I read "Walking the Bible" on my flight to and from Israel last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it, and on my short blogroll I link to David Plotz' Blogging the Bible. Last week, I found on Slate that Plotz has returned with "Digging the Bible."

So, it's not exactly the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, it's not exactly much of anything—just a dirty shard of pottery the size of my big toe. But I found it. I had been scraping the floor of this Israeli cave when I spotted its sharp edge. I fished the piece out of the dirt and pushed on it, as instructed, to see if it crumbled. If it did, it was probably just the local limestone, which is as soft as a bar of soap. But my piece firmly resisted, so I brushed off the dirt until I could see smooth pottery, one side black, the other brick red. I'm the raider of the lost pot.

I hand it to my digging partner Ian Stern, the archaeologist in charge of this site. He glances at it and says, "Cooking pot. See the black part? That's where it carbonized. Probably 2,200 years old, time of the Maccabees"—the Jewish heroes of the Hanukkah story. He tosses my shard into a plastic collection bucket. "That's why this place is so great. It has instant gratification. There's a biblical connection. There's a Hanukkah connection. It takes it out of the realm of the abstract and makes it tangible. You can come here and dig up pottery from the time of Judah Maccabee. He fought a battle near here. Now, I'm not saying he ate out of that pot, but you see and hold this pottery, and he is not a fairytale figure anymore. He is real."

I've spent much of the last year blogging the Bible for Slate, writing about reading the Good Book for the first time. Now I've come to Israel to see the Bible, to dig it. I've read the stories. Now I want to see where they happened and to learn if they happened—to experience the Bible through archaeology, history, politics, and faith.

This is a similar premise to "Walking the Bible," which contains quite a few passages where Bruce Feiler is wrestling with the lack of historical evidence for major events like the Flood and the Exodus or whether Moses really existed:

The unusual circumstances of this story -- the fact that Moses gets his name from an Egyptian and is raised in the pharaonic court, the fact that he claims not to speak well -- have led many speculate that Moses wasn't an Israelite at all. Sigmund Freud, in his influential book "Moses and Monotheism," says that Moses was an Egyptian who learned monotheism from Akhenaten and was inspired to lead a revolt of foreign slaves out of a desire to overthrow his symbolic father. Freud says Moses gave the slaves the idea that they were a chosen people, which in turn led to anti-Semitism. "It was one man, the man Moses who created the Jews. To him his people owes its tenacity in supporting life; to him, however, it also owes much of the hostility which it has met and is meeting still.

Leaving aside Freud's psychological interpretation, many scholars agree with his underlying thesis, that Moses might have been an Egyptian.

First off, lots of scholars have lots of contradictory theories. This is the academic process. But after reading this, I jumped onto my computer and ordered Jonathan Kirsch's book, "Moses: A Life," which I anticipate will add to the discussion (though in half a year I have yet to crack).

The passage reminded me of Rabbi David Wolpe's famous Passover sermon a few years ago, when he let members of Sinai Temple know that most scholars don't believe the Exodus actually occurred. The declaration dropped on LA Jewry like an A-bomb (little hyperbole intended), thanks to the LA Times, which played the story as a Column One:

Wolpe's startling sermon may have seemed blasphemy to some. In fact, however, the rabbi was merely telling his flock what scholars have known for more than a decade. Slowly and often outside wide public purview, archeologists are radically reshaping modern understanding of the Bible. It was time for his people to know about it, Wolpe decided. After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership. To the contrary, the prevailing view is that most of Joshua's fabled military campaigns never occurred--archeologists have uncovered ash layers and other signs of destruction at the relevant time at only one of the many battlegrounds mentioned in the Bible.

Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan--modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel--whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt--explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say. As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges.

"Scholars have known these things for a long time, but we've broken the news very gently," said William Dever, a professor of Near Eastern archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona and one of America's preeminent archeologists. Dever's view is emblematic of a fundamental shift in archeology. Three decades ago as a Christian seminary student, he wrote a paper defending the Exodus and got an A, but "no one would do that today," he says.

The Jewish Journal followed the next week with a cover package dedicated to Exodus-doubting fallout, including conservative columnist Dennis Prager arguing that no Exodus = no Judaism, just as Christians would say that without the resurrection, Christianity is dead.

But if Christianity is built upon the Torah, upon the stories of Jewish history, does it also need a literal, factual, historical Exodus? And if we the faithful are willing to dismiss some historical findings, what is the value of biblical archeology?

This article was cross-posted at The God Blog.

Posted by Brad Greenberg at January 21, 2008 | Comments (15)

Like a lot of Christians, I watched the "Gospel of Judas" program on the National Geographic channel in 2006. It was a well-done program. But at the time, the entire endeavor was under a cloud. The manuscript's history has always been a problem. Then, the producers of the program, the codex owners, and several of the program's commentators all seemed to have agendas that conflicted with good scholarship.

Now, come to find out, another scholar has a fresh transliteration of the text that reflects a fundamentally different perspective than the one that NG provided.

You can get up to speed with this piece in the current US News & World report (Yahoo version). Journalist Jay Tolson notes:

Remember all the hoopla about the Gospel of Judas, the long-lost Gnostic text that depicted Judas not as wicked villain but as the Messiah's favorite, who was given the nasty job of betraying him because he understood Jesus's special mission better than anybody else did?

Well, now it turns out that that might not be what the Gospel of Judas was saying at all. If April De Conick, a professor of biblical studies at Rice University, is right, the English translation that was sponsored by the National Geographic was so flawed in crucial places that it reversed what the text was actually saying: that Judas was just as nasty as all the traditional orthodox Christian accounts said he was.

The problem, De Conick says, is that the translation was based on very incomplete reconstructions of the original Coptic text. In the October 15 entry of her Forbidden Gospels Blog, she explains that the mistakes were so bad that she was inspired to write a book, the newly published Thirteenth Apostle, to rectify them:

I haven't see a copy of the book yet. But if De Conick's work holds up under further scrutiny it will weaken further the attempts by lefty scholars to undermine Christian orthodoxy through the elevation of gnostic writings.

Wikipedia will give you a good summary overview of this ongoing controversy.

To me, the other amazing realization is how

Judas has staying power as a pop culture icon.

See this review of the new production, "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot."

The reviewer writes:

The play centers on Judas’ trial in purgatory, and a liberal, young, female lawyer’s attempt to have him cleared of all charges and let in to heaven. Many famous witnesses are called on his behalf and against him including Mother Teresa, Sigmund Freud, and Lucifer himself. What makes these characters so unique is their portrayal. They use clichés skillfully by upholding them and debunking them at the same time. Typical religious figures such as Peter, Matthew, and Judas himself are modernized in a way that makes them accessible without diminishing the root of their characters.

Here's more on the play in the Dallas Morning News.

Why do we find Judas such a fascinating figure?

Posted by Tim Morgan at October 30, 2007 | Comments (1)

Now that Hebrew University archaeologist has held his Tuesday press conference, the newspaper Haaretez has updated its coverage of the discovery of King Herod's tomb.

It turns out that Herod's limestone sarcophagus was raided and smashed shortly after his death. Netzer's team discovered no bones, but they are sure the tomb is Herod's given its ornate decoration and other unusual characteristics.

The Herod news has paled, however, as Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has survived three attempts at a no-confidencde vote in the Knesset. Sixteen members of his party either voted against him, abstained, or absented themselves. Remarkably, Olmert, unlike Herod, is still politically alive.

Posted by David Neff at May 8, 2007 | Comments (0)

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz broke the news Monday night of a stunning archaeological discovery, scooping the press conference Hebrew University had planned for Tuesday.

Ehud Netzer, a Hebrew University professor, has discovered the tomb of King Herod the Great—the same Herod that according to Matthew 2 tried to kill the infant Jesus by massacring all the male children under two in the region of Bethlehem. Herod’s cruelty to his own family was so well known that even Augustus Caesar said he would rather be Herod’s dog than his son.

Netzer has been looking for Herod's grave at the site known as Herodium, some 12 km miles south of Jerusalem, since 1972. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus had named Herodium as the site of Herod’s burial, but until now, the grave had escaped detection.

Herodium was a fortified palace, refuge, and mausoleum. The site was destroyed by the Romans in AD 71.

The Haaretz story is at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/856784.html. More details will be released at Tuesday’s press conference. Archaeology buffs should watch the Haaretz web site and that of Hebrew University.

Posted by David Neff at May 7, 2007 | Comments (0)