Archaeological dig reignites debate over the Old Testament’s historical accuracy

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeological-dig-reignites-debate-old-testament-historical-accuracy-180979011/

by gmays • 5 years ago

78 90 5 years ago

If nothing else, the old testament is a fascinatingly well-preserved look at how people viewed life thousands of years ago. Although a lot of things have changed, the nature of human conflict and the desire for power haven't.

lalaland11254• 5 years ago

I think the most interesting part of the Old Testament is how the ancient Israelites justified their war against Canaan.

One of the main charges against Canaan is that they accused Canaan of sacrificing children. It's the exact same "think of the children" justification used endlessly today.

zozbot234• 5 years ago

It was a real thing, we know the same stuff from Roman sources about Carthage which shared much of their culture with Canaan.

int_19h2• 5 years ago

It should be noted that the historicity of the conquest of Canaan is itself highly suspect.

bjourne2• 5 years ago

The Israelites were one Canaanite people among others. The reason they are the main characters in our history books is because of survivorship bias. Other people had just as elaborate myths and legend (and a lot of material were shared among many groups) but their material was lost to history. The Israelites and proto-Israelites that existed around 1000 BC were most likely also sacrificing children to the god Moloch. The story of how Abraham almost sacrificed his son and other hints in the Old Testament indicates as much. The practice of child sacrifice went out of fashion over the centuries and the Israelites revised their holy texts, eventually outlawing child sacrifice. The impetus for the theological change may have been greater contact with cultures that would have been seen as more sophisticated, such as the Greeks and the Achaemenids, whose gods did not require that extreme sacrifices.

eli_gottlieb2• 5 years ago

The funny part there is that the text is offering legitimation propaganda for a war that, as far as archaeology and secular history can tell us, never actually happened. You can only trust the Biblical text as even a little historical once you get to the period of kings!

lurquer• 5 years ago

Provide cite to this “main charge”.

The Pentateuch is clear that the land was given to Abraham and his descendants. After their 400+ years in bondage in Egypt, they returned and reclaimed their land. They weren’t encouraged to kick the Canaanites out because of child sacrifice; (although, that was certainly a practice that some were engaged in.) In any case, the OT doesn’t paint a picture of the Hebrews being some force of social justice, ridding that particular parcel of geography of some vile practice... indeed, Solomon ended up erecting shrines to Moloch, Manessah (a Jewish king) sacrificed his own son to Moloch, as did King Ahaz, and the Jew’s tendency to fall into periods of child sacrifice and idolatry is recounted time and time again throughout the OT. In other words, the vice of infanticide wasn’t described in the OT as exclusive to the Canaanites.

In short, I think you are somewhat confused... clearly, child sacrifice is bad, but it wasn’t the ‘main’ reason — or even a minor reason - for the conquest. Cite something specific if I’m mistaken.

brightball• 5 years ago

That was definitely one of the things I took from reading it. How human nature has changed very little, if at all, in all that time.

bjourne2• 5 years ago

But a lot of things have changed. Women are for the most part not viewed as cattle anymore and we don't treat other ethnic groups as subhuman species that we are free to exterminate and/or take as our slaves.

s1artibartfast• 5 years ago

This view has come and gone in different societies at different times. There were places 2,000 years ago with relative equality, and places today where this is still the case.

mbfg3• 5 years ago

I wouldn't be so rosy about that claim. Sure in small pockets things are good, in others-- mild improvements, in still others, probably as bad.

sysrpl2• 5 years ago

No it's not.

The Genesis account states that the earth was created, then the oceans, then trees and plants, and after all that the sun the moon and the stars were created.

The correct historical order is stars existed, then the sun was formed, then the earth and moon, then oceans, and finally trees and plants.

commandlinefan2• 5 years ago

Interesting that your mind immediately goes there. I read the title and wondered about the historical accuracy of, say, Abraham offering his wife to pharaoh or Solomon killing his brother to ascend to the throne. With a handful of exceptions, after the part with the Ark, the old testament is at least believable.

katzgrau• 5 years ago

I was like, pretty sure all those people didn't live 900 years. I like a lot of the stories and subjective meaning, but you kind of have to look past the odd factoids.

soneil3• 5 years ago

I find "the part with the Ark" fascinating. The number of different traditions that have a deluge myth has to make you wonder if there isn't something behind it.

Obviously if you take it very literally, every species on earth in the back of a homemade boat, the entire planet being wiped out, etc - it doesn't stand up very well. But I'd be willing to entertain the possibility that the story is the fossilised remains of an oral tradition that predates the written record - perhaps the loss of lands after the last ice age, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

SeanLuke2• 5 years ago

Actually there are TWO incompatible accounts of creation in Genesis, one in Genesis 1 and one in Genesis 2.

Genesis 1: the world initially all water. God has to dry it to create land. Genesis 2: the world initially all land. God has to add water.

Genesis 1 creation order: water, land, plants, animals, humans (male and female at the same time, most reasonable reading is many humans all at once). Genesis 2 creation order: land, water, Adam alone, plants, animals, Eve alone.

dane-pgp4• 5 years ago

The two accounts aren't necessarily incompatible, and they can be interpreted as offering two parallel perspectives of Creation: the first with a cosmological focus, and the second with a sociological one. A synthesis of the two accounts would give an order something like this:

Fluid (the proto-Earth which didn't have a distinct atmosphere), solid Earth (with liquid water forming oceans, and a gaseous atmosphere), plants, animals, humans, Adam, the garden of Eden (in an area that had been barren), (animals brought to Adam for naming), Eve.

dang6• 5 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. It's the last thing we want here, and it's particularly easy to avoid.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sysrpl2• 5 years ago

The original title of this submission until it was changed was "Is the Old Testament historically accurate". My response was to that title, no it isn't historically accurate.

rbanffy2• 5 years ago

A tamer version of the title would have prevented 50% of the comments at this time.

We can try "new evidence of an advanced society in the time of the biblical Solomon" would probably be a better fit.

ducharmdev• 5 years ago

Yeah, the final line seems to be far from any kind of "gotcha":

What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.

Spooky23• 5 years ago

A lot of the status quo understanding of the past is filtered through British Imperial Era historians and archaeologists who in turn interpreted through the eyes of the world order they lived in.

Every once in awhile there’s a headline to the effect of “Breaking: Scientists discover that Bronze Age/medieval/not European people were total idiots in <year>“

User232• 5 years ago

It raises questions that anatomically modern homo sapiens existed for at least 200,000 years, but supposedly only developed civilization in the past five thousand years or so. Perhaps human civilization is considerably older than the mainstream view, but 5,000 years is about how long it takes for all traces to disappear? It does appear the great pyramid will probably be extant for longer than 5,000 years, but such artifacts appear to be rare.

My very limited understanding is that traditional Hindu teaching is that human civilization is orders of magnitude older than 5,000 years. If anyone who knows more about that wants to reply I’d be interested.

treis• 5 years ago

I don't see why a mine is an indication of a local kingdom. It seems reasonable that it would be an outpost specific to resource extraction. All of the stuff they found could be the modern equivalent of finding a Rolex at an oil derrick in Oklahoma.

dang6• 5 years ago

We've switched from "Is the Old Testament historically accurate?" (which was the HTML doc title, not something the submitter made up, but still too baity) to the page title, which seems more factual and neutral.

rbanffy2• 5 years ago

I would never imagine the Smithsonian would do a click-bait like this.

Ekaros• 5 years ago

Is any historical text from similar time period accurate?

joshdance• 5 years ago

Could be. I think the most interesting part of the article is that they have identified a limit of archeology. They discovered wealthy and powerful groups that don't exist according to archeology because they didn't leave behind buildings. The royal purple dye was very interesting as well.

jjtheblunt• 5 years ago

Possibly related, but not mentioned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos#Potential_biblical_conn...

ianbutler• 5 years ago

I think it's interesting that it feels like we have such high expectations of archaeology to provide mostly accurate pictures of history when if we were wiped out tomorrow our historical record would exist for what 10000 years before everything is completely degraded? Most of that information loss would happen in like the first 100 years after we were gone just based on how quickly most of our digital storage mediums degrade.

If we can't build a long and comprehensive enduring legacy of our civilization why should we expect older civilizations to have been better at it while theoretically having worse means to do so and expect that legacy to be wholistic when archaeologists explore it?

maartenh• 5 years ago

One thing I really like about Doctor Who, is the absurd mis-remebered fake histories they make up for our current era. Hilarious!

Puts into perspective how we think about the cultures that came before us.

ArtWomb• 5 years ago

I mean check out that 3000 year old smelting furnace. Not only does it work as a piece of aesthetically intriguing sculpture, it probably still works as a blast furnace! I think about this a lot actually. When ancients built, they had to built for survival, so the focus, care and attention was exponentially multiplied. The result is of course things that were implicitly designed to last for generations.

It must be an amazing feeling to be an archeologist at the moment of new discovery. You suddenly enjoy a serendipitous connection with a human being who has been dead for ages. But is suddenly memorable again, as if reborn.

I think that human connection is the seed of "psychohistory". What message or wisdom can we wish to convey to our Future Selves?

mikepurvis• 5 years ago

Not an archeologist, but isn't most of what we find pretty sharply split between everyday stuff that was frozen in time or left behind in an unplanned catastrope (Anasazi, Pompeii, etc), and then the formal, intentional records left in tombs and so on?

I know both pieces are important, but the intentional record of some ruler tells you more about their ego than what everyday life was like.

I expect that even if we were all snuffed out tomorrow, there would be loads of our record remaining 1000+ years from now— both the intentional efforts like seed vaults, time capsules, stacks of hard copy documents sealed in safes, but also the enormous presence of all kinds of plastic, which even divorced from context would still give myriad insight into what daily life was like at the start of the 21st century.

sabertoothed• 5 years ago

No.

A better title could have avoided this simple answer.

dang6• 5 years ago

"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dvh• 5 years ago

- "Is it true that they give out free BMWs in Moscow?"

- "Yes it is true. But it's not in Moscow but in St Petersburg. And it's not BMWs but Ladas. And they don't give it, they steal it"

tomohawk2• 5 years ago

The tent theory makes a lot of sense. Prior to Solomon's temple, the temple was a tent, and is recorded as being a tent for hundreds of years.

A lot of scholars used to insist that the Bible was obviously not historical because it talked about this thing called the Assyrian empire that had conquered the fertile crescent, and everyone knew that empire never existed.

And then in the mid 19th century archeologists unearthed extensive evidence of the Assyrian empire.

Interestingly, records from that empire concur on some of the same events in the Bible. For example, Sennacherib is mentioned as the leader of Assyria who conquered most of Judah (the southern kingdom of Isreal - he had already conquered the northern one). See, for example, Isaiah 37.

From an unearthed clay tablet:

"But as for Hezekiah, the Jew, who did not bow to my yoke, forty-six of his strong walled towns, and innumerable smaller villages in their neighbourhood, I besieged and conquered by stamping down earth ramps and then by bring up battering rams, by the assault of foot soldiers, by breaches, by tunnelling and military engineering operations.

I made to come out from them 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, innumerable horses, mules, donkeys, camels, large and small cattle, and counted them as spoils of war. He himself I shut up like a caged bird within Jerusalem his royal city. As for Hezekiah, the awful splendour of my lordship overwhelmed him."

This coincides with the account in the Bible.

Note that Hezekiah is a descendant of Solomon - less than 200 years separate them.

wl2• 5 years ago

A lot of scholars used to insist that the Bible was obviously not historical because it talked about this thing called the Assyrian empire that had conquered the fertile crescent, and everyone knew that empire never existed.
And then in the mid 19th century archeologists unearthed extensive evidence of the Assyrian empire.

You're conflating the Assyrians and the Hittites. The Assyrians were well known from sources other than the Hebrew Bible before the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform and modern archeology. Even then, Archibald Sayce's 1876 identification of the Biblical Hittites with the Hittite Empire of Anatolia remains problematic today. You're also drawing up a bit of a strawman of pre-19th century scholars—the problem of the Biblical Hittites never seems to have been more than a minor curiosity for those arguing over the value of the Hebrew Bible as a historical work.

Also, if you're going invoke Sennacherib's Annals to compare with the Biblical accounts, actually compare them. Briefly, the Hebrew Bible has Hezekiah paying heavy tribute (though not as heavy as in the Annals) to Sennacherib so he won't attack, Sennacherib lays siege anyway, and then divine forces destroy Sennacherib's army.

tomohawk2• 5 years ago

The Hittites are another example of almost the same thing. The Bible was the only source of information about them. Some people said the Bible was making things up. Archeology has now confirmed that the Hittites existed.

For Assyria, there was only textual evidence in the Bible, and some Greek manuscripts. The Greeks even say they are not sure Assyria existed as there were no ruins to point at. All the other textual evidence was based on the Bible and Greek sources.

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rdas/hd_rdas.htm

The excavations of the 19th century are often called a 'rediscovery'.

The Assyrian and Biblical accounts are not contradictory. The Assyrian account merely leaves off the humiliation of not actually capturing and killing Hezekiah as Sennacherib intended. How that failure occured is not mentioned in the Assyrian account, which is fairly normal for defeats and failings.

After Assyria withdrew, Hezekiah had a tunnel built to supply water to Jerusalem. You can see that tunnel today, and the Hebrew inscription.

furrowedbrow• 5 years ago

Loved this article, thanks for sharing!

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

I am reminded of a piece I read about a dig in either Central or South America. It was probably a thousand years old and archaeologists were baffled by something commonly found in the burial sites.

A local fisherman was able to readily identify it as a spacer for making fishing nets with consistently sized openings.

So much of what gets left behind only makes sense if you have knowledge of human behavior. It isn't necessarily readily inferable from the physical remains themselves.

readthenotes1• 5 years ago

I got chills when I read about the protagonist being too fearful of the wrath of the mob to publish his theory until after he got tenure.

Reminded me of the quip that science advances one gravestone at a time.

Archaeological dig reignites debate over the Old Testament’s historical accuracy

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