In biblical studies, an ultra-skepticism has led to stunning tendencies in the discipline. There are scholars who abdicate entirely their responsibility to utilize the biblical text as a source and so they write vacuous histories of Israel. Some of these scholars, in an ironic inconsistency, will continue to appeal to the biblical text as a springboard to a counter-narrative without any significant contrary evidence other than their own conviction that the biblical text is false. A common thread in this sort of historical reconstruction is the creation of a community of elites living in Judah, Yehud, or Judea from the sixth century BCE to the second century BCE who, in an effort to maintain their elite status, invent a (hi)story for that community, which that community then apparently accepts as its own to the point that a new cult and social identity form (even though the [hi]story is apparently only decontextualized theology/ideology with little to no historical resonance for the community of readers and hearers). I am disturbed by this sort of reconstruction because of the many unanswered questions it leaves.
First, to what extent do these scholars really, truly reject the veracity of biblical claims? The impression left by these writers is that there is a radical discontinuity between biblical historiographical narrative and wie es eigentlich gewesen. If this is so, I would like to know precisely which events they would deny because it is quite unclear to me. On the one hand, they will flippantly deride the historicity of the biblical text and yet on the other hand it is manifestly obvious that there is a pre-exilic northern Israelite polity centred in Samaria, a pre-exilic Judahite polity centred in Jerusalem, a pre-exilic Yahwism and Baalism, and that there are nations such as Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and Hatti along with lesser petty kingdoms who compete for control of the Levant. Major campaigns in the Levant, such as Sennacherib's 701 BCE campaign and Nebuchadnezzar's 586 BCE campaign, are independently verified by abundant inscriptional and archaeological/stratigraphical evidence. Most of the kings of Israel and Judah mentioned in the biblical records are mentioned in stelae or tablets of one kind or another and even the historicity of some lower administrative officials are potentially corroborated by provenanced bullae. If biblical texts completely invent (hi)story, what of this? Do the minimalists deny the historicity of any or all of this? I would think not and, if they do not, are they not then conceding that biblical texts contain valid historical traditions? If they concede this, why do they posit such a radical discontinuity between pre-exilic reality and biblical historiographical narratives? Where are the traces of historicity coming from? Was there no intellectual activity before the sixth century? How did writers in the sixth century or substantially later have as much accurate knowledge as they did about so many disparate subjects that by their own time would have been locked in a distant and ancient past, in some cases even having reliable information only true of a second millennia reality, four to five hundred years before their time? Why do the biblical writers succeed where someone such as Herodotus, by comparison, often fails (yet the latter many still hail as father of history)? Why are the myths, motifs, tropes, and themes of Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Canaanite royal and religious ideologies and literature interwoven into the fabric of texts written, apparently or largely ex nihilo, at least one hundred or as much as five hundred years or more after such things had probably been forgotten and were almost certainly irrelevant? Were there no such offices as prophet or priest? Did the pre-exilic communities have no texts? Do the minimalists believe that a city the size of eighth and seventh century Jerusalem did not have a temple? Was no record, no list, no story, no law, no proverb, no psalm, no oracle, no legend, no myth, no prophecy ever written and preserved to be incorporated into later writing and rewriting or alternatively, was pre-exilic literature so radically different that it did not espouse Yahwism or distinguish between good and bad kings or pronounce judgments against enemies or warn against the dangers of apostasy or extol and glorify Jerusalem and her temple or contemplate the problems of social and political identity? Is 'biblical Israel' really nothing more than a post-exilic ideological construct with little to no traces of a former time?
Second, how is it such scholars can dismiss biblical literature or abdicate any responsibility to address its claims on the grounds of its supernatural worldview and its ideological embellishments when no other piece of evidence is exempt from the self-same or similar difficulties? Even the selectivity of material culture remains can betray reality; even pottery exists within iconographical and ideological matrices; every wall and every arrowhead must be filtered through a subjective worldview and a particular epistomological framework; most inscriptions bespeak supernatural and ideological propaganda. Is it sensible to respond to a historical reconstruction utilizing biblical evidence by asking the historian if he believes an axe-head can float or if witches can raise the spectres of dead prophets? What should be made then of the chronicles of Assyria and Babylonia if there is no Assur or Marduk? What should scholars say about the deeds of Egyptian Pharoahs who could not gaze past their own navel nor accept anything less than the perpetuation of their own grandeur even when every other piece of evidence suggests Egypt may have lost a battle or two in its history? Of what use are the Amarna tablets given their ideological embellishments, imaginary or pseudo-familial sociological matrix, and their provenance in the city and archives of Egypt's most notorious heretic king? What knowledge of the past is possible in a historiographical model that dismisses in toto evidence that is not perfect or that suffers from the vicissitudes of human worldviews, frailities, inadequacies, and subjectivity? Is the human historian nothing more than a data recorder and incapable of critical hypothesis, judgment, interpretation, and synthesis? Is there such a radical discontinuity in human experience that an historian must disavow any ability to read between lines to perceive reality behind an account? If the fish is not the length of a friend's outstretched arms, is there no fish at all and is my friend a liar?
Perhaps the thing that strikes me most about the minimalist schools is that I do not believe that they truly accept their own rhetoric; in fact, many of their rhetorical flourishes are undermined by the implicit and sometimes even explicit implications of their work or the implicit assumptions reflected in their work and conclusions. To me, it seems that the entire epistomological framework of minimalism and its jargon exists in opposition to a naive maximalism of religious fundamentalists and/or long discredited historical-critical reconstructions that really have little to no currency in academia today. Like the vast majority of the ancient historians, I do not accept Albright's conquest model nor do I accept naive renderings of the biblical story presented as history. I do not arrogantly claim to possess a complete or adequate knowledge of the past nor do I believe that such a knowledge could ever be found period, let alone in only the biblical texts. I do, however, reject the ultra-skepticism that essentially denies historians the ability to employ critical judgment to contextualize, interpret, and evaluate biblical and extra-biblical literary sources and to bring the results of such work to bear on the evidence from archaeology. I reject the type of arrogance required to dismiss, a priori, history that does not originate within the same epistomological framework as the modern historian/interpreter and a minimalism that does not respect the different and variegated modes by which humans have and continue to represent the past. I reject that view of the biblical texts which does not accept the many independent verifications of its claims as a sign of its usefulness for historical reconstruction (even while I do recognize that its testimony on many specific and general historical topics is altogether irrelevant or untestable, suspect, and/or demonstratably false). I reject a hermeneutic of the biblical texts that does not allow for the possibility to mine the texts for kernels of historicity; I believe history can be found in myth, prophecy, and ancient historiography by those who are willing to understand the literary conventions inherent in such genres. The patriarchs, Moses, the Exodus, the kingdoms of David and Solomon, and much of the biblical story in Samuel-Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah have historical antecedents and, in my opinion, it is impossible to deny completely, in light of the biblical corpus, such antecedents.
To what degree the biblical narratives are an accurate representation of wie es eigentlich gewesen remains, of course, an open question. Don Redford, e.g., asserts in Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times that the historical antecedent of the Exodus is the Hyksos expulsion. The patriarchal narratives may be no more than etiological tales of mostly legendary tribal/clan chiefs. The kingdoms of David and Solomon may have been little more than small tribal chiefdoms concentrated in the southern highlands and Ezra and Nehemiah may be idealized representations of largely unsuccessful community leaders or even in the case of Nehemiah a judaizing of a Persian governor. In fact, I think the relevant biblical texts actually provide hints to support some of these "minimalist" theories and there is definitely merit in debate over such ideas. Alternatively, scholars might desire to abandon historical reconstruction for productive literary and theological analysis, though even here it is frequently necessary to situate the texts in a given historical context and appreciate that clear evidence in extra-biblical texts from the 3rd century BCE exclude the wilder late datings. Biblical studies, however, can no longer reasonably entertain notions that the Bible is a fabrication; it is intellectually dishonest and a crime against history and the discipline of historiography. It is time to recognize that historians fairly and appropriately use the Bible as a witness to the past that it purports to recount and that a critical historical reconstruction may reasonably draw on its claims even when historians have only circumstantial evidence to contextualize, rather than outright corroborate, its claims. Such reconstructions may in the course of time prove right or wrong but, at least, they will move scholarship forward through productive, rather than vacuous, engagement with the sources.
History in the Bible?
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