As promised, I am now ready to provide a more substantial response to Dr. Whitelam's criticisms of my blog entry on history in the Bible:
My blog entry was not designed as a personal attack against any scholar but rather against a methodological tendency/rhetoric/approach within biblical studies. I purposefully did not name specific scholars or schools in my post for that very reason. Also, the bulk of the blog entry consists of questions so that even if I had named Dr. Keith Whitelam and Sheffield, it would not contain an indictment to the effect that Dr. Whitelam rejects the existence of ancient Israel or that there is a lack of academic freedom at Sheffield. Indeed, this indictment can not be found because I do not believe either of these two points to be true. Actually, one of the contentions of my blog entry is that the rhetoric of some minimalists is inconsistent with the assumptions, conclusions, and methodology of their work and that I do not think they would or alternatively ultimately could deny the historicity of the cases I enumerated in the second paragraph of my blog entry (Jim West notwithstanding).
So, let me clarify what my blog entry did attempt to convey. I rejected the notions that a history of Israel is not possible, that biblical texts do not yield historical evidence for the events they recount, and that most biblical texts belong to late Hellenistic periods. I believe that these claims are untenable. I even referred to them as "intellectually dishonest and a crime against history and the discipline of historiography." Now, keeping in mind that I use the term "crime" here very loosely to denote an offense or affront rather than to denote a contravention of a legal statute, I maintain the essential accuracy of these statements, even if they are a colourful choice of words.
For me, the interesting part of Dr. Whitelam's response is that at once he seems to want to clarify that he is not the subject of my critique but on the other articulates a position that I do clearly address and, in general, reacts defensively to the critique. The former is evident when he challenges me to cite an occasion in his published works where he rejects the existence of ancient Israel and when he notes Lemche's opinion that he is not a minimalist. The latter is evident in the offense he takes to my statements and then also in his statement that he does not write histories of Israel because, in his opinion, they are not possible.
The substance of Dr. Whitelam's critique, however, is that I have misrepresented him. To this, I would respond that I did not target him in my post. To date, I have only read one of Dr. Whitelam's books, The Invention of Ancient Israel, and perhaps an article or two, though I can't specifically recall them. As I mentioned above, the target of my post was a methodology. To the extent that Dr. Whitelam does not hold the views I address, he should not take offense. To the extent that he does, I would challenge him to answer the relevant questions. If the answers are contained in one of his published works that I have yet to read, it will suffice to simply direct me to relevant works. For my part, I will take up his advice to read his article in The Biblical World and will post a review of it when I am able. I will also make an attempt to post on The Invention of Ancient Israel. Given my schedule at this time, I'd expect that I will have those blog entries ready sometime in January. Evidently Dr. Whitelam wants me to specifically engage his work and so I will do so.
Response to Keith Whitelam, Part II
![[Valid Atom]](http://anduril.ca/blog/themes/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom Feed"){kind=small}
