The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts

The authors suceeded into raising questions-but thats all- the haven't succeeded into disproving the bible.

It's very hard to score the work in the scientific area especially if you are not a professional in this field. Nevertheless this book gives the fresh insight and powerful arguing about the Book that affected entire Judeo-Christian civilization. From other hand, it reveals the real (at least more documented) meaning of the classic history picture. Technically it does not touch the question of the God existence - there is all about the Book, about the Myth and the Reality. You can believe to authors or you can argue to them but most of readers will be definitely not apathetic.

A meticulous examination devoid of mythological leanings, based in the accuracy of measurable examinations yielding erudite conclusions throughout. Such works should not dismiss ones want of faith; as unbiased research only affirms the footing of facts which are truly there and those which in word or deed, never were. Simply put, this is a sophisticated, wonderful work.

Ancient Israel was not an empire of great cities but was a tiny kingdom. The spell-binding saga of the Exodus was not a historic epic but was a moving product of human imagination. Many of the stories happened in a different era than portrayed in the Bible; many were exaggerated and misrepresented; some didn't happen at all.

Here's just one example of how we know this:

The stories of the patriarchs are loaded with camels but archeology clearly tells us camels were not domesticated and widely used until centuries later. The camel caravan in the Joseph story carried gum, balm, & myrhh, products of 7th & 8th century BCE trade during the Assyrian empire, but not before. Likewise, numerous cities, significant in the 7th & 8th centuries BCE, were mentioned in Genesis, but were either non-existent or were merely insignificant villages at the time.

This is just a tiny part of the voluminous evidence that tells a story much more mundane than does the Bible. The stories of the patriarchs reflect concerns of a seventh century Israel - projected onto the lives of legendary figures from a mythical past. The first archeologists studied the holy land with a "Bible in one hand and a shovel in the other." William Albright provided us with the first book representing more modern archeological methods in 1945. F&S have provided us with the first comprehensive update to that book - well worth the time of anyone interested in this subject.

The thesis set forth in this book is not new for those who have been following modern research on the Tanach (Hebrew Bible), and the bibliography is not the kind one would expect in a serious scholarly treatise.
However, the book was not written with the intention of being an original contribution to the scholarly discourse - ecen so, in some ways it is - but to provide the educated reader with the latest theorization about the origins of the Tanch, in particular its historiographical literature, and this it does with great success.
The writing is lucid and readable, the ideas clearly presented. The bibliography at the end of the book is basic, but it includes some of the most important biblical research literature.
I recommend this book to all my Bible students (in its Hebrew translation), and in one of my courses, several chapters are required reading.
Dr. Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College
Beit Berl, Israel