In the study of biblical archaeology there are several names that rise up: Kathleen Kenyon, Agatha Christie, Nelson Glueck, are just a few of the names of well respected archaeologists. One name, however, takes it's place among the top archaeologists in this field, and that is William Foxwell Albright. His contributions to this field of study are well known, and even if his record of field work is not that of some of his peers, he is still known as a pioneer, and would later become known as the “Father of Biblical Archaeology.”1
William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971) will forever be remembered as one of the leading figures of biblical archaeology, “a field that aimed to demonstrate empirically the Hebrew Bible’s substantial historicity.”2 Originally trained as an Assyriologist, he would later go on to master much of the “archaeological knowledge available in the first half of the twentieth century, concerning ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.”3 Albright would spend his first year out of college in Menno, South Dakota, where he taught high school math and science.4 After having completed his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University, he would go one to serve nearly a decade as Director of the Jerusalem brach of the American Schools of Oriental Research, and prior to his retirement in 1958, he had directed more than fifty doctoral dissertations.5 The fields of scholarly research that he controlled were many and included: semitic linguistics , epigraphy, orthography, ancient history, chronology, historical topography, and mythology. In short, he was considerably familiar with most Near Eastern civilizations from the Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500 BCE) through the Greco-Roman period.6 The first world war would interrupt any plans Albright had for traveling to the Palestinian region, but he and his students, like Nelson Glueck, “had a significant influence during the inter-war years on American culture that included helping to shape the structure of curricula (theological, biblical, and ancient Near Eastern studies) at all the major universities.”7 He would also be responsible for training most of the prominent archaeologists of the later 20th and early 21st century in the US and Israel, including: “G.E. Wright, N. Glueck, and B. Maisler (Mazar). He also trained such eminent biblicists and Semiticists as J. Bright, F.M. Cross, D.N. Freedman, and W. Moran.”8
The “Golden Age” of Palestinian Archaeology, which was the period between the two World Wars, was dominated by the American-style “Biblical Archaeology” that was championed by Albright.9 The efforts made by Albright and others in this field would continue “to cast its shadow over the archaeology of Palestine up to the early 1970s (especially through the highly influential work of Albright's foremost student, G. Ernest Wright).”10 The Albright school of thought was heavily based in late 19th and early 20th century American religious life, and its agenda was more like an exercise in contemporaneous theological polemics than to archaeology.”11 These men, as well as the next generation that would come after them, were almost exclusively Protestant Old Testament scholars and clerics who were trying to establish the historicity of the biblical narratives, particularly those of the Patriarchal Age and the conquest of the Promised Land.12 Speaking about his mindset during this time period, Shlomo Bunimovitz writes:
“was well aware that archaeological evidence is at times equivocal and that Biblical narratives are not always all they seem; nevertheless he, as well as many of his followers in succeeding generations, considered both archaeology and the Bible as essentially trustworthy sources of historical information. This optimistic but naive belief (resting on empiricist and conservative foundations) soon led to a narrow interpretative framework that relied exclusively on Biblical history and theology.”13
It was Albright's dream to be able to conduct excavations in Palestine, and after finally being able to reach the area, his visit would extend for nearly 10 years, allowing him to construct an empirical chronology of ancient Hebrew history, including the historicity of the patriarch Abraham.14 Albright “carried out his first excavation in Palestine at Tell el-Ful, a site he identified as Gibeah of Saul.”15 In 1926 and 1932, Albright would direct four excavation seasons at Tell Beit Mirsim, located near the junction of the southern Judean hills and the Shephelah region. It would be these excavations, along with his ceramic analysis, and the rapid publication of his findings, would be what established Albright's influence as a leading archaeologist.16 Tell Beit Mirism would be identified by Albright as the biblical city of Debir, and it is “first mentioned as a Canaanite royal town whose inhabitants, the Anakites, were destroyed by Joshua.”17
While scholars continue to debate on whether Albright was correct in identifying Tell Beit Mirsim as the biblical city of Debir, the importance of Albright’s research conducted at the site came from his studying the ceramic material from the Middle Bronze through Iron Ages, making it the type site for Palestinian archaeology for more than 60 years.18 It would be Albright, using the stratigraphic record and the pottery found at Tell Beit Mirsim, who would “pioneer the establishment of the first rigorous ceramic chronology for the second and early first millennia BCE of Palestine.”19 Albright actually raised the standard of publication and presentation of pottery in the early 1930s, and where earlier scholars would publish only complete vessels, Albright began studying the pottery shards, illustrating rim profiles, and using only the highest available quality photographs.20 His vision of using ceramic typology to assist in refining the dating was “truly pioneering and helped lay the foundation for the first systematic archaeological field surveys by one of his most famous students, Nelson Glueck.”21
William Albright would also conduct an excavation at Beitin, which was the biblical city of Bethel, where he “discovered a destruction level datable to 1250 BC.”22 This site was “excavated by Albright and Kelso intermittently between 1934-1961”23 and some of the discoveries there included city walls from the Middle Bronze ages, well built houses with imported pottery from the Late Bronze Age, and a 13th century destruction layer of ashes and burned bricks, attributed to being destroyed by Joshua.24 Among some of his other excavations were Among his excavations were “Gibeah of Saul, Tell Beit Mirsim (Kirjath-Sepher), and, in association with others, Beth-zur and Bethel in Palestine and Baluah, and Petra in Jordan.”25
Albright would leave Palestine in 1929, “returning to Johns Hopkins to occupy the Semitics chair once held by Paul Haupt”26, and “three years later he brought out his first book, The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (1932), which again focused entirely on the Old Testament.”27 Always on his mind were the Patriarchs, and his many years of studying them began “when Albright challenged the then dominant paradigm of Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) studies established by Julius Wellhausen (1844 -1918)”,28 the German biblical scholar who “developed the documentary hypothesis to understand the development of the written Bible.”29 The most prominent publication on the subject of Abraham published by Albright was entitled “Abram the Hebrew: A New Archaeological Interpretation. There “Albright places Abraham in the Middle Bronze I period which he dates from 2,000 B.C. to 1,800 B.C.”30 Albright identifies Abraham as a donkey caravaneer, and writes that this was “an occupation he associates with the Apiru (i.e., the caravaneers), a word which ultimately became Ibri or Hebrew.”31 Being a theologically conservative scholar, Albright dated the Patriarchs “ to the first half of the second millennium on the basis of his intensive study of the Near Eastern background of the period.”32 Similarly, Albright would assign “the historical books of the Bible known as the "Former Prophets" to the 13th–10th centuries B.C.E. and most of the Psalms to the pre-Exilic period.”33
In June of 1939, Albright “began work on a grand synthesis of his views with respect to biblical and archaeological history, this published the following year as From the Stone Age to Christianity.”34 Some of his other writings, ranging in dates between 1932 and 1961, include: The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible (1932–35), The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography (1934), The Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim (1932–43), From the Stone Age to Christianity (1940–46), Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (1942–46), and The Bible and the Ancient Near East (1961).”35
The year 1948 was a remarkable year for William Foxwell Albright, to say nothing of the astonishing find that would be discovered by shepherds in a cave in the Middle East. Albright had made the news that year for his work on a set of mortuary slabs from the Sinai desert. He had “examined 28 distinctive characters and, with characteristic boldness, declared them to be letters of an alphabet, all consonants.”36 Furthermore, he said, “several of them still existed, all but unchanged in form, in modern languages.”37 But it would be the discovery in the Dead Sea region that would change the face of biblical archaeology. It would be into this harsh environment that the people of God, the Israelites, had come in times past, and “it may have been this association that led an orthodox but breakaway community of Jews to settle at a site known today by its Arabic name Khirbet Qumram.”38 It was in the hot and arid climate of the Dead Sea region that the documents of this community survived, which “represent some 1,100 ancient documents which today consist of several intact Scrolls plus more than 100,000 fragments.”39 Included in this massive amount of documents is a representation of every book of the Old Testament, with the exception of the Book of Esther.40 This collection of manuscripts contains our oldest known copies of Scriptures, commentaries on the books of the Bible, apocryhpal and pseudepigraphical works, and sectarian documents.41 Albright would call this “the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.”42
With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Albright was “the first scholar to authoritatively assess them as 'the most momentous discovery in modern times pertaining to the Bible.'”43 During his assessment of the manuscripts, Albright would be the one to “confirm the authenticity of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were a thousand years older than any previously known Hebrew texts.”44 In a letter that he would send to John C. Trever, who “had sent the photos from the American School of Oriental Research, he said, '...I should prefer a date around 100 BC.'"45 That would be a shot heard around the archaeological world. If Albright would in fact be correct with the date he had given, “that would make the scrolls and other materials recovered from the Qumran cave and other sites in the area a millennium older than any known biblical manuscript.”46 Many scholars would disagree with his assertion, but Albright would be proven right “after careful examination of coins, pottery, and other artifacts from the site, after more finds that included documents with dates written on them, and after carbon-14 dating of linen recovered at one site.”47
It was Albright's skill as an “epigrapher specialized in Northwest Semitic scripts, especially all the known variants of ancient Hebrew, that 'pre-adapted' Albright to immediately understand the great significance of the scrolls.”48 As the editor of the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, Albright would publish an article in the April 1948 volume commemorating the discovery of the scrolls. 49 In the October 1949 volume, he would publish one of the first scholarly articles on the discovery of the manuscripts, “entitled 'On the Date of the Scrolls from Ain Feshkha and the Nash Papyrus,' that included a good infrared photograph of the Nash Papyrus for comparison.”50 This was an important comparison, because Albright had previously dated the Nash Papyrus as belonging to the first or second century B.C.E.51 The letters in the Isaiah Scroll belonging to the Dead Sea collection “paleographically resembled the letters of the Nash Papyrus, which was then the oldest known Hebrew manuscript containing a Biblical text.”52 The Nash Papyrus contains the Ten Commandments and the Shema Israel, and in “1937 Albright published his study of the document (“A Biblical Fragment from the Maccabaean Age: the Nash Papyrus”) in the Journal of Biblical Literature.”53 David Noel Freedman would remember:
“Albright saying that within an hour of first looking at the photographs he knew it was a genuinely ancient discovery and that the scrolls dated from the last two centuries BCE and the first century CE . As Mrs. Albright related the story, it may have taken Albright 20 minutes to form a judgment, and 19 of those minutes were spent trying to find his 1937 article on the Nash Papyrus, with photograph, somewhere on his stacked desk.”54
Showing Albright's remarkable attention to the tiniest form and detail, upon reviewing the Dead Sea Scrolls he “recognized in the tiny Leica photographs four letters with distinguishing characteristics that were definitely older than those he had written about and dated in the Nash Papyrus over 10 years earlier.”55 Albright would also be instrumental in translating other ancient documents, including the “Hebrew letter from King Josiah's time discovered at Mesad Hashavyahu in 1960, as well as three of the more than 100 Hebrew and Aramaic ostraca found at Arad.” 56
Albright's complete works have been used by many, even novices, as a starting point for their interest in the field of Biblical Archaeology. His final work was to be in the series “The Jews: Their History, Culture, and Religion”, but he was unable to finish it before his death in 1971.57 In July of 1959, the work that he had completed so far had been laid aside with only 150,000 of the projected 250,000 words having been written.58 Beginning “with Israel’s prehistory, the manuscript had reached the period of the divided kingdom in the middle of the eighth century B.C.” 59 Why he never finished the work is unknown, although he had hinted during his final years that he wished to complete the book. As late as 1966 he spoke of completing his “History of the Religion of Israel”, although “he realized that after an interval of seven years, it 'would have to be completely rewritten in view of the many changes he had made in his own ideas as well as in the total approach.” 60 After the death of Mrs. Albright in 1979, several scholars and nonscholars approached David Albright requesting to have the partially completed work published, but all efforts proved futile, and the work goes unpublished to this day.61 Some of Albright's friends who had managed to read the incomplete manuscript shortly after his death thought “if he had completed it, it would have been one of his major contributions.”62 Even though many discoveries made since this date have made the book almost obsolete, Siegfried H. Horn writes of it's importance:
“In its extant state Albright’s manuscript is no more than a torso without head or feet; it lacks not only its initial two chapters but also several important chapters at the end. The text material is only a first draft; it has not been reworked or edited and lacks a large number of footnotes. From the master’s hands, they would have been packed with valuable and thought-provoking insights. Fortunately, however, he left a vast corpus of published writing which, even without this unpublished manuscript, is a fitting legacy.”63
William Foxwell Albright has had a lasting legacy on the field of Biblical Archaeology. He was heavily influential in the development of archaeology in the (at the time) newly founded state of Israel, where the groundwork that he laid continues to play a role “in shaping research directions and the study of historical archaeology at the major institutions”64, institutions such as the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University, Ben Gurion University, and other “organizations where the aim is to situate biblical history in the greater context of the ancient Near East by taking an interdisciplinary approach.”65 Wherever the archaeology of the southern Levant is taught, including nations such as the US, Germany, Switzerland, and others, the “general questions regarding archaeology's relationship with ancient text as formulated by W.F. Albright during the 20th century still lay at the core of the field.”66 Albright would say of his own work in Palestine:
“To one who believes in the historical mission of Palestine, its archaeolgy possesses a value which raises it far above the level of the artifacts with which it must constantly deal, into a region where history and theology share a common faith in the eternal realities of existence.”67
In spite of several attempts by those who have come after him to paint Albright as something of a positivist, such as Dever, and being heavily influenced by his own “religious conservatism and methodological flaws, these charges fail to appreciate the revolutionary impact Albright's establishment of a new scholarly paradigm, biblical archaeology, continues to have on Levantine archaeology.”68
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alter, Stephen G, “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36 no 1 (2012)
Avi-Yonah, Michael, "Albright, William Foxwell" Encyclopaedia Judaica, Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, (2007)
Bunimovitz, Shlomo, “How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 21:02 (1995) www.basarchive.org
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. “W. F. Albright.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. 11th ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, (1911)
Grisanti Michael A., “Recent Archaeological Discoveries That Lend Credence to the Historicity Of The Scriptures.” Journal of Evangelical Theological Society 56 no. 3 (2013)
Horn, Siegfried H., “The Book Albright Never Finished”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 10:01 (1984) www.basarchive.org
Keiger, Dale, “The Great Authenticator”, Johns Hopkins Magazine, April (2000). www.pages.jh.edu
Levy, Thomas and Freedman, David Noel, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February (2009) http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/albright5.shtml
Price, Randall. The Stones Cry Out. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House Publishers, (1997)
Shanks, Hershel, “A Life of Albright”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2:02 (1976) www.basarchive.org
Sweeney, Marvin A., “The Nash Papyrus-Preview of Coming Attractions”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 36:04 (2010) www.basarchive.org
Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. [rev. ed.] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, (2011)
1 Michael A. Grisanti, “Recent Archaeological Discoveries That Lend Credence to the Historicity Of The Scriptures.” Journal of Evangelical Theological Society 56 no. 3 2013, 487.
2 Stephen G. Alter, “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36 no 1, 2012, 1.
3 Ibid., 1.
4 Ibid., 6.
5 Ibid., 1-2.
6 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
7 Ibid.
8 Michael Avi-Yonah, "Albright, William Foxwell" Encyclopaedia Judaica, Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, 596.
9 Shlomo Bunimovitz, “How Mute Stones Speak: Interpreting What We Dig Up”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 21:02 ,1995, www.basarchive.org
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Stephen G. Alter, “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36 no 1, 2012, 12.
15 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
16Ibid.
17 Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. [rev. ed.] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011, 345.
18 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
19Ibid.
20Ibid.
21Ibid.
22 Randall Price, The Stones Cry Out. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House Publishers, 1997, 145.
23 Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary. [rev. ed.] Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011, 189.
24Ibid., 189.
25 Hugh Chisholm, ed. “W. F. Albright.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. 11th ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1911 www.britannica.com
26 Stephen G. Alter, “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36 no 1, 2012, 13.
27Ibid., 13.
28 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
29Ibid.
30 Hershel Shanks, “A Life of Albright”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 2:02 (1976) www.basarchive.org
31Ibid.
32 Michael Avi-Yonah, "Albright, William Foxwell" Encyclopaedia Judaica, Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007, 596.
33Ibid.
34 Stephen G. Alter, “From Babylon to Christianity: William Foxwell Albright on Myth, Folklore, and Christian Origins.” Journal of Religious History 36 no 1, 2012, 14.
35 Hugh Chisholm, ed. “W. F. Albright.” In Encyclopedia Britannica. 11th ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1911 www.britannica.com
36 Dale Keiger, “The Great Authenticator”, Johns Hopkins Magazine, April 2000. www.pages.jh.edu
37Ibid.
38 Randall Price, The Stones Cry Out. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House Publishers, 1997, 281.
39Ibid., 278.
40Ibid., 278.
41Ibid., 278.
42Ibid., 277.
43 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
44 Dale Keiger, “The Great Authenticator”, Johns Hopkins Magazine, April 2000. www.pages.jh.edu
45Ibid.
46Ibid.
47Ibid.
48 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
49Ibid.
50Ibid.
51 Marvin A. Sweeney, “The Nash Papyrus-Preview of Coming Attractions”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 36:04 (2010) www.basarchive.org
52Ibid.
53Ibid.
54Ibid.
55Ibid.
56 Siegfried H. Horn, “The Book Albright Never Finished”, Biblical Archaeology Society, 10:01 1984,www.basarchive.org
57Ibid.
58Ibid.
59Ibid.
60Ibid.
61Ibid.
62Ibid.
63Ibid.
64 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
65Ibid.
66Ibid.
67 Randall Price, The Stones Cry Out. Eugene, Or.: Harvest House Publishers, 1997, 335.
68 Thomas Levy and David Noel Freedman, “William Foxwell Albright: 1891-1981 A Biographical Memoir”, February 2009 http://www.bibleinterp.com
No comments:
Post a Comment