Talk:William G. Dever

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Since there has been a lot of recent debate in the scholarly community on where Dever's sympathies lie (especially in regard to his worldview, vis-a-vis his work), perhaps it would be good to add another quote that further clarifies his positions. Several years ago, Dever wrote an essay entitled "Contra Davies" that, among other things, sought to do this very thing; here's a quote that we could perhaps use:

"...I am not reading the Bible as Scripture... I am in fact not even a theist.

...

My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information. That hardly makes me a 'maximalist.'"

HeretiKc 20:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Festschrifts

May contain prefaces with further biographical information:

• Beth Alpert Nakhai (ed.), The Near East in the Southwest: Essays in Honor of William G. Dever. Atlanta: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2003. ISBN 0897570650

• Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel (eds.), Confronting the past : archaeological and historical essays on ancient Israel in honor of William G. Dever. Winona Lake, Ind. : Eisenbrauns, 2006. ISBN 1575061171

Jheald 11:48, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Date

The date of birth of Dever is not clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 14:13, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

There are gaps in the biography of Dever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 14:16, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Categories

Why is he listed in the categories as being a Jew, and a convert to Judaism from Protestantism, when in the article he is quoted as saying he is not a theist?J'onn J'onzz (talk) 04:58, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Dever and his assessment of Biblical historical reliability and Syro-Palestinian archaeology

I personally feel Dever is overstating his case a bit with respect to archaeology not only failing to confirm much of the Bible, but in fact being a major source to undermine it. He writes:

"But today there is a deepening “historiographical crisis” in both archaeology and Biblical studies in Israel, Europe and America—a creeping skepticism and a loss of confidence in our ability to confirm anything. The Hebrew Bible is only a “social construct,” a figment of the tortured imagination of later Judaism in an identity crisis of the Hellenistic era (the fiction naively adopted, of course, by Christians). The result, says Baruch Halpern, is to “erase Israel from history.” And it is not only the European Biblical “revisionists”—the most extreme of the minimalists—who appear to be the culprits, but also many Israeli and American archaeologists. Lay people may not have noticed, but nearly all of us archaeologists have become “minimalists” of a sort." [Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 32]

He continues:

"Until about a generation ago, we all spoke confidently about William F. Albright’s “archaeological revolution...Not only has modern archaeology not helped to confirm the tradition, it appears to some to be part of the process that has undermined it. This will be unwelcome news to BAR’s readers, but it’s a not-so-well kept secret among professional archaeologists."

With respect to the "'larger than life' portraits of the Bible" that are "unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence", he cites the Conquest as having no evidence and somewhat obliquely implies the Exodus was exaggerated, and by default the various stories (Sarah's conception of Isaac, Moses' miracles, anything a non-Biblical maximalist may imagine).

I'd like to make the observation that his generalizations strike me as oversimplifications. In the Anchor Bible Dictionary he opines about Syro-Palestinian archaeology being treated as a sub-department of Biblical Studies and that the American archaeologists there consider Israel during the biblical period as being unique in a "superhistorical" way - quite the contradiction between his generalization in 2006, only 15 years after his article in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, and much more recent than his claim that Albright's "pro-Bible archaeology" was rejected two generations ago.

Dated as it is, one has to only read Edward F. Campbell and David Noel Freedman's (ironically the same editor as the Anchor Bible Dictionary), The Biblical Archaeologist (Vol. 2; 1964), to understand how WRONG Dever is. For example, the earliest traditions about the Patriarchs are completely confirmed where the evidence will allow through documents discovered at Mari and so on:

1. The names Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph are typical names of the period and places. (The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol.2, p.16)

2. Sarah gives Hagar, a concubine, to Abraham due to her own infertility. This was exactly what the custom was there at the time. Although Eliezer was a slave of Abraham's, he was his heir, just like in those times. (Ibid., p.22). The custom was that if the wife would have a child, the servant-woman who had children should not be exiled, which is why Abraham was so upset with Sarah. (p.23)

3. The Hurrians (biblical sons of Hamor/Horites) were the nobles of Western Asian cities (i.e. Shechem), thus how Shechem was able to convince the entire town to circumcise themselves so he would have a bride.

4. The blessing of Isaac upon Jacob was legally binding even in a literate society like Mari! Also, a similar case exists in the documents of Mari to Esau's selling of his birthright for a bowl of soup - a brother had sold his inheritance for three sheep, no doubt induced by similarly dire circumstances that were exploited by the other brother. (Ibid. pp.23-24, 27).

5. The situation with Laban and Jacob's toil under him as well as every detail of the story completely matches the situation of the time. (pp.25ff.)

Many more examples exist that completely contradict the general impression Dever tries to create with his assessment. But what of other events such as the Exodus and the Conquest? In the case of the Exodus, the ancients were not in a habit of recording their losses and often turned them into victories (so the chroniclers of Shalmaneser III regarding the Battle of Qarqar which he most certainly lost - Ibid. p.158). Secondly, one cannot expect archaeological evidence in the case of a nomadic, non-sedentary people as the Hebrews were for a mere 40 years during the Exodus. This is perfectly exemplified with the origin of the Ammonites. Hence, George M. Landes writes in, 'The Material Civilization of the Ammonites' (p.70): "The biblical tradition that the Ammonites, along with their brothers the Moabites, originated in southern Transjordan (near Zoar, cf. Gen. 19:30) can probably never be demonstrated historically, since in all probability they began as nomadic clans who would leave behind little or no evidence of their existence." It is of course no different with the Exodus.

What about the Conquest? First, the reason why the situation is said to contradict the Bible is because the Conquest is dated to the late 13th century BC, instead of the early 14th! The evidence fits the Bible much better if we assume a 15th/14th century BC. As for the general impression given by the lack of specifically Israelite pottery and objects in Canaan is because the Israelites had no such original culture - they would have been thoroughly saturated of the Semitic and Canaanite influence of the Goshen already. The same is the case with early Christian artwork which is indistinguishable from Greco-Roman artwork because that's the culture the Christians inherited culturally!

In the same BAR article, Dever writes, "Monotheism may have been the ideal of Biblical writers, but many, if not most, Israelites throughout the Monarchy were polytheists."

This is no secret even in the Bible that the Israelites frequently abandoned the Israelite religion for Canaanite religions. Even Solomon succumbed to this in the beginning of his reign (1 Kings 3:2-3). One can still hear the Old Testament lament of how only Israel abandoned their religion. But it's quite a different story to suggest the original religion was polytheistic. Had this been the case there would have never been a monotheistic cultic center in Jerusalem or Bible! The few obscure references one can strain in the Old Testament as signs of polytheism cannot account for a polytheistic origin that was replaced, especially as late as the "waning monarchy" of Ze'ev Herzog. When Akhenaten attempted to merely bring to prominence one deity exclusively (but not even attempt to eliminate the rest of the gods), after his death his changes were forcefully reversed to the point that he was given a Damnatio Memoriae by the follow Pharaoh. A pharaoh, who was considered a divine incarnation of a god was completely shunned from Egyptian history and the public mindset for merely attempting something like this - who could have gotten away with this in Israel and the endless polytheistic Israelites? The constant external pressures that Judah faced from c.900 BC - 500 BC completely rule out a strong centralized system that could have changed the entire already established and centralized cultic system at Judah that certainly wouldn't have allowed something like this and keep it so for generations. Proof of this is the consistent stubbornness of the Israelite population itself! Thus Dever's statement that the Biblical writers had a monotheistic ideal completely falls apart on itself - these writers were ISRAelites themselves who would have preferred the same thing as the Israelites if the Judaic cult's origin was polytheistic (they would have certainly known this as in the case of Akhenaten it was known that the Egyptians had many powerful deities, not just one strong one). If the Judaic cult had major problems bringing and keeping the majority of people under monotheism, how can some monotheistic movement or force be powerful enough to come, being extremely unpopular, replace the cult with monotheism, and keep it that way in the face of the Israelites? Royal support? But none of the kings are recorded as being anti-pagan and removing the high places, except three: David, Hezekiah, and Josiah! It is completely impossible!

But one issue remains very interesting: why does Dever have the general impression that modern archaeologists acknowledge archaeology as not really confirming Biblical historicity? Biblical archaeology arose at a time when Biblical studies were heavily biased against the Bible. The days of Albright were marked by the higher textual critics who considered the Old and New Testament as containing mythologized history - unhistorical theology recast as pseudo-history (Martin Dibelius, Rudolf Bultmann, and many more). How is it that biblical archaeology even got to be such a "pro-Bible" field as Dever seems to complain when no one would have been biased that way?

Aside from the personal invective in Dever's article, there's little to wonder when most of Israel's leading archaeologists have adopted this attitude - a crossover leftover from biblical textual criticism studies which have been becoming more and more conservative for the past 100 years! Finkelstein, Ze'ev Herzog, Baruch Halpern et al have adopted a personal attitude, much like Dever has, that is the equivalent of the opposite of those "American archaeologists" in the Syro-Palestinian archaeology department that think it's a sub-field of biblical archaeology. And they influence the rest - a real example of how leadership affects the rest, such as the disobedient kings misleading Israel in ancient times!

Cornelius (talk) 12:09, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Please read WP:TALK and WP:NOTFORUM. Your opinions on the subject matter are not appropriate here. And placing more or less the same long-winded comment on two different talk pages is WP:SPAMming. You should find a different outlet. Zero^talk 15:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Video lectures

@PraeceptorIP: Re this. Sorry, my mistake. I really wish universities' official YouTube channels would make it more clear from their usernames that they were who they are, rather than some hack copyvio-ers. But I still think the entire section should be cut and the links (official lecture titles, with no original commentary) given in the external links section or some such. Imagine if we painstakingly listed all of Bart Ehrman's video lectures, and provided original summaries of their contents, in the body of our article on him! Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:27, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. Maybe the third one is unnecessary. But the other two both (1) illustrate Dever's views and (2) give the reader a ==see also== URL so that they can go view or listen to him for themselves and make up their own minds about his "message."

Two lectures is not comparable to "if we painstakingly listed all of Bart Ehrman's video lectures, and provided original summaries of their contents." The summary is also quite short. If you think it cam be shorter and still accurately tell the reader what it identifies, OK, rewrite them. As one interested in what Dever has to say, however, I do not find this section inappropriate. In fact it may be too short. Maybe a few more video lectures should be identified. PraeceptorIP (talk) 00:48, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

The links are in explicit violation of WP:ELPOINTS, which discourages inline links. Why can they not be added to an "External links" section, or have Dever's views explained inline and the videos linked in the citations? And it is comparable to Ehrman example -- can you demonstrate that these are not the only three lectures by this person available on YouTube? It looks to me very much like someone went around and found every single Dever lecture on YouTube, and linked them all inline. The small number is simply because Dever is not as well-known as Ehrman. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

"have Dever's views explained inline and the videos linked in the citations" -- That could easily be arranged. Would that be a big improvement? PraeceptorIP (talk) 16:43, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Instead of watching videos I highly recommend taking the time to read and explore Dever's books if you are interested in state of the art archaeology of the Hebrew Bible.Miistermagico (talk) 06:34, 22 November 2018 (UTC)