in educating everyone else for the greater good of humanity...the university, which should be situated within the Church...(unfortunately, the Church resists education, which is such a shame...)
Thanks for this James! I praised you for this.
Yes to David, I agree.
I find it almost laughable, yet expected, that people would assume that bible believing folks are uneducated or lack the critical mind to sift through new ideas or facts. One would have to consider the material presented in this Nova special to be very biased at the very least.
Is there no one out there, scientists, professors, or dare we even invite bible believing scientists (is that an oxy-moron?) to present an opposing opinion? How is the material itself presented as fact when the Nova program is obviously dealing with a narrative that is more conjecture than a demonstrative and infallible testimony of many compelling scientific evidence. Forget the inerrancies of carbon dating, and focus for a moment on the theories that are offered to support the missing evidence in the archeological digs. Missing evidence means what exactly?
It is laughable that this program attempts to offer an unbiased view of history. Did anyone else notice how Israel was “guilty” of destroying a city? Are we now attaching blame to the historical record too? There is a slant being pushed in this program that is meant to undermine the trust worthiness of the bible for sure. The conclusion any viewer is led to surmise is that the origin of Israel as we know it today is because the local Canaanites revolted against the economic and social times of their day, like a revolution of sorts, and so Israel created their history by writing a few imaginary tales comparable to many fairy tales of old. Someone please provide the evidence to support this new revealing conclusion.
To get back to brass tax here. How could any program worth its salt attempt to rewrite history with so little evidence itself and not even offer a critique from the same scientific community for due diligence sake? Where is the critical thinking offered in this program? How is it that professors who teach in our public and private schools are not able see the bias and lack of intellectual integrity in this program? To steal a line or two from the Nova special itself, “naturally” we can believe it’s biased at its very core.
The evidence you ask for is available in many textbooks on the Bible. It includes:
(1) The fact that cities said to have been destroyed by the invading Israelites in the lifetime of a single generation were not destroyed in this way during any single generation in history.
(2) There is no evidence from Egypt supporting an Exodus of the number of people the Bible claims left, nor of the ravages the Biblical plagues would have left in their wake.
(3) The material culture of the earliest Israelites is continuous with that of earlier Canaanite culture.
(4) Hebrew is a Canaanite language, closely related to that of the other peoples who inhabited the region.
(5) Where DNA testing has been possible of ancient Canaanite remains, there is evidence that the later inhabitants are indeed descended from the earlier inhabitants.
(6) The Book of Judges indicates a slower process of emergence of Israel to dominance in the region.
In short, all the evidence points to the conclusions presented in the documentaries, except the Book of Joshua and the Exodus stories written some time later.
That's what we call getting down to brass tacks...
I applaud you for sticking with substance and not taking the "tacks" bait. I sense a genuine conversation can begin, but for time constraints let's stick to the issue at hand.
Would you will be willing to say that many scientists (I'm not offering a choice between a majority or minority view) would disagree with the work and conclusions this programs leads its audience? And what about calling Israel "guilty"? Are you then accepting this work as "unbiased" scientific work?
What is your honest answer?
Is it unbiased? Is anything? I'd say it is certainly a fair treatment of the evidence. Being "unbiased" may be too much to hope for.
As for the use of "guilty", I suspect that may have been simply an issue of wording. Wasn't it an Israeli archaeologist, whose first language I assume would be Hebrew, who used that term? If we substituted "responsible" would you have less objection? I think that is what was meant. But at any rate, the point as I understood it was that this particular archaeologist seemed quite certain that Israelites were responsible for the destruction of Hazor, while others are less certain. Of course, if it was a Canaanite internal rebellion, and those Canaanites evolved into what later was known as Israel, then we may be splitting hairs.
The postman delivered your book today James : )
I hope you like it, but even if you don't, I hope you blog about it! :)
The dilemma you point to is all too real, James. When I was involved in ministry, I felt like I was walking a tightrope, balancing on one side my faithfulness to God and the truth and on the other side my faithfulness to the church that had hired me and to its convictions. Quite frankly, I eventually quit the ministry mostly because this dilemma was too much for me. And I don't think I'll go back unless it's among the Unitarians or something.
Dr. McGrath,
As you know, many through the centuries have believed the Bible because of simple faith in it, without demanding any sort of scholarly or archaeological proof that its truth claims are correct. Even in our day, when so many experts are claiming that its claims are in fact inaccurate or misleading at best, many still hold this simple faith. I think you are suggesting that such faith is misplaced, and minds need to open--or be opened--to accept what the skeptics are teaching.
This might make sense to me, too, if only I could be sure that the experts are actually right. The truth matters. However, there is good reason to suspect that the scholars have taken a wrong turn and do not realize it. I think your "brass tacks" may be a case in point.
(1) Most scholars have been expecting to find evidence of the exodus and conquest around the middle of the second millennium B.C. We can agree that the evidence sought at this period has not been found. Who has been looking for this same evidence but dated 1000 years earlier? When one looks there, the evidence is abundant. See Aardsma's new book on the exodus, for instance, for more details:
http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/products/Exodus_book.php
I think your claim overreaches, because the dating of archaeological remains in the middle of the third millennium B.C. can hardly be precise enough to pinpoint a particular generation, assuming these were still only about a third of a century back then. The margin of error for a given date that far back surely exceeds this.
(2) The evidence, when considered with the proper date in mind (approximately 2450 B.C.), even includes pottery shards that can be used to trace portions of the exodus route. The book covers more, or you can browse Aardsma's website.
(3) When did the "earliest Israelites" live? With biblical chronology corrected as Aardsma has proposed, I think you will find that this is no longer a problem.
(4) Why is this classification of the Hebrew language a problem for a straightforward reading of the Old Testament?
(5) Again, the interpretation of this evidence depends heavily on the proper dating of the conquest led by Joshua. If it is off by 1000 years, the conclusions could be worthless.
(6) Can this possibly be a problem for the historicity of the biblical narrative, especially if the lost 1000 years are restored to this period? I say "lost" because Aardsma believes that an ancient scribe accidentally dropped four Hebrew letters while copying I Kings 6:1, so the original number there was 1480, not 480. See I Samuel 13:1 for another instance, here accepted by modern scholarship, of lost text involving numbers.
My conclusion is that the experts have not paid close enough attention to problems related to biblical chronology, and one serious error there has thrown them off. Those of us who have taken the Bible by faith have no reason to regret our choice. Now when will the academics be ready to think out of the box and start paying more attention to scholarship that has been marginalized? Is their ideological bias too great to allow this?
If you agree that Aardsma is onto something, I hope you will help spread the word. If you remain convinced that he is mistaken, at least I would be interested in any clear evidence that refutes his theory.
I have had second thoughts about my remarks on marginalization near the end of my last post. I had no business raising that question, so I repudiate it. I still stand by the rest of the post, though.
I agree with Tom. Aardsma's claims should be challenged. Prove Aardsma wrong and I guarantee you Aardsma will forsake his theories. He longs to discover truth! Until proven wrong, Aardsma's ideas should stand. I strongly suggest reading Aardsma's books/publications. (Not your usual bedtime reading, I assure you! Aardsma is a thinker and he will expand your mind.) Check out www.biblicalchronologist.org.
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