Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>]

Dear Bryan,

Please let me make another comment on this quote 
of your writing:


> (3) Issues of Biblical history.  Anyone who brings up a claim that
> raises the possibility that the Bible is errant will be target to a
> discussion of whether the Bible is historically correct, whether
> the Documentary Hypothesis is founded on solid foundations,
> etc.  A scholar who has to debate the documentary hypothesis
> which is generally accepted for a century now, or who has to
> debate whether the Patriarchal Narratives are historical, now
> discredited for decades, will find this list not a hospitable place
> to discuss these issues.



HH: It is really a battle tactic, not neutral 
moderating, to claim the historicity of the 
Patriarchal Narratives has been discredited for 
decades. People have tried to discredit the 
historicity of the narratives. Many scholars 
uphold their historicity. Here is only one source, 
involving scholars who do, to one extent or 
another; you can read their articles:

http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/epn.html

HH: Hershal Shanks, editor of Biblical 
Archeological Review, asserts that the historicity 
of these narratives is an open question:
http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_BAR/bswbba3302fp.html

___________________

Archaeologists from an earlier generation have 
rightly been called to task for trying to use 
archaeology to prove the Bible. It can’t be done, 
and it shouldn’t be tried.

But neither, except in the rarest cases, can 
archaeology be used to disprove the Bible.

Take the case of the patriarchs. At one time, the 
great Biblical archaeologist William Foxwell 
Albright and others thought that they could 
identify the archaeological age that provided the 
setting for the patriarchal narratives. They were 
wrong. Many archaeologists today, however, jump 
from this error to the conclusion that the 
patriarchal narratives are not historical at 
all—just legends or fairy tales.

The fact is that the relationship of the 
patriarchal narratives to history is an open 
question, open to discussion and debate (just as 
it is in the case of Homer), but archaeology 
cannot contribute much to this discussion and 
debate. As with Homer, there is no archaeological 
evidence that can prove or disprove the 
historicity of the patriarchal narratives.
_____________________

Yours,
Harold Holmyard