Biblical Minimalism

For other uses, see Copenhagen School (disambiguation).

Biblical minimalism^[1] (also known as The Copenhagen School) is a term used by its detractors to refer to a tendency in biblical exegesis which stresses a heavily skeptical approach to archaeological evidence when establishing the history of Ancient Israel and Judah. It came to prominence in the late 1960s as a reaction to the Biblical Archaeology movement, and the perceived contradictions between the archaeological record of Syro-Palestinian archaeology and the Bible's version of history. The following quote characterizes the viewpoint of the Biblical Minimalists: "For decades ... scholars interpreted archaeology in light of what the Bible said ... [taking] for granted that what the Bible said, was true—not just morally and religiously, but historically and scientifically. So, as an archaeologist back in the 19th century, you would pick up your Bible and expect to find Noah's Ark somewhere on top of Mount Ararat in Turkey, just as the Bible said; or that you could dig in Jerusalem and find the remains of David's and Solomon's palace."^[2]

According to the Copenhagen School, by historicising the biblical text, the traditional approach to Biblical scholarship created a false ancient Israel which fails to fit into the archaeologically established context of Iron Age Syria and Palestine. The Biblical history as seen by Minimalism is in fact more comparable to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: the play is based in real history, but was not written for the purpose of retelling that history. In recognising that the historical narrative of the Bible is literature rather than as history, with a plot, a set of characters, and a theological theme concerning the nature of the covenant between the people of Israel and their God, Minimalism treats "biblical Israel" as in fact a literary construction rather than an objective reality.

Scholarly hypotheses which are strongly associated with Minimalism include dismissing the entire united Israelite monarchy period of David and Solomon as fictitious;^{[citation needed]} and positing that few if any books of the Hebrew Bible date from before the 4th-century BC (while many may be later still).^{[citation needed]}

Key scholars associated with this school of thought (although they do not necessarily consider themselves to be part of any unified movement) include John Van Seters, Thomas L. Thompson, Niels Peter Lemche, and Philip Davies.^[1] Critics include William G. Dever and Baruch Halpern.

Criticisms

Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen has raised numerous objections to minimalist claims, rejecting Thompson’s assertion that the Hebrew Tabernacle is a literary fiction,^[3] that the Merneptah Stele is not reliable evidence for a people named ‘Israel’ in early 13th century Canaan,^[4] that the Tel Dan Stele does not refer to a Hebrew ‘House of David’,^[5] that the description of Solomon’s wealth is legendary,^[6] and that the use of the first person perspective in the Mesha Stele indicates a post-mortem or legendary account.^[7][8] Kitchen has also criticized Finkelstein^[9] and Silberman.^[10] Archaeologist William Dever has opposed minimalism vigorously, declaring himself the opponent of what he refers to as "minimalist" or "revisionist" views.^[11] He has criticized Davies for lack of familiarity with standard literature,^[12] accused Whitelam of "caricatures of modern archaeological theory and results",^[13] and dismissed one of Thompson's works as "next to nothing to do with real archaeology".^[14]

Despite sympathies with some minimalist views, Israel Finkelstein has rejected strongly the minimalist claims concerning Persian era Hebrew scribes,^[15] that the "lists and details of royal administrative organization in the kingdom of Judah" are fictional,^[16] and that the Hebrew King David never existed.^[17] He has also acknowledged strong archaeological support for certain parts of the Biblical record.^[18]

See also

• The Bible and history

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Philip Davies, "Minimalism, 'Ancient Israel', and Anti-Semitism"
2. ^ ATHAS, George, 'Minimalism': The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies, Edited Transcript of Lecture, 3rd Ed, University of Sydney, 1999.
3. ^ ‘In so doing he ignores the whole of the comparative data that show clearly that the tabernacle was a product of Egyptian technology from the overall period 3000 to 1000 D.C. (plus Semitic analogues, 1900-1100), and would be unable to account for such facts.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, pp. 450-451 (2005).
4. ^ ‘The Israel of Merenptah's stela was, by its perfectly clear determinative, a people (= tribal) grouping, not a territory or city-state; rare statements to the contrary are perverse nonsense, especially given the very high level of scribal accuracy shown by this particular monument.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 451.
5. ^ '(i) The name "David" may be unusual, but is not unparalleled. Long centuries before, it was borne by a West Semitic chief carpenter in about 1730 B.C. on an Egyptian stela formerly in the collection at Rio de Janeiro. (ii) Dwd is neither the name (which Thompson admits) nor an epithet of a deity. Others are beloved of deities (for which references are legion!), but male deities are not beloved of others, human or divine (only goddesses are beloved of their divine husbands in Egypt). (iii) Mesha's stela is ninth, not eighth, century. (iv) On Mesha's stela dwd(h) is not a divine epithet of YHWH or anyone else. (v) Contrary to TLT, "House of X" does mean a dynastic founder, all over the Near East, in the first half of the first millennium B.C.; it was an Aramean usage that passed into Assyrian nomenclature, and examples are common. (vi) Again, the expression, in part of its usage, is like the British "House of Windsor", etc. Such usages were not peculiar to Aram, Assyria, and Judah either: in Egypt, the official title given to the Twelfth Dynasty (Turin Canon) was "Kings of the House (lit. 'Residence') of Ithet-Tawy" = 'the Dynasty of Ithet-Tawy". And the Thirteenth Dynasty was duly entitled "Kings who came after the [House of] King Sehetepibre" (founder of the Twelfth Dynasty). (vii) The charge of forgery is a baseless slur against the Dan expedition, without a particle of foundation in fact.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, pp. 452-453.
6. ^ ‘The point of the comparisons drawn with external (and firsthand!) sources was precisely that Solomon's wealth (even as stated in Kings) was not exceptional or "fabulous/legendary" in its wider context. He was a pauper compared with (e.g.) Osorkon I, who, less than a decade after Solomon's death, spent sums that massively outstrip Solomon's stated income, and gave detailed accounts. The layering that TLT objects to was customary. At Karnak in Egypt, some temple columns were grooved to fit sheet gold from top to bottom, not mere "plastering." As a touch of throwaway wealth, one need look no further than the recently discovered burials of two Assyrian queens. Solomon had just one golden throne? One pharaoh was sent ten at a time!’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 454.
7. ^ ‘Use of the first person by a monarch does not belong exclusively to either postmortem memorial texts or to later legends about such kings. A huge army of texts shows up the falsity of his presumption.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 456.
8. ^ ‘For first person, not postmortem, see (e.g.) Lipit-Ishtar (247), Warad-Sin/Kudur-mabuk (251-52), Rim-Sin I (253, his third text), Hammurabi (256-57), Ammi-ditana (258-59), and Shamshi-Adad I (259), all early second millennium. In the first millennium every major Assyrian king did exactly likewise, in various editions of their annals that were anything but postmortem, from Tiglath-pileser I to Assurbanipal (cf. ANET, 274-301; CoS II,261-306; RIMA, 1-3 passim).’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 456.
9. ^ ‘His reevaluation of the realm of Omri and Ahab is refreshing but wildly exaggerated, especially in archaeological terms. As others have shown amply, the redating will not work (cf. chap. 4, sec. 3 above).’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 464.
10. ^ ‘The Philistines of Gerar (not those of the Pentapolis!) are a very different lot from the Iron Age group of that name. The term is a probably twelfth-century one substituted for Caphtorim or the like, precisely as Dan was substituted for Laish in Gen. 14:4.’, Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, p. 465.
11. ^ ‘There are some who claim that the Bible contains little or no historical information about ancient Israel. I want to combat these “minimalist” or “revisionist” views of the history of ancient Israel by showing how archaeology can and does illuminate a historical Israel in the Iron Age of ancient Palestine (roughly 1200–600 B.C.E.)’, Dever, Save Us from Postmodern Malarkey, Biblical Archaeology Review (26.02), March/April 2000.
12. ^ ‘Davies does not even cite the standard handbook, Mazar’s Archaeology of the Land of the Bible,’, Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites? And Where Did they Come From?, p. 138 (2003).
13. ^ ‘That same year Whitelam wrote an article for the Sheffield Journal for the Study of the Old Testament on “the realignment and transformation of Late-Bronze-Iron Age Palestine.” It was so full of caricatures of modern archaeological theory and results that I felt compelled to answer it in the same journal.’, Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites? And Where Did they Come From?, p 139.
14. ^ ‘Thus he [Thompson] published two years later his revisionist treatment of ancient Israel: The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel. Despite its subtitle, this work has next to nothing to do with real archaeology.’, Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites? And Where Did they Come From?, p. 141.
15. ^ ‘First of all, as the biblical scholar William Schniedewind has indicated, literacy and extensive scribal activity in Jerusalem in the Persian and early-Hellenistic periods were much less influential than in the seventh century b.c.e. The assumption is inconceivable that in the fifth, or fourth, or even second centuries b.c.e., the scribes of a small, out-of-the-way temple town in the Judean mountains authored an extraordinarily long and detailed composition about the history, personalities, and events of an imaginary Iron Age “Israel” without using ancient sources.’, Finkelstein, Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible, in Schmidt (ed.), ‘The Quest for the Historical Israel’, Archaeology and Biblical Studies, number 17, p. 13 (2007).
16. ^ ‘The sheer number of name lists and details of royal administrative organization in the kingdom of Judah that are included in the Deuteronomistic History seems unnecessary for a purely mythic history. In any event, if they are all contrived or artificial, their coincidence with earlier realities is amazing.’, Finkelstein, ‘Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible’, in Schmidt (ed.), The Quest for the Historical Israel, Archaeology and Biblical Studies, number 17, p. 13 (2007).
17. ^ ‘This argument suffered a major blow when the Tel Dan basalt stele was discovered in the mid-1990s.’, Finkelstein, Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible, in Schmidt (ed.), ‘The Quest for the Historical Israel’, Archaeology and Biblical Studies, number 17, p. 14 (2007).
18. ^ ‘Archaeological excavations and surveys have confirmed that many of the Bible’s geographical listings—for example, of the boundaries of the tribes and the districts of the kingdom—closely match settlement patterns and historical realities in the eighth and seventh centuries b.c.e. Equally important, the biblical scholar Baruch Halpern showed that a relatively large number of extra-biblical historical records—mainly Assyrian—verify ninth- to seventh-century b.c.e. events described in the Bible: the mention of Omri in the Mesha stele, those of Ahab and Jehu in the Shalmaneser III inscriptions, Hezekiah in the inscriptions of Sennacherib, Manasseh in the records of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, and so on. No less significant is the fact, as indicated by the linguist, Avi Hurwitz, that much of the Deuteronomistic History is written in late-monarchic Hebrew, which is different from the Hebrew of post-exilic times.’, Finkelstein, Digging for the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible, in Schmidt (ed.), ‘The Quest for the Historical Israel’, Archaeology and Biblical Studies, number 17, pp. 13-14 (2007).

References

• Brettler, Marc Z., “The Copenhagen School: The Historiographical Issues,” AJS Review 27 (2003): 1–21. (a brief, cogent critique)
• Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1998.
• Dever, William G. What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans 2001.
• Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 1988
• Garbini, Giovanni, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, 1988 (trans from Italian).
• Halpern, Baruch, "Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel", Bible Review, Dec 1995, p26 - 35, 47.
• Lemche, Niels Peter, Early Israel, 1985.
• Lemche, Niels Peter, The Israelites in History and Tradition, 1998.
• Provan, Iain W., "Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel", Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p585-606. (a critique of the Copenhagen School of Thought - with responses by Davies (above) and Thompson (below))
• Thompson, Thomas L., Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, 1974.
• Thompson, Thomas L., Early History of the Israelite People, 1992.
• Thompson, Thomas L., "A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?" Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p683-698. (a response to the article by Iain W. Provan - above)
• Thompson, Thomas L., The Mythic Past, 1999.
• Van Seters, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.

External links

• Philip Davies (2005), "The Origin of Biblical Israel", The Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, Volume 5, Article 17. Places the origins of "biblical" Israel in the Neo-Babylonian period.