Archaeology in Israel: Ya Dig?

            17 Days from now I will be on my first flight. Altogether I am counting about 23 hours in the air before reaching Tel Aviv. You can bet that this traveler will have plenty of motion sickness remedies in her zebra-print backpack.

As I prepare to visit so many historical places, I’d like to take this opportunity to organize my thoughts and to get on the same page as my readers. Dr. Shaw shared with us an article from National Geographic’s December 2010 edition that I would encourage you all to take a look at.             http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/12/david-and-solomon/draper-text/2

The article talks about the controversy surrounding archaeology in the Holy Land.  Jewish Israelis hold fast to the Old Testament accounts of King David and their national identity as God’s chosen people. With this in mind, archaeology becomes less about objective discovery and more about proving the Bible. On the other hand, Palestinians are resentful about Israeli claims on territory they have lived in for generations. Some scholars feel that biblical accounts should not be taken literally and criticize efforts to prove the bible as attempts to validate Israel’s existence.

In short, either King David is real and Israel is right, or the Old Testament is a fish story and the Palestinians are. Of course there are many other important details, but this is the problem I want to focus on.

As a Bible-believing Christian, I feel first drawn to the first argument. I believe that King David was who the Bible said he was. I believe that the places and people talked about in the Old Testament were real and tangible. At the same time, I think that any reasonable person recognizes that in most arguments there is a little bit of right and a little bit of wrong on both sides. I believe that God wants my heart, my soul, and my brain. It is so important to read the Bible within a cultural context. We have to recognize that the way we understand the writing of history may be different from the ancient Hebrew understanding.

I feel like I gained a tiny understanding of this when I named this blog. Being a little bit familiar with Spanish, it was my understanding that language was like a coin. On one side you have English, and on the other you have whatever it is you want to translate to.  “Dog” flips over into “Perro” and easily flips back, unless of course you share my utter inability to rrrroll my rrrr's . I failed to think about the fact that Spanish and English are both Latin-based languages, they’re in the same family. Hebrew is from another part of the world, totally unrelated to what I know language to be like. This turns my coin idea into a rubix cube. “Adventure” didn’t go straight into “Harpatka’ah”, it went to Hebrew letters. Then there were different types of “adventure”, different parts of speech, different spellings. After some persistent Googling, I still don’t know if I got it right. Is it not reasonable to think about the Old Testament this way? That maybe we have to leave a little room? That maybe we aren’t going to find hard evidence of everything we read? Maybe we don’t know everything?

I think that the prospect of seeing biblical sites is very exciting. However, I find the use of archaeology to prove the bible a little manipulative. I don’t need to prove the greatness of Israel to believe in the greatness of my God. He picked that scrawny country on purpose. As far as I’m concerned, we ought to seek truth and justice where it can be found and chill out where it cannot. Maybe if these conflicting scientists could put their emotional attachments to the issue aside, we could really get somewhere.

Having barely expressed what I set out to say, I think I’ve likely reached the end of your attention span. Thanks for staying with me. On a lighter note, I got a fantastic new notebook to write in on the trip. I anticipate this blog getting far more exciting when things get rolling.