The biblical archaeology is concerned with the recovery and investigation of material remains of the past events, happenings and culture to illuminate the periods and descriptions in the Bible, especially from the Old Testament. An understanding of the Biblical archaeology requires knowledge of the Bible as the object of research. Many archaeologists have gained interest in uncovering the Bible happenings through various sources of evidence that they can find with relation to the Bible itself. Most of such archaeologists have formed arguments that the Bible stories are not historically correct but rather a presentation of traditional divergent ideologies. Finkelstein and Silberman in their book, the Bible unearthed have supported the idea that
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These include extraction of information regarding the Old Testament. Drawing from an example of Israel’s expansion under King David, the archaeologists have found little evidence of the same that could support the Old Testament. This is due to the reason that the existing evidence was destroyed during the development of the cities that are built on the location of this evidence. Evidence for example on David’s military campaigns in the records of one of the kingdoms of Israel harbors many archeological sites (Finkelstein and Silberman …show more content…
This kingdom has been described in the Bible as a regional power but the archaeologists claim that it was a small tribal kingdom (Exod. 3:2—22, 12:31-36). The argument of Finkelstein and Silberman suffer about Jerusalem suffer this shortcoming of archaeology. They fail to acknowledge the magnitude of Jerusalem which was the capital of an empire by referring it to a cow town (Finkelstein and Silberman 78). Jerusalem had its magnitude not acknowledged, and this was partly due to the fact Israel had been defeated by Hazael. This is evident in the Tel Dan Stele which harbors a victory inscription by Hazael. Additionally, the Mesha Stele talks about how Israel had been able to subjugate the Moabites, but was later overrun by Mesha who happened to be king of Moab. These accounts may prove that Israel was not strong
These include extraction of information regarding the Old Testament. Drawing from an example of Israel’s expansion under King David, the archaeologists have found little evidence of the same that could support the Old Testament. This is due to the reason that the existing evidence was destroyed during the development of the cities that are built on the location of this evidence. Evidence for example on David’s military campaigns in the records of one of the kingdoms of Israel harbors many archeological sites (Finkelstein and Silberman …show more content…
This kingdom has been described in the Bible as a regional power but the archaeologists claim that it was a small tribal kingdom (Exod. 3:2—22, 12:31-36). The argument of Finkelstein and Silberman suffer about Jerusalem suffer this shortcoming of archaeology. They fail to acknowledge the magnitude of Jerusalem which was the capital of an empire by referring it to a cow town (Finkelstein and Silberman 78). Jerusalem had its magnitude not acknowledged, and this was partly due to the fact Israel had been defeated by Hazael. This is evident in the Tel Dan Stele which harbors a victory inscription by Hazael. Additionally, the Mesha Stele talks about how Israel had been able to subjugate the Moabites, but was later overrun by Mesha who happened to be king of Moab. These accounts may prove that Israel was not strong