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  • From: Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] how scholars debate controversial issues
  • Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:13:21 -0500

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






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