World War I delayed progress in fieldwork in Palestine, since the Jerusalem School was closed from 1916 to 1918. It also delayed the arrival of W. F. Albright, who was to have such a determinative influence on the history of the discipline. Albright came to Jerusalem as Thayer Fellow in 1920 and stayed for a decade of work that included excavation, exploration, and teaching in the field of archaeology and biblical studies with a great emphasis on the linguistic heritage of the ancient Near East. His excavations included Tell el-Ful, the palace of King Saul at Gibeah, and Tell Beit Mirsim, which he identified as the biblical Debir. There he established the basic pottery typology for Palestinian archaeology that was standard till the 1970s. He also conducted excavations at Bethel and Beth Zur during the period when he split his year between Jerusalem and Baltimore, where he was head of Johns Hopkins Oriental Seminary from 1929 till 1958.
Albright arrived at the Jerusalem School the year that BASOR was established, and he was its editor from 1930 to 1968. In the pages of the Bulletin can be found the core of his scholarly agenda, namely, support for the basic historical reliability of the Bible, which he believed was reflected in its narratives, language, and accurate references to aspects of everyday life. In his fieldwork Albright adopted the best of the stratigraphic method and recording system developed by George Reisner and Clarence Fisher at the Harvard excavations at Samaria (1908–10) and combined it with his own emphasis on ceramic typology to develop his own approach to field methodology. His most eminent follower was G. Ernest Wright, though Yigael Yadin, Israel’s most famous archaeologist, often cited Albright as his intellectual mentor and as the “father of biblical archaeology.”
Albright’s fieldwork during the 1920s and 1930s led him to ever more positive assessments of the role of archaeology in supporting the Bible. In the second half of his career he interpreted many of the results of his own and others’ work as supporting the historicity of the patriarchal narratives. In no small measure Albright’s zeal for the patriarchs derived from his disdain for Wellhausen and his followers, who emphasized the exile and its aftermath as the most formative period in Israel’s history. Albright first summarized these views in 1932 in his The Archeology of Palestine and the Bible. His positivistic views on the historicity of the patriarchs dominated American scholarship into the 1960s.
George Ernest Wright carried Albright’s achievements forward, especially in respect to the biblical theology movement then popular in America. In presenting the theological underpinnings of what was basically Albright’s scientific construct, Wright was the last in a long tradition of making biblical archaeology a respected scientific inquiry. The field was more or less what Albright had also called “Palestinian archaeology,” albeit tied closely to biblical theology. With respect to encouraging new excavations, training new students, and embracing the “new archaeology” of the 1960s and 1970s, Wright succeeded to an unprecedented degree, and this success had an impact on an entire new generation of scholars and teachers.
Wright’s excavations at Shechem (1956–69) laid the groundwork for the future work of many who would continue in the Albright/Wright tradition (e.g., Bull, Campbell, Calloway, Dever, Holiday, Lance, Seger, Toombs). By beginning the excavations at Gezer with Nelson Glueck in 1964, Wright made it possible for those of the next generation to begin their own in dependent work. The foremost among them, William Dever, soon took over the Gezer operations and became the main advocate for changing the name of the discipline to “Syro-Palestinian archaeology.” Dever’s hope was that by changing its name the field could sever its ties with theology, thereby delegitimizing any theological claims over archaeological data. He also hoped that changing the name from “biblical archaeology” would leave open a way for genuine dialogue between the science of archaeology and the sophisticated field of biblical studies. Dever believed that the conservative theological tendency of the field of biblical archaeology to support the historical veracity of the Bible would be diminished if archaeologists and biblical scholars could do their work separately and at the conclusion of their discrete investigations compare results on issues of joint interest.
While debates about the definition of the field progressed, the opinion of specialists on several key issues was changing. By the mid-1970s support for the historicity of the patriarchal age was fast declining, and soon after there was a growing consensus that the period of the Israelite conquest and settlement, a major pillar of Wright’s biblical archaeology, was far more complicated than anyone had anticipated and that the historicity of the exodus itself was now open to serious debate.
Dever’s sustained critique resulted in a reevaluation of where the field was going and allowed for a more inclusive Near Eastern archaeology to evolve during a period of growing political tension. The broadening of the discipline to include new interpretive frameworks as well as new methodologies taken from anthropology also permitted new types of field archaeologists to pursue their interests without having to deal with the questions of most interest to biblical studies. In the areas of prehistory, Islamic archaeology, and the archaeology of Jordan and Syria, for example, such a development was most welcome and had the immediate effect of encouraging many new comers to enter the field, now conceived of as “Near Eastern archaeology.” That is not to say that the biblical archaeology movement had peaked or would disappear, but it had moved on in ways more congenial to the academic and intellectual atmosphere of the end of the twentieth century.
When viewed in historical perspective, the maximalist/minimalist debate about the implications of archaeological findings for the history of Israel that emerged in the 1990s was a natural outgrowth of the ongoing tension between archaeologists who had long been working in Palestine and Israel and biblical scholars. Since the time of Wellhausen biblical scholars had been trying to reconcile the large historical gap that separated the probable editing and redaction of the Hebrew Bible, which occurred during the exile or later during the Persian or Hellenistic period, from the period when Israelite remains from the Iron Age were documented in the material record. Moreover, archaeological surveys and analysis of excavations that could provide information about the critical transition between the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, the thirteenth–twelfth century BCE, seemed not to support the existence of a new people arriving from Egypt or Mesopotamia, who within several centuries were able to establish a new kingdom in the form of the United Monarchy. Instead, the data seemed to indicate that Israel had emerged from indigenous groups in the central hill country somewhat later than what is indicated in the biblical narrative.
Arguments over dating tenth-century material, pottery in particular, led to a bitter dispute over whether there was a United Monarchy and whether Jerusalem had developed into an urban center before the eighth century. In this aspect of the debate the minimalists, largely based in England and Europe, were indirectly supported by the pioneering work of Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, who questioned whether key archaeological data used to support the existence of a strong centralized kingdom were correctly dated, data from such sites as Beersheba, Dan, Hazor, Gezer, Jerusalem, and Megiddo. Finkelstein’s views have been overwhelmingly rejected by the archaeological community, which still supports the position, based on ceramic dating, that monumental remains compatible with a United Monarchy were constructed in the tenth and ninth centuries. Ceramic typology and the interpretation and dating of such remains have become the central issues dividing the archaeological camps, while biblical scholars have differed on the implications of a late editing of the Bible and have debated whether a fictional narrative would or would not be possible in the later periods.
For all those who study the Bible seriously, the harshness of the debates and the attendant publicity have created confusion. To say that the older Albright/Wright positivist stance has collapsed is an understatement. What in fact can be said of the situation at the beginning of the twentieth-first century is this: there is no longer a consensus on the history of ancient Israel
either from biblical scholarship or from archaeology. A new synthesis is in the making, one that will be significantly different from the one that dominated in American circles for most of the twentieth century.
Just as the old consensus regarding how to reconstruct ancient Israel has fallen, so too has the consensus on how to pursue the field of Syro-Palestinian archaeology. The quest to recover ancient Israel through archaeology and the critical use of the Hebrew Bible has for decades now been cast in socio-historical terms. Syro-Palestinian archaeology, however, has not kept pace with current trends in world archaeology or historical research. Understanding the Bible is no longer an appropriate focus for archaeological research in the Near East. A number of new trends in field excavation can be noted: a shift away from excavating large, spectacular sites in favor of smaller sites without known literary pedigree, allowing scholars to reconstruct the lives of nonelite, ordinary people; greater use of ethnographic and environmental data in reconstructing ancient societies; and greater care in recording the mundane objects of daily living to enable more precise study of households and gender roles of antiquity. This new approach, at tempting to broaden and deepen the investigator’s ability to appreciate an ancient culture, has been called “socio-archaeology” by Eric and Carol Meyers. William Dever, in reacting to recent developments, has called for what he labels “contextual archaeology.” Dever has also called upon archaeologists to take the biblical record seriously and to use it critically, while at the same time being concerned with religious and social history. In making these suggestions Dever hopes to keep alive the “biblical archaeology” movement in a new form while being faithful to its distinguished record of achievement.
Perhaps all this is asking too much of archaeologists who simply want to work in Syro-Palestine or the Levant. Not everyone can be a good biblical scholar and an excellent field archaeologist at the same time. Whatever may be the resolution of the more than century-old debate concerning the proper relationship between archaeology and the Bible, each discipline quite certainly needs the other. A more constructive and positive discourse between the two fields will have to emerge if a new consensus about ancient Israel’s complex social history is to be forged.
* * *
* Philip J. King, American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 26.
Archaeology and the New Testament
JÜRGEN ZANGENBERG
SINCE FOR CHRISTIANS THE NT forms an integral part of the Bible, and since the groups behind the NT did not live in a world consisting only of texts and ideas, but one that also contained pots, jars, houses, and temples, archaeology is a natural partner for any research on the NT and early Christianity.
Inventing a New Discipline
THE GREAT MAJORITY OF NT SCHOLARS have always had a keen interest in the results of archaeological work and have used whatever elements of material culture were available to them to explain realia and describe locations, habits, and practices mentioned in the NT text. One source for such data, of course, was the series of ongoing explorations in Palestine. The scope of these expeditions was quite broad. Much of the early work followed a rather general “biblical” agenda to locate sites, reconstruct the history of particular regions through historical geography, find new epigraphical sources, and describe architectural remains from various periods irrespective of their connection to either the OT or the NT. In that regard NT research benefited equally from the efforts of great pioneers such as Robinson, Schick, Warren and Conder, Vincent and Abel, Clermont-Ganneau, Reisner and Fisher, Smith, Dalman, Alt, and Albright. Not surprisingly, Jerusalem provided enough material to engage scholars from many different fields—excavations in the City of David (Bliss and Dickie, Warren, Macalister and Duncan, Weill) and around the Temple Mount (Warren, Robinson), explorations in the Old City to locate sites mentioned by Josephus and prominent in the passion narratives (Schick, Dalman, Mauss, Vincent), and the quest for the magnificent Constantinian buildings mentioned by Eusebius (Coüasnon, Vincent)—though other sites like Samaria, with its Israelite and Herodian monuments, attracted equal attention (Reisner and Fisher). Other scholars went to the field to explore sites directly relevant to the NT or early Christianity (e.g., early Franciscan archaeologists in Jerusalem and Capernaum) or worked in regions prominent in NT or early Christian tradition (Kohl and Watzinger’s synagogue survey in Galilee and southern Syria). Even though many of these activities had an overt confessional or national agenda in the increasing competition of Western nations before World War I, these early explorations laid the foundations for a critical understanding of one key region for early Christian history until in the 1950s and 1960s Israeli archaeologists ushered in a new era of systematic archaeological exploration.
At about the time archaeological work in Palestine began, European scholars turned to Asia Minor, the second key region of early Christianity. Schliemann’s discoveries in Troy in the 1870s—a sensational success in correlating ancient texts with the archaeology of a site rediscovered by reading Homeric epics with a keen eye for local geography and a vivid imagination—were only the start of a series of highly prestigious expeditions sponsored by Western powers to the west coast of Turkey and Greece (e.g., Austria in Ephesus, Germany in Olympia and Pergamon, France in Delphi, Britain in Athens and many sites in Anatolia, the United States in Corinth and Sardis). Given the apparent success of biblically inspired archaeology in Palestine in locating sites, substantiating biblical history, and supporting plausible reconstructions of the life and ministry of Jesus, it was only a small step to take on the life and ministry of Paul and contextualize the earliest Christian communities mentioned in his Letters, Revelation, and Acts. Like Palestine, Asia Minor had a century-long history of Christian life and culture, which only waited to be freed from oblivion.
Since direct OT connections were virtually nonexistent in Asia Minor (apart from the Hittite culture, whose exploration started in 1906 when Winckler and Makridi excavated Bogazköy), research in Asia Minor and Greece opened up new perspectives by emphasizing the classical Greco-Roman (or “Hellenistic” according to a new term coined by Droysen) heritage of early Christianity. A prominent example of this kind of pioneering work was done by William M. Ramsay (1851–1939). Ramsey deliberately concentrated on the unknown inland regions of Asia Minor, especially Phrygia, through which he traveled systematically during several long journeys between 1881 and 1914, collecting a tremendous amount of data that flowed into several monumental works still indispensable today. By analyzing the language and contents of thousands of newly found inscriptions (the most famous perhaps being the epitaph of Abercius), mapping sites (especially famous is the rediscovery of the land of the Montanists), and drawing conclusions about historical geography and local infrastructure in antiquity, Ramsay was able to bring back to life an entire region once deeply rooted in Christianity. A whole new branch of “biblical archaeology” developed outside of Palestine and was, at least initially, entirely devoted to the NT and the early Christian heritage. A great advantage possessed by scholars working at sites in Asia Minor or Greece was that they had enjoyed a sound classical education enabling them to record and discuss all traces of ancient culture they happened upon in a region that was still quite inaccessible to Westerners.
On the other hand, still only few genuine NT scholars personally went into the field to generate the data they were using. Neither did many NT scholars enter into a systematic dialogue with professional archaeologists in order to reflect on methods of interpreting material culture and to correlate their results with textual sources.
Only when NT scholars became not simply recipients but producers of prime data and partners in dialogue should one speak of NT archaeology. In this respect NT archaeology is a fairly recent development, even though it continued a much older impulse. Two factors were decisive in producing this development. First, NT studies, like many fields in the humanities including archaeology, underwen
t a profound diversification and professionalization in the late 1960s and 1970s. NT scholarship benefited from extending its methodological spectrum beyond philology and from enhancing its available data through collaboration with neighboring disciplines. This “sociological turn” broke the ground for a new interest in questions of social setting, group formation processes, religious rituals, patterns of everyday life, and modes of enculturation of early Christian communities, thereby allowing an increasingly creative and comprehensive dialogue with the social sciences and with professional archaeology. In this way NT scholarship used archaeology to fulfill its theological and historical task of interpreting the NT contextually and of better understanding the historical, social, and religious formation of early Christianity.
The second decisive impulse came from Judaic studies that, since the early twentieth century, have collected a huge wealth of data on Jewish material culture and everyday life from the vast literary tradition (Krauss). Other scholars systematically researched particular regions (Büchler, Galilee), events (Tcherikover), and art (Goodenough). They programmatically included evidence from epigraphy and—if available—archaeology. Especially prominent with regard to archaeology were the discovery of a synagogue and early house church in Dura Europos (Cumont, Kraeling, Rostovtzeff), the excavations of a synagogue in Bet Alfa (Sukenik), and explorations in the necropolis at Bet Shearim (Maisler, Lifshitz, and Schwabe) as well as the find of the century, Qumran. As scholars became increasingly aware of Judaism’s diversity not only in matters of theology, but also in art and everyday life, they realized the role of regional factors in the expression of Judaism. Debates about “sectarian” versus “normative” Judaism (Goodenough) were also affected by such regional expressions. Scholars also became aware of the manifold connections between Jewish culture and the wider Hellenistic world.
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