...the most notable feature of the new biblical archeology is that it is largely unapologetic. Some of the largest projects are undertaken precisely on sites whose finds relate directly to questions of biblical history...Three excavations may characterize the new biblical archeology.
At Khirbet Qeiyafa, on a ridge overlooking the Elah Valley southwest of Jerusalem, Professor Yossi Garfinkel of Hebrew University is revealing a unique, short-lived, and massively fortified town dating to around 1000 B.C.E. The location, and the site's two gates, appear to match the biblical description of the Judean site of Sha'arayim. A short text found on a potsherd in 2008, while not yet in fully developed Hebrew language or script, appears to contain the words "judge" and "king." Guarding a primary route into Jerusalem, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Qeiyafa was fortified against the rival Philistines to the west. Given the site's date, a connection with King David (a biblical hero but thus far a shadowy archeological figure) is tantalizing, although obviously still unproven. What is more obvious is that a high level of planning and organization was necessary to build this site, precisely in the place and time when we might expect from biblical texts that the early Israelite state found itself threatened by the Philistines.
Some six and a half miles west of Qeiyafa, Professor Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University is excavating Tel es-Safi, in all likelihood the Philistine city of Gath. This enormous site contains a long sequence of settlement going back to at least 2500 B.C.E., and shows the advent of Philistines after 1200 B.C.E. With their Aegean lifestyles, the Philistines appear to have assumed control of existing Canaanite cities and then gradually assimilated. Dramatic finds continue to pour out of the site...
Finally, on the brown, dry plains of the northern Negev, a few miles from the town of Sderot, is the tiny site of Khirbet Summeily. There a team directed by Professors Jeffrey Blakely of the University of Wisconsin and James Hardin of Mississippi State University have begun excavation of a rural Judean village of the eighth century B.C.E. In its first season, among other techniques, the project is using advanced digital systems to record the precise three-dimensional location of finds along with images directly into a computer database...
Many will stop here and observe with satisfaction that the Bible has been "proven" by archeology. But this is far from the case. Whether the Bible is regarded as divine writ or dispassionate history, the relationship of those texts and the archeological finds cannot be credulously assumed. To their credit, most biblical archeologists today understand this, in greater or lesser degrees, which is why serious and healthy disagreement exists on virtually all issues.
Still, though it is as scientifically oriented as any other branch of archeology, biblical archeology remains typecast as a servant to biblical history and theology. But archeology globally is discovering with chagrin that public interest matters...believers find their faith confirmed, while non-believers are provoked and occasionally enraged. But the majority of people in between are stimulated to ponder the questions of just what realities are embodied in the biblical texts, the relationship between religion and science, and, most fundamental of all, the relationship between the past and the future.
UPDATE
Check out a horned altar.
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