From Eden to Exile

240 Pages·2014·5.5 MB·English

by  Eric H. Cline

2
Copyright © 2007 Eric H. Cline. Afterword copyright © 2012 Eric H. Cline. All rights
reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without permission is
prohibited.
The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible,
copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of
Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. In addition, some material in this book
previously appeared in oral and/or written form by the present author and appears here with
the permission of Modern Scholar/Recorded Books (www.modernscholar.com).
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Cline, Eric H.
From Eden to exile : unraveling mysteries of the Bible / by Eric H. Cline. – 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-4262-1224-6
1. Bible. O.T.–Evidences, authority, etc. 2. Bible. O.T.–History of Biblical events. 3. Bible.
O.T.–Antiquities. 4. Bible. O.T.–Criticism, interpretation, etc. 5. Judaism–History–To 70
A.D. 6. Jews–History–To 70 A.D. I. Title.
BS1180.C64 2006
221.6’7–dc22
2007003122
Founded in 1888, the National Geographic Society is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and
educational organizations in the world. It reaches more than 285 million people worldwide
each month through its official journal, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, and its four other magazines;
the National Geographic Channel; television documentaries; radio programs; films; books;
videos and DVDs; maps; and interactive media. National Geographic has funded more than
8,000 scientific research projects and supports an education program combating geographic
illiteracy.
For more information, please call
1-800-NGS LINE (647-5463)
or write to the following address:
National Geographic Society
1145 17th Street N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 U.S.A.
Visit us online at www.nationalgeographic.com/books
3
Interior Design: Cameron Zotter
v3.1
4
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: The Garden of Eden
CHAPTER 2: Noah’s Ark
CHAPTER 3: Sodom and Gomorrah
CHAPTER 4: Moses and the Exodus
CHAPTER 5: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho
CHAPTER 6: The Ark of the Covenant
CHAPTER 7: The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel
EPILOGUE
AFTERWORD
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Notes
About the Author
5
6
INTRODUCTION
“The greatest challenge for anyone trying to ‘solve’ a Biblical mystery is
that the Bible interweaves the historical and the theological, the mystical
and the verifiable—often in one sentence.”
—Molly Dewsnap Meinhardt, Biblical Archaeology Society
T
here are many mysteries in the Bible. Some cannot be explained and
must remain as mysteries or even miracles—at least for now, if not
forever. Other mysteries can be discussed rationally within a historical
and archaeological framework. A number of these, including the Garden of
Eden, Noah’s ark, Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses and the Exodus, Joshua and
the Battle of Jericho, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Ten Lost Tribes, are
of great interest to many people. It is on these seven mysteries that we will
concentrate here.
While doing the research for this book, I became amazed and, frankly,
appalled by the amount of pseudoscientific nonsense that has been published
on these topics, especially on the Internet but also in book form. The vast
majority of this work has not been produced by professional scholars but
rather by amateur enthusiasts, some of whom we will meet in the following
chapters. These enthusiasts—most of whom are self-trained and self-
employed, and some of whom publish only, or primarily, on the Internet—all
work outside of academia. As such, they are not held to the same standards
of rigor, peer review, and scrutiny as professional scholars employed by
colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher learning. Indeed, the
work of such enthusiasts frequently meets the criteria of “junk science,”
especially when it, as Ron W. Pritchett has explained, “advocates a cause,
pays little attention to the investigative process, ignores contrary evidence,
and advertises a high moral purpose.”
Quite frequently, the public embraces such enthusiasts, for they are
entertaining and passionate, for the most part. And, unfortunately, when it
comes right down to it, it seems that a good but erroneous story trumps good
but boring data every time: The enthusiast might be completely wrong, but
he or she is frequently a charismatic storyteller who never lets the facts get
in the way of a good story. As a result, such stories frequently reach a larger
audience than the more detailed and often dry work of the archaeologists,
ancient historians, and biblical scholars. On television shows or in media
articles devoted to these stories, real scholars are often reduced to the role of
7
mere commentators and “nattering nabobs of negativism,” to use the words
of former Vice President Spiro Agnew and William Safire in a new context.
Frequently, these experts come off as spoilsports—“an effete corps of
impudent snobs”—refuting the exciting nonsense being spewed by those who
have no formal training in history or archaeology and who are, as they say,
taking on the establishment.
That is not to say that the work of such enthusiasts is always without
merit or completely flawed. Some of them may have good evidence or logical
clues that they are following, but then come to faulty or erroneous
conclusions. Sometimes they are simply guilty of wishful thinking or of
reading too much into the evidence. Other times they are guilty of setting off
on their investigations with an a priori set of assumptions, such as the
infallibility of the Bible, which does not inspire confidence in the impartiality
of their investigations. They frequently do not seem to know, or care, that
there are larger debates within the fields of biblical studies, ancient history,
and archaeology that will (or should) affect their studies, ranging from
biblical criticism and source theory to the validity and accuracy of
radiocarbon dating.
The materials written and published by some scholars on these topics can
also be problematic, especially the most fervent of the evangelical biblical
maximalists, who see the Hebrew Bible as infallible, and the biblical
minimalists, who see the Hebrew Bible as a late (that is, Persian or
Hellenistic) fabrication. Some biblical maximalists—particularly those
working outside of mainstream academia—seem to be closer to the
enthusiasts in setting out with their own a priori set of assumptions, which
are often stated outright in the mission or message statements on their Web
sites. Others dilute their good and careful analysis of archaeological material
and ancient literary sources with uncritical thinking or blatant proselytizing.
In addition, both the maximalist and minimalist camps harbor individuals
who abuse and occasionally distort the information.
Thus, one of the reasons I have written this book is to sound both a word
of warning and a call to arms, because I believe that the general public
deserves—and wants—better. It is high time that professional archaeologists,
ancient historians, and mainstream biblical scholars take back their fields
from the amateur enthusiasts, pseudoscientists, uninformed documentary
filmmakers, and overzealous biblical maximalists and minimalists who have
had, for the most part, free rein to do what they wish, without any regard to
scientific method or an unbiased investigation for the truth. In return,
though, we as academics owe it to the general public to deal with these
mysteries in a serious way and to publish our findings. Even if our
investigations come up empty, it is frequently the journey—including the
8
benchmarks established and information imparted along the way—that is
most valuable and sometimes even more interesting than the end result.
I will say right up front, however, that what I cannot do is solve all of these
mysteries—nobody who adheres to the facts can do that. All that I can do is
unravel some of the threads that make up these mysteries, present the
current state of our evidence and what professional scholars are thinking
about these topics today, highlight the most likely situation, and provide
enough information so that the reader will be able to better assess future
claims made by another author or a television program. But I doubt that
alone is enough reason for anyone to want to read on. So are there other
reasons to explore these topics? The answer, I believe, is a resounding “yes.”
For one thing, these mysteries are not ancient history. They are still very
much around today, showing up every few weeks or months in newspaper
headlines and as references in stories about all kinds of otherwise unrelated
events. Sodom and Gomorrah, Armageddon, the walls of Jericho, Adam and
Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tower of Babel—references to these topics
constantly appear in media around the world, and not just in tabloids sold at
supermarket checkout stands. To know a little about these topics is to be
culturally literate; to know more about them is to have an informed opinion.
Moreover, these topics still resonate and are both used and abused in
connection with current events. Plenty of people read the Bible as history—
even though we cannot correlate and confirm its specific details until the
events of the first millennium (as we shall see in chapter 7)—and they use
B.C.
these biblical narratives to frame today’s headlines, especially news from the
modern Middle East. Did Joshua really fight the Battle of Jericho and drive
the Canaanites out of the land, as stated in the biblical account of the Israelite
conquest of Canaan? If so, who was there first and to whom does the land
really belong today? The Palestinians, via their ostensible ancestors, the
Canaanites and Jebusites, or the Israelis, via their ostensible ancestors, the
invading Israelites? The debate over who has first rights to the Holy Land
may be completely moot if Professor Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv
University is correct about the original Israelites and their role in Canaan.
His “Invisible Israelites” model, which we will touch upon in chapter 5,
suggests that long ago the Israelites and the Canaanites once occupied the
land at the same time because they were the same people. This would mean
that there was never an Israelite conquest of Canaan—and that, in turn,
means that the current cycle of violence in modern Israel and Palestine is
less like two nations at war and more like a sibling rivalry or a family reunion
gone bad.
Similarly, does it matter whether the Ark of the Covenant is located in a
cave on a mountain in Jordan or underneath the Temple Mount in modern-
9
day Jerusalem or even in a church treasury in Aksum, Ethiopia? It matters
very much to political and religious authorities. And what about the Ten Lost
Tribes? Does it matter that the Lemba in Africa or the B’nai Menashe in
India claim to be members of the lost tribes of Israel? It certainly does,
especially when we consider that the emigration and airlifting of Ethiopian
Falasha Jews to Israel from 1977 to 1991 occurred in part because of a
similar possibility. The biblical stories become real when people adopt them
as their own, regardless of their historical accuracy.
Therefore, in the following pages, I will investigate the seven intriguing
mysteries of the Bible mentioned earlier. I will put each of them into their
proper historical and archaeological contexts and describe what many
archaeologists, ancient historians, and biblical scholars are currently thinking.
I will be exploring these mysteries primarily as an archaeologist and an
ancient historian. I am not a theologian, so I will not be looking at the
theological questions that are present in some of these mysteries; I will leave
that to others. I am also not specifically an expert in literary criticism or
textual analysis. However, as an ancient historian, I frequently use many of
the same tools, although not to the extent that the specialists do. I often tell
my students that ancient history is essentially “texts plus archaeology,” and
to interpret the texts correctly means using the tools of literary criticism and
textual analysis.
My own methodology, therefore, is the standard historical method
followed by most historians. I generally hope to have several—preferably at
least three—independent bodies of evidence when attempting to answer a
question or confirm a fact about something in the ancient world. In the case
of most of the mysteries that we will investigate in this book, the data will
come from the biblical account, extra-biblical literary texts, and archaeology.
In each of the following chapters, I will first present a brief recapitulation
of the biblical account relevant to the mystery at hand. Within the ensuing
discussion section, I will present the additional available evidence—both
textual and archaeological—and will briefly evaluate some of the suggestions
that have been proposed to explain each mystery. I will also include a section
on the historical context of the biblical mystery in question, because by
putting each mystery into its probable (or definite) historical context, we can
see if it is possible to explain it logically.
In the concluding section for each chapter, I will attempt to weigh the pros
and cons of each topic and to discuss any possible historical kernel of truth
upon which the mystery may rest. And, finally, I will suggest what I believe
to be the most likely solution to each mystery, if there is one. We will need to
keep in mind, though, that there is a wide range of reactions and responses to
these mysteries even among archaeologists, ancient historians, and biblical
10