Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Harold Holmyard <hholmyard3 AT earthlink.net>]

Yitzhak Sapir wrote:
> > Conservative Old
> > Testament scholars, "biblical maximalists,"
> > generally accept the historicity of most Old
> > Testament narratives (save the accounts in Gen
> > 1–11) on confessional grounds, and noted
> > Egyptologists (e.g., Kenneth Kitchen) argue that
> > such a belief is not incompatible with the
> > external evidence. Other scholars (e.g., William
> > Dever) are somewhere in between:
> >     
>
> This is a misrepresentation of Biblical maximalists.s
>   

HH: Not really.

> Biblical maximalists generally refers to scholars
> who hold to the accuracy of the Bible in terms of
> events during the United Monarchy, if such a
> period indeed existed.

HH: Look, maximalists are opposed to minimalists, who deny biblical 
historicity. A prime focus of the debate may be the United Monarchy, but 
the terms are used more broadly than that. Here is another source to 
support  Wikipedia's definition, Mario Seiglie:
http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/gn/gn039/exodus.html

Uphill battle for believers

When it comes to the Bible, archaeologists and biblical scholars 
categorize themselves into two groups: minimalists and maximalists. The 
minimalists (also called deconstructionists of the Bible) generally hold 
the view that the Bible is full of myths and is therefore unreliable. So 
they vigorously try to refute any evidence that supports the biblical 
account.

Professor and archaeologist Anson Rainey says of the minimalists: "Their 
view that nothing in biblical tradition is earlier than the Persian 
period (538-332 B.C.), especially their denial of the existence of a 
United Monarchy (under Saul, David and Solomon), is a figment of their 
vain imagination . . . Biblical scholarship and instruction should 
completely ignore the ‘deconstructionist school.’ They have nothing to 
teach us" (Biblical Archaeology Review, November-December 1994, p. 47).

The maximalists, on the other hand, believe the biblical accounts have 
solid historical and archaeological backing. Long a minority among 
archaeologists, their numbers are growing, since it seems that every 
year discoveries are found that support, rather than refute, the 
biblical narrative.

Archaeologist Bryant Wood is an example of a biblical maximalist who is 
slowly turning the tide in favor of the biblical evidence. He argues 
that the archaeological data for the Exodus fall into place if the event 
is dated back to 1450 B.C., the approximate date the Bible indicates for 
the Exodus. He mentions that the documented evidence of foreign slaves 
at that time in Egypt could well include the Israelites. He also adds 
that archaeological indications of the destruction of Canaanite cities 
some 40 years afterward support the account of Joshua’s conquests (an 
interview with Dr. Wood begins on page 12 of this issue).

HH: Seiglie is certainly not using maximalist in your sense because 
Bryant Wood discusses the Exodus as in 1450 B.C.; Wood is not talking 
about the United Monarchy, yet Seiglie gives him as an example of a 
maximalist.

HH: Here is a quote by someone reviewing Kitchen's book On the 
Reliability of the Old Testament:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A13536JM05RBU2?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview

The title speaks for the subject of the book. Dr. Kitchen has once again 
produced an incredible work. Regardless of whether you are a Biblical 
Maximalist, Minimalist, or something in between, this book sets the bar 
for future scholarship on the subject. Kitchen takes a conservative 
approach to the material using a vast array of primary texts and 
originial sources. He is a paragon in the fields of Egyptology and the 
Ancient Near East--the material shows it.

HH: Since the book is speaking about the reliability of the whole OT, 
the reviewer is certainly not referring only to the United Monarchy when 
he uses the term maximalist.

HH: Here is a comment by Christopher O'Brien, Adjunct Professor of 
Anthropology at California State University, who seems to use maximalist 
in a broad sense:
http://northstatescience.blogspot.com/2006/11/is-there-biblical-archaeology-some.html

Two observations struck me while reading Hoffmeier’s letter and 
returning to the original articles that he cites. The first is that I 
question whether the whole minimalist/maximalist debate in biblical 
archaeology is really a construct of biblical fundamentalism more than 
it is a theoretical debate in archaeology. Supposedly “minimalists” see 
the Bible as offering little or no history verifiable through 
archaeological research. At the other end of the spectrum, “maximalists” 
see the Bible as mostly historical, documenting people, places and 
events frequently verified by archaeology.

HH: Here's another one, by Angela Roskop Erisman, a Bible scholar:
http://imaginarygrace.blogspot.com/2007/02/discourse-in-biblical-studies.html

The terms "maximalism" and "minimalism" are used with great regularity 
in biblical studies, as those of us in the scholarly world and regular 
readers of Biblical Archaeology Review are aware. To the best of my 
knowledge, these terms were coined by William W. Hallo in his 1989 
Presidential Address to the American Oriental Society, published as "The 
Limits of Skepticism" in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 
110 (1990): 187-199. Hallo took up the problem of how Assyriologists use 
cuneiform texts to understand ancient history, religion, and society, 
and the terms have made it over into biblical studies to label how the 
Bible is used for these same purposes. . . .

In a certain sense, these terms are labels for two different reading 
strategies. Put very simply, a "maximalist" reading tends to trust that 
the details about history, religion, and society that we find in a 
cuneiform or biblical text are accurate. A "minimalist" reading, on the 
other hand, tends to approach such details with skepticism—not the 
neutral and healthy "questioning" kind of skepticism that ought to 
characterize scholarship, but doubt. I think these terms are really a 
problem, and that using them does us more harm than good.

HH: Here's another one:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/11/not_a_trivial_e.html

The truth of the matter is (as any educated person knows) that there are 
two schools of thought among academics -- Biblical maximalists and 
Biblical minimalists. The Biblical maximalist believes the Bible to be 
accurate on most accounts unless proven otherwise, while the Biblical 
minimalist believes the Bible to only be accurate on things that have 
already been proven to line up.

>   Dever is considered a
> maximalist.  But thanks for giving a good live
> example of how discussions that somehow
> touch on issues of biblical historicity inevitably
> end up having to defend the positions on biblical
> historicity that scholarship has adopted for some
> time now.
>   

HH: It does not seem that you are defending anything. I am defending 
something. You were denying that there are many Biblical scholars who 
reject the documentary hypothesis and uphold the historicity of the 
patriarchal narratives.  I was correcting that misrepresentation of reality.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard