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The Exodus and the Bible: What Was Known; What Was Remembered; What Was Forgotten?

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Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective

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Abstract

This chapter offers an archaeological critique of the current model of the Hebrew Bible as “cultural memory” with particular reference to the exodus–conquest narrative. Instead of asking how these texts functioned socially, religiously, and culturally, this chapter asks “What Really Happened?” This approach will facilitate a critique of the literary tradition based on external rather than internal evidence, attempting to isolate a “core history.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For convenient orientation and bibliography, see Barstad (2010). The theme of this symposium on the Exodus reflects the current trend. One of the participants, Jan Assmann, is a major player; cf. Assmann (2007): cf. also the useful essay of Hendel (2010).

  2. 2.

    “Reception history” seems to be little more than an extension of the “reader response” approach popularized some time ago by New Literary Criticism. It simply brings the response up to the present moment, including popular media. To most archaeologists, antiquarians as they are, that is irrelevant. The impact of the “literary turn” on biblical studies, an offshoot of postmodernist epistemology, is too well known to need documentation, but cf. the balanced critique of Barr (2000).

  3. 3.

    Barstad, one of Europe’s best biblical scholars, has made the distinction clear, showing how “cultural memory” may mean the end of real history, as in Davies (2008). See Barstad (2010); and cf. Barstad (2007, 2008). For an extensive critique of biblical revisionism and its background in postmodernism, see Dever (2001).

  4. 4.

    For the superiority of artifacts over texts as primary data, see Dever (2001: 81–95, 2010) (a review of Grabbe 2007, a leading biblical scholar who has advocated seeing the archaeological data as primary).

  5. 5.

    Lemche (2010: 12) has made the same point, although with no misgivings.

  6. 6.

    See footnote 4 above.

  7. 7.

    On types of history, see further Dever (1997b, c). There are few if any other discussions by archaeologists.

  8. 8.

    “Invention” is a favorite term of the biblical revisionists; cf. Whitelam (1996), Thompson (1999), and especially Liverani (2005) (although not necessarily a member of the revisionist school).

  9. 9.

    For positive views, see Killebrew (2005), Faust (2006, 2010), Dever (2007). Literature on negative views will also be found in these works.

  10. 10.

    See this volume, Chaps. 8 (Moshier & Hoffmeier), 15 (Hoffmeier), and 34 (Redford).

  11. 11.

    The papers here by natural scientists are welcome, but they do not provide an explanation of what really happened.

  12. 12.

    The fact that the earlier sources allow for a smaller number does not resolve this problem—or the many others in the biblical narratives.

  13. 13.

    See Hoffmeier (2005). On Kadesh-barnea, see now the final publication, Cohen and Bernick-Greenberg (2007).

  14. 14.

    How Levy’s metal-working installations in the Wadi Fidan, dated as early as the eleventh to tenth century BCE, will affect this date is not yet clear; see Levy (2010) and references there.

  15. 15.

    See the full discussion in Dever (2001: 54–71, 1977).

  16. 16.

    See Dever (2011) and the full discussion there; cf. also Dever (1997a). For the latter, see Lederman (1992).

  17. 17.

    The notion of a “nomadic ideal” persists in the literature; but for independent refutations cf. Dever (1995), Hiebert (2009).

  18. 18.

    Few biblical scholars, elitists themselves, appreciate just how elitist the biblical texts are—limited not only by their late date but by a limited perspective. People could not have had any biblical texts before the seventh century BCE or so; and since at least 95% of them were illiterate, they could not have read these texts in any case. For a full exposition of the lives of ordinary people, see Dever (2012).

  19. 19.

    Cf. Dever (2003), Faust (2006), Sader (2010).

  20. 20.

    Cf. Rainey (2007), Dever (2011).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    William G. Dever

  2. Lycoming College, Williamsport, PA, USA

    William G. Dever

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  1. William G. Dever
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Correspondence to William G. Dever .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, San Diego, California, USA

    Thomas E. Levy

  2. The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Thomas Schneider

  3. University of California, San Diego, California, USA

    William H.C. Propp

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Dever, W.G. (2015). The Exodus and the Bible: What Was Known; What Was Remembered; What Was Forgotten?. In: Levy, T., Schneider, T., Propp, W. (eds) Israel's Exodus in Transdisciplinary Perspective. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04768-3_30

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