Biblical minimalism

For other uses, see Copenhagen School.

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.

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^[1] 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."

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

1. Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur seemed to show the appearance of 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.
2. 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.
3. Excavations in Egypt confirmed the existence of the "store cities" of Raamses (Per Ramses) and Pithom (Per Atum), and suggested that 'Apiru (Hebrews) had been engaged in building projects for Rameses II.
4. The discovery of the 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.
5. John Garstang's excavations at Jericho found large walls split by cracks that seemed confirmaion of Joshua's attack as reported in the Bible.
6. William F. Albright claimed to have found the city of Ai conquered by Joshua during the settlement of Canaan by the Israelites shortly after the Battle at Jericho
7. 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.

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.

At the same time, the development of higher or historical criticism was leading to the search for the various sources of the Biblical traditions, the nature of the genres used as 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 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?)

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 dating of Events in the Old Testament

Abraham

In 1975 John Van Seters^[2] re-analysed the history portrayed of the patriarchs, particularly the tale of 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 camels 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.

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 economies in the Levant during the eighth and at the earliest, the ninth century.

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.

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 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.

Exodus

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 Ramessides. Others have sought to find links between the Atenist revolution of Akhenaton during the Amarna period, and the supposed monotheism of Moses.

Joshua

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.

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.

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.

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"?

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 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

1. 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).
2. Van Seter, John, Abraham in History and Tradition, 1975.

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.

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

• 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))

• Thompson, Thomas L., Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives, 1974.
• Thompson, Thomas L., Early History of the Israelite People, 1992.
• 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)
• Thompson, Thomas L., The Mythic Past, 1999.

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