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{{Short description|Movement in biblical scholarship}}

{{Otheruses|Copenhagen School}}

{{Other uses|Copenhagen School (disambiguation){{!}}Copenhagen School}}

'''Biblical minimalism''', also known as the '''Copenhagen School''' because two of its most prominent figures taught at [[Copenhagen University]], is a movement or trend in [[biblical scholarship]] that began in the 1990s with two main claims:

# that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and

# that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=Qjkz_8EMoaUC&q=two+main+claims&pg=PA33 33]}}

Minimalism is not a unified movement, but rather a label that came to be applied to several scholars at different universities who held similar views, chiefly [[Niels Peter Lemche]] and [[Thomas L. Thompson]] at the [[University of Copenhagen]], [[Philip R. Davies]], and Keith Whitelam. Minimalism gave rise to intense debate during the 1990s—the term "minimalists" was in fact a derogatory one given by its opponents, who were consequently dubbed "[[Biblical maximalism|maximalists]]", but in fact neither side accepted either label.{{fact|date=June 2023}}

The '''Copenhagen School of Biblical Studies''', also known as '''The Minimalist School''' is a school of biblical [[exegesis]] emphasizing that the bible should be read and analysed primarily as a collection of narratives and not as an accurate historical account of events in the prehistory of the middle east. This means that the theologists of the Copenhagen School read the Bible primarily as a source to the times and circumstances under which it was written. Frequently Copenhagen theologists have argued for a later dating of parts of the Bible than other scholars.

Maximalists, or [[Biblical archaeology school#William F. Albright and the biblical archaeology school|neo-Albrightians]], are composed of two quite distinct groups, the first represented by the archaeologist [[William G. Dever|William Dever]] and the influential publication ''[[Biblical Archaeology Review]]'', the second by biblical scholar [[Iain Provan]] and Egyptologist [[Kenneth Kitchen]].{{sfn|Banks|2006|p=185}} Although these debates were in some cases heated, most scholars occupied the middle ground, evaluating the arguments of both schools critically.

==Origins of Minimalism==

Minimalist theology arose from the need of scholars to deal with the contradictions that seemed to emerge from the findings of [[archaeology]] in [[ancient Israel]] and [[Palestine]] and surrounding countries, and various literalist interpretations about the [[Bible]]. The "Minimalist Method" advocates using archaeology as the primary source for reconstructing the history of Israel and Judea, and suggests that the Bible as text needs to be fitted within the context suggested by historical archaeology. As George Athas<ref>Athas, George (1999), "'Minimalism' The Copenhagen School of Thought in Biblical Studies"(3rd Ed, University of Sydney, (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/9246.htm).</ref> says It arose from "major discrepancies between the Bible and what archaeologists have dug up in Israel and Palestine. Or rather, what archaeologists have failed to dig up in Israel and Palestine. For decades, before biblical scholarship started to sharpen its approach, scholars interpreted archaeology in light of what the Bible said. Everything was seen through the Bible's window. That is, scholars took for granted that what the Bible said, was true - not just morally and religiously, but historically and scientifically. So, as an archaeologist back in the 19th century, you would pick up your Bible and expect to find Noah's Ark somewhere on top of Mount Ararat in Turkey, just as the Bible said; or that you could dig in Jerusalem and find the remains of David's and Solomon's palace."

Since the 1990s, while some of the minimalist arguments (i.e. the Bible should not be used in archaeology) have been challenged or rejected, others have been refined and adopted into the mainstream of biblical scholarship (i.e. claims about Exodus, Israelite Conquest, United Monarchy).{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011}}{{sfn|Grabbe|2017|p=36}}

The first generations of [[Biblical archaeology|Biblical archaeologists]] from [[Flinders Petrie]] to [[William Albright]] and [[John Bright]], seemed to find confirmation of the Bible in their work.

==Background==

# [[Leonard Woolley]]'s excavations at [[Ur]] seemed to show the appearance of [[West Semitic languages|West Semites]] [[Amorites]] (or Martu) coming to rule in Southern [[Iraq]] close to the time spoken of for [[Abraham]]'s supposed residence in the city.

By the opening of the 20th century the stories of the [[Genesis creation narrative|Creation]], [[Noah's Ark]], and the [[Tower of Babel]]—in short, chapters 1 to 11 of the [[Book of Genesis]]—had become subject to greater scrutiny by scholars, and the starting point for biblical history was regarded as the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and the other [[Patriarchs (Bible)|Hebrew patriarchs]]. Then in the 1970s, largely through the publication of two books, [[Thomas L. Thompson]]'s ''[[The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives]]'' and [[John Van Seters]]' ''[[Abraham in History and Tradition]],'' it became widely accepted that the remaining chapters of Genesis were not historical. At the same time, archaeology and comparative sociology convinced most scholars in the field that there was little historical basis to the biblical stories of [[the Exodus]] and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=18-20}}

# The discovery of the [[Code of Hammurabi]] led to the suggestion of similarities with the [[Laws of Moses]]. [[Hammurabi]] of [[Babylon]] was identified with [[Amraphel]] of [[Shinar]], one of the four kings confronting Abraham in Genesis.

# Excavations in Egypt confirmed the existence of the "store cities" of [[Avaris|Raamses]] (Per Ramses) and [[Pithom]] (Per Atum), and suggested that [['Apiru]] (Hebrews) had been engaged in building projects for Rameses II.

# The discovery of the [[Merneptah Stele|Israel stele]] mentioned a battle between Egpt and Israel in Canaan, in seeming confirmation of the settlement of the country after the [[Exodus]] by the Children of Israel.

# [[John Garstang]]'s excavations at [[Jericho]] found large walls split by cracks that seemed confirmaion of [[Joshua]]'s attack as reported in the Bible.

# [[William F. Albright]] claimed to have found the city of [[Ai (Bible)|Ai]] conquered by [[Joshua]] during the settlement of Canaan by the Israelites shortly after the Battle at Jericho

# [[Yigael Yadin]] and others found what was claimed to be Solomon's stables, enclosed by [[ashlar walls]] of fortress cities at [[Megiddo]], [[Hazor]] and [[Gezer]].

By the 1980s, the Hebrew Bible's stories of the Patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt and Conquest of Canaan were no longer considered historical, but biblical histories continued to use the Bible as a primary source and to take the form of narrative records of political events arranged in chronological order, with the major role played by (largely Judean) kings and other high-status individuals. At the same time, new tools and approaches were being brought to bear on scholars' knowledge of the past of ancient Canaan, notably new archaeological methods and approaches (for example, this was the age of surface surveys, used to map population changes which are invisible in the biblical narrative), and the social sciences (an important work in this vein was Robert Coote and Keith Whitlam's ''The Emergence of Early Israel in Historical Perspective'', which used sociological data to argue, in contradiction to the biblical picture, that it was kingship that formed Israel, and not the other way round).

But Minimalists claim that further research has challenged every one of these findings and shown them to be erroneous interpretations of archeological data caused by a Biblical bias.

Then in the 1990s a school of thought emerged from the background of the 1970s and 1980s which held that the entire enterprise of studying ancient Israel and its history was seriously flawed by an over-reliance on the biblical text, which was too problematic (meaning untrustworthy) to be used even selectively as a source for Israel's past, and that Israel itself was in any case itself a problematic subject. This movement came to be known as biblical minimalism.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=27-33}}

At the same time, the development of [[higher criticism|higher]] or [[historical criticism]] was leading to the search for the various sources of the Biblical traditions, the nature of the genres used as [[form criticism|forms of literature]] and were giving a better understanding of the purposes and intentions of the various authors and editors of the Bible. It was also leading to the suggestion that we required better understanding of the historical, political and social contexts under which the books were written. This had led to deep skepticism about whether [[Moses]] had in fact authored the [[Pentateuch|first five books]] of the Bible as claimed by [[Ezra]] (Ezra 3:2; 6:18; 7:6). (For instance, it is difficult for an author to describe his own death and burial, as the Pentateuch does of Moses. Conservative critics claim this was inserted by Joshua, but if part of the Penteteuch was written by another, say the Minimalists, why not other parts too?)

==Biblical minimalism==

In 1968, award winning articles by [[Nils Peter Lemche]] and suggested that Biblical archaeologists would have constructed a very different story of the history of ancient Palestine, if they had only the archaeological record and if they had not made use of interpretations drawn from readings of the Bible.

The scholars that have come to be called "minimalists" are not a unified group, and in fact deny that they form a group or "school": Philip Davies points out that while he argues that the bulk of the Bible can be dated to the Persian period (the 5th century BCE), Niels Peter Lemche prefers the Hellenistic period (3rd to 2nd centuries BCE), while Whitelam has not given any opinion at all. Similarly, while Lemche holds that the [[Tel Dan stele]] (an inscription from the mid-9th century BCE which seems to mention the name of [[David]]) is probably a forgery, Davies and Whitelam do not. In short, the minimalists do not agree on much more than that the Bible is a doubtful source of information about ancient Israel.{{sfn|Davies|2000}}

===Bible as a historical source document===

==The dating of Events in the Old Testament==

The first of the minimalists' two central claims is based on the premise that history-writing is never objective, but involves the selection of data and the construction of a narrative using preconceived ideas of the meaning of the past&mdash;the fact that history is thus never neutral or objective raises questions about the accuracy of any historical account.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=33}} The minimalists cautioned that the literary form of the biblical history books is so apparent and the authors' intentions so obvious that scholars should be extremely cautious in taking them at face value. Even if the Bible does preserve some accurate information, researchers lack the means to sift that information from the inventions with which it may have been mixed.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=34-35}}

The minimalists did not claim that the Bible is useless as a historical source; rather, they suggest that its proper use is in understanding the period in which it was written, a period which some of them place in the Persian period (5th–4th centuries BCE) and others in the Hellenistic period (3rd–2nd centuries).{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=35}}

===Historicity of the nation of Israel===

===Abraham===

The second claim is that "Israel" itself is a difficult idea to define in terms of historiography. There is, firstly, the idealised Israel which the Bible authors created&mdash;"biblical Israel". In the words of Niels Peter Lemche:

In 1975 [[John Van Seters]]<ref>Van Seter, John, [[Abraham in History and Tradition]], 1975.</ref> re-analysed the history portrayed of the patriarchs, particularly the tale of [[Abraham in History and Tradition|Abraham]]. He showed that there had been a consistent bias in the archaeology, which had given preference to the earliest appearance of characteristics of the story and against elements of first millennium. For example, while [[camel]]s may have been domesticated earlier than the first millennium, their widespread appearance in the Middle East as beasts of burden was with the appearance of [[Bedouin]] tribes from about 950 BCE.

{{quote|The Israelite nation as explained by the biblical writers has little in the way of a historical background. It is a highly ideological construct created by ancient scholars of Jewish tradition in order to legitimize their own religious community and its religio-political claims on land and religious exclusivity.| {{Harvnb|Lemche|1998|pp=165–66}} }}

Modern scholars have taken aspects of biblical Israel and married them with data from archaeological and non-biblical sources to create their own version of a past Israel&mdash;"Ancient Israel". Neither bears much relationship to the kingdom destroyed by Assyria in about 722 BCE&mdash;"historical Israel". The real subjects for history-writing in the modern period are either this historical Israel or else the biblical Israel, the first a historical reality and the second an intellectual creation of the biblical authors. Linked with this was the observation that modern biblical scholars had concentrated their attentions exclusively on [[Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)|Israel]], [[Kingdom of Judah|Judah]], and their religious history, while ignoring the fact that these had been only a fairly insignificant part of a wider whole.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=36}}

==Important works==

Again, while the purchase of land was common in ancient Iraq and Egypt, the alienation of land, as described by the Spring of [[Mamre]], and its selling for money is a feature which is only documented from the spread of [[monetary economy|monetary economies]] in the [[Levant]] during the eighth and at the earliest, the ninth century.

*''In Search of Ancient Israel'' (Philip R. Davies, 1992){{sfn|Davies|1995|p=}}

Davies' book "popularised the scholarly conversation and crystallised the import of the emerging scholarly positions" regarding the history of Israel between the 10th and 6th centuries—in other words, it summarised current research and thinking rather than proposing anything original. It was, nevertheless, a watershed work in that it drew together the new interpretations that were emerging from archaeology: the study of texts, sociology and anthropology. Davies argued that scholars needed to distinguish between the three meanings of the word Israel: the historical ancient kingdom of that name (historical Israel); the idealised Israel of the biblical authors writing in the Persian era and seeking to unify the post-exilic Jerusalem community by creating a common past (biblical Israel); and the Israel that had been created by modern scholars over the past century or so by blending together the first two (which he termed ancient Israel, in recognition of the widespread use of this phrase in scholarly histories). "Ancient Israel", he argued, was especially problematic: biblical scholars ran the risk of placing far too much confidence in their reconstructions through relying too heavily on "biblical Israel", the Bible's highly ideological version of a society that had already ceased to exist when the bulk of the biblical books reached their final form.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=36, 291-292}}

*''The Invention of Ancient Israel'' (Keith Whitelam, 1996){{sfn|Whitelam|1996|p=}}

Similarly, the appearance of [[Philistines]] living in [[Gerar]], with properly Canaanite names, as documented in the story of Abraham, is a late rather than an early feature, as Philistines only arrived in Palestine after the great [[Sea People]]'s battles with [[Rameses III]], in 1187 BC, and it was only much later that they gave up their Aegean cultural traits to become indistinguishable from their [[Canaanite]] neighbours.

Subtitled "The Silencing of Palestinian History", Whitelam criticised his peers for their concentration on Israel and Judah to the exclusion of the many other peoples and kingdoms that had existed in Iron Age Palestine. Palestinian history for the period from 13th century BCE to the 2nd century CE had been ignored, and scholars had concentrated instead on political, social, and above all religious developments in the small entity of Israel. This, he argued, supported the contemporary claim to the land of Palestine by the descendants of Israel, while keeping biblical studies in the realm of religion rather than history.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=37}}

*''The Israelites in History and Tradition'' (Niels Peter Lemche, 1998){{sfn|Lemche|1998|p=}}

Van Seters demonstrated to the satisfaction of most Biblical scholars, that the tales of [[Abraham]] referred to people and places set within an Iron Age context. From a [[literary criticism|literary critical]] point of view, the stories of Abraham seem designed to establish claims from exiles coming from Southern Iraq over lands in the vicinity of [[Hebron]].

*''[[The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past|The Mythic Past]]'' ([[Thomas L. Thompson]], 1999){{sfn|Thompson|1999|p=}}

===Exodus===

The subtitle of the US edition of ''[[The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past|The Mythic Past]]'' was "Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel", a phrase almost guaranteed to cause controversy in America. The European title, ''[[The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past]]'', was perhaps more descriptive of its actual theme: the need to treat the Bible as literature rather than as history—"The Bible's language is not a historical language. It is a language of high literature, of story, of sermon and of song. It is a tool of philosophy and moral instruction." This was Thompson's attempt to set the minimalist position before a wider public; it became the cause of a rejoinder by William Dever, ''[[What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?]]'', which in turn led to a bitter public dispute between the two.

The Bible reports 10 plagues of Egypt about 480 years before the supposed building of [[Solomon]]'s temple, and an escape during which the forces of the [[Pharaoh]] were drowned crossing the Red Sea. During this period some 600,000 Israelites (Exodus 12:37) were supposed to have left from a city called [[Rameses]] to wander for 40 years around the Sinai, before crossing into Israel. The period, however, was shown to be the height of the Egyptian Empire in Palestine, during which the total population of the country would have been less than 2.5 million. The escape of a quarter of Egypt's population is nowhere attested. Historians have dated Exodus either earlier, to the period of expulsion of the [[Hyksos]], or later, during the period of the [[19th Dynasty|Ramessides]]. Others have sought to find links between the [[Aten]]ist revolution of [[Akhenaton]] during the [[Amarna period]], and the supposed monotheism of [[Moses]]. Others attempted to relate various [[Ten plagues|plagues]] to historic events, notably the volcanic eruption in [[Thera]] in the 17th century BCE, although this is generally seen as [[pseudoscience]] (see [[Plagues of Egypt]]).

==Reception and influence==

===Joshua===

The ideas of the minimalists generated considerable controversy during the 1990s and the early part of the 21st century. Some conservative scholars reacted defensively, attempting to show that the details of the Bible were in fact consistent with having been written by contemporaries (against the minimalist claim that they were largely the work of the Persian or Hellenistic periods). A notable work in this camp was Kenneth Kitchen's ''[[On the Reliability of the Old Testament]]''. Taking a different approach, ''A Biblical History of Israel'', by [[Iain Provan]], [[V. Philips Long]], and [[Tremper Longman III]], argued that criterion of distrust set by the minimalists (the Bible should be regarded as unreliable unless directly confirmed by external sources) was unreasonable, and that it should be regarded as reliable unless directly falsified. Avi Hurvitz compared biblical Hebrew with the Hebrew from ancient inscriptions and found it consistent with the period before the Persian period, thus questioning the key minimalist contention that the biblical books were written several centuries after the events they describe.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=38}} [[Takamitsu Muraoka]] also argues against the hypothesis that the entire Hebrew Bible was composed in the Persian period, associated with some minimalists like Davies, countering that there are specifically late Biblical Hebrew features, like some rare [[Plene scriptum|plene spellings]], that are contained in books dated to the Persian era by minimalists as well, but unusual or absent elsewhere.{{sfn|Joüon|Muraoka|2006|p=9, n. 2}}

At first the excavations of Jericho by the American Anthropologist Garstang, suggested that the cracks found in the Jericho Walls confirmed the Biblical account of the battles of [[Joshua]]. However, in the 1960s, the superior methods and expertise of digging in squares of 5 metres each, leaving walls of debris between each square, of Dame [[Kathleen Kenyon]] demonstrated that Garstang's wall dated to a completely other era altogether (the Middle Bronze Age) and couldn't possibly have been standing in Joshua's time. In fact, during the era that was being ascribed to Joshua and his conquest of the land of Israel, Jericho didn't even have a wall. It probably didn't even have any residents. Kenyon began to using e the superior technique . With this more accurate technique, the famous walls of Jericho were lost.

In the scholarly mainstream, historians of ancient Israel have partially adapted their methodologies by relying less on the Bible and more on sociological models and archaeological evidence.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=39, 291}} Scholars such as [[Lester L. Grabbe]] (''Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?'', 2007), [[Victor H. Matthews]] (''Studying the Ancient Israelites: A Guide to Sources and Methods'', 2007), and Hans Barstad (''History and the Hebrew Bible'', 2008) simply put the evidence before the reader and explain the issues, rather than attempt to write histories; others such as K.L. Knoll (''Canaan and Israel in Antiquity'', 2001) attempt to include Israel in a broader treatment of Syria-Palestine/Canaan. This is not to say that the ideas of the minimalists are completely adopted in modern study of ancient Israel: [[Mario Liverani]], for example (''Israel's History and the History of Israel'', 2005), accepts that the biblical sources are from the Persian period, but believes that the minimalists have not truly understood that context nor recognised the importance of the ancient sources used by the authors. Thus positions that do not fit either a minimalist or a maximalist position are now being expressed.{{sfn|Moore|Kelle|2011|p=39}}

On the one hand, the Biblical book of Joshua told of the Israelite's war cry and "the walls came a-tumblin' down". On the other hand, Kenyon said there was no Jericho for Joshua to conquer.

{{blockquote|The impression one has now is that the debate has settled down. Although they do not seem to admit it, the minimalists have triumphed in many ways. That is, most scholars reject the historicity of the 'patriarchal period', see the settlement as mostly made up of indigenous inhabitants of Canaan and are cautious about the early monarchy. The exodus is rejected or assumed to be based on an event much different from the biblical account. On the other hand, there is not the widespread rejection of the biblical text as a historical source that one finds among the main minimalists. There are few, if any, maximalists (defined as those who accept the biblical text unless it can be absolutely disproved) in mainstream scholarship, only on the more fundamentalist fringes.|{{harvnb|Grabbe|2017|p=36}}}}

===The Stables of Solomon===

Yidgal Yadin's excavations of Megiddo showed a peculiar structure with a central corridor with lateral smaller rooms. Slightly similar structures had been found at Gezer and Hazor, and using the Biblical account, it was claimed that these were the fabled stables that Solomon was supposed to have built at these locations. Subsequent work by David Usshinskin and Israel Finkelstein showed that these structures were gatehouses, not stables, and on the basis of the pottery that they were built at the period of the Omride state of Ahab of Israel, much later than the period of Solomon.

==See also==

Once again, early beliefs that were Biblically coloured led to the premature interpretation of archaeological evidence. Later evidence showed a significant discrepancy, that needed explanation. The Minimalist school of Copenhagen looks at which parts of the Bible are confirmed archaeologically, and in which parts are there differences. They seek to ask the question "what is the reason for these discrepancies"?

* [[Atheism]]

* [[Historicity of the Bible]]

==The "Minimalist" Approach==

It was these types of discrepancies between what the Bible said and what archaeologists said that started the development of the Copenhagen School of thought, colloquially called as "Minimalism".

The approach taken by the Minimalist school start by treating the Bible as a text, with a "plot" and with a set of "characters". It aims to establish a [[theology|theological]] view, concerning the nature of the [[covenant]] between the historical people of [[Israel]] and their God. They claim that the events were not written as [[historiography]], nor as a newspaper account of contemporary events, but were written as a story, similar to the story of Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. It had similarities because it was based upon the historical accounts available to Shakespeare, but the dialogue and dramatic development of the plot, were dependent not on Julius Caesar, but on the concerns of Elizabethan England.

"Minimalist" scholars say that most other scholars have tended to put the evidence of the Bible account as superior to what archaeology shows, in situations when they contradict. That is, they look at the archaeological evidence from the perspective of justifying the Bible as an exact history. They charge conservative scholars like [[Bright]] and [[Albright]] of letting their religious convictions and preferences take priority over unbiased, objective historical research. They accuse fundamentalist scholars of having a hidden, sometimes subconscious agenda of wanting to prove that the Bible is right, and that this bias affects the way they do history.

Philip Davies claims scholars have created a false Ancient Israel, that fails to fit into the archaeologically established context of Iron Age Syria and Palestine. The Ancient Israel that scholars have reconstructed, says Davies, is false - it is not the real historical Ancient Israel from Syria-Palestine but is rather a figment of conservative scholars' imaginations.

==Notes==

{{reflist|2}}

<references />

==References==

* Davies, Philip R., Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures, 1998.

* Finkelstein, Israel, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 1988

* Garbini, Giovanni, History and Ideology in Ancient Israel, 1988 (trans from Italian).

* Halpern, Baruch, "Erasing History: The Minimalist Assault on Ancient Israel", BR, Dec 1995, p26 - 35, 47.

==Bibliography==

* Lemche, Niels Peter, Early Israel, 1985. á Lemche, Niels Peter, Israel in History and Tradition, 1998.

*{{cite book |last=Banks |first=Diane |title=Writing The History Of Israel |year=2006 |publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6hnrpeC2KNAC |isbn=9780567026620 }}

* Provan, Iain W., "Ideologies, Literary and Critical Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel", Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p585-606. (a critique of the Copenhagen School of Thought - with responses by Davies (above) and Thompson (below))

*{{cite book |last=Cogan |first=Mordechai |title=The Raging Torrent: historical inscriptions from Assyria and Babylonia relating to ancient Israel |year=2008 |publisher=Carta}}

*{{cite book |last=Davies |first=Philip R. |title=In Search of 'Ancient Israel' |year=1995 |publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5D5GNju1-ggC |isbn=9781850757375 }}

*{{cite book |last=Davies |first=Philip R. |title=Minimalism, 'Ancient Israel', and Anti-Semitism |year=2000 |publisher=The Bible and Interpretation |url=http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Minimalism.htm |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081021140010/http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Minimalism.htm |archive-date=2008-10-21 }}

*{{Cite book |last=Grabbe |first=Lester L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4lzyDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 |title=Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?: Revised Edition |date=23 February 2017 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=978-0-567-67044-1 |page=36 }}

*{{cite book |last=Lemche |first=Niels Peter |title=The Israelites in History and Tradition |year=1998 |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |isbn=9780664227272 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JIoY7PagAOAC }}

*{{cite book |last1=Moore |first1=Megan Bishop |last2=Kelle |first2=Brad E. |title=Biblical History and Israel's Past |year=2011 |publisher=Eerdmans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qjkz_8EMoaUC |isbn=9780802862600 }}

*{{cite book |last1=Joüon |first1=P.|last2=Muraoka |first2=Takamitsu |title=A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew |year=2006 |edition=Second |publisher=Gregorian & Biblical Press |isbn=9788876536298 }}

* {{cite book |last=Thompson |first=Thomas L. |title=The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology And The Myth Of Israel |year=1999 |publisher=Basic Book |title-link=The Bible in History: How Writers Create a Past }}

*{{cite book |last=Whitelam |first=Keith W. |title=The Invention of Ancient Israel |year=1996 |publisher=Routledge |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jz3X-n8JhwUC |isbn=9780415107587 }}

==Further reading==

* Thompson, Thomas L., Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, 1974.

* {{cite book|doi=10.1163/9789004275607|title=Early Israel|year=1985|last1=Lemche|first1=N.P.|isbn=9789004275607}}

* Thompson, Thomas L., Early History of the Israelite People, 1992.

* {{cite journal|doi=10.1080/10477845.2012.673111|title=Strengthening Biblical Historicity vis-à-vis Minimalism, 1992–2008 and Beyond, Part 2.1: The Literature of Perspective, Critique, and Methodology, First Half|journal=Journal of Religious & Theological Information|volume=11|issue=3–4|pages=101–137|year=2012|last1=Mykytiuk|first1=Lawrence J.|s2cid=8509370 |url=https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_fsdocs/52|url-access=subscription}}

*Thompson, Thomas L., "A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?" Journal of Biblical Literature 114/4 (1995), p683-698. (a response to the article by Iain W. Provan - above)

* {{cite journal|doi=10.2307/3266476|jstor=3266476|title=Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel|journal=Journal of Biblical Literature|volume=114|issue=4|pages=585–606|year=1995|last1=Provan|first1=Iain W.|s2cid=165776437}}

* Thompson, Thomas L., The Mythic Past, 1999.

* {{cite journal|doi=10.2307/3266481|jstor=3266481|title=A Neo-Albrightean School in History and Biblical Scholarship?|journal=Journal of Biblical Literature|volume=114|issue=4|pages=683–698|year=1995|last1=Thompson|first1=Thomas L.}}

==External links==

* Van Seters, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.

*Philip Davies (2005), [https://web.archive.org/web/20080528230034/http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_47.htm "The Origin of Biblical Israel"], ''[[Journal of Hebrew Scriptures]]'', Volume 5, Article 17. Places the origins of "biblical" Israel in the Neo-Babylonian period.

[[Category{{DEFAULTSORT:Christian theology|Copenhagen School]]}}

[[Category:Biblical exegesis]]

[[Category:Biblical archaeology]]