It was in 2001 that archeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman published their popular book “The Bible Unearthed: Archeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts” (Touchstone).
And the issues they raised are still roiling the field of biblical archeology, according to Sam Wolff, senior excavator and researcher of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Wolff, 56, was in Milwaukee to speak at a Jan. 16 meeting of the Milwaukee Area Biblical Archeology Society at Wisconsin Lutheran College.
In an interview with The Chronicle afterward, Wolff said the field is “still reacting” to Finkelstein’s “radical ideas.” These include:
• That the archeological record does not match with what the Bible says were conditions during the era of the Patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt, or the periods of Joshua and the judges; but the stories clearly do match conditions that existed during the existence of the Kingdom of Judah (10th to sixth centuries B.C.E.).
• That the golden age “united kingdom” of Judah and Israel under the reigns of David and Solomon probably either didn’t exist or its character has been greatly exaggerated; and Jerusalem during that time likely was a small and insignificant settlement rather than the magnificent city portrayed in the Bible.
(Finkelstein and Silberman have expanded upon these claims in a new book published by Free Press last year, “David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition.”)
• That the person who perhaps really set in motion the process that led to the creation of the Hebrew Bible and of Judaism as we know them was probably not the legendary Moses, but King Josiah of Judah (reigned c. 639-609 B.C.E.).
Archeologists now are “trying to answer” these claims, to prove them either true or false, said Wolff.
He added that the discovery that archeologist Eilat Mazar announced in 2005 of a large building in Jerusalem, which some speculate could be “King David’s palace,” does not provide enough material to settle any of these controversies.
“The issue will have to be decided at other sites,” Wolff said.
Salvage archeology
Wolff spoke to an audience of around 30 about the work he directed in 1994 at Tel Megadim, located on the Carmel coast along the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway.
Wolff called this the “Rodney Dangerfield” of sites because it “got no respect.” It doesn’t appear on any British maps from the Mandate period; a construction crew blasted through one side of it to put in a railroad line; and the archeologists who did an excavation in the 1960s never wrote a report of their findings, Wolff said.
In the 1990s, someone made a decision to put a second railroad line next to the first. So the Israel Antiquities Authority was called in to excavate a portion of one side of the tel (steep-sided flat-topped hill) to pull out whatever interesting things could be found before building the rail line.
Wolff said this kind of “salvage archeology” is what the Israel Antiquities Authority does “for the most part.”
The site appears to have been intermittently occupied. Wolff said he found evidence of inhabitation going back to about 2800 B.C.E. and continuing through most of the Bronze Age. But it was not inhabited during the Iron Age; was during the Persian era; was not during Hellenistic and Roman eras; then was again during the Byzantine era.
Particularly interesting was the range of imported pottery found at the site, some of it coming from as far away as ancient Athens, indicating a wide-reaching trade, he said.
His team also found some unique items that are now in museum displays, he said.
Unfortunately, he could only dig in that one section for only one year. “I would love to excavate a good part” of the top of the tel, Wolff said.
Wolff got his undergraduate degree in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. However, after his junior year, he spent some time in Israel working on a kibbutz, where “I learned what archeology was about.” That fired his interest in the field, and he spent much of his senior year taking classes in Hebrew, anthropology and archeology.
He then got a job at Merrill Lynch, but spent two summers working in Israel on digs, including one at Tel Gezer. That experience led him to decide on a career in archeology, and he obtained his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Among other projects, he is now co-director of a new excavation at Tel Gezer, he said.
He has lived in Israel since 1987 and has participated in excavations at Carthage in North Africa and in Europe as well as in Israel.
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