A critical view
of the Minimalist view of the United Kingdom By Koot van Wyk
(DLitt et Phil, ThD)
I am writing
from my first-hand experience in Archaeology in Israel associating with great
archaeologists, albeit just with visits, or traveling together, or actual
digging under William Dever and their team at Gezer. Of course one of my
doctorals is in Biblical Archaeology. I was schooled and doctoral examined for
hours on this subject at Andrews University, Michigan between 1989-1995. Biblical
Archaeology was made redundant by William Dever himself after Albright died.
Biblical Archaeology with a capital B became biblical archaeology with a
smaller b. It was renamed as Syro-Palestinian Archaeology. The concept of
minimalist or maximalist is one of the Fundamentalist issues that one has to
ask: the Bible says the United Kingdom was large. Modern Archaeologists try
their best to shoot that idea down. Thus, anti-biblical archaeology. Well does it
work? My own
experience and dealing with the sources taught me that the issue is whether you
were schooled in Jerusalem under the Mazars (Benjamin, Amichai and William
Dever of the Albright Institute) or whether you were schooled in Tel Aviv under
Israel Finkelstein and his men, including David Usshiskin. If you are not
aware of the “pottery reading wars” between these two groups, you have not done
any Archaeology in Israel. William Dever
does not bring the Bible to the Tel and boasted at Gezer about it to a number
of scholars, one day explicitly near me to Joe Seger. But, that said,
much of what he sometimes do, actually supports the Bible, ironically because
he wrote the critical article after Albright’s death: Will the real Israel
stand up! At the outer
wall on the Western side Dever found evidence at the ashlars of Solomonic time
red-burnished ware which Israel Finkelstein keep disputing that they date to
the 8th century BC. Finkelstein
operates with the Arabist Julius Wellhausen’s theories on the Bible, namely the
Higher- and Lower-critical theories, JEDP etc. Look at the
work of Eta Linnenmann, Historical Criticism of the Bible: Methodology or
Ideology? Reflections of a Bultmannian turned evangelical. Translated by
Robert W. Yarbrough. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1993 (4th
edition). The specialist
recognized in Syro-Palestinian archaeology for potter readings is undoubtedly
William Dever and judging by the number of Israeli and other scholars in
Archaeology that came to my square on Gezer at the castle, I can witness that
Dever was controversial to them but in a very bright mind. I saw him in
action reading pottery, so when it comes to pottery reading, I would also vote
for him rather that Israel Finkelstein. Dever said that
the area near the castle where we were working on Tel Gezer on the west, the
western wall, so to speak, that the pottery indicate a 10th century
support for the ashlars. It dated to the United Kingdom. Solomonic and
Davidic presence at Gezer was a reality for us. Linnenmann
question regarding the science of Higher-Criticism also pertain to the science
of Archaeology of Israel: It is not a
matter of Methodology. It is a matter of Epistemology and even deeper, of
Ontology. The way you
live [ontology] will determine the way you think. The way you think [epistemology]
will determine the way you select your parameters of your methodology and the
way you limiting yourself [minimalist searching for examples] will determine
your product or final outcome: idea, book, article, talk, sermon, lecture
[deontology]. Finkelstein’s
problem is with his epistemology and methodology. Tel Aviv is using
Gestalt-theories superimposed on minimalist exposure of tells in Israel and
Jordan. Fractional exposure of say, Tel Qasile, cannot determine the “rest of
the unexposed tel”. One cannot superimpose the result of excavation in a small
area over the rest of the tel as the reality of the tel. That is the
Gestalt-fallacy of Finkelstein and Ushishkin and other agnostic Archaeologists
in Syro-Palestine. That is why
their minimalist claims are really talk in the wind because more than 2 thirds
of the tells are not yet excavated and not yet to a proper depth.
Koot van Wyk 7th
of November 2022 Sangju Campus Kyungpook
National University South Korea