“When people talk about doing something in Palestine and they learn that it will have to go through Taha, the advice is basically to forget it” because, he says, Taha is “very political” and takes control of projects to consolidate his power.
who is supported by Gerrit van der Kooij, of the Leiden University in the Netherlands archaeologist, there is a professional and academic dispute going on whether the Bible is confirmed by today's science and whether the Bible can be thought of as a credible source and is its chronology reliable (a related previous post).
More information and understanding can be gleaned from a profile on Dr. Eilat Mazar, "Archaeology's Rebel":-
..."I'm suggesting that what we've revealed can be related quite safely to King Solomon." Such a bold biblical connection from a modern Israeli archaeologist is rare. It provokes other archaeologists (except for evangelical ones), but it also exposes how the discipline has changed over the past several decades...
...In 1998, the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the main professional organization for archaeologists working in the Middle East, changed the name of its magazine from Biblical Archaeologist to Near Eastern Archaeology in order to separate itself from that modus operandi...
...also noted [are] objections from Israel Finkelstein, a professor at the Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology...Finkelstein is the chief proponent of the Low Chronology, which re-dates archaeological findings from the 10th century B.C. This method of dating minimizes the significance of David and Solomon, suggesting that they were minor chieftains rather than major rulers. The Low Chronology is based in part on the paucity of archaeological evidence for David and Solomon's rule in Jerusalem itself.
Mazar's team discovered a 3/4-by-1-inch fragment of a clay tablet inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform script. The tablet was dated to the 14th century B.C.—the oldest writing ever found in Jerusalem. "It's very small, but it does tell much because it was written by a very highly skilled scribe," Mazar said. The dating puts it in the period of the Amarna Letters, a cache of correspondence sent from vassal Canaanite kings to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. Six of the letters were from Abdi-Heba, the ruler of Jerusalem.
...Mazar doesn't shy away from being called a biblical archaeologist, as some of her colleagues might. She likes the terminology..."it's not like I'm here because it's some anonymous place. This is Jerusalem, which we know best from the Bible...I don't believe these [modern] archaeologists who ignore the Bible," she said. "To ignore the written sources, especially the Bible—I don't believe any serious scholar anywhere would do this. It doesn't make any sense."
...archaeologists working at sites such as Khirbet Qeiyafa and Khirbet en-Nahas have found new evidence for a centralized Judean monarchy during the time of David and Solomon. The pendulum is swinging away from the biblical minimalists.
Mazar calls the Bible a historical document. But she also says that it needs to be tested and examined. While evangelicals can appreciate her vigorous defense of the Bible as an independent narrative in the field of biblical archaeology, she does not view it as holy writ. "I'm not religious," she said. "The only interest we share is interest in historical sources, either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Everything [in the Bible] is important to me in order to be examined or studied.
...Mazar secured financing and began to dig in 2005 [in the northern section of the City of David]. Soon the diggers uncovered the remains of what she called the Large-Stone Structure. The impressive size of the remains made it clear this was no ordinary building. Diagnostic pottery tests allowed for a 10th century B.C. date. Mazar announced that the most logical conclusion was that she had found the remains of King David's palace...[and] One of her supervisors working inside the Large-Stone Structure spotted raised letters on a flattened ball of clay about the size of a fingernail. Called a bulla, it was the seal impression from an important document. It read, "Belonging to Jehucal, son of Shelemiah, son of Shovi."... Mazar wrote, "I felt as though I had just resurrected someone straight out of the Bible."...[another] bulla was unearthed with the name of one of Jehucal's colleagues: Gedaliah, the son of Pashhur, also mentioned in Jeremiah 38:1. "That is why archaeology is so fascinating," said Mazar. "It's written in the Bible, and then we find these seal impressions. It demonstrates that this biblical story is so accurate."...
Academic and scientific debates are fine. Minimalism or whatever.
Identity theft is another matter. And denying Shiloh as Jewish is not only personally downright insulting but rather highlights to ludicrous of the effort on the one hand, and the simplistic incredulousness displayed by those at the UN, the EU and foreign ministries of countries that delight in pumping the Pals. with money to undermine Jewish nationalism and what Zionism has achieved.
UPDATE
Anyone attemnding this lecture:
'Dangerous Archaeology: The Ethics of Fashioning the Past in Jerusalem'
A public lecture by Professor Raphael Greenberg (UCL and Tel Aviv University), With response by Dr Beverley Butler (who was co-author of Keys to the Past, Keys to the Future: Developing a National Policy for Museums in Palestine. Consultancy paper commissioned by Palestinian Authorities/ UNESCO. She argues for a "need to problematise the ‘over-determined’ assertions (or appropriations) of ‘heritage as cure’ and ‘heritage as healing’ and the accompanying overdetermination at play"). Sponsored by the UCL Centre for Museums, Heritage, and Material Culture Studies, Thursday, November 17th, 6pm, Room 612, Institute of Archaeology, UCL, All welcome.
Abstract
Archaeologist are both producers and interpreters of the
archaeological record. Where ideological pressures are powerful,
archaeologists, their discoveries and their interpretations are often moulded to conform with them. The dangers of a conformist archaeology will be discussed, as will its ethical alternatives, with particular reference to Israel/Palestine and ancient Jerusalem.
In other words, no real debate, no real confrontation of theses.
Rafi is one of the 'antis':
...the ostensibly dovish Ha'aretz reporter Danny Rubinstein saw no shame in closing an op-ed piece critical of Elad's settlement plans by asking rhetorically, "But who can remain unmoved by the important addition to the study of Jerusalem's past that is now being revealed by the City of David digs?"
Tel Aviv University professor of archaeology Rafi Greenberg, for one, can. As he leads the alternative archaeological tours that he and a small group of like-minded Israeli colleagues have begun to conduct around Silwan and the City of David site--in a modest but concerted effort to counter the grossly skewed version put forth by Elad and the archaeologists on its payroll...he is deeply troubled by what is happening--to Silwan, to Israel, to his profession...
He's been a bother for the past few years, aiding the new paradigm of "politicisation of urban heritage" theme or what Noam Chomsky terms (p. 54) ‘the counterrevolutionary
subordination of scholarship’, or, in short:
“The Bible should not be the guiding principle or the yardstick of an archaeological site,” Greenberg says. “Archaeology should tell an independent story
and see here.
Butler, mentioned above, presented a paper in December 2010 which drew, in its first part, on the work of Derrida, Said and others
"who have identified the marginalising capacity of dominant Euro-North American archival and cultural-museological institutions. The second half of my text grounds the above conceptual-ethical issues in the context of Palestinian cultural politics and memory-work, in particular with reference to the imagining of Jerusalem, both as a place of exile and return but also as something to capture, aspire and build. I use this critical framework to draw out the silences in archives and cultural institutions and the epistemological and 'real' violences at play in what Derrida characterises as 'archive trauma' and to respond to Said's call to 're-read' the colonial
archive 'contrapuntally' in order to create an 'othering' of dominant archival discourse. My paper will that what is needed to provoke such an 'othering' is a commitment to rethink the archive in terms of alternative understandings of 'hospitality', 'memory-work' and in terms of what Derrida has referred to as 'heritage dignity'...
Greenberg, along with Butler, Chomsky, Said and Hamdan, is not independent but quite mobilised.
^
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment