The Quest for the Historical Israel ─ Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel

Three decades of dialogue, discussion, and debate within the interrelated disciplines of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, Israelite history, and Hebrew Bible on the question of the relevance of the biblical account for reconstructing early Israel's history have created the need for a balanced articulation of the issues and their prospective resolutions. This book brings together for the first time and under one cover, the currently emerging "centrist" paradigm as articulated by Israel Finkelstein and Amihai Mazar, two leading figures in the field of early Israelite history and archaeology. Although these two authors advocate distinct views of early Israel's history, they nevertheless share the position that the material cultural data, the biblical traditions, and the ancient Near Eastern written sources are all significantly relevant to the historical quest for Iron Age Israel. The results of their research are featured here in accessible, parallel syntheses of the historical reconstruction of early Israel with the aim of facilitating comparison and contrast of their respective interpretations. The two histories presented in Quest are based on invited lectures the authors delivered in October 2005 at the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism's Sixth Biennial Colloquium in Detroit, Michigan.

Israel Finkelstein is Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. He is Co-director of the Megiddo Excavations and the co-author of David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition and The Bible Unearthed, Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origins of Its Sacred Texts (both from Free Press).Amihai Mazar is Professor of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he holds the Eleazar Sukenik Chair in the Archaeology of Israel. His ongoing projects include a series of publications on the Tel Batash (Timnah) excavations and the Beth Shean Valley Archaeological Project. He is the author of Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (Anchor Bible Reference).Brian B. Schmidt is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient West Asia at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition (Eisenbrauns).