EABS Conference IIIB
My afternoon at the conference was spent at the Europrean Seminar on Historical Methodology. For those of you who have been following the debate that is similisticaly referred to as the minimalist / maximalist debate, this seminar is usually considered the epitome of minimalism. The seminar was started by Phillip Davies, and it includes Rainer Albertz, Thomas Thompson, and Niels Peter Lemche (although the latter two were not able to attend this year). It is somewhat unfair to refer to this as a minimalist-only camp, however, as it also includes Marc Zvi Brettler and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Papers for the seminar were circulated in advance, so most of the time was spent in discussion.
The first paper was by Blenkinsopp. It was on the Midianite hypothesis for the origins of Yahwism. The difference with his paper, however, was that he proposed that Yahwism came in through Judah, whereas most see it as coming in through Israel. It seems to me that Frank Moore Cross’s idea of Yahwism being adopted from the Midianites through the tribe of Reuben is more convincing.
The second paper was by Brettler, who argues that the stories of David not killing Saul when he had the chance have little historical basis. Not much to argue with here. Apparently he laid out a method in the paper (which I did not get to read before hand) for dealing with historical sources.
The third paper was by Davies, who argued that even if the Tel Dan inscription does refer to the house of David, it doesn’t tell us anything of importance. Some archaeologists from Dan were there, and they (rightly) took great umbrage when he mentioned that some people thought the inscription was a forgery.
The final paper was given by Lester Grabbe on historical information about David and Solomon. The paper was scheduled to be given the next day, but they made time for part of his paper today because it dealt with Shoshenq. Since my book is the latest work on Shoshenq, they wanted me to talk for a few minutes about my research.
We went to dinner that night at a traditional Hungarian restaurant. After dinner, I was talking briefly with Phillip Davies, and he was waxing eloquent about how we cannot use any information in the Bible unless it is corroborate by external sources. I have to say that I find such an approach highly problematic. There are plenty of events in history for which we have only one piece of evidence, and that is not a reason to reject them. I am neither a maximalist nor the son of a maximalist, but just because something is written in the Bible is not a reason to treat it as any more or less reliable than other historical datum. Obviously, the Bible does present some things that are not historical, but we judge each case on its own merits. Events that are historically probably need little evidence, while those that are improbable need more. There is nothing improbable about Shoshenq campaigning against Jerusalem, and we have two small pieces of evidence that also suggest a campaign, so I see no reason for not taking 1 Kings 14:25-28 as indicating an attack on Jerusalem by Shoshenq. A confluence of evidence allows us to write history.
On August 17th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Thanks for this, Kevin. I agree with you completely. There is a good critique of Davies’ position in Provan, Long, and Longman, _A Biblical History of Israel_ (2003), pp. 54-56, “Verification and Falsification.” Here is one nice point: “How much history, ancient or otherwise, would we ‘know’ about if the verification principle were consistently applied to all testimony about [history]–e.g., to the testimony of Julius Ceasar about his invasion of Britain in 55-54 BCE, which we know about only because Ceasar himself tells us of it? The answer is clearly ‘very little.’”