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From Eden to exile : unraveling mysteries of the Bible PDF

267 Pages·2007·5.61 MB·English
by  Cline
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Preview From Eden to exile : unraveling mysteries of the Bible

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: 978-1-42621224-6 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. 1145 17th Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 U.S.A. Visit us online at www.nationalgeographic.com/books Interior Design: Cameron Zotter v3.1 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 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 There 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 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 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) B.C. —and they use 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-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

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Examines seven mysteries of the Hebrew Bible, from the Garden of Eden and Noah's Ark, to the Exodus, the Babylonian Exile, and the Lost Tribes of Israel, placing these biblical stories in their archaeological and historical context. Abstract: Eric H. Cline uses the tools of his trade to examine some
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