I’m an archaeologist, both by training and professionally (mostly retired now). That means I’m a scientist who studies past human societies and culture. In the United States, where I live, archaeology is classed as a subfield of anthropology, which is why I’ll sometimes call myself an anthropologist. My particular specialty is the archaeology of the historical era American West, so I also have training and experience in interpreting historical documents.
But this is a Christian website, not an archaeological one, so why do I have a a section called Insights from Archaeology? Well, mainly because I decided that Insights from Anthropology, with a Special Emphasis on Archaeology, and on History was too long. Seriously, though, most of the articles on this site are intended to be practical and simple, although sometimes they come from a different perspective than is common (though still Christian one). I’m drawing heavily on my own experience because I’m not a theologian, and I’m not a Bible scholar, but I am the world’s top authority on what God has done in my life.
In this section, however, I’m integrating more actual scholarship, because it’s within my expertise. I’m not qualified to offer an opinion on which of several possible translations of Romans 8:28 most closely follows the Greek grammar, nor can I offer an opinion on the use of dialectic in Barthian theology, but I am able to show how my own field can offer insights to help understand and apply the Scriptures. That’s what this section of the website is all about.
Biblical Archaeology
It’s important to understand at the start, however, that archaeology is not a subfield of biblical studies. Although archaeology has (far too often) been used either to defend or to attack the accuracy of the Bible, both of these are misuses. The proper archaeological study of past cultures requires taking the evidence on its own terms. It is not valid to use it as a means of “proof texting” either for or against any particular preexisting opinion. Using it that way almost necessarily involves cherry picking of evidence, and making decisions about how to weight archaeological findings based primarily on whether or not they support the desired outcome. This is simply not a way in which good science can be done. It also commits the investigator to a particular understanding of the archaeological evidence, which may well be undermined by future findings.
Properly used, however, archaeology can provide insight into past cultures, which can help us determine how the biblical texts would have been understood by their original audience. It can also constrain modern interpretations by ruling in, or out, certain readings, and can help us understand the meaning of practices that are foreign or obscure to modern readers. But archaeology is not the handmaid of apologetics, whether theistic or atheistic.
I like what Old Testament scholars John H. Walton and Andrew E. Hill (2018:183) had to say about archaeology:
Archaeology is a discipline independent of biblical studies. Although archaeology in the Middle East has often served those in biblical studies, and at times in its history has been motivated and undertaken by those whose interests were in biblical studies, it is not an arm of biblical studies. It is a scientific discipline that is driven by its own ends and means. This is why some today are uncomfortable with the label “biblical archaeology” – archaeology cannot be carried out with integrity if it is just targeting the Bible. As a science, it has a much larger task to fulfill as it focuses on recovering the material culture and successive lifestyles of the people of antiquity.
Inequality in Ancient Israel
An example of the proper use of archaeology in understanding the context in which the Bible was written is an article by Avraham Faust (2018) about the archaeological evidence for social stratification in the Middle East during the time of the divided monarchy.
In the article, Faust explains how he studied houses at dozens of archaeological sites. He divided the houses into four classes based on size, construction quality, and shared walls, then graphed the results. What he discovered was a significant amount of social stratification in urban locations – cities and large towns – but essentially none in rural areas. Faust attributes the difference to the presence of hired labor in urban areas. He also notes that this implies that when the Biblical prophets denounced the exploitation of the poor (Isaiah 3:14-15 is one example), they were looking at what was happening in urban areas, not in rural villages.
I would also add that this finding implies that in Israelite society at that time, it was effectively impossible for individual households to accumulate large amounts of land, which is what we would expect if the Years of Jubilee were being observed (Leviticus 25:8-13). Archaeology can’t reveal in this case whether Israelite villages actually followed the specific laws about land and inheritance given in the Law of Moses, rather than some other rules, but we can infer that whatever rules were being followed led to farm land being distributed among a large number of households instead of just a few, and that the distribution at the level of the village was roughly equal. There were no large estates or landlords.
Faust’s monograph is an example of the proper application of archaeology. He used archaeological methods to address an archaeological question about a culture in the past, not to try and prove or disprove anything in the Bible. The results do provide some insight into the way certain Biblical texts would have been understood by their original intended audience, however, and also give us a more precise picture of who the original intended audience of those particular passages was; that this message was aimed specifically at wealthy urban dwellers.
Creatures of Culture
Humans are both cultural creatures, and creators of culture. That’s the way God designed us. The first two assignments God gave to Adam, to cultivate the garden (Genesis 2:15) and to name the animals (Genesis 2:19-20), are both cultural acts. The first human interaction in the Bible was a marriage (Genesis 2:22-24) – also a cultural act. We experience the world through the “lens” of our culture, often encoded in the languages we speak. It’s our language, for example, that allows us to categorize the world around us. When I say that a whale is a mammal, I’m not just saying that whales and cows share certain defined traits, but that the traits whales share with cows are more important for our purposes than the traits whales share with tuna, or submarines, or bananas. So important, in fact, that Carl Linnaeus gave a name to this similarity. This assigning of importance to some similarities rather than others is a cultural decision.
It’s very hard for people who are only familiar with one culture to grasp just how much of what they think is obvious and self-evidently true is neither obvious nor self-evident to someone who grew up in a different culture. To use a common metaphor, we are like fish, swimming in the water of our culture. It’s hard to recognize many of our own culture’s beliefs about reality unless somebody points them out.
Slaves to Righteousness
Take slavery, for example. If you’re like me, you have an extremely negative response to anything that has to do with slaves or slavery. So what do we do with passages of Scripture like, “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness?” (Romans 6:17-18). Am I supposed to be thankful that I’m a slave of righteousness? But it gets worse a few verses later: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” (Romans 6:22). If I’m uncomfortable with the idea of being a slave, I’m much more so with the idea that God would want to keep slaves.
You see, for modern English speakers, and especially Americans, the word “slave” has a lot of historical baggage that it didn’t have for the people Paul was writing to. More than that (as well as partly because of that), we use the word in a very restrictive way. There are many situations of enforced obedience that we do not call “slavery.” For example, we don’t call people under contract “slaves” even though they can face legal penalties for failing to do what the contract requires. And although some contracts can be sold, we don’t say that the person who is under that contract is sold. Military personnel can be sent to prison for failure to obey an order, yet we don’t consider them slaves, even if they were drafted and did not enlist voluntarily. And while political activists may sometimes talk about being enslaved by the government, in everyday use we don’t call the ordinary obligations to pay taxes and obey the law “slavery.”
So is Paul thinking in broader terms than are encompassed by the English word “slave?” Any decent commentary, or even a quick glance at the Blue Letter Bible, will quickly prove that the answer is yes. The Greek word he uses does include the kind of slavery that existed in the American South before the Civil War, but it also includes servants, attendants, or basically anyone whose job it is to put another’s needs ahead of their own. And Paul himself tells us what he means by “slave” in Romans 6:16: “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?”
Once I take into account the cultural context of this passage, the meaning is clear: Because of Christ I am no longer forced to obey sin, but I have been set free to obey God. And that is something I can give thanks for.
These are just two examples. Archaeology, anthropology more broadly, and history are valuable tools to help us understand God’s word and apply it in societies (like our own) that are very different from the ones that first received it. That’s what this section of the website is all about.
References Cited
Faust, Avraham
2018 Social Stratification in the Iron Age Levant. In Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament, edited by Jonathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber and John H. Walton, pp. 482-491. Baker Academic, Grand Rapids.
Walton, John H. and Andrew E. Hill
2013 Old Testament Today 2nd edition. Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids.