Does Archaeology Really Deserve The Status Of A ‘High Court’?

Abstract

Archaeology is excellent research tool and supplies solid evidence. But is archaeology as accurate as some archaeologists claims it to be? Should we always prefer the results of the archaeological research over the biblical evidence? In what follows the author examines a series of test-cases in which the documentary evidence disagrees with the results of the archaeological research. In the light of this comparison, the author points out the circumstances in which the archaeological research is quite limited and should be treated with great caution. The reconstruction of tenth-ninth century Jerusalem made on the basis of the archaeological evidence alone, while ignoring the biblical text, might be misleading, because it fails to take into account the great limitation of the archaeological research while ignoring the historical potential of the biblical text. The city of Bethel is well attested in biblical historiography and prophetic books of the eighth-seventh centuries. Keywords: archaeology; Bethel; biblical text; Jerusalem