Books of the Day
The Background of the Bible
The Bible and Archaeology. By Sir Frederic Kenyon. (Harrap. 15s.) The Bible and Archaeology. By Sir Frederic Kenyon. (Harrap. 15s.)
ARCHAEOLOGY is the study of the material remains of antiquity ranging from buildings to documents on stone, papyrus or vellum. As pursued methodically nowadays, it is a relatively modern discipline, and the innumerable and at times sensa- tional discoveries, made readily accessible in, e.g, the British Museum or in journals, e.g., the Illustrated London News,
have invariably attracted all who are interested in the links between past and present. Books and articles abound, but few indeed could claim the authority of one who, besides a hereditary interest in our great national museum, has had many years of service as its director and principal librarian, and whose particular concern lay in the acquisition and publication of Biblical and other papyri and manuscripts and in archaeological expeditions to the Near East.
Sir Frederic Kenyon writes for students rather than specialists, and presents a careful account of the work of the last hundred years with a general assessment of the bearing of the results upon our understanding of the Bible. After an introductory chapter on the general nature of archaeological evidence, he surveys the achievements in the several areas: Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians, • Crete and Philistia, Hittites of Asia Minor, Northern Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine and Sinai. A couple of chapters deal with papyri and MSS., and an especially useful account is given of the quite recent discovery of the Chester Beatty papyri and other Greek Biblical fragments. The book contains in moderate compass a very full and instructive record of archaeological research, and since the author refers to his early debt to one of his first school prizes, Layard's Nineveh and its Remains, we may add that he may be said to have repaid it by a book which would not inappropriately serve as a similar stimulus to others.
The annals of archaeology are a record of the romance of discovery, recovery and decipherment, the tricks of natives— and not natives alone—and the luck that sometimes attends and often deserts the field worker and the expert. They are a story of hard drudgery and of some spectacular results, e.g., in Crete, in Ur and in the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amen. Besides much that bears at least indirectly upon the Bible, there are great masses of material that go to build up a back- ground, for in archaeology—as in all serious research—we can call nothing "common." The results combine to illustrate the world in which the Bible grew up : Egypt, whose culture begins about 3500 B.C.; the Sumerians, an important cultural factor with links with India ; Indo-Europeans or Iranians of Asia Minor and Mesopotamia; and the Hittites, who surely were not the unintellectual people the author thinks. Some periods of history are better illuminated than others, and at Ugarit (Ras Shamra) tablets in a variety of languages and on a variety of subjects point to the busy life at this North Syrian commercial port about the fifteenth century B.C. At times some new chapter is opened, as at Ur and at Tell Halaf ; but there is a certain close cultural inter-relationship through- out which raises problems of the " originality " of Biblical religion.
In a book so full and ranging over so wide a field there is room for divergence of opinion, not to mention the corrections and supplements due to the progress of research. The chronological problems are particularly maddening, and while Sir Frederic has overlooked Langdon's revised dates in the second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, things have moved since then, and the law-giver Hammurabi and others stand not where they did. It is a pity to quote, as he does, from a 1904 translation of Hammurabi's code, and still more so to rely upon an imperfect translation, dating from 1885, of the unique Siloam inscription. The translation and inter- pretation of important tablets (e.g., Lachish and Ras Shamra) are still to a certain extent sub judice, and the best explanation of archaeological material (e.g., the evidence for the fall of Jericho) still divides experts. There are degrees of certainty or of probability in archaeology as also in literary-historical criticism, and Sir Frederic, who points to the divergence of opinion touching the date of the early Christian Didache (C-12 "Two Ways ") could have found an even stronger example in the case of the fragments of the Jewish so-called " Zadoltite " work.
The most recent discoveries are telling us of Greek frag- ments of Deuteronomy as early as the second century ac. and of the New Testament of the first half of the second century A.D. Of special interest is the evidence for the early date of the fourth Gospel, in consequence of which "the contentions of the ' advanced ' critics of the nineteenh century, that it was not produced until after A.D. 150, vaniql into smoke." But there is a healthy and stimulating rivalry between archaeology and literary-historical criticism, and Sir Frederic usually steers a judicious course. As a matter of fact, archaeology places Biblical research upon a new footing. In the lands of the Bible were laws before Moses, psalms before David and proverbs before Solomon, and we have to ask to what period belong those actually preserved in our Bible. Contrary to popular fancy—shared by some who should know better—the antiquity of writing does not affect the " critical " view of the date of the Pentateuch, as S. R. Driver was emphasising more than 30 years ago. Indeed, late writers
constantly preserved old details, and the unique Has Shamra tablets enable us to see how Greek writers of the Christian
era could present very ancient elements in very late dress, a practice already familiar when we carefully compare the late book of Chronicles with the earlier account of the Monarchy in Kings.
There are many who are anxious to learn how far the Bible is still trustworthy, and Sir Frederic is at pains to show that
nothing has happened that "need disturb the faith of the weakest." His care to explain and justify the scholarly study of the Bible gives his book a special value at the present day, when the religious situation is attracting earnest attention ; for he is virtually going behind the Bible, taking his reader from the Sacred Book to the very human people of flesh
and blood among whom it emanated. STANLEY COOK.
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