William Foxwell Albright
The social and political structure, the religious concepts and practices and
other human activities and relationships that are found in the Bible or pertain
to peoples mentioned in the Bible.
Following the example of Sir William Flinders Petrie, who worked in Southern Israel from 1890 onwards, Albright was able to establish a systematic way of dating pottery found in Palestine, as when Tell Beit Mirsim, to the south west of Hebron in Jordan, was excavated in the years from 1926-36. His earliest archaeological investigations had as their focus the historicity of the Patriarchs. As late as 1961 he was able to utilize much of his knowledge on this subject , gathered over many years, in his article Abram the Hebrew, a new archeological perspective. In 1922 he had worked at the site of Gibeah ( Tell el ful, meaning hill of beans ) He would also work at other sites such as Beth-Zur, Bethel and Petra , the great trading city of the Nabateans, in Jordan. Although best known, and mainly concerned with biblical archeology, he was also able to make his contribution to knowledge about other near eastern subjects. He helped to establish a correct dating for Hammurabi in Babylon, when he argued with other scholars that their interpretation of a Mari letter was incorrect, His paper entitled, New Light from Egypt on the Chronology and History of Israel and Judah, was concerned with dating the Egytian pharoah Shishak, a contemporary of Soloman who began to rule at some point from 945 and 940 B.C.E. He laid the foundation of the understanding of ancient West Semitic cultures, in particular the religion of the Cananites. For all these reasons he was referred to as The Great Authenticator because, among other things, it was he who identified, the Dead Sea Scroll as being authentic, despite his poor eye sight. In 1948, having only seen a photograph up to that point, of the scroll of Isaiah, he wrote to John C. Trevor at the at American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem in March 1948 -
I repeat that in my opinion you have made the greatest manuscript discovery
of modern times---certainly the greatest biblical manuscript find...What an incredible find
There were in fact some 15,000 fragments making up texts from 574 original manuscripts. The particular text concerned, a complete copy of the prophecy of Isaiah, which had been shown to Trevor by a Syrian Orthodox monk about a year after the original discovery of the scrolls, was the oldest Hebrew text discovered up to that time.
Some of his work was instinctive, as when he studied a letter, believed by others to be from the Bronze Age, that is some 4,000 years ago. According to Dale Keiger he just sensed that something was wrong. Only recently has he been proved right. Keiger says of him -
The Bible, before William Foxwell Albright, was exempt from critical appraisal It was simply Gospel.
He goes on to describe how, because he could not see well enough to join in ball games, he studied from an early age. He was brought up in a Christian home and never repudiated Christian interpretations of the Bible, but he did say that it should be studied in the context of history.
Albright has been described as the-
Father of biblical archaeology and the dean of American archaeologists
working in the southern Levant from the 1920s through the 1960s.
And he was father in the sense that he passed on both his knowledge and enthusiasm. A number of his former students became leaders in their own right in the field of Biblical study and in archeology.
Yet the same writer claims that the impact he made upon archaeological methods can be described as negligible. So was Albright as great as has been claimed
Other workers
Although relatively well known because of his association with the amazing finds at Qumran in the 1940s, Albright was in fact only one of dozens of other leaders of archeological expeditions. These began in a small way when an attempt was made in 1838 by Edward Robinson and Eli Smith to identify biblical cities, using as their basis modern day Arabic names. From the 1860s onwards Warren began searching in Jerusalem.Albright actually used for the most part methods already established by earlier workers, rather than developing new ways of working.
It was the British archeologist Kathleen Kenyon who developed the idea of stratigraphy, which involved close examination of the soil under and around objects discovered. It was her method, which was more demanding upon the excavators that was used from the 1950s at very important sites such as Jerusalem and Jericho. It was based not upon instinct, but upon very careful analysis and interpretation of the materials found.
Albrights achievements.
In Bernard Andersons work of 1957 The Living World of the Old Testament the index has 17 citations under the name W.F.Albright .This gives some indication of the amount and range of his scholarly writing. For instance it is his opinion about the probable date of the Exodus that became widely accepted at the time. Much of his writing is about the translation of ancient texts. He is known for instance for his views on the history of the word YHWH which he said had it origins in Gods creative ability, a view accepted by some scholars, as Anderson describes.
His scholarly writing was wide ranging, as when he described the Canaanite religion in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit. though it may be in this case that he was only restating what others such as Pritchard had discovered about such very early texts, although Anderson does quote a translation by Albright.
He was prepared to argue with others when he felt that he was right as when he stood out about the dating of the Song of Deborah, and the battle of Megiddo. Also with regard to the Biblical prophecy of Habakkuk Anderson describe how many scholars see the Psalm in chapter 3 as having been inserted by different writer, whereas Albright held out for a substantially unique authorship for the whole book, basing this upon the language used.
Work by Albright has been confirmed by later work, as when he evacuated King Sauls fortress at Gibeah, in 1922-3 and found that the charismatic Israelite leader lived a very simple life, in a two story building built upon earlier foundations. His findings were confirmed by Paul Lapp who looked at the site again in 1964.
He was acknowledged as an expert upon links between the Bible and archeological findings because of his many writings, as when he wrote Archeology and the Religion of Israel.
Albright was able to study the group of artefacts known as the LMLK seals. He also performed many on-site excavations, the first being one of the most significant, when in 1923 he was able to excavate a tumulus situated near Jerusalem, Israel.
Criticism of Albrights work.
Some recent archeologists have seemed to be trying to make a separation between the Biblical record and archeology, whereas Albright sought to prove the Bible from archeology. Archeologist William Denver has said Most people really think that archeology is out to prove the Bible. No archeologist thinks so. He has also said of Albright that -
Central theses (regarding the historicity of the Bible) have all been overturned, partly by further advances in biblical criticism, but mostly by the continuing archaeological research of younger Americans and Israelis to whom he
himself gave encouragement and momentum.
Despite such statements in Albrights case he was often able to confirm the Biblical record. It has been found by people such as Lapp that his archeology was correct. Having said that Metzer and Coogan in 1993 said that his identification of Tell Beit Mersim as Debir has been disputed. Debir was the ancient fortress of one of the kings of the Amorites who were eventually defeated by Joshua at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan, . Despite this the Thompson Chain Bible marks it to the south west of Hebron as Albright said. The Oxford Companion to the Bible has a similar map, so even when his findings are disputed they are accepted by at least some scholars.
Albrights were not the only person whose findings were disputed. The various different views caused much confusion in the mind of the public. In 1932 he wrote-
Small wonder that historians and Biblical scholars turned away from this chaos
of conflicting views in despair, convinced that the main purpose of archaeology was to unearth inscriptions and occasionally to elucidate the arts and the crafts
of the ancient inhabitants.
Times have moved on in what Thomas described as The Shifting Sands of archeology. According to William Dever, as quoted by Thomas Davis, staff needed for excavations in Bible lands would no longer ask the questions posed by the Bible and it associated archaeology, but those raised American anthropology.
Conclusion
Albrights real claim to fame seems to have been not so much as a pure archeologist as in his skills in the Semitic group of languages. He was able, despite his faulty eyesight, to examine ancient texts and come to important conclusions. In some cases his findings clearly back up the literal Biblical record. It has now been almost 40 years since his death and so perhaps it is time for a reassessment of his scholarly contribution.
There is ongoing work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but apparently no doubts about Albrights original dating of the finds at between 200 BCE and 200 C.E. Archeologist Doctor Bryant Wood , one of the Associates for Biblical Research, has described the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are important because they are roughly 1000 years older than the previously known texts with which they can be compared. This means that they show how the Old Testament scriptures have been faithfully copied and carried forward down the years.
Albright was many things all of them to high standards. He was a biblical scholar and historian, a linguist as well as being an archeologist and an expert in early ceramics. His careful scholarship meant he was able to merge the science of archaeology and his knowledge of the languages used in the Biblical countries with the ancient Biblical narratives, in several instances proving their historical accuracy. In 1964, when his active working life was drawing to its close, he described himself not as a biblical archaeologist, or even as archaeologist, but rather as an Orientalist. Since his day new methods have come in, often using modern day electronic devices that were unavailable to Albright. Despite this it is with good reason that his writings are described as authoritative. During his life time he received numerous awards including both honorary doctorates, and medals. All archeologists are scientists, but they all also work to some extent using their instincts when making choices Albright it seems was one of the best at doing so, despite the fact that in more recent years his has received considerable adverse criticism. He did his best according to the skills, knowledge, methods, beliefs and attitudes of his time. Dr Albright was able to bring Biblical archeology into the notice of the mainstream However it seems that, according to Thomas Davis, George Ernest Wright, a student of Albrights has done work which could bring about the end of the kind of Bible based archeology Albright promoted so well. Despite all the negativism in 2004 Thomas Davis, who makes dozens of references to Albright in his book of that year, still felt able to write that Biblical archeology still has validity as a name for the sphere of interaction of archaeology and the Bible. G. Ernest Wright in 1982, described him as-
The dominant creative figure in the attempt to place the Bible in a
perspective of the whole of ancient history.
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