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Bill Deaver

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American archaeologist specializing in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times

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1966: Ph.D. from Harvard

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1975 to 2002: Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson

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books

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"The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel"

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Deals with the 8th century BC and shows how those people whose lives are not reflected in the Bible actually lived.

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"Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel"

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examines what he calls folk religion in ancient Israel

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"What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel"

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this book contains two different works: one is a helpful introduction to the world of Syro-Palestinian archaeology and its possible interaction with biblical studies, while the other is a diatribe against a certain cadre of scholars and the philosophical background they represent, it will be rare to find a nonspecialist reader who has interest in the former but is also willing to dig through the latter

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current book: "An Archeological History of Ancient Israel and Judah"

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600 page book

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based on the material cultural evidence rather than on the Biblical texts

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does not ignore the biblical texts but argues that they are secondary to archeology

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"what I did was pretend I never heard of the Bible although I'm trained as classically as you are"

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answers the question: what would we know about this area and time of history if we didn't have the Bible?

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compared to the 1960s, today we know much more about the archeological history of Israel

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the Bible is limited in what it can tell us about the area of Israel in the Iron Age, but archeology is open-ended

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Israel is one of the more researched areas of the world when it comes to archeology

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I tried to keep the controversies in the footnotes and allow the text to flow

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80% comes from archeology and 20% from the Biblical texts

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example which shows that there is much more archeological information than what is mentioned in the Bible

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in the 9th century, Omri established a new dynasty in the Northern Kingdom and moved the capital to Samaria

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the Book of Kings gives seven verses to his whole life

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Biblical writers say basically that he was not a nice guy

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there is a rich history that can be compiled of him based on archeological finds such as the Syrian records

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the Davidic Era

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we have at least one extra-Biblical text referring to a David of that time

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the Biblical stories seem larger than life, the question is who was David, assuming that he lived

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the later you come in time, the more knowledgeable Biblical writers are

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when they talk about the fall of Jerusalem in 586, they were there

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the farther back in time you go the more difficult it is to read the Biblical stories just at face value

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they are probably not completely made up, but they are exaggerated

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the Bible is didactic literature so these stories are most always moving in a certain direction, usually to teach the readers a moral lesson, it isn't interested in exactly what happened

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archeology is a primary sources because

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it is interested in exactly what happened

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it is closer to the events that happened

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it is expanding over time as there are new discoveries and studies

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there needs to be more collaboration between archeologists and more traditional Biblical scholars