Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know
It? by Lester Grabbe is an overview of archeological, ancient inscriptions, and in
general, extra-biblical evidence for the events depicted in the Bible.
For years, Europeans took the bible as the inerrant
word of God, as history in the largest and broadest sense.
Beginning in the Age of Enlightenment, this view gradually
eroded.
Advances in philology enabled scholars to see the bible as a patch-work of
sorts, a book composed of many documents stitched together by some unknown redactor.
As a consequence, over the years, the historicity of the bible has
been rolled back. Geology and evolution
destroyed the notion of Adam, Eve, Eden.
The pre-flood events in the bible were viewed simple folk
stories. The patriarchs survived for a
while, as did the exodus from Egypt, but eventually they succumbed to a lack of evidence. Without extra-biblical
confirmation, events in the bible can’t be viewed as indicative of any
verifiable historical event.
This brings us to Grabbe’s book. He gets us up to speed on all those elements.
Taken simply on raw data, Israel, as an entity, can only be verified
from evidence outside the bible. What we get
is rather slim. Take the first outside
reference to Israel in the the Merneptah Stele, about 1203 BCE. The next mention of
Israel is of King Omri, who ruled the Northern Kingdom of Israel, often known
as Samaria, in the Mesha Stele,
set up around 840 BCE.
In those 363 years,
there is no mention in external sources of a Kingdom of Judah, a united Kingdom of Israel and Judah, David and
Solomon. Grabbe’s intent is clear:
without extra-biblical support, it appears that Omri’s Kingdom of
Israel-Samaria became a nation before Judah to the south. This is a complete turnaround from the
biblical text!
Grabbe gives you
this and more. He shows the reader that what
can be proved as reasonably accurate in the biblical text, and what is
conjecture or legend, is often miles apart.
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