wynalazki: Historicity of the Bible

Evidence: 71 • authority: 72

The historicity of the Bible is the question of the Bible's relationship to history—covering not just the Bible's acceptability as history but also the ability to understand the literary forms of biblical narrative. Questions on biblical historicity are typically separated into evaluations of whether the Old Testament and Hebrew Bible accurately record the history of ancient Israel and Judah and the second Temple period, and whether the Christian New Testament is an accurate record of the historical Jesus and of the Apostolic Age. This tends to vary depending upon the opinion of the scholar. When studying the books of the Bible, scholars examine the historical context of passages, the impor…

Evidence: 65 • authority: 72

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. 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 deb…

Evidence: 53 • authority: 72

On the Reliability of the Old Testament (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids and Cambridge, 2003: ISBN 0-8028-4960-1) is a book by British Egyptologist and Biblical scholar Kenneth Kitchen (1932–2025). The book was intended to serve as a counterpart to F. F. Bruce's Are the New Testament Documents Reliable? (1943), and in so doing to counter the arguments of Biblical minimalism, which casts doubt upon the historical value of the Old Testament. The book opens with an introductory chapter surveying the history with which it intends to deal, the continuous narrative in the Hebrew Bible from the Genesis creation narrative to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from the Babyloni…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

The Kingdom of Israel (Hebrew: מַמְלֶכֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Mamleḵeṯ Yīśrāʾēl) was an Israelite kingdom that may have existed in the Southern Levant. The first extra-biblical mention of Israel dates from the Merneptah Stele created by Pharaoh Merneptah in 1208 BC. According to the Deuteronomistic history in the Hebrew Bible, the United Kingdom of Israel or the United Monarchy existed under the reigns of Saul, Ish-bosheth, David, and Solomon, encompassing the territories of both the later kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Whether the United Monarchy existed—and, if so, to what extent—is a matter of ongoing academic debate. During the 1980s, some biblical scholars began to argue that the archaeological…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

Biblical Hebrew (Hebrew: עִבְרִית מִקְרָאִית, romanized: ʿiḇrîṯ miqrāʾîṯ or לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא, ləšôn ham-miqrāʾ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of the Jordan River and east of the Mediterranean Sea. The term ʿiḇrîṯ 'Hebrew' was not used as the language in the Hebrew Bible, which was referred to as שְֹפַת כְּנַעַן śəp̄aṯ kənaʿan 'language of Canaan' or יְהוּדִית Yəhûḏîṯ 'Judean', but was used in Koine Greek and Mishnaic Hebrew texts. Paleo-Hebrew is attested in inscriptions from about the 10th century BCE, when…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 72

The Bible is an anthology of religious texts that are central to Judaism and Christianity, and important in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The texts include instructions, stories, poetry, letters, prophecies, and other genres. The religious texts, or scriptures, were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections, called biblical canons. Believers generally consider the Bible to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and how they interpret the text varies. The Hebrew Bible, originally written in Hebrew, with some parts in Aramaic, is divided into three sections: the Torah ("Teaching"), Nevi'im ("Prophets") and…

Evidence: 42 • authority: 80

History of the Old Testament. Vol. 1: The Ancient Orient and Ancient Biblical History

Evidence: 36 • authority: 80

The Old Testament in Archaeology and History ed. by Jennie Ebeling et al.

Evidence: 36 • authority: 80

Old Testament History and Archaeology

Evidence: — • authority: 88

A Dictionary of Middle Egyptian for Students of Biblical Archaeology and Old Testament Studies. Problem. Middle Egyptian has played an increasingly important role in Biblical Archaeology and Old Testament studies. Much of biblical chronology is closely connected to Egyptian chronology; many biblical events record Egyptian involvement, and some of these are included on Egyptian monuments. A knowledge of Middle Egyptian has been crucial in understanding the historical background and cultural context of the biblical world because this phase of the Egyptian language influenced the widest range of Egyptian writing, particularly as it pertains to Old Testament history. Unfortunately, students do…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Biblical maximalism is the movement in Biblical scholarship that, as opposed to Biblical minimalism, affirms the historicity of central Biblical narratives, such as those pertaining to the United Monarchy, and the historical authenticity of ancient Israel as a whole. Due to differences between the Bible and 19th- and 20th-century archaeological findings, there exist discrepancies between these two parties of biblical exegetists: the biblical maximalists argue that prior to Judaism's Babylonian Captivity (the period that spanned the 6th-century B.C.), the Bible serves an accurate historical source and should influence the conclusions drawn from archaeological studies; whereas biblical minima…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Biblical archaeology, is the school of archaeology which concerns itself with the biblical world. In the academic setting it serves as an adjunct to biblical studies, providing the historical, cultural, and linguistic context to scripture. If the modern discipline had a founder, it would be William F. Albright, an American with roots in the Evangelical tradition. By the 1950s, Albright and his students, notably Nelson Glueck, E. A. Speiser, G. Ernest Wright, and Cyrus Gordon, claimed to have found physical evidence for the historical events behind many Old Testament narratives.