Throughout the Hebrew Bible it is by miracles that God makes Himself known to his chosen people. Mysteries of the Bible s5e6: Magic & Miracles
Why is Moses, perhaps the greatest worker of miracles in the Hebrew Bible, punished by God for miraculously drawing water from a rock? ibid.
Why is Magic forbidden? And what is the distinction between Magic and Miracle? Why did the time of miracles draw to an end? ibid.
All scholars agree about the Sea of Reeds. ibid.
For what seems a minor transgression Moses will suffer a terrible punishment. ibid.
King Saul bows down before the apparition. ibid.
Why didn’t Saul withdraw to fight another day? ibid.
The Witch of Endor has intrigued readers of the Bible. ibid.
The people of Israel persist in the practise of forbidden magic. ibid.
A spectacular contest between Magic and Miracle: Baal v Elijah. ibid.
Nowhere in this miraculous book of miracles – Hebrew Bible – does the word miracle occur. ibid.
Ancient Palestine: about a thousand years before Jesus. The Israelites maintain an uneasy truce with the Philistines. Mysteries of the Bible s5e7: Samson & Delilah
In all the three cities mentioned in the Bible as rebuilt by Solomon – I repeat, Gezer, Megiddo and Hazor – identical fortifications and gates were found. Yigael Yadin 1972
cf.
So Yadin started from a point where he accepts the Biblical texts, the Biblical testimony, as fully historical. Professor Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University
Yadin’s dating was wrong. Israel Finkelstein
There was no mass Exodus from Egypt. There was no violent conquest of Canaan. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people - the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were – irony of ironies – themselves originally Canaanites!
The conquest of Canaan by Joshua could not have happened in the way described in the Bible. Most of the towns he is supposed to have conquered either weren’t inhabited, didn’t exist or were conquered at wildly different times.
Jerusalem, which was supposed to have become the capital of the great unified empire of King David (he of David and Goliath fame), appears to have been tiny and only sparsely inhabited in the relevant period. Many of the great monuments of ancient Israel attributed on the authority of the Old Testament to King Solomon were of a later date. Finkelstein and Silberman, The Bible Unearthed
Whereas archaeology tells us something which is the opposite. According to the archaeology the rise of early Israel is an outcome of the collapse of Canaanite society, not the reason for that collapse. Israel Finkelstein
Biblical archaeology doesn’t work. Is wrong. Israel Finkelstein
There’s no archaeological evidence for the simple reason that we cannot excavate on the Temple Mount. Israel Finkelstein
There are a few pottery shells from the tenth century on the ground, a wall here and there maybe, but nothing monumental. We are left with no archaeological evidence for the Temple of Solomon. Israel Finkelstein
There are a few pottery shells from the tenth century on the ground, a wall here and there maybe, but nothing monumental. We are left with no archaeological evidence for the Temple of Solomon. Israel Finkelstein
The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land [of Canaan] in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united kingdom of David and Solomon, described in the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. Professor Ze’ev Herzog
Are the stories in the Hebrew Bible true in any sense? They are true in some sense and not in others. In other words the Biblical writers want to expand upon events, to shed light on their meaning. William Dever, archaeologist
There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these site. At the same time it was discovered that most the large Canaanite towns that were supposed to have been destroyed by these Israelites were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by others. William Dever
There was no ancient Israel. Israel is an intellectual construct. In other words these people were not re-thinking their past, they were inventing their past. They had no past. So the Bible is a myth, a foundation myth told to legitimate a people who had no legitimacy. William G Dever, University of Arizona
The Israelites did not like the Canaanite system. And they defined themselves in contrast to that system. By not using decorated pottery, by not using imported pottery, they developed an ideology of simplicity which marked the difference between them and the Egyptian Canaanite system. (Bible & Old Testament & Israelites) Avraham Faust, Bar-Ilan University
They spread the idea of a God who represented freedom, freedom for people to keep the fruits of their own labour. This was a message that was so powerful that it brought people together and gave them a new kind of identity. Carol Meyers, Duke University
The further back you go in the Biblical texts the more difficult it is to find historical material in it. The patriarchs go back to Genesis. Genesis is for the most part a compilation of myths, creation stories, things like that, and to find an historical core is very difficult. David Ilan, Hebrew Union College Jerusalem
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. Genesis 1:1&3&5
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that; when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4
Who is this people the Bible calls The Children of Israel? Where did they come from? The Bible Unearthed: The Book, 2005
These inscriptions clearly distinguish between two kingdoms: Israel & Judea. ibid.
Megiddo is the jewel of Biblical archaeology. The Bible Unearthed: The Patriarchs
Megiddo serves as a reference for the dating of sites throughout the whole near east. ibid.
There was no migration in the direction of Canaan at the time the Bible situates Abraham’s voyage. ibid.
Genesis contained a number of stories of various origins that were woven together. ibid.
An actual reference then, albeit the only one we have – we know the date the Stele was erected – 1207 B.C. At that time Israel was already established in Canaan, so the Exodus could not have occurred before this date. The Bible Unearthed: The Exodus
The absence of any evidence of their journey through the wilderness in either this oasis or anywhere else in the Sinai Peninsula is one of the enigmas of the Exodus story. ibid.
King David really did exist. There is no doubt about it. He reigned in the tenth century B.C. But was his kingdom the vast empire described in the Bible? The Bible Unearthed: The Kings
David did not build a prestigious capital. ibid.
The Old Testament, as everyone who has looked into it is aware, drips with blood; there is indeed no more bloody chronicle in all the literature of the world. H L Mencken
If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane. Robert G Ingersoll
This Stele is what the Egyptians would have called a Triumph Stele, a Victory Stele ... The text reads ... ‘Israel has been shorn. Its seed no longer exists’. Donald Redford, Pennsylvania State University
Are their stories real or merely myth? Archaeologists dig through the Bible to determine what is fact, what is fiction and whether Moses really wrote the Hebrew Bible. Is there evidence to support the exodus of the chosen people from Egypt or was the exodus really a smaller group of Canaanites who chose to be free? Nova: The Bible’s Buried Secrets 1/2, National Geographic 2008
It became known as the Merneptah Stele. Today it is in the Cairo Museum: ‘Israel has been shorn; its seed no longer exists’. ibid.
History proved the Pharaoh’s confident boast to be wrong. Rather than marking their annihilation, Merneptah’s Stele announces the entrance on to the world stage of a people named Israel. ibid.