Archeologist says yes as he defends Bible’s historical value
Does biblical archeology undermine Judaism or, at least, reduce the appeal of Judaism to people? Maybe it does for some, but for biblical archeologist William G. Dever, 70, it most definitely did not.
True, he is one of those who insist that the history of ancient Israel is not exactly as the Hebrew Bible says it was.
For example, he will be speaking in Milwaukee this weekend on the possibly startling topic “Did God Have a Consort? Archeology and the Cults of Ancient Israel.” He will contend, in a summary of his forthcoming book on the subject, that according to archeological evidence many ancient Israelites believed the God of Israel had a goddess wife.
“It is pretty obvious that the ideal of the Bible was monotheism, but the reality was quite different,” Dever said in a recent telephone interview from his New York home. “Archeology can illustrate the popular practices, those of the majority of the people,” which were not necessarily those “of the minority who wrote the Bible.”
Nevertheless, Dever, the son of a Christian fundamentalist preacher who describes his beliefs as “secular humanist,” converted to Judaism about 15 years ago.
“I lived in Israel so long, I lost track of Christianity,” Dever said. “All my adult life has been connected with Israel one way or another” starting with his first visit there as a graduate student in 1957. Moreover, “for me, the Bible was always the Hebrew Bible.”
In addition, he said, “about 15 years ago, I remarried and my wife is a Jewish educator…. I live every day with the reality of ancient Israel.” Therefore, “it seemed natural that I should convert.”
Dever may not be a biblical literalist, but he insists that there really was an ancient Israel, and said he has “defended it against some nasty folk” who are trying to deny it — and not only from purely intellectual motives.
“Some biblical scholars in Europe are anti-Semites,” he said. “What they want to do is write ancient Israel out of history…. They hate the Bible and they hate Israel. Now they hate America. It all goes together.”
Dever recently retired from his post as professor of archeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona, which he held since 1975. Before that, he was head of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archeological Research in Jerusalem.
He said he has written some 25 scholarly books. Then he decided “for fun at the end of a long career” to write a trilogy of books describing biblical archeology’s findings for a broader audience.
The first two are “What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel” (2001) and “Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?” (2003).
The “goddess” book will be the third. Titled “Did God Have a Wife? Archeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel,” it will be released in November.
He said he became interested in this topic because some 20 years ago he discovered one of the more important inscriptions about “Yaweh and His Asherah” that, combined with other evidence (like the finding of “hundreds” of small statues of women),
suggested that Israelite folk religion was not the religion described in the Bible.
The “folk religion” — as opposed to the Bible’s “book religion” — had much continuity with pagan Canaanite religion, Dever said. The Bible’s authors, he said, were “elitist priests, prophets and reformers” who had “little knowledge of rural people and less concern” about them. “Because [the Bible’s authors] were out of touch with most people, the real religion was almost everything these folks condemned.”
Moreover, “women played a prominent role” in the folk religion in contrast to the male-dominated Bible. Therefore, “much of the new book is about women’s religious practices, which the Bible ignores or condemns,” Dever said.
Dever is scheduled to speak on Sunday, April 18, 3 p.m., at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Sabin Hall, 3413 N. Downer Ave. Admission is free. His appearance is sponsored by the Archeological Institute of America-Milwaukee Society and co-sponsored by UWM’s art history and anthropology departments. For more information, call 414-229-5014.
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