The Bible as History

The Bible as History: An Incredible Adventure 4000 Years Into the Past to Reveal the Historical Foundations of the Book of Books, Werner Keller, translated from the German by William Neal, Revised and with a postscript by Joachim Rehork, New Material translated from the German by B.H. Rasmussen, Bantam Books, New York, 1981

Werner Keller has a deep knowledge of archaeological digs, Biblical claims, naturalistic explanations, and ancient customs and history. He does not have a great deal of faith.

In The Bible as History he examines the finds up to his time that related to history as related by the Bible. He compares names, dates, locations, people involved, and similar histories as related by concurrent civilizations.

His writing is rather confusing. He will discuss an archaeological dig that is from the appropriate time as the Bible, the location named in the Bible, the people named in the Bible, and how documentation of that civilization discusses things and confirms what the Bible says...then he deconstructs it and explains that it can't really mean that because...well, his becauses are weak at best, them being universally contrived and unnecessary.

He also displays a distinct lack of belief that anything supernatural can have occurred. He feels compelled to offer naturalistic explanations for numerous miracles...such as the quail and manna consumed in the wilderness by the Israelites. A few passages from his book really caught my attention.

The first one is among the most fascinating anecdotes I have ever read. For those who do not know me I am a history major and have read extensively on every theatre of World War I. Yet I had never heard of the battle won by Major Allenby of the British to outmaneuver and defeat the Turks. He was about to fight a battle at Michmash and remembered the name. He read the Biblical account in I Samuel 13, copied the tactics of Jonathan who took a secret passage to surprise and destroy the Philistines. Using the Biblical account to find that passage, Allenby and his men used the same secret pass to outmaneuver and crush the Turks. (p. 187-188)

Later Keller reveals much. He discusses the events from the books of I & II Maccabees as being Scripture on the same level of being Scripture as the books of Genesis to Malachi and Matthew to Revelations. They are not. They are part of the Apocrypha...rejected by all until the Catholics sought to destroy Martin Luther. It was not until the Council of Trent in 1546 that even the Catholics accepted them as canonical books. Essentially nobody else does. Well, Keller does...(p. 334 & following)

In the post-script Joachim Roark makes some interesting assertions. "There is no lack of scholars - among them historians, theologians, philologists and archaeologists - who after conscientious examination of the Biblical tradition have come to the conclusion that fundamentally it is of secondary importance whether the facts reported in the Bible are correct or not. (p. 433)

"In any case, the emphasis lay on getting the message across and not on the accuracy of historical details." (p. 434)

He does admit some people strongly disagree, saying that if the Bible is inaccurate historically then the faith points it espouses cannot be true. However, his discussion of this point gets bogged down in showing he has no understanding of Scripture.

So there you see the good and the bad of the book. It is heavily researched, but then only skims the surface of the discoveries. It was written prior to many numerous discoveries that show how his deconstructions are not only illogical but based on bad information (the most famous being the existence of camels in Egypt long before Abraham entered the timeline). It is outdated, it has a lot of passages that indicate the authors confusion and lack of cohesion and provides very little in the way of useful information.

I really, really wanted to love this book. I anticipated finding an informative, intelligent discussion of an area of research which many people seldom take into account. I was disappointed all the way around.