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Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Text and History: Reassessing the Relationship between the Bible and Archaeological Findings

https://denverseminary.edu/resources/news-and-articles/text-and-history-reassessing-the-relationship-between-the-bible-and-archaeological-findings-a-review-essay/

This is basically a critique of secular biblical archeology. The primary value lies in the correctives provided by Hess rather than the book under review.

4 comments:

  1. Have you gone through his OT and/or his book on Biblical history? I am just curious as to how they stack up compared to Walton or Longman.

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    Replies
    1. He has a very strong focus on biblical archaeology corroborate OT history, making allowance for the gaps and ambiguities in the archeological record. Longman is more literary and theological. Walton is a fine OT scholar who coauthored a large OT intro. I prefer Hess's intro. Walton still does some good stuff, like his commentary on Job. But he's hit and miss. Longman is more of a lightweight theologically moderate popularizer.

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    2. Ok. I see a lot of anti Walton and would agree with many of the points you brought up. i.e. Noel Weeks' review of his first Lost World book tore it to shreds and said it was completely wrong. Would his work on 'prehistory' be a miss?

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    3. Walton is hit-n-miss. His commentary on Genesis has some good material. He put a lot of original thought into that commentary. His subsequent writing on Genesis has gone downhill from there.

      In his monograph on Noah's flood, he made a useful point about the role of hyperbole in the flood account, but he could have done that in a few pages. The book as a whole was poor.

      He wrote an interesting commentary on Job.

      His Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament has useful background material but he overemphasizes continuity at the expense of discontinuity.

      Sometimes he tries too hard to say something revolutionary, based on how the OT supposed belongs to a "lost world" unless we're familiar with biblical archeology. That's overstated.

      He's triied to create a wedge for theistic evolution in Gen 2-3. That labors to combine two divergent paradigms.

      His attempt to restrict the scope of inerrancy using speech act theory is ad hoc and philosophically he's in over his head when he goes there.

      The OT intro he coauthored with Hill is better than Longman's. It has some competition from the OT intro coauthored by Merrill, Rooker, and Grisanti, although that's shorter.

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