Abstract
These days, scholars who work on the history of Israel are typically divided into three groups. “Maximalists” accept Old Testament testimony to history unless that testimony can be shown to be doubtful or false. “Minimalists” reject historical data from the Old Testament, except for data which can be verified through other means. There is no widely accepted name for scholars in the middle who accept some, but not all, of the Old Testament's unverified testimony to history. BHI2 (the authors' abbreviation for this volume) is probably the leading apology for the “maximalist” camp.
The first 130 pages of BHI2 deal with historical methodology, exploring how the science of discovering history has changed since the 19th century. BHI2 embraces modern ideas about how to do history, offering a useful and necessary maximalist voice while interacting with scholars of both history and Bible. The authors acknowledge problems inherent in deriving history from ideologically loaded narrative containing information which seems extremely implausible, even impossible. But we must recognize that a careful reading of the text, taking into account matters of provenance and style, may well contain historical information that is as valuable as that gleaned from other data, both written and material. BHI2 raises valid issues, regularly pushing for methodological consistency. The authors insist that we cannot dismiss Old Testament history in favor of other kinds of testimony without offering compelling, consistent justification. We have reasons to question the Old Testament, but questions persist also about archaeological findings, non-biblical writings, sociological models, and so on.
This first part's section on “testimonial chains” (the idea that the chronologically further testimony is from the event, the greater the likelihood for errors) is unfortunately weak, thus undermining the entire argument of the book. BHI2 never gets around to letting us know that our oldest Old Testament manuscripts date from no earlier than 200 bce, many hundreds of years later than the events they describe. This is the place to interact with modern literature on ancient Near Eastern scribal practices: general ideas about ancient history transmission are insufficient when we must consider the involvement of well over a dozen generations, with each chain potentially modifying the original testimony.
With the exception of the appendix (discussed below) the remainder of BHI2 paraphrases certain Old Testament “historical” texts while offering apologetics to show the trustworthiness of the Old Testament's witness to history. BHI2 includes a number of excellent discussions about specific pieces of archaeology and epigraphy. These discussions are sensitive and open-minded, often leading to conclusions which do not necessarily support the usual “maximalist” ideas. A nice example is the discussion of the identification of the Egyptian king Shishak of 1 Kings 14:26 with Sheshonq I, the founder of Egypt's 22nd dynasty. For more than 100 years scholars of both ancient Israel and ancient Egypt have relied on this correlation for dating, but modern scholars are now (appropriately) questioning the evidence.
BHI2 is a second edition, and devotes an unusually large amount of space to rebut criticisms of the first. At least one original criticism requires repetition and clarification. The authors defend their extensive use of paraphrase to write “history,” citing historians' use of paraphrase for histories of other peoples. But while paraphrasing obscure, difficult texts for a history of ancient Greece is appropriate, virtually all readers of BHI2 can easily paraphrase the books of Samuel and Kings on their own. A scholarly history of ancient Israel should thus offer more. For example, BHI2 argues that David's Jerusalem was large enough to serve as capital of Israel, and that Solomon really was “king” in some sense of an area which stretched from the Euphrates to Egypt. To make scholarly “history,” the authors might have tried to figure the population of David's Jerusalem, and to explain in modern terms the sense in which Solomon was “king” over a huge territory. We have data to help us to suggest answers to these problems; a biblical historian should work with it.
I call the authors “maximalists,” but I must report that they express serious displeasure with this designation, as this “name-calling” places them at one end of the history-of-ancient-Israel spectrum. (They have no problem calling the work of other scholars “revisionist,” however, a term which contains more negative connotations than any of the others.) The “maximalist” nomenclature is nevertheless appropriate and helpful, as at virtually every turn BHI2 affirms the plausibility of the biblical witness. Until someone offers a better way of distinguishing Provan et al from other “non-minimalists,” one hopes that they will graciously accept the designation “maximalist.”
Finally, I've never seen a scholarly text that includes thirty pages of appendix material attacking critics of an earlier edition, and I can think of few second additions that need this less. Constructive scholars engage important opposing arguments in their text, listing reference information about their opponents' views in the foot-notes. BHI2 already has plenty of this, with more invective for opposing viewpoints than warranted. The appendix only detracts from a useful volume. One hopes that BHI3 will eliminate this section, using the saved space to further describe the authors' picture of ancient Israel.