When we started writing more about archaeology in the beginning of this blog, we talked about this problem. Far too many archaeologists tend to use artifacts to create their own vision of what took place in history.
One of the biggest archaeologists that do this is Dr. Wm. Dever. We have read his books, and articles, seen interviews and listened to some of his lectures. he is one of the guiltiest so far.
In fact, his 2009 BAS lecture series How Archaeology Illuminates the Bible is the best evidence for this trend. His foundation for doing this is his mantra that Archaeology is an unedited research field.
That is not true. One reason for responding that way is that archaeologists edit the artifacts, ancient structures, and manuscripts according to their belief system. The discoveries are all vulnerable to what the discoverer decides what they found says.
It is not like they get ancient contemporary manuscripts detailing every object they find and how it was used, who made it, and why. Everything is left up to the archaeologists’ subjective opinion.
The second reason we said what we said is because the archaeologist has no idea when the artifact or manuscript was placed where it was found, who placed or left it there, or if it remained untouched for 2000+ years or not.
The only information they have is broken pottery, intact artifacts, remains of buildings, and either whole or fragmented manuscripts, etc. Science cannot help them determine the answers to any questions they may have about what they find.
Science is of no value in archaeology as position, depth and so on do not provide any real answers as there are too many variables involved. His lecture series is 8 lectures long and they cover topics that have a broad territory.
One we were disappointed in was his lecture on Everyday Life in Biblical Times. He spent very little of the hour of lecture 6 on everyday life. Instead, he complained more about what the bible left out than revealing what everyday life was like.
This was a topic he could not know much about as again, all we have are the material remains of ancient societies not what everyday people did or how they lived. The gaps were filled with his imaginative conjurings.
He also did not understand the Bible as Dr. Dever complained frequently throughout his lectures that the Bible did not touch on this aspect of ancient life or that aspect and so on.
The Bible is not a book about ancient life. It is a book of revelation. Not only revealing the past but of God’s interaction with his creation. You will not find much information on ancient life in the OT or NT because that is not the purpose of the Bible.
The Bible is also revealing God’s commands, instructions, and information that his creation needs to know in order to live a holy life. It will not talk that much about other religions nor will it accept them for those other religions are false.
God is telling people how to live and what to avoid if they want to live with him. Then he lives it up to their free choice of which path they will walk. The Bible is not a book written by elites, as Dr. Dever claims nor is it a book that is an ideal of how the elites want their world to be like.
He misunderstands the Bible greatly and archaeology is not help[ing him understand it. In fact, archaeology is being used to lead Dr. Dever away from the truth. We saw that in so many of his erroneous conclusions.
One of those conclusions was his idea that the ancient Hebrews were polytheistic and not monotheistic. he gets that from the so-called figurines that are found throughout the Promised Land as well as the many accounts where the ancient Hebrews strayed from their holy instruction.
He puts the practice of polytheism and chasing after other gods prior to the command to have no other gods before God. In his crafting of his ancient past, he gives no thought to the fact that the Israelites started out monotheistic and changed their minds and adopted pagan religions after they got into the Promised Land.
But this is the way it is with unbelieving archaeologists. They get it wrong just about every time as they do not want the real past, they want one more to their liking.
One of the claims Dr. Deber and other archaeologists make is that the ancient world was illiterate. They have no evidence to back up those claims. They base it on the fact that they are not discovering what they want to find to make the declaration that the ancients could read and write.
They do not realize that future archaeologists may start digging up different parts of America and come to the conclusion that only the Washington elites were literate. They would base that claim on the fact that everyday people do not leave any written material behind.
The everyday people may have left written material behind but over the future centuries that material was destroyed or rotted away. We disagree with those archaeologists as most ancient and modern people do not write books and have them in libraries, etc.
We cannot tell the extent of their literacy rate because the evidence has disappeared or been misassigned by modern archaeologists. Someone once asked, when seeing the large number of inscriptions, monuments, and other royal written material, just who were they writing to if the population was illiterate?
Obviously, the kings, etc., were writing to the common people because they were literate and they wanted their people to know how great they were. These items were certainly not written to the elites as the elites, like today, would be a minute minority.
Then as you listen to the 8 lectures, you will find that Dr. Dever reads into the different discoveries what he wanted them to say and not what they actually said. We saw it too many times and it made us not want to finish the lecture series.
This is a common practice because too many unbelieving archaeologists want a past they create not the past that was. The erroneous conclusions go on and on with Dr. Dever as he seeks to remove God from history as well as the history of the Israelites.
The lecture series was mistitled as it is not archaeology that illuminates the Bible. Instead, it is the Bible that illuminates archaeology. Archaeology is not an infallible research field even though Dr. Dever thinks it is.
It is shaped by the subjective thoughts and beliefs of modern archaeologists who often disagree with each other. That fact does not make archaeology superior to the Bible or God.
It makes archaeology a research field that is easy to manipulate because corroborating evidence is often not found, ignored, or credited to some other era. That is not a good source of information to base one’s life.
People may say that the Bible is easy to manipulate and there are many who do it, except the Bible has a true record that can be used to expose those manipulative errors.
Archaeology does not have that true record and the errors cannot be readily exposed.
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