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Archaeology Verifies the Bible as God's Word
Bible Minimalists
Back Again!
Chapter 4
Unfortunately, the “Biblical
minimalists” or “Biblical nihilists” are back again. This time
with both an anti-Semitic and a political agenda. They are
distorting archaeology to defend Palestinian land rights by
attempting to prove there is no historical evidence of a Jewish
State. Fortunately, there are highly esteemed scholars qualified
to unmask their political agenda. This controversy came to a
head in October 2002 at the Bible and Archaeology Fest held in
Toronto, Canada, and was evaluated in an article that appeared
in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Dr. Hershel Shanks, editor of the
Biblical Archaeology Review (flagship of
archaeology periodicals), observed that the scholarly debate has
become tinged with more than a hint of present day politics.
They’re writing books with titles
like The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of
Palestinian History—not very subtle attempts to subvert
the historical premise of the modern Jewish state.
As early as thirteen centuries
B.C.E. and 200 years before the birth of David, a stele
exhibited in the Cairo Museum states that Pharaoh Merneptah
boasted of his army’s invasion of Israel. “This is very
inconvenient stuff for minimalists,” Dr. Shanks said, “because
there’s no other way to read it. This is a clear reference to
ancient Israel.”
The elder statesman of American
Archaeologists William Dever, of the University of Arizona,
stated, “I think it’s important to unmask these people. They are
not biblical scholars. They are certainly not archaeologists.
They are social engineers manipulating the biblical texts for
their own goals.”
Harvard University’s eminent
Frank Moore Cross put it bluntly in the pages of Biblical
Archaeology Review by observing that they are “driven by
anti-Semitism.” |
