How Historical is the Hebrew Bible?

I keep running into people that are either convinced that the Hebrew Bible has been demonstrated to be 100% historically accurate or has been proven to be all pure mythology.

Actually the truth probably lies somewhere in between and there is a whole lot of disagreement over exactly where to put the boundary, or even if there is a boundary.

The True Believers accept every word as God’s own truth. I think we can ignore that position and contemporary scholarship pretty much does ignore it. Still, like any other endeavor that requires interpretation, there are wildly varying positions. After reading a considerable amount on the topic, including books and essays from so-called “minimalist” scholars as well as some espousing more traditional views, I have come to some soft conclusions. I say “soft” because I don’t find the evidence on the table as conclusive as some would like to have me believe.

Obviously I don’t accept the Bible as 100% historically accurate. That being the case one has to divide the Bible into timeframes. I choose the following timeframes: Genesis, Exodus and the Story of Moses, Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan, Judges, The Combined Kingdom, The Kings of Israel and Judah as told about in Kings I & II and Chronicles I & II and The Post Kings Exile.

Genesis I consider to be purely mythological and more moral allegory than history. This doesn’t mean that some of the stories aren’t based upon real people, or the composites of real people, or that some of the stories aren’t based upon real events. It’s just unlikely that what we have here is anything more than the folklore of a Canaanite tribe. I think it’s pretty safe to say that there was no universal flood and Noah didn’t get two each of the several million animal species on the ark. I’m less certain about some of the other stories being completely mythological.

I sort of lean toward Exodus and the Story of Moses being myth rather than history as well. I say this primarily because I have been convinced by the scholarship of minimalist archaeologists such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman. I accept the fact that I may have been convinced because of my anti-religious bias, but there’s not much I can do about that other than acknowledge it.

I say I lean because I have a basic problem with the figure of Moses. I find the personality of Moses a little too flawed for me to believe that it’s pure fiction. The Story of Moses does have elements of Lord Raglan’s Hero Scale and, at least according to one compilation, scores 20 on the scale of 22. But it’s not unusual for historical personages to take on the attributes of “The Hero” as time passes, especially in an oral culture.

So if the figure of Moses isn’t pure fiction, how can the story of the Exodus be pure fiction?

That brings us to Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan. On this topic the Documentary Hypotheses and the scholarship of folks like Richard E. Friedman kick in and add to the weight of evidence presented by Finkelstein and Silberman. As a result, I feel fairly confident that this is pure fiction and no, I don’t think it’s a contradiction to have doubts about Moses and the Exodus being fiction while accepting Joshua to be pure myth.

I put Judges in the same category as Genesis. Possibly based upon real or composite people and real events but so distorted over time as to be more folklore than history. There may have been a real Gideon but his story is most likely a consolidation of many men and events. I doubt there was ever a real Jephthah. I think that story is pure moral allegory.

That brings us to The Combined Kingdom of David and Solomon. Finkelstein speculates that the Omride dynasty of the Northern Kingdom might be the basis of the supposed opulence of David’s Kingdom as it seems unlikely that the sparse Southern Kingdom of Judah could have been the source of such riches.

Personally I’m not at all that sure on this one. I think there is enough evidence to say that a Davidic line of kings existed in Judah. As to whether the riches of the Omride kings were assigned to these southern monarchs through historical revisionism based upon religious prejudice is open to question.

Once we move beyond The Combined Kingdom I think it’s safe to say that the Bible becomes more history than folklore or mythology. That doesn’t mean it’s 100% accurate, but I have little doubt that Ahab was King of Israel and that he married the Canaanite Jezebel. I think we can pretty much dismiss the confrontations with Elijah however as little more than wishful thinking on the part of the southern kingdom’s priesthood.

Similarly I have little doubt that Hezekiah and Josiah were real historical personages that carried out great religious reforms while being cheered on all the time by Isaiah and Jeremiah respectively. We may well owe the book of Deuteronomy to Josiah as well as, if you accept the Documentary Hypothesis as basically accurate, the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. The only question is whether Joshua was duped by Hilkiah and the priesthood, was instrumental in the generation of the books or whether the truth lies somewhere in between.

I tend to romanticize Josiah so I like to think he was the driving force. But, then again, marching out to confront an Egyptian army was a pretty dumb move, and he paid a fatal price for that mistake, so who knows?

Like I said before, with reasonable evidence I could be persuaded otherwise on a number of these positions. It might even be fairly easy since I’m not emotionally attached to any of them.

Clearly I could be wrong, but the very fact that there is a range of positions, each with its own interpretation of the known facts, makes it clear than the truth of the situation has not been definitively demonstrated by anyone and that’s the key point. No one really knows.