The Old Testament has been taught at the University of Aberdeen since its inception in the fifteenth century. In , a professorial Chair of Hebrew and Semitic Languages was founded in order to provide a permanent, solid basis for the study of the Old Testament and neighbouring fields with the requisite philological and historical rigour. Please contact one of the supervisors below if you are thinking about applying for a PhD in their subject area. Supervision can be offered in the field of ancient Greek religion with particular focus on comparisons with Biblical and Near Eastern traditions creation narratives especially.
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At the same time the tendency of the rank and file of the Christian church within the past decade has undoubtedly been to neglect the older Testament. Preachers as a rule select less than a fourth of their texts from it; the prevailing courses of Bible study devote proportionately less time to it; and teachers and scholars in the great majority of cases turn to the Old Testament with much less enthusiasm than they do to the New.
Why are these two great currents setting in opposite directions, and what are the causes of the present popular neglect of the Old Testament? If the Old Testament should be relegated to a second place in our working canon of the Bible, let us frankly and carefully define our reasons. If, on the other hand, the prevailing apathy and neglect are due to ignorance of the real character and value of the Old Testament, let as lose no time in setting ourselves right.
The present volume has been suggested by repeated calls from ministerial bodies, popular assemblies, and groups of college students for addresses on the themes here treated. The aim has been to give in concise, popular form answers to some of the many questions thus raised, with the conviction that they are in the mind of every thoughtful man and woman to day, and especially on the lips of earnest pastors, missionaries, and Sunday school teachers.
Overview Music Video Charts. In published books, one of the early advocates of the current school of thought known as biblical minimalism is Giovanni Garbini, Storia e ideologia nell'Israele antico , translated into English as History and Ideology in Ancient Israel Thompson with his lengthy Early History of the Israelite People: Davies' shorter work, In Search of 'Ancient Israel' Thompson and Davies see the entire Hebrew Bible Old Testament as the imaginative creation of a small community of Jews at Jerusalem during the period which the Bible assigns to after the return from the Babylonian exile, from BCE onward.
Niels Peter Lemche , Thompson's fellow faculty member at the University of Copenhagen , also followed with several titles that show Thompson's influence, including The Israelites in history and tradition The presence of both Thompson and Lemche at the same institution has led to the use of the term " Copenhagen school ".
The effect of biblical minimalism from onward was debate with more than two points of view. There is great scholarly controversy on the historicity particularly of those events recounted in the Biblical narratives prior to the Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE. Regarding the debate over the historicity of ancient Israel, the maximalist position holds that the accounts of the United Monarchy and the early kings of Israel, David and Saul , are to be taken as largely historical.
Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts which advocated a view midway toward biblical minimalism and caused an uproar among many conservatives.
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Apart from the well-funded and fundamentalist "biblical archaeologists," we are in fact nearly all "minimalists" now. The fact is that we are all minimalists—at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. When I began my PhD studies more than three decades ago in the USA, the 'substantial historicity' of the patriarchs was widely accepted as was the unified conquest of the land. These days it is quite difficult to find anyone who takes this view.
In fact, until recently I could find no 'maximalist' history of Israel since Wellhausen. In fact, though, 'maximalist' has been widely defined as someone who accepts the biblical text unless it can be proven wrong. If so, very few are willing to operate like this, not even John Bright whose history is not a maximalist one according to the definition just given.
In , Kenneth Kitchen , a scholar who adopts a more maximalist point of view, authored the book On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Kitchen advocated the reliability of many although not all parts of the Torah and in no uncertain terms criticizes the work of Finkelstein and Silberman, to which Finkelstein has since responded. He Israel Finkelstein cites the fact—now accepted by most archaeologists—that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century B. Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, Ai was abandoned before B.
Even Jericho , where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in B. Now controlled by the Palestinian Authority, the Jericho site consists of crumbling pits and trenches that testify to a century of fruitless digging.
However, despite problems with the archaeological record, some maximalists place Joshua in the mid-second millennium, at about the time the Egyptian Empire came to rule over Canaan, and not the 13th century as Finkelstein or Kitchen claim, and view the destruction layers of the period as corroboration of the biblical account. The destruction of Hazor in the midth century is seen as corroboration of the biblical account of the later destruction carried out by Deborah and Barak as recorded in the Book of Judges.
The location that Finkelstein refers to as "Ai" is generally dismissed as the location of the biblical Ai, since it was destroyed and buried in the 3rd millennium.
The prominent site has been known by that name since at least Hellenistic times, if not before. Minimalists all hold that dating these events as contemporary are etiological explanations written centuries after the events they claim to report. Both Finkelstein and Silberman do accept that David and Solomon were really existing persons not kings but bandit leaders or hill country chieftains [] [] from Judah about the 10th century BCE, [] but they do not assume that there was such a thing as United Monarchy with a capital in Jerusalem.
The Bible reports that Jehoshaphat, a contemporary of Ahab, offered manpower and horses for the northern kingdom's wars against the Arameans. He strengthened his relationship with the northern kingdom by arranging a diplomatic marriage: The house of David in Jerusalem was now directly linked to and apparently dominated by the Israelite royalty of Samaria.
Composition and authorship
In fact, we might suggest that this represented the north's takeover by marriage of Judah. Thus in the ninth century BCE—nearly a century after the presumed time of David—we can finally point to the historical existence of a great united monarchy of Israel, stretching from Dan in the north to Beer-sheba in the south, with significant conquered territories in Syria and Transjordan.
But this united monarchy—a real united monarchy—was ruled by the Omrides, not the Davidides, and its capital was Samaria, not Jerusalem. Others, such as David Ussishkin , argue that those who follow the biblical depiction of a United Monarchy do so on the basis of limited evidence while hoping to uncover real archaeological proof in the future. These views are strongly criticized by William G. From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple [] that the principal points of the biblical tradition with Solomon as generally trustworthy, as does Kenneth Kitchen , who argue that Solomon ruled over a comparatively wealthy "mini-empire", rather than a small city-state.
- Anthropology of the Old Testament;
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Recently, Finkelstein has joined with the more conservative Amihai Mazar to explore the areas of agreement and disagreement and there are signs the intensity of the debate between the so-called minimalist and maximalist scholars is diminishing. Hess , [] which shows there is in fact a plurality of views between maximalists and minimalists.
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Jack Cargill [] has shown that popular textbooks not only fail to give readers up to date archaeological evidence, but that they also fail to correctly represent the diversity of views present on the subject. Kelle provide an overview of the respective evolving approaches and attendant controversies, especially during the period from the mids through , in their book Biblical History and Israel's Past. Biblical archaeology has helped us understand a lot about the world of the Bible and clarified a considerable amount of what we find in the Bible. But the archaeological record has not been friendly for one vital issue, Israel's origins: The strong consensus is that there is at best sparse indirect evidence for these biblical episodes, and for the conquest there is considerable evidence against it.
The mainstream view of critical biblical scholarship accepts that Genesis—Joshua perhaps Judges is substantially devoid of reliable history and that it was in the Persian period that the bulk of Hebrew Bible literature was either composed or achieved its canonical shape. He cites the fact—now accepted by most archaeologists—that many of the cities Joshua is supposed to have sacked in the late 13th century b.
Hazor was destroyed in the middle of that century, and Ai was abandoned before b. Even Jericho, where Joshua is said to have brought the walls tumbling down by circling the city seven times with blaring trumpets, was destroyed in b. So although much of the archaeological evidence demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible cannot in most cases be taken literally, many of the people, places and things probably did exist at some time or another.
But someone may ask: But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The origin and permanent value of the Old Testament
Part of a series on the Bible Canons and books. Tanakh Torah Nevi'im Ketuvim. Authorship Dating Hebrew canon.
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Pauline epistles Petrine epistles. Hermeneutics Pesher Midrash Pardes. Authorship of the Bible. Historical reliability of the Gospels. Historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles. The Bible and Interpretation. It has been accepted for decades that the Bible is not in principle either historically reliable or unreliable, but both: One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: History and the Hebrew Bible: Reconstructing the society of ancient Israel. As Refracted Through the Generations , p. Peter Smith Pub Inc. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details of the Bible as a source of history.
God, Revelation and Authority. Archived from the original on The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham. Of the number, antiquity, scope, authority and interpreters of the books of Holy Scripture". Green Dragon in St.
Of the authorship of the Pentateuch and the other historical books of the Old Testament". A critical history of the Old Testament.
Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch. Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Adam and Charles Black.
The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old Testament by Charles Foster Kent
In Kratz, Reinhard G. One God - one cult - one nation archaeological and biblical perspectives. The Results of the Jericho Excavations, — Jericho in the Late Bronze Age. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in ancient times. Khirbat Qeiyafa Preliminary Report". Archived from the original on 16 May Biblical History and Israel S Past: The Changing Study of the Bible and History.