(8 of 8)
Defenders of the Exodus story have theories too, though their case remains circumstantial. There's no Egyptian record of the Israelites' departure, they suggest, because the losers would never have recorded such a major defeat. People may have been looking in the wrong part of the Sinai for remains of the Israelites' wandering, or perhaps the Israelis were in northwest Arabia all along. Anyway, say many scholars, what nation would falsely claim to have been enslaved?
Even the widely accepted notion that the Patriarchs were mythical figures has been challenged. Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool offered what has been called an "extraordinary demonstration" in Biblical Archaeology Review earlier this year that the stories about Abraham are plausible. Drawing on nonbiblical records, Kitchen argued that everything from the quoted price of slaves to the style of warfare to the laws of inheritance in Abraham's day is amazingly consistent with the Bible accounts.
Is he right? Most scholars don't think so, but one crucial discovery — an independent, ancient chronicle of Abraham's wanderings, perhaps — could change their minds in an instant. Similarly, a single discovery could erase all doubts about the Exodus or the sacking of Jericho or just about anything else in the Bible. And new Bible-related discoveries and theories crop up all the time. Early next year, Biblical Archaeology Review will be reporting on two of them. The first is another impression of the scribe Baruch's seal, this one with a fingerprint on the edge that was presumably made by Baruch himself. The second is an analysis that claims to fix the precise location where the Ark of the Covenant (the "Lost Ark" of Raiders fame) was stored. That's sure to be controversial; the author contends that it must have been placed in a rectangular indentation on the outcropping beneath the Dome of the Rock, the sacred Muslim shrine on the Temple Mount.
All of these finds are useful and interesting. But what scholars truly yearn for — what might even be called the Holy Grail of biblical archaeology — is a royal archive from before the time of King David or King Solomon. No such archive has ever been located inside Israel, although surrounding countries have yielded many from the same era. Sighs Amnon Ben-Tor, a Hebrew University archaeologist: "It's like striking oil. Everywhere but here."
Many scholars believe the archive must exist, though, and Yigael Yadin even thought he knew where it was: in the ancient city of Hazor, in northern Galilee. At his death, Yadin was planning a major dig there to find the clay tablets he was sure lay hidden beneath the surface. His protege, Ben-Tor, has inherited the project. To date, Ben-Tor has found only a few uninformative tablets. But Hazor is the largest biblical site in the country, and it will take years of digging to explore it fully.
If and when Ben-Tor or his successors locate the archive, the effect on biblical scholarship would be be profound. Instead of relying on half-legible inscriptions and fragments of clay and stone, historians would suddenly have access to huge amounts of information, set down not to advance religious ideas but to record secular events. The historical accuracy of much of the Bible could be settled, one way or the other, almost at a stroke.
Many professional archaeologists maintain that such questions are irrelevant. Says the British School of Archaeology's Woodhead: "I'm not interested in whether there was a David or a Solomon. I'm interested in reconstructing society: what was traded in clay pots, whether the pots or the contents were traded, where the clay was from ... I don't deal with the Bible at all." And even those who do deal with the Bible insist that their emphasis is science, not Scripture. Says Broshi: "Archaeology throws light on the Bible. It has no business trying to prove it."
Yet for ordinary Jews and Christians, it's impossible to maintain scientific detachment about ancient clay pots and fallen stones and inscriptions being dug up in the Holy Land. Hundreds of millions of people grew up listening to Bible stories, and even those who haven't set foot in a church or synagogue for years still carry with them the lessons of these stirring tales of great deeds, great evil, great miracles and great belief. Many may be able to accept the proposition that some of the Bible is fictional. But they are still deeply gratified to learn that much of it appears to be based on fact. Says Harvard's Cross: "To suggest that many things in the Bible are not historical is not too serious. But to lose biblical history altogether is to lose our tradition."
Reported by Marlin Levin and Felice Maranz / Jerusalem and Richard N. Ostling / Philadelphia