In follow up to the last post, a new book, "The Bible Unearthed," will not be warmly greeted by Christofascists and charlatans who use the pulpit to shake down the ignorant and gullible for money. The authors of the book, two archaeologists, use archaeological discoveries and analysis to disprove many of the main stories of the Old Testament and instead describe the Bible's Old Testament as a contrived and manipulated set of ancestor stories aimed at meeting the needs of seventh-century-B.C. Judah and its quest for a unified kingdom. As one book review notes:
Their detailed analysis yields conclusions that are startling to the uninitiated: the search for the historical ancestors has failed; the Exodus did not happen as described; the violent, swift and total conquest of Canaan never took place; the picture of judges leading tribes in battle against enemies does not fit the data; David and Solomon existed in the 10th century B.C. but as ''little more than hill country chieftains.'' There was no golden age of a united kingdom, a magnificent capital and an extended empire.
A small nation with big plans could use a grand story. In constructing it, authors and editors drew on many diverse and conflicting traditions, which they embellished and elaborated. The intent was ideological and theological -- not to record history (in the modern sense) but to appropriate the past for the present. The epic that emerged was edited and added to in subsequent centuries to become the powerful saga we know as the Hebrew Bible. Unequaled in the ancient world, it articulated a national and social compact for an entire people under God. Finkelstein and Silberman leave no doubt of their reverence for it. In their view, however, it is ''not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination.''
Drawing on new methods, excavations (even of old sites) and assumptions, they turn the traditional argument on its head. Archaeological studies, they argue, undercut rather than support the historicity of biblical traditions about the origin and rise of Israel.
The take away? The Bible is anything but inerrant and it is anything but the "inspired word of God." It was written to serve the political and theological needs of an upstart kingdom that needed to support its boasts of special divine guidance and superiority over others. It is little wonder that the Bible is so popular among the GOP base which likewise feels compelled to claim that America is under divine guidance and superior. 27 centuries later and the same mindset and agenda are alive and well.
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