Mock around the clock

One and two, three and four, five and six and seven and more. Anti-bibliobloggers out there are jumping up and down in righteous indignation at bibliobloggers who are rocking around the clock over a recent rediscovery. Probably nobody can explain exactly why, but for some strange reason July saw an outburst of interest in an article originally published in the New York Times in August, 2005. Seems as if Bible believers have only just discovered the discovery. In the now much-quoted article, Israeli archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, was quoted as claiming to have uncovered remnants of King David's palace, spoken of in Scripture:

Then Hiram king of Tyre sent messengers to David, and cedar trees, and carpenters and masons. And they built David a house (2 Sam. 5:11).

A few months after the NY Times article, Mazar followed up with her own article, published in Biblical Archaeology Review, Jan/Feb, 2006, outlining her reasons for her conclusion. Titled "Did I Find King David's Palace?", she recounts how she had long suspected that his palace had stood in the northern part of the most ancient area of Jerusalem. She based her ideas on a simple piece of deduction, having noticed that 2 Samuel 5:17, "describes David in the City of David going down, or descending (yered), from his residence to the citadel or fortress (metzudah). The citadel or fortress to which he descended was of course the Canaanite/Jebusite stronghold, the Fortress of Zion. that he had conquered a short time earlier. It is clear from the topography of the City of David that David could have gone down to the citadel only from the north, as the city is surrounded by deep valleys on every other side."

Mazar felt bolstered in her position by the earlier discovery of a "massive public structure" by famed British archaeologist, Kathleen Kenyon, in the vicinity. Kenyon dated associated pottery to the 9th or 10th century B.C., a nice fit with the biblical data concerning David's and Solomon's time. After accessing the funds, Mazar began digging. In no time she found large stones beneath remains of the Second Temple period. And then she found "giant walls from the Large-Stone Structure between 6 and 8 feet wide extending in every direction beyond the area of our excavation!" David's palace, she concluded.

Her claims sparked a mild furor, though not as intense as the uproar sparked in 1999 by Israeli archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog in an infamous speech in which he claimed that, "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom." Mazar and Herzog represent opposite poles in attitudes towards

the relationship between the Bible and archaeological evidence. She believes her stone structures support the biblical account of David and Solomon while Herzog believes the whole biblical account to be mythical. Herzog, a professor at Tel Aviv University, is supported in his position by two well known colleagues from the same institution, Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin (now retired). They argue their case against Mazar in the September, 2007, edition of the university's archaeological journal, "Tel Aviv", concluding that "the walls unearthed by Mazar do not belong to a single building".

Seems to me you have two kinds of folk out there when it comes to the issue of the veracity of the Bible in light of archaeology: those who interpret all archaeological evidence as undermining the scriptural narrative and those who see "proof" of the Bible in every discovery. This dichotomy applies both to ordinary folks who dabble in archaeology and to professional archaeologists. Let's face it: believers may well clutch at straws sometimes in their attempts to "prove" the Bible, but don't you think it cuts both ways? Academics are not immune to the influence their worldview has on their findings. Talking about the cut and thrust between Mazar and Finkelstein over David's palace, Science magazine says,

Academic spats about the dating of Iron Age cooking pots are not uncommon, but this one spills over into political and religious disputes as well (2 February, 2007).

Now I'm certainly not qualified to pontificate on specific archaeological issues, but let me throw my hat in the ring here. You don't have to know much about archaeology to find serious flaws in the pronouncements of the skeptics. I mean, how can anybody suggest that archaeology shows that "the Israelites were never in Egypt [and] did not wander in the desert"? What archeological evidence do you expect to find in the Sinai desert of a wandering horde of people who never stayed in the same spot for more than a year? Stone walls? Leather belts? A rusty refrigerator?

One skeptical website tries to tell us that "Archaeology contradicts significant parts of the Bible" and then lists as its first of three examples of such contradictions the allegation that, "camels, mentioned in Genesis 24:10, were not widely used until after 1000 B.C.E." (His source for this amazing revelation is a piece written by Finkelstein mentioned above.) You can't be serious, surely. So these brilliant archaeologists have dug into the sand and found no sign of desiccated camels with Abraham's name inscribed on the saddlebags.

Just as I ask evolutionists to bring forth one scientific fact that contradicts the idea of intelligent design, I ask archaeologists to produce one absolute archaeological fact that cannot be reconciled with Scripture.

How do the new theories advanced primarily by Israel Finkelstein and David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University impact the current interpretation of Jerusalem's historical development? The short answer, and the conclusion that should be drawn from the archaeological evidence outlined above is, they do not. Although the long answer will not and cannot be asserted until publication of both past and present excavations - in Jerusalem in general and the City of David in particular - is completed, the principle underlying the long answer is simple and relevant to all types of archaeological interpretation: theories based on negative evidence should never be preferred to theories based on positive evidence. Stated another way: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially at sites such as Jerusalem that are located in hilly terrain.

Vaughn, A. G., and Killebrew, A. E., Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: the First Temple Period, SBL Symposium Series 18; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003