YSCM Y o r k s h i r e S c h o o l o f C h r i s t i a n M i n i s t r y for all Bible believing Churches and Christians - organised by The West & North Yorkshire FIEC Churches the bible college on your doorstep XTEND ARCHAEOLOGY pt 1 General Introduction and Discoveries Relating to the Patriarchs A Definition of Biblical Archaeology Biblical archaeology may be defined as a study based on the excavation, decipherment, and critical evaluation of the records of the past as they affect the Bible. INTRODUCTION: ARCHAEOLOGY IN GENERAL Three Important Terms Tell: Ancient cities tended to be built on the remains of earlier settlements and cities. The resulting mound is called a "tell". Stratigraphy: By digging through such mounds, the various superimposed layers can be examined to provide evidence of what sort of society occupied the site at various times. This complicated science involves meticulous work and record-keeping, as the process necessarily destroys the very evidence it seeks to understand (archaeology has been likened to reading a book and destroying each page as it is read). Typology: Not a comparison between OT people, events or structures (e.g. the tabernacle) and the person and work of Jesus! Rather the classification and dating of objects, especially pottery and other utensils, based on their differing shapes and structures. Two Vital 19th Century Discoveries Although the most notable discoveries affecting the OT were not made until the 20th century, key foundational finds were made in the 19th century. Modern archaeology may be said to have begun in 1798, when the antiquities discovered in the Nile Valley were exposed to scientific study by Napoleon's Egyptian expedition. The Rosetta Stone Discovered by one of Napoleon's officers in 1799 at Rosetta (Rashid), near the westernmost mouth of the Nile River, this slab of black basalt is inscribed in Greek, demotic Egyptian and the earlier, more complicated Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Greek could be immediately translated, and helped in the decipherment of the other two scripts. The Frenchman Sylvester de Sacy and the Swedish scholar J D Akerblad unraveled the demotic Egyptian by firstly identifying the Greek personal names it contained, i.e. Ptolemy, Arsinoe, and Berenike. Thomas Young of England then identified Ptolemy in the hieroglyphic script, as it was a royal name and so enclosed in an oval frame called a cartouche. The Frenchman, Jean Francois Champollion, 1790-1832, then spent the last fourteen years of his life in deciphering these hieroglyphics, making a dictionary and formulating a grammar that was used to translate numerous Egyptian texts. He has rightly been called the Father of Egyptology. Today many universities maintain chairs in the language and culture of ancient Egypt. The Behistun Inscription This large relief shows a life-sized figure with many individuals bowing before it, together with numerous columns of writing. It was carved on the face of a mountain 500' (160 m) above the Karmanshah plain, on the old caravan q u a l i t y t r a i n i n g f o r b u s y p e o p l e
route from Babylon to Ecbatana. Like the Rosetta Stone, it contained three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian, all written in the wedge-shaped cuneiform script. Thousands of clay tablets had been discovered written in Akkadian, the language of ancient Assyria and Babylon, but little progress was made in its decipherment until, beginning in 1835 and for several years following, a young English officer in the Persian army, named Henry C Rawlinson, made a series of dangerous climbs to the inscription to make plaster of paris impressions of it. Rawlinson knew modem Persian and, after a decade (!), finally succeeded in translating the five columns comprising nearly 400 lines of the Old Persian portion of the inscription, sending it to Europe in 1845, to be published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1847. Rawlinson's translation indicated that the scene on the Behistun relief depicted Darius the Great (522-486 BC), who saved the Persian Empire from a rebellion, receiving the submission of the insurgents. Supposing that the other inscriptions told the same story; scholars were soon enabled to read the Elamite language. Finally, but most importantly, they deciphered the Akkadian script. Just as the Rosetta Stone opened up the science of Egyptology, the Behistun Inscription produced the science of Assyriology. No up-to-date Bible dictionary, handbook or commentary can ignore the importance of these disciplines. Numerous cuneiform libraries have been discovered. The library of Ashurbanipal (669-625 BC) contained some 22,000 tablets. Among the tablets unearthed in this collection and sent to the British Museum were Assyrian copies of the Babylonian creation and flood stories. The identification and decipherment of these particular tablets by George Smith in 1872 produced great excitement in the archaeological world. IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES RELATING TO THE EARLY OLD TESTAMENT Babylonian Creation and Flood Accounts: Similarities and Differences Enuma Elish: Although there are several parallels between the Babylonian creation myth and the OT, there are significant differences. The Babylonian creation story tells how Tiamat, the primeval ocean, gave birth to dry land (Ki) and heaven (Anu), from whom the other gods descended. Tiamat decided to destroy them all but was, in the end, conquered by the young god Marduk, who made the earth from one half of Tiamat's body and the sky from the other. Mankind was created from the blood (mixed with clay) of Tiamat's helper, Kingu, in order to serve the gods. This stands in marked contrast to the accounts of Gen 1 and 2. The Gilgamesh Epic: Parallels between the OT and the flood account in this myth are much closer, as the hero, Utnapishtim, is warned in a dream by one of the gods, Ea, that the divine council has decided to flood the earth. He builds a boat, which eventually lands on a mountain (Mount Nisir), after he has released a dove, swallow and a raven. But the cause of the flood in this Babylonian myth is not a just and ethical divine judgment upon sinful mankind, as in the account concerning Noah, but rather that mankind's noise was disturbing the gods' rest! The Moabite Stone: Direct Confirmation of OT History This important inscription, found in 1868, dates from c.850 BC. It was erected by Mesha, king of Moab, and tells of his wars with the Edomites, paralleling the biblical history of 2 Kings chs 1 and 3. It mentions numerous OT sites, including Ataroth (Num 32:34), Beth Diblathaim (Jer 48:22), Bezer (Jos 20:8) and others. The 14" thick stela is about 3' 9" high and 2' 4" wide. Its 34 lines constitute the longest single extra-biblical inscription yet discovered dealing with Palestine 900-600 BC. It records
Moab's previous defeat and subjugation to Israel under Omri and Ahab, but celebrates its newfound freedom thanks to the intervention of its god, Chemosh. When it was discovered, the Mesha Stone was not only the longest and oldest Phoenician- Hebrew inscription then in existence, it was the only one. (Since then, the Gezer Calendar, a small limestone tablet containing a school boy's exercise written in perfect classical Hebrew c.925 BC, has been discovered). The Nuzi and Mari Texts: Indirect Confirmation of OT Customs and Society Note: It is important to understand that many critical scholars do not regard the stories of the patriarchs to be historical, usually seeing them as later, legendary inventions. E.g. Wellhausen: "From the patriarchal narrative it is impossible to obtain any historical information with regard to the Patriarchs; we can only learn something about the time in which the stories were first told by the Israelite people. This later period... was unintentionally projected back into hoary antiquity, and is reflected there like a transfigured mirage." Another popular view during the days of the early critics was that of Ewald's, namely that the patriarchs were personifications of their tribes, i.e. actions taken by whole tribes were often condensed and attributed just to the patriarch himself. One should also note that there is presently no "extra-biblical" (outside of the bible) evidence for the existence of the patriarchs. This should really be expected, for at the time, none of their contemporaries would have understood the far-reaching significance of the activities of men, who were to them, just one more group of semi-nomads. Furthermore, the patriarchal narratives themselves contain no references to events of that time that are known about from other sources, or that can be accurately dated. This means that all appeals for the patriarchs' historicity must come from indirect evidence from archaeological finds, i.e. since the narratives would be dated early 2nd millennium BC, one would expect them to reflect what archaeology has revealed about conditions of that time, if they are authentic. The Nuzi Texts: A whole archive of legal and social texts, dated as 15th - 14th cent. BC, has been found at Nuzu in north-east Iraq, which elucidates some of the customs of the patriarchal age, e.g.: an adopted son would inherit his entire father's estate if there was no natural heir. But once a natural son was born into the family, the adopted son lost all rights to that inheritance. Cf. Abraham and Eliezer. There are laws and marriage contracts that refer to barren wives asking their husbands to have a child for them by their maidservants, compare Sarah, Rachel, and Leah. One marriage contract has the bride, Geliminu, promising to procure a slave girl for her husband, Shennima, if she could not bear children. The subsequent expulsion of slave wives and any children they bore was forbidden, so Geliminu promised not to expel any child of the slave girl. Cf. Gen 21:10. Oral blessing were seen as legal and binding: Texts tell of a son who produced witnesses to corroborate his father's dying words winning his case in a law court. Cf. Isaac's refusal to retract his blessing in Gen 27. There is a tablet that refers to one Tupkitilla selling an inherited grove to his younger brother Kurpazah for three sheep. Cf. Esau's selling of his birthright to Jacob in Gen 25.
However, while Albright is certainly right when he says: "The customary law reflected by the patriarchal stories of Genesis fits better into the framework of Nuzion social and legal practices than it does that of later Israel", it must be borne in mind that the Nuzi texts are 15th cent. BC, and the patriarchs are generally dated as earlier than this. Conservative scholars suggest that these customs had been observed for centuries, but critics rightly point out that the argument might also mean the customs continued for another five hundred years, leaving a period of one thousand years in which to fit the patriarchs! Furthermore, the examples cited above come from a selective use of only about 6 of more than 300 tablets. Some critics wonder if these examples might be anomalous to, rather than typical of, the practices of the day. Furthermore, some overzealous conservatives have in the past claimed parallels where none exist, e.g. it has been claimed that the Nuzi texts link the possession of household gods was associated with inheritance laws (consider Rachel's theft of Laban's gods in Gen 31:17). This view has now been discounted. The Mari Texts: These comprise some 25,000 cuneiform tablets, dated c. 1765-1694 BC, and are therefore closer to the more usual time given for the patriarchal period (usually 2100-1900 BC). They were found by French excavators at Tell-el-Harari, one of the most important centres of north-western Semitic life in patriarchal times, in a city ruler's palace that contained more than 300 rooms. The texts mainly relate to the sedentarization of certain western Semitic nomads in the early 2nd millennium BC. The texts record a society with a "dimorphic" lifestyle, i.e. reflecting both nomadic and sedentary ways of life, with many similarities to the tribes and peoples belonging to the patriarchs. For example, the texts show that travel between Mesopotamia and Canaan was not uncommon - one tablet refers to a wagon being leased to a man for a year on condition he would not take it as far as Kittim (the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea). Texts also speak of: frequent camping in the vicinity of towns (Gen 12:6-9; 13:12-18; 33:18-20; 35:16-21; 37:12-17); the occasional practice of agriculture (26:12); an easy social and economic exchange with townspeople (21:25-34; 23:1-20; 26:17-33; 33:18-20); groups living in towns for various periods as "resident aliens" (12:10; 18:13; 17:18); and the occasional separation of groups, as some chose to reside near Canaanite towns (13:8-13). Both societies also practiced a "village-pastoralist" culture: Sheep-breeders would move camp periodically in search of water and pasture (13:5; 21:25-31). Their subsistence was based largely on sheep-herding, augmented by some agriculture and trade with villages (26:1-33). Both societies show signs of tribal organisation, the Mari texts refer to the Suteans; Hareans; and Yamnites. Some scholars have suggested these may be related to some of the biblical tribes, e.g. the Yamnites are linked with Benjamin. Mari's social units included extended families and a patriarchal system similar to that in Genesis. Although evidence from the Mari and Nuzi texts needs to be treated with caution, one can agree with John Bright when he writes: "... enough can be said to make it certain that the patriarchal traditions are firmly rooted in history... we can assert with full confidence that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were actual historical individuals." (A History of Israel, pp.76, 91).
Ebla: Names and Places In 1946, archaeologists from the University of Rome began excavating a 140 acre mound called Tell Mardikh in northwest Syria. Many impressive buildings, dated 1900-1700 BC were uncovered. In 1968 an inscription was found identifying the city as Ebla, the site of an ancient but advanced civilization that was previously unknown. Between 1974-76, three rooms in one palace yielded c.7,000 preserved clay tablets and c.13,000 fragments with cuneiform writing. Some of these tablets were dictionaries, indicating the meanings of words in both Sumerian and the Eblaite language, which in turn shed light on other terms found in the OT. Many place-names that occur in the OT are also mentioned at Ebla, which it transpires was a merchant empire, with trade routes reaching from Mesopotamia to the Nile and up towards modern-day Turkey. Haran, Damascus, Hazor, Beth Shan, Shechem, Joppa, Eshkelon, Jerusalem, Dor, and possibly also Sodom and Gommorah are mentioned. Since the Bible presents these as real places, existing in the early 2nd millennium BC, the Ebla tablets help support its historical reliability. About 10,000 names of people are found on the tablets. Among them are biblical names such as Adam, Eve, Noah, Jubal, Abram. Ishmael, Hagar, Keturah, Bilhah, Israel, Micah, Saul, David, Jehorum, and Jonah. Although these do not refer to the biblical personages, they establish that the names in the OT are authentic to the early 2nd millennium BC period. Peter T Davies File under Miscellaneous