An Observation on Israelis and Archaeology

Ariel David of Haaretz reported on a new find, one that appears here and deals with An Israelite Residency at Mahanaim in Transjordan?

It deals with  "the site of Tall adh-Dhahab al-Gharbi in the valley of the az-Zarqa River, the biblical Jabbok, in Jordan. We discuss a group of incised ashlar blocks found there, probably dating to the first half of the 8th century BCE. We suggest that the blocks originated from an official building, a residency or a gate complex, not yet excavated, and propose thematic similarities with visual imagery from Kuntillet ʿAjrud. We then show that this site can be securely identified with biblical Mahanaim and point to several biblical verses that may hint at the existence of a North Israelite residency there."

Credit: Pola et. al./Ruhama Bonfil / The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

And he needed to add two, let's call them 'hesitations'.

The first:

To be clear, no one is proclaiming that evidence has been found confirming the historicity of this or other biblical narratives linked to this region. Rather, the evidence of a strong administrative Israelite presence in Transjordan helps us understand why key foundational biblical stories were set in this area, say the study's authors, Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Haifa University and Prof. Tallay Ornan of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

And the second:

A word of caution must be sounded again: identifying the names of biblical places like Mahanaim or Penuel doesn't necessarily say anything about the historicity of biblical stories that take place there. It simply means that – based on the geography, the modern names of the sites, the biblical descriptions and the archaeological or historical evidence – scholars think that these are the real locations that the authors and readers of the Bible would have had in mind as a setting for their stories.

I am almost tempted to write "God forbid that anything that could seemingly confirm the Biblical narrative would be accepted as as close to the scientific truth as possible.

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