The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

Three decades of dialogue, discussion, and debate within the interrelated disciplines of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, Israelite history, and Hebrew Bible on the question of the reliability of the biblical account of Israel’s history have made a balanced articulation of the issues and their resolution a desideratum. This book brings together for the first time under one cover the currently emerging centrist paradigms articulated by Finkelstein and Mazar, two leading figures in the field of early Israelite history and archaeology. Articulating distinct views of Israelite history, the two perspectives presented here nevertheless share the position that the material cultural data, the biblical traditions, and ancient Near Eastern written sources are all significantly relevant to the historical quest for ancient Israel of the Iron Age. The results of their research are featured in an accessible dual-authored synthesis of the historical reconstruction of ancient Israel. The parallel histories readily facilitate comparison and contrast of the interpretations proposed by the authors.

These lectures were delivered at The Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism’s Annual Colloquium. Detroit, October 2005.

Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)