We have already become accustomed to the scene: Yeshiva students chasingarchaeologists on the hills, cops chasing the yeshiva students. Thediggers into holy books are at war with the diggers into antiquities.
And what is this fight about? On the face of it, they are fighting overdry bones in old graves. But that is only a pretense. The real bone ofcontention lies buried much deeper, in the subconscious of the warringparties.
When the founding fathers of Zionism decided to go to Palestine– against the inclinations of Theodor Herzl the atheist — theypulled out the Old Testament. It contained the divine Deed ofPurchase to the land. It was also a record of a magnificent nationalhistory, which is essential for any modern national movement. We are notinvading someone else’s country. After all, it’s right here in writing.
The Hebrew Bible is a extraordinary literary work whichalso tells a historical tale. But first and foremost, it is areligious document. It records the covenant between The Almighty God andhis people Israel. Its writers used historical and literary materialssolely for the purpose of driving home the religious moral lessons. (“Andhe did wrong in the eyes of The Lord…”). As far as the great Torahsages of the last century were concerned — most of whom treated theZionist Founding Fathers with venomous hatred — the Old Testament had apurely religious significance.
The Zionists, on the other hand, completely ignored the religious contentsof theHebrew Bible. They used its literary elements to create the newHebrew culture and the new Hebrew language, but most of all, they used the”historical” story in order to establish their claim to the land.Generations of archaeologists swarmed the land in order to “prove” thecorrectness of the biblical descriptions. Numerous amateurs, from Moshe
Dayan to Rehavam Ze’evi, turned archaeology into a kind of national sport.All were feeding the public “evidence” and bent the “findings” inaccordance with their imagination and enthusiasm. The orthodox, who didnot need proof for matters of faith, did not care.
But as the Zionist fervor declined, and as the existence of the Hebrewnation on the land became an established fact no longer in need of”proof,” the bitter truth began to trickle out: All that vast effort onthe part of those archaeologists did not reveal a single proof to attestto any truth in those biblical stories. No exodus from Egypt, no conquest
of Canaan, no Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon — none of these haveleft behind even a shred of evidence.
Learned professors, whose religious or nationalistic faith got the betterof their scientific purity, were busy making up excuses for thisastounding fact. Perhaps the Kingdom of David was not in the tenthcentury but instead in the ninth, perhaps all of David’s and Solomon’sbuildings are actually buried under the Dome of the Rock, making itimpossible for us to excavate there, and so on. But in recent years, anew crop of archaeologist has emerged, one no longer afraid to speak thetruth: All those many centuries between the conquering of Canaan and theKingdom of Solomon did not leave the slightest imprint on the land. Andthat is very strange indeed.
The result has been a kind of a draw: There is no evidence to supportthose biblical stories, but neither is there any evidence to disprove it.There are those who reasonably ask: How is it possible that there is noshred of historical truth in so many magnificent stories? After all,those fairy tales must have some historical kernel of truth! Moses,Joshua, David and Solomon probably existed, albeit not exactly as depictedin the Bible. Perhaps the writers exaggerated a bit.
But this, too, is not true. Archeologists did, indeed, provide theevidence that all those stories were pure fiction. Researchers ofantiquities in Egypt decyphered thousands of Egyptian documents which spanthe entire biblical period. The land of Canaan had always been most vitalto the Egyptian national security, as well as to its foreign affairs, itseconomy and its transportation. Throughout the different historicalperiods, Canaan was a permanent host to Egyptian envoys, diplomats,military commanders, spies, and merchants. All those individuals providedcontinuous reports on everything going on in Canaanite cities and in theirenvirons. The pharaohs themselves also recorded in writing on stone theirown victories and achievements, real and imagined.
Hence, there exists a rich body of contemporaneous documentation ofevents in virtually every city and at all times. And lo and behold: Thereis no exodus, no conquering of Canaan, no Kingdom of David, no Kingdom ofSolomon. None of those ever happened or could have happened, since allthe reports from the country of Canaan reveal an entirely different stateof affairs in that land at the time when those events are purported tohave taken place there.
Only during the period of the two Kingdoms — Israel and Judea– does the Biblical story begin to match the historical one.Everything prior to this period — from the Book of Genesis throughthe Book of Samuel II– is legend.
There is no escaping the conclusion — one accepted by virtually everyserious scientist in the world — that the Hebew Bible, written after theBabylonian exile by religious preachers with stunning literary skills, isnot a history book. And because the archaeologists proved it, they arehated by the orthodox.
Does this detract from the greatness of the Bible? Ofcourse not. It has always been, and still remains, a work ofliterary, cultural and linguistic magnificence, on a par with nothing elseamong the cultures of the world. Its stories influenced billionsthroughout the ages. Even if Joshua never really conquered Canaan, andKing David never really ruled in Jerusalem, and neither even existed –still they have influenced our lives and our spiritual world more than anyhistorical figures.
And as for the archaeologists — they reveal what really happened, beyondthe myths. It’s their job.