Bible's Historicity

In 1830, Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon from tablets written in Egyptian. In 1835, he bought Egyptian funerary papyri from a traveling exhibitor, which he declared to have been written by Abraham. Over the coming years he published his translation as the Book of Abraham, which later became part of the LDS canon. Because every stage of this process is documented, we can see how a mid-century piece of American literature was made into scripture by a new religious movement.

Ezra-Nehemiah mentions only four of the twelve kings who ruled the Persian empire: Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes. The book of Daniel also speaks of four Persian kings, and adds a fictional Darius the Mede as their precursor. Historically, the Achaemenid period lasted 220 years, but using only the kings mentioned in the Bible, rabbinic texts reconstruct a 52-year Persian period.

The creation accounts, the Garden of Eden, the innovations and life spans of early humans, and the flood story are best understood as an Axial Age critique of polytheistic, mythical cosmology.

An archaeological find of biblical proportions is calling into question key aspects of U.S. history.

During the reign of Pharaoh Siptah, Egypt had a powerful vizier from the Levant named Baya, who dominated even the Pharaoh. Archaeological records and climatological studies show that this was right in the middle of a lengthy famine that affected the entire Mediterranean.

Was Israel ever a tribal society? Although some scholars accept the Bible’s depiction of Israel’s pre-monarchic society as a confederation of tribes, others have dismissed this as ahistorical. Can a study of biblical law help us resolve this question?

Sommer asks, “Can observant Judaism and modern biblical scholarship happily and honestly co-exist?” I’m concerned only with honesty, and will argue that Sommer’s theology fails to give an account of authoritativeness consistent with a commitment to biblical scholarship.

The Book of Chronicles updates and reinterprets Deuteronomy’s court system.

Jerusalem in the 14th century B.C.E. was a Canaanite city; by the 10th/9th century B.C.E. it was Israelite. The Bible records several different accounts of how it was conquered. What are we to make of these different traditions?

Notwithstanding modern day biblical critical and historical critical claims, applying the tools of contemporary philosophy demonstrates how room still exists to have faith that something extraordinary happened to our ancestors and that this event had a permanent effect on the development of Torah and Judaism.

Exodus 12:40 declares that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years, yet evidence from other biblical texts suggests a much shorter sojourn.

The Torah implores us to remember and teach the exodus, yet surprisingly, some biblical passages seem unaware of this event and describe an alternative tradition: God found Israel in the wilderness.

Weighing the historicity of the exodus story entails more than addressing the lack of archaeological evidence.

The evidence for the Levites leaving Egypt and the introduction of YHWH into Israel.

The historical symbolism of the twelve tribes and the geographical significance of the tribe of Benjamin.

Does Abraham really need to be historical in order to claim an important role in Jewish religious consciousness? Should the Torah be seen as a historical account reported by God, or simply as the story of God?

Historical-critical and text-critical approaches to the Torah have a strong precedent in classical rabbinic literature. Yet Orthodox Jewish communities today pointedly resist these methods. It is time that critical thinking about the Torah be embraced within our educational systems.

According to tradition, must we believe that the Torah is: Historical? Mosaic? Univocal? Perfect?

Reflections on teaching biblical criticism in the classroom; a talk given at the Edah conference (2005).