archaeology

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What can modern people (journalists even) know about biblical figures like Joshua?

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What can modern people (journalists even) know about biblical figures like Joshua?

THE QUESTION (as raised by The New York Times):

What can we know about biblical figures, for instance Joshua?

THE ANSWER:

How do we know what we know, or think we know, or can know, or might know?

“Epistemology” is the branch of philosophy that ponders such matters. It may seem odd, but philosophers even ponder if there’s any basis for believing that anything we remember from before one second ago actually happened!

Back to earth, how do we assess what can be known about people and events from long ago that we ourselves did not witness? One approach is the ideology known as “logical positivism,’ which rules out supernatural claims in advance by definition and thus wipes out many assertions by the great world religions. That’s a simple method, but other philosophers say it’s far too simple.

Well, then, what can we know about the past, whether religious or not? The answer is almost entirely written records that have been passed down to us. This is obviously central with the biblical faiths of Judaism and Christianity, which center heavily upon historical narratives.

Which is why The Religion Guy continues to ponder eight words The New York Times found fit to print in a recent feature about Muslims in Iraq tending what they believe is the tomb of Joshua. Israelis say instead that the ancient patriarch is buried 20 miles north of Jerusalem.

Both claimed locations invite skepticism. But the influential newspaper went much further, informing readers: “There is no historical evidence Joshua actually existed.”

This is not a particularly prudent thing to say in the Muslim world, where Joshua is revered as an actual prophet of God in the line that culminated with the Prophet Muhammad, had no doubt Joshua existed, this according to authoritative hadith texts. Joshua is also referred to in the Quran, though not by name (18:60). The earlier Jewish and Christian Scriptures depict Joshua as an actual person.

In effect, the Times writer and copy editors tell us the Jewish Bible contains nothing that should count as historical evidence. Think about that. Liberal university professors will often teach that a particular Bible section has flawed evidence, or mixes fact with myth, or even is pure fiction. But they do not dismiss all evidence that the Bible records.


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Could these writings shatter Christian history? True or false, journalists might take a look

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Could these writings shatter Christian history? True or false, journalists might take a look

Let's pretend there's not much news coming out of Washington, D.C and a reporter yearns to cover something different. And what if the press has missed "the biggest biblical discovery to date," indeed, "arguably the most important religious discovery of all time"?

Sounds interesting. And if those lavish promotional claims turn out to be false, that's a story, too.

A friend of The Religion Guy uses the News360.com app, whose algorithms scan 7,000 newspapers and magazines for articles keyed to the individual's interests. This friend's interests include Christian history, and he was alerted to a Jan. 29 article announcing the discovery of ancient documents that "could revolutionize our picture of Christianity."

A seasoned journalist immediately recalls hoaxes of this sort. Leave aside the deceptive history on Christian origins offered as fact in "The Da Vinci Code" novel, a huge 2003 seller that spawned a movie starring Tom Hanks. A claim of proof Jesus Christ was married that emanated from august Harvard Divinity School was debunked. Evangelicals swooned over spurious reports about finding a manuscript of the Gospel of Mark written in the 1st Century. In 2017, The Guy attempted to assess the Shroud of Turin dispute.

The Jan. 29 article wasn't from a recognized scholarly journal or site but CoreSpirit.com, which informs practitioners, entrepreneurs and curiosity-seekers about magic, esoterica, life enhancement nostrums, transcendence and "ancient wisdom."

By the way, this site is potentially useful for media. The Guy bets journalists know nothing about most of the 800-plus topics covered (e.g. global brain, isolation tank, medical intuition, superhuman agility, urine therapy, tongue cutting, wall crawling, you name it).

Core Spirit neglected to tell readers that its news is not new.

The mysterious "Jordanian Codices," a collection of small, bound-together metal tablets, first won publicity in 2011 and mostly in Britain. Though scholars scoffed, there's been lively chatter across the Internet ever since that reporters can plumb to assess story prospects. The history of where these items came from is confused, but they're now being held by Jordan's antiquities department.


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Epic New Yorker 'chin stroker' meets thin Guardian 'head scratcher' in no-news showdown

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Among the varieties of “news” stories dumped on an ever more skeptical clientele by the rapidly metastasizing news business are two categories I’ll call the “chin stroker” and the “head scratcher.”

Examples of both recently caught my eye. One was unquestionably high brow, the other decidedly not. I’ll get to them soon enough, but first some clarification.

Never confuse a “head scratcher” with a “chin stroker.”

The first is confounding — as in, what the *&#@ is this? Or, why’d they bother to publish this useless collection of words and punctuation, the point of which eludes?

The chin scratcher, in contrast, can be stimulating and have value, even if it leaves you wondering, why run this feature on this subject right now? Thus, chin stroking here is meant to conjure the image of the serious reader massaging their chin in thought.

My GetReligion colleague Richard Ostling recently tackled one such chin stroker in a post about a super-long New Yorker piece about the search for archeological evidence that the biblical King David was a historical figure. It’s the same one that caught my eye.

It’s a great read — if one has the time and patience to explore 8,500 words on the political and religious differences that infect the field of biblical archeology in Israel. Because I do — the coronavirus pandemic has me hunkering down at home with considerable time to fill — I found the piece an interesting, solid primer on the subject.

Journalistically, however, and as Richard pointed out, why did the New Yorker choose to run this story now? We’re in the middle of a scary pandemic and a brutal presidential election campaign complicated by great economic uncertainty and racial and social upheaval.

One need not be an ace news editor to conclude there’s plenty of more immediate fodder that readers might prefer. And given that it’s the New Yorker, why give it, as Richard put it, “10 pages of this elite journalistic real estate” when there’s no discernible news peg?

If you missed it, read Richard’s post — fear not, it’s far, far shorter than 8,500 words — because I’ll say no more about it here. Richard covered the finer points of the piece’s journalistic questions. Should you care to go straight to the New Yorker article, then click here.

Now let’s pivot from our chin stroker to a definite head scratcher, courtesy of the The Guardian.


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Editors should pay attention when King David bursts into news 3,000 years later 

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Merriam-Webster’s definition 2(b) of the term “peg,” as a noun states: “something (such as a fact or issue) used as a support, pretext, or reason,” for example “a news peg for the story.”

When it comes to media peg-manship and the Bible, it certainly appears that any old pretext will do.

The Religion Guy toiled on several of those Time magazine Bible history cover stories pegged to Christmas or Easter, often analyzing the pros and cons of the latest sensations sent aloft by skeptics in academia and elsewhere.

The Guy successfully used a new book as the peg to sell Time on the 1997 cover “Does Heaven Exist?” What could be more “off the news” than that?

Yet news pegs of any kind are remarkably absent with the most recent example of the genre, in The New Yorker dated June 29. The 8,500-worder by Israeli freelance Ruth Margalit consumes 10 pages of this elite journalistic real estate.

The cute headline announces the pitch: “Built On Sand.” Subhed: “King David’s story has been told for millennia. Archeologists are still fighting over whether it’s true.”

Was David the grand though flawed monarch the Bible depicts, or merely some boondocks bandit or sheik?

The debate affects current Israeli-vs.-Palestinian settlement politics, but in archaeology the last major news peg on David occurred 15 years ago while this pretext-free article appears in most news-crazed year imaginable.

That should tell media strategists something. Margalit’s reputation as a writer and skill at story pitches presumably helped, but the magazine’s editors knew that multitudes gobble up this stuff. The New Yorker’s long-form journalism is well suited to exploring such matters.

Pegs from the past? Any claims that David never even existed were all but eradicated by the 1993 discovery of the “House of David” inscription within a century of the king’s reign.


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Solid story out of Israel with a king-sized hole left for journalists to fill

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Solid story out of Israel with a king-sized hole left for journalists to fill

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) officially announced details Oct. 6 on a major archaeological project in northern Israel south of Haifa near present-day Harish. The inland En Esur site has remains of a town that covered 160 acres, indicating that an estimated 6,000 residents lived there in the Early Bronze Age 5,000 years ago.

This remarkably early date for such a large settlement is an unprecedented find not only within Israel but for the entire region. Without later technological developments, that’s about as big as a municipality could have been. Not only that. The archaeologists found another settlement lying underneath En Esur that dates back 7,000 years. These towns were strategically located along an ancient trade route and with access to fresh-water springs.

The IAA team reports that the Bronze Age settlement demonstrates careful urban planning, with streets, drainage and public spaces that included a notable temple with a sizable basin that contains burned animal bones signaling ritual sacrifices, a town square, storage facilities and a mausoleum. There are many figurines, showing artistic culture and a possible religious purpose. Tools on the site are identified as Egyptian. Huge stone blocks for construction were somehow hauled from a quarry a half-mile away.

The site has long been known, but was only excavated in earnest starting in 2017 by a team led by Itai Elad, Yitzhak Paz and Dina Shalem. Work was funded by Netivei Israel, the transport infrastructure firm that is building a highway interchange at the site. Some 5,000 students volunteered to help with the massive archaeological dig.


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USA Today gets one right: Story on African-Americans found in unmarked graves notes religion

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Reader Chris Blevins urged us to check out a USA Today story on the discovery of unmarked graves in Texas.

Blevins praised the piece as a rare case of a news outlet “allowing the religious angles to speak for themselves.”

“I know you guys at Get Religion emphasize praise for reporters when they get it right as well as justifiable criticism when they get it wrong,” Blevins noted.

He is right on both counts.

In a tweet, USA Today editor in chief Nicole Carroll linked to the “powerful story” by national reporter Monica Rhor, which opens with this compelling scene:

SUGAR LAND, Texas — Reginald Moore sank deep into silent prayer, an electric candle casting a glow on the countenance of Martin Luther King Jr. embossed on his black T-shirt.

Beside him, on the steps of Sugar Land City Hall, 50 others paused in quiet reflection. Eyes closed. Heads bent. Flames flickering in their hands.

Moore shifted from side to side, as if communicating with a spirit. He silently mouthed an invocation. He lifted his hands to heaven.

His mind returned to the moment, a few months back, when he first saw the skeletal remains of 95 African-Americans discovered at a school construction site in Fort Bend County, about 20 miles southwest of Houston.

He thought of those souls in the unmarked graves, laying forgotten for decades in the soil where a convict lease camp once stood. He thought of the free men, women and children ensnared by a system often called “slavery by another name.” How they toiled and sweated and bore the brunt of the lash, until they dropped in their tracks and were buried where they fell.

That is brilliant writing. And it certainly displays the journalist’s willingness to reflect the strong religion angle.


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How do conservatives respond to archaeologists’ skepticism about Bible history?

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How do conservatives respond to archaeologists’ skepticism about Bible history?

THE QUESTION:

Many archaeologists have raised skeptical questions about the Bible’s historical accounts, especially in the Old Testament. How do conservatives respond?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

A September headline in London’s tabloid Daily Express proclaimed a “Bible Bombshell,” with “stunning new evidence that could prove” Joshua’s invasion of the Holy Land following the Exodus from Egypt. However, in the article the archaeologists involved, David Ben-Shlomo of Israel’s Ariel University and Ralph Hawkins of Averett University in Virginia, gave only carefully framed suggestions.

Their site has a stone enclosure for herded animals, and pottery indicating people lived outside the stone compound, presumably nomads living in long-vanished tents. The settlement dates from the early Iron Age, but testing of electrons in soil samples is needed to pinpoint whether it fits the Exodus chronology. And that wouldn’t prove these nomads were Israelites. (See below on Jericho.)

People thrill when a discovery is proclaimed as proof of the Bible, but it takes years if not decades to establish such claims. There can also be sensationalism when skeptics known as “minimalists,” Israelis among them, announce findings said to undermine the Bible. As a journalist, The Guy recommends caution toward assertions from all sides.

The pertinent archaeological maxim is “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” That is, a biblical event is not contradicted if archaeologists have not (or not yet) found corroboration from physical remains, non-biblical manuscripts, or inscriptions. There’s vast unexplored terrain in Israel, where only 50 of an estimated 6,000 sites have undergone thorough examination, with limited work at another 300. Surviving evidence from ancient times is necessarily spotty and interpretations can be subjective. Scholars usually end up with circumstantial plausibility, not absolute proof or disproof.

Conservatives energetically answer the minimalists. Their magnum opus is “On the Reliability of the Old Testament” (Eerdmans) by Egyptologist K.A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool. William Hallo of Yale University said that “after decades of ‘minimalism,’ it is refreshing to have this first systematic refutation” from “a leading authority” on the relevant history.


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Archaeology as click bait: Is the news 'Santa is dead' or 'Tomb of St. Nicholas has been found'?

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Let me start with a kind of religion-beat emotional trigger alert.

WARNING: Members of ancient Christian communions (and lovers of church history) should put down any beverages (hot or cold) that are in their hands before reading the following "Acts of Faith" feature in The Washington Post. It may help to take some kind of mild sedative.

Now, let's proceed. First there is the headline, which is both clever and totally outrageous, in light of the actual news hook in this story. Ready? Here we go:

Santa dead, archaeologists say

The New York Post headline? You do NOT want to know.

So can you say, "click bait"? Of course this is click bait and I understand why. However, the question is whether this report contains key information that is useful to readers who are interested in the real story -- which could turn out to have major implications for church history as well as ecumenical relations between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox churches of the East.

The "Santa" in the headline is actually St. Nicholas of Myra, one of the most beloved saints and bishops in ancient Christianity. Before we get to the real story, here is the creative (to say the least) overture of the Post report (which was not written by a religion-desk pro).

First the good news:
Whoever told you that Santa Claus was an impostor with a fake beard collecting a Christmastime check at the mall or a lie cooked up by your parents to trick you into five measly minutes of quiet was, at minimum, misinformed.
The bad news: Santa Claus is definitely dead.
Archaeologists in southern Turkey say they have discovered the tomb of the original Santa Claus, also known as St. Nicholas, beneath his namesake church near the Mediterranean Sea.

Pause: This man is "also known as St. Nicholas"?


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Was the Bible's Abraham a real person or only a fictional character?

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Was the Bible's Abraham a real person or only a fictional character?

MARK’S QUESTION:

Liberal biblical scholars say Abraham never lived and was a literary invention of “priestly” writers in exile in Babylon. Since we have no archaeological data on him, how do we know he really lived?

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The patriarch Abraham is all-important as the revered founding forefather and exemplar of faith in the one God, this not only for Jews and Christians but Muslims, whose Quran parallels some of the biblical account on him in Genesis 11–25. Islam believes Abraham was a prophet in the line that concluded with Muhammad. He is also Muhammad’s ancestor, just as the New Testament lists Abraham in the genealogy of Jesus.

For Orthodox Judaism, traditional Christianity, and the entirety of Islam, it’s unthinkable that Abraham would have been a fictional character. The stakes are high for the Bible, which presents the Abraham material in extensive narrative history, not obvious mythology. Even scholars who see Genesis 1-10 as mythological may think actual history begins with the patriarchs while, as Mark states, liberal religious and secular scholars question his existence.

In pondering such questions, the archaeologist’s well-worn maxim is that “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

Yes, no texts about Abraham apart from the Bible survived. The “Aburahana” in Egyptian texts from 1900 BC(E) is thought to be someone else. But that doesn’t prove he never lived. Remains from such a long-ago epoch are necessarily scattershot, even for grand potentates with court scribes much less Abraham, a relatively obscure figure during his lifetime and a semi-nomad who moved among locations.


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