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Our Past in Present Tense
Can We Rely on Biblical History?
San Diego Jewish Times, May 16, 1996
By Dr. Yehuda Shabatay
Are the historical narratives of the Bible accurate?
This question ahs been raised for at least two millenia by the talmudic sages to
archaeologists in our days. Several rabbis who lived in the first and
second centuries C.E. asked: How could Moses have written the last verses of the
Torah that tell about his death and burial?
A thousand years later Abraham ibn Ezra wondered why it was necessary to add to
Abraham's story that "the Canaanite was then in the land" (Genesis
12:6)—since that was the situation in the days of Moses, to whom we attribute
the book. And 20th cenutry scholars have been debating whether the Book of
Genesis correctly refers to camels, when, in thier opinion, the patriarchs
were ass-nomads. (William F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of
Israel, p. 98, cf Gen: 12:18, chapter 24, etc)
Yet, regardless of individual critics, until the 18th century the Bible was generally accepted as a trustworthy history of antiquity. Few people doubted the stories of the Creation, The Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah and all the rest,, and even those handful who raised questions tried to find answers to them that were commensurate with the religious traditions.
"But as the Age of Reason dawned and in turn
gave way to 19th century philosophies of evolution and scientific materialism,
the Bible...came to be very considerably discounted as a reliable basis for the
reconstruction of history." (Harry Orlinsky, Ancient Israel, p.5)
However, around the middle of the 19th century, modern archaeology came to the
rescue by providing parallels to several biblical narratives. Surprisingly, one
of the most dramatic discoveries originates not from the land of Israel but from
the capital of the former Kingdom of Moab, some 13 miles east of the Dead Sea,
and it was found not by a trained scholar, but by a Protestant missionary.
In 1868, F.A. Klein, from Prussia, was visiting biblical sites in Palestine and in present-day Jordan. As he was investigating the neighborhood of Diban, the the Arnon River, he noticed the tip of a large, smooth stone with what seemed to be ancient Hebrew writing on it. A Bedouin, who camped in the vicinity, demanded payment for the stone, which Klein could not afford.
All he could do was to circulate reports on his find. One of these reports reached a French scholar by the name of Clemont Ganneau in Jerusaelm, who rushed to Diban and was allowed to take an impression (a squeeze copy) of the inscription on the stone. Klein continued his fund-raising efforts, but by the time he obtained the sum that was demanded by the Bedouin they had blown the stone into pieces—in order to raise its price. Eventually, the pieces were purchased by the French, reassembled and placed in the Louvre in Paris.
Why is this 40-inch high and 28-inch wide
Moabite, or Mesha, Stone so important? Because its 34 lines provide close
historical ties with mid-ninth century B.C.E. events narrated in the third
chapter of the Second Book of Kings. Even beyond that, the
inscription on the stone (or stele) shows religious and linguistic parallels
with the Hebrew Bible that were unknown before the discovery. What are the
resemblances and the contradictions as far as the events are concerned?
The text is written in the first person and it begins as follows: "I am
Mesha, son of Chemos(yat), King of Moab, the Dibonite. My father was king over
Moab 30 years and I became king after my father." Then Mesha recounts his
successful revolt against Israel and states: "Israel perished utterly
forever." He also boasts about the new towns and the reservoirs he built
and assures the reader that all his successes were due to the god Chemosh's
constant support (D. Winton Thomas, editor, Documents from Old Te4stament
Times, pages 196-7)
As mentioned earlier, Mesha's rebellion against Israel is described in
considerable detail in II Kings, chapter 3. There we learn that Mesha was a
"sheep-master," a vassal of the Northern kingdom, Israel. When he
rebelled, the two Jewish states—Judah and Israel—joined forces "and
smote the Moabites (3:24). But at some stage "there came a great wrath upon
Israel and they departed from him (i.e. Mesha) and returned to their own land
(3:27)."
Accordingly, the ultimate results of the war are
identical in both sources—with one exception: Israel did not perish utterly
forever. On the contrary Moab ceased to exist following the Babylonian conquest
that occurred some 250 years later, while the Jews survived. But the fact that
the Bible does not deny Mesha's success in his revolt against Israel is of major
importance, for it indicates that the biblical historian is reliable.
The Mesha Stone sheds light on two other areas as well. The first is religious:
the stele speaks about Chemosh, the national god of Moab, in very similar terms
to the Bible's description of the G-d of Israel. Chemosh is apt to be angry with
his people, to forsake them, and to deliver them to their enemies, yet he will
save them in the end. The second parallel is linguistic: the "script is
closely related to Hebrew and the language to...the literary and historiographic
style of the books of the Bible." (Abraham Malamat, editor, The Age of
Monarchies, Vol. 41, p. 40)
Since the accidental discovery of the Mesha Stone, there have been innumerable excavations in Israel and in its vicinity that have brought to light a vast treasury of historical relics. At first the objective of the explorers was "the illustration and defense of the Bible," as the Palestine Exploration Society in New York, founded in 1870, declared. But within a century scholars realized "that archaeology and Bible study are two separate disciplines which sometimes have a direct bearing on each other...but ultimately the scriptures are concerned with...theological, rather than objective, history." (Robert L. Harris, The World of the Bible, p. 21)
The last statement provides a key to the understanding of Bible research in the past three decades. Present-day archaeologists do not consider it their task to prove, or to disprove the veracity of all historical data that appears in the Bible, nor the causes and the effects it attributes to the various events. They fully recognize that science and faith cannot develop along the same lines, for each has a terrain of its own. Still, there are exciting moments, like the discovery of the Mesha Stone, when the two meet and they are celebrated by all monotheistic religions with great delight.
Dr. Yehuda Shabatay received rabbinical training in Budapest, a master of jurisprudence degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his doctorate in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. He was engaged in Jewish educational administration over most of his career and now teaches Jewish studies and history at Palomar and City Colleges.