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 8^th 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 (4^th 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 10^th 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

7^th of November 2022

Sangju Campus

Kyungpook National University

South Korea