The Story of Ancient Israel: Discoveries & Historical Frameworks
In our last class, we discussed the fact that the Bible is an anthology of books by different people written over a wide span of time, and that even within single books like Genesis or Exodus we can see the work of multiple authors. Rather than a single book, the Bible in its origins was instead a lot of different scrolls on parchment and papyrus that people felt free to add to and alter as they made meaning of prior oral and written traditions in new historical circumstances. Sometimes these reworkings were modest, while at other times they were more dramatic—for example, the finalized form of the Bible has two versions of the creation in Genesis, two versions of the flood a few chapters later, and at least four different versions of the ten commandments in the rest of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). This variety is interesting not only in itself, but also because it signals that the people who finally chose which books would be "Bible" had no problem with contradictory traditions—in fact, they embraced them, perhaps because the different renditions require readers to engage the texts and make meaning for themselves.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, penned between about 300 BCE–68 CE and discovered in caves along the northwest corner of the Dead Sea between 1947-1955, offer a later example of the same freedom with texts. As you glance at the synopsis of scrolls passages posted on Camino, try to identify and characterize the types of changes to the biblical text that you find. And if you want an extra challenge, play at being a Dead Sea Scroll scholar by downloading the Israel Antiquities Authority's app, "Dig Quest: Israel" (iTunes / Google play), then go to the Qumran section and try to piece together some fragmentary scrolls (demo below). The other videos below introduce the scrolls and discuss some of the cutting-edge technologies that are being used to preserve and publish them online.
Archaeologists have found much more than the scrolls, though; they've found other evidence from the biblical period that we can use to test the biblical account. With all its authors writing at so many different times, often so much later than the events they describe, you won't be surprised to find out in today's reading how much of the Bible is fiction. But that just means that the meanings it reveals are more about its tellers than their tales, and perhaps ultimately more about our historical and scientific biases than about the past at all.
From The Meaning of the Bible, work on these issues and skills:
From an historian’s point of view, what are some of the problems with the biblical accounts of the Exodus and the settlement of the land of Canaan?
Be able to identify the following on a map: Egypt, Mount Sinai, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Samaria, Antioch, Nineveh, Babylon, Persepolis (see The Meaning of the Bible p. 19). Here is a Google Map you can use to locate the sites and their archaeological remains today:
Click on the square with left arrow icon to the left of the map title to select a specific capital or empire. Click on the square corner icon in the upper right corner to open a full page map that allows you
to select which empire and which imperial or national capital you are viewing.
Assigned Readings
Primary: Synopsis of passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls compared to modern Bibles (Camino)
Secondary: Knight & Levine, The Meaning of the Bible chapter 1, pp. 1-22; online class prep
Douglas Knight is the Drucilla Moore Buffington Professor of Hebrew Bible Emeritus and retired Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderilt University Divinity School in Tenessee.
Amy-Jill Levine is the University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Profesor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderilt University Divinity School in Tenessee. She is a specialist in the Christian Gospel of Matthew and in feminist studies, and is an Orthodox Jew. She will also be our guide through the parables of Jesus when we turn to the New Testament.
Grossman, Maxine L. Rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls: An Assessment of Old and New Approaches and Methods. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010.
VanderKam, James. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010. (our library has the original 1994 edition)
Links
Virtually Unwrapping the En-Gedi Scroll - A short video showing the process of how burnt scrolls are X-rayed in 3-D, then scanned in high contrast to reveal the ink, and finally "unwrapped" to flatten the layers — all without unwrapping the scroll at all!
2.13
Digital Unwrapping: Homer, Herculaneum, and the Scroll from Ein Gedi - Dr. Brent Seales, chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Kentucky and Director of the Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments speaks about his X-ray and imaging techniques that can virtually unroll burned scrolls from antiquity and make them readable again. His discussion of a scroll from ancient Israel begins at 43.30.
1.08.45
The Dead Sea Scrolls - Israeli Archaeologist Guy Steibel provides a nice introduction to the background of the scrolls complete with animations, and gives a sense of Cave 11 and why this discovery of the scrolls in general has been so important to everyone who cares about the past. Published by Piled Higher and Deeper (PHD Comics).
5.12
The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls - The Shrine of the Book, across from the Knesset in Jerusalem, houses several of the first scrolls found in Cave 1 that were in pretty complete shape, and worked with Google Israel to make them available online in a really cool scrollable form. This video introduces their collection.
2.09
The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Library - The Israel Antiquities Authority's video of the sophisticated technologies used to preserve and publish the actual Dead Sea Scrolls. Their project is to image all of the tens of thousands of fragments found in all eleven caves near the Dead Sea with imaging technology developed by the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
4.09
Demo of the Dig Quest app - Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority posted this YouTube video to demo how this children's app works. The app was produced by the Israel Antiquities Authority, the official archaeological organization of the Israeli government.
1.10
Acknowledgements
Image from a the Dig Quest Israel app, screengrab downloaded from jewish, "Great New App 'Dig Quest: Israel,'" The Jewish Link (20 November 2014), online, http://thejewishlink.com/archives/7617#jp-carousel-7623, accessed 2 February 2015.
In our last class, we discussed the fact that the Bible is an anthology of books by different people written over a wide span of time, and that even within single books like Genesis or Exodus we can see the work of multiple authors. Rather than a single book, the Bible in its origins was instead a lot of different scrolls on parchment and papyrus that people felt free to add to and alter as they made meaning of prior oral and written traditions in new historical circumstances. Sometimes these reworkings were modest, while at other times they were more dramatic—for example, the finalized form of the Bible has two versions of the creation in Genesis, two versions of the flood a few chapters later, and at least four different versions of the ten commandments in the rest of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). This variety is interesting not only in itself, but also because it signals that the people who finally chose which books would be "Bible" had no problem with contradictory traditions—in fact, they embraced them, perhaps because the different renditions require readers to engage the texts and make meaning for themselves.
