What Did The Biblical Writers Know & When Did They
Know It
What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel
William G. Dever
None of the references have been crossed by myself.
Pg 2 The many books of the bible were written almost entirely by anonymous
authors. The stories were set down over a period of a thousand years.
The whole, finely woven into a composite, highly complex literary fabric
sometime in the Hellenistic era (2nd Century B.C.E.).
This vast library contains such diverse and indeed contradictory literary
forms as myth, legends, and folktales, sagas, heroic epics, oral traditions,
annals, biographies, narrative histories, novella, belle’s letters, proverbs,
and wisdom –saying, poetry (including erotic pomes) prophecy, apocalyptic
and much more.
All this comes down to us from a long lost oriental world, almost entirely
foreign to our modern consciousness and worldview and in a dead language.
Tho Hebrew has been revived as a spoken language only recently, as in Israel,
but it differs considerably from biblical Hebrew.
The librarians in charge of the biblical corpus seems to be mostly clerics
of one sort or another, intent upon forcing their “orthodox” interpretation
upon the rest of us, tho no two of them agree. Or else they are academics,
who seem to delight in making the bible even more mysterious and there for
accessible only thru them.
Pg 3 Many priests and clergy no longer know Hebrew or Greek and thus can
not read the bible in the original. The study of history of ancient
Israel long fundamental to our understanding of the biblical Israel and her
faith, is scarcely taught in many Protestant Seminaries. History and
historical exegesis have been replaced by more stylish courses in liberation
theology; feminist approaches to the bible; new literary criticism,
including structuralism, semiotics, rhetorical criticism and even more esoteric
‘schools’ .
The most deadly attack on the bible and it’s veracity, in either the historical
or the theological meaning had come recently not from it’s traditional enemies
– atheists, skeptics, or even those ‘godless communists” feared by bible
believing people until recently – but from the bible’s well meaning friends.
Despite the authors statement: This is meant to be “popular” book, designed
to be accessible to the non-specialist, so it may be at times overly simplistic,
and it is certainly polemical. Yet for those who wish to purses some
scholarly matters further, there are detailed footnotes and references.
I lost interest, wondered often while reading. The reading didn’t flow for
me I may revisit at a latter date. 05/04/03
