Biblical Archaeology, And Several Ways To Do It Wrong

Two recent stories in HP give examples of what I would call poorly-done Biblical archaeology, and a third, a poor response to soundly-done archaeology. The problem in all three cases is a premature assumption of the accuracy of Biblical texts. In one story, Dina Avshalom-GorniIn says she may have found the place where Jesus met Mary Magdalen She assumes that the New Testament story of Jesus meeting Mary Magdalen is accurate, and then speculates about a find based on that assumption.

Then there's this story about a recent find by James Tabor. Tabor is speculating that the find may have belonged to Sadducees. That speculation is based in part on the assumption that the Sadducees were enemies of Jesus and conspired to bring about his death, just as described in the New Testament. I think that all that the NT tells us for certain about the Sadducees is that its authors were hostile to them.

In the third case, archaeologist Ken Dark's speculation that he may have found the town of Dalmanutha, mentioned in the Gospel of Mark and no other known text of the era of Jesus, who's rushing to conclusions: Dark, or Joel L Watts, who insists that Dalmanutha never existed, based in large part upon his conviction that every single deviation from literal geographical accuracy in Mark has been corrected by the author of the Gospel of Matthew? I'd say it's Watts. Not that Watts even distrusts Mark's accuracy, strictly speaking: he speculates that Mark is not so much making mistakes as taking artistic license, and that making up the place-name Dalmanutha is an example of this license. It seems much less farfetched to me that Dalmanutha may have existed, regardless of whether Mark was right that Jesus traveled there, or, as Watts says, Matthew was right in saying that journey was to Magdala, or neither of the above.

In any case, between Dina Avshalom-GorniIn, James Tabor, Joel L Watts and Ken Dark, Dark is the only one not making speculations based upon the assumption of the accuracy of Biblical texts.

Ken Dark Said That PERHAPS Dalmanutha Has Been Found

Dark mentioned here that his archaeological team may have found the town of Dalmanutha, a town known until now only from a mention in the Gospel of Mark.

Joel L Watts thinks Dark is full of it. In a commentary on Huffington Post, Watts seems to be making some rash assumptions: that Mark's style follows Lucan's. (Lucan's only surviving work, his poem on the Roman Civil War, was left unfinished at his death in AD 65, and Mark's Gospel was written within a dozen years of that. Lucan was popular, but did his influence on other writers extend as far as Judea and Galilee that fast? Hmm.) That Matthew not mentioning Dalmanutha argues against its existence. That Dark is affected by a compulsion to "to locate everything mentioned in Holy Writ." Pardon me, but Watts seems to suffer from a compulsion to dismiss Dalmanutha right away as a fictional literary device. What's wrong with saying that for the moment we don't know whether the newly-excavated site is Dalmanutha or not? I'm perfectly comfortable not knowing for sure yet, just as comfortable as I am not being sure yet whether there was an historical Jesus. Sometimes -- many times -- the only responsible position an historian can take is to say, it could have been like this, or like this, we don't know, so why not try to learn more about the subject, and in the meantime keep an open mind?

I see a widespread compulsion to oversimplify things. For example, in the comments on Watts' Huffington Post article, one reader declares: "The Bible is FICTION!" This simpleminded compulsion to reduce all 2000 pages or so of the Bible to one two-syllable all-caps word is often to be seen these days, and this particular instance wouldn't have been worth mentioning except that it comes from a HuffPost blogger. That's depressing.

Of course, neither Watts nor HP's simpleminded new atheist blogger betrays any particular interest in archaeology per se. Watts is a Christian theologian, still insisting, here and now in the 21st century, that The Answers Are In There (in the Bible that is), and the new Blogger appears to be a professional atheist with no other notable qualifications for employment. Dark is the only one of three with expertise in the field of archaeology -- and the only one of the three who seems to have an open mind about whether the site in question is Dalmanutha or not. The only one of the three who appears to intend to investigate the matter further before coming to a conclusion. The only one of the three whose motives for investigating the matter appear to be actually archaeological and not theological. Regular readers of The Wrong Monkey know that I have a very low opinion of theology. Let me just take the opportunity to point out that my opinion of atheists who have nothing better to do than to endlessly and fruitlessly argue with theologians is about as low. There are much more interesting, much more substantial things in the world, much more rewarding topics of conversation. (Archaeology, for example.)