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Here are some links from my reading this past week:

Mission

Eddie Arthur, Executive Director of Wycliffe (UK) posted some of his presentations including: God’s Project: The Worldwide Church and Us

Biblical Studies
InterVarsity Academic Press published a lengthy interview with NT Wright on his new book Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision

Ben Witherington, my colleague at Asbury Seminary, reviews Bart Ehrman’s controversial bestseller Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them). Ben is up to five parts now: Parts one, two, three, four, and five. I am grateful for my colleague’s agility in NT studies and his willingness to engage in serious debate.

Leadership/Vision
Here are two excellent articles from Fast Company:
Six Traits that Separate the Achievers from the Wannabes
Behance Best Practices: The 7 Principles of Success

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In between the Fall and Spring terms at Asbury, I hope to complete work on the following writing projects:

1) Chapter two of Unleashing the Scriptures: Reading the Bible Missionally for the Church and the World

2) Book Review of Exodus (New International Biblical Commentary) by James K Bruckner for the Review of Biblical Literature.

3) Essay on the historical background to the narratives in Ezra and Nehemiah for Adult Bible Studies Illustrated

4) Sermon on Ephesians 2:13-18 for Proclaim

5) Preparation for speaking engagements.

6) Finish devotions on the Psalms and begin ones on the Minor Prophets

Archaeologists from the Hebrew University said they found five lines of text written in black ink on a shard of pottery dug up at a five-acre (two-hectare) site called Elah Fortress, or Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Read the report on Reuters. This text may pre-date the Dead Sea Scrolls by 1000 years.

How do faith and history relate to one another? We have been discussing this in an online course on the Exegesis of Exodus that I am teaching for Asbury Theological Seminary this summer. During the early part of the course, we study and discuss archaeological research and historical reconstruction of the events in Exodus. Many scholars doubt the historicity of the Exodus event. This offers a challenge to faith. It begs the questions: Is a historical Exodus necessary for Christian faith? What would be lost if the Exodus from Egypt never really happened? What is the relationship between faith and history?

Asbury Seminary is an evangelical seminary so most students are fairly conservative in their approaches to the results of historical-criticism. But many react to historical questions by arguing that they are irrelevant to a life of faith. In most of the recent sections, I have had to argue for the importance of asking historical questions and of historicity in general. Regardless of where one stands, it is critical for us to think clearly and critically about the relationship between faith and history.

Here is how I have responded to students who would prefer to ignore historical based questions.

I have been intrigued by our preliminary discussion of the “historicity” of the Exodus account and the apparent willingness of many of us to reckon such matters as “unimportant to faith.” I offer the following comments not to be unduly polemical, but because I think deeply about these issues on an almost daily basis and I want to grow in my own thinking.

Ironically, a denial of the importance of history for faith makes it seem as though Rudolf Bultmann has been reincarnated. In his day, he was tired of the endless “Quest of the Historical Jesus.” During his reign as major figure in New Testament Studies, there was essentially “No Quest” because Bultmann had tried to buttress faith against historical research by declaring the Quest to find the historic Jesus “historically impossible” and “theologically illegitimate.” Impossible because of the problem of adequate evidence and illegitimate because, so Bultmann alleged, it would make faith a work. I wonder sometimes if our recent shift away from historical study marks not a “post-modern” move that frees us from modernism but rather moves us into a purely fideistic theological construct in which our faith moves away from a risen Lord to a faith in a story about a risen Lord.

I am by no means advocating a purely historical approach to faith. I completely agree that our authority is bound up in the final form of the biblical text and thus our exegesis should focus on the final form (and it will for the vast majority of this class).

I, however, simply cannot get around the historical elements in both the Creeds and in the biblical materials. Have you ever pondered the line in the Apostle’s Creed “suffered under Pontius Pilate?” What an odd affirmation we make! Yet it roots the events of eternal importance in 1st century Palestine to the time of a two-bit Roman official.

1 Corinthians 15 is the great chapter in which Paul defends the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus as foundational for Christianity. Part of his appeal is to the church’s earliest kerygma (see vv. 3-5 in particular which by the way may date to within two years of Jesus’ death/resurrection). Paul is not merely recounting a story; he is declaring historical events. These events Paul says were witnessed to by OT Scripture.

I appreciate the way that N.T. Wright describes the relationship between faith and history. In his popular book co-written with Marcus Borg, Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, Wright describes a “faith divorced from history” as being indicative of one imprisoned in the attic whereas “history divorced from faith” is an equally problematic bondage in the dungeon. Writing about his historical research on Jesus, he can write, “The more I find out about Jesus historically, the more I find that my faith-knowledge of him is supported and filled out” (26).

Allow me one more extended quote from Wright on this topic:
History, then, prevents faith from becoming fantasy. Faith prevents history becoming mere antiquarianism. Historical research, being always provisional, cannot ultimately veto faith, though it can pose hard questions that faith, in order to retain its integrity precisely as Christian faith must struggle to answer, and may well grow strong through answering. Faith, being subject to the vagaries of personality and culture, cannot veto the historical enterprise (it can’t simply say -I don’t like the Jesus you write about, so you must be wrong’), but it can put hard questions to history, not least on the large topic of the origins of Christianity, and history may be all the better for trying to answer them. (26-27)

How does this relate to the question of the historical reality of the Exodus?

In brief, the Exodus functions typologically not only for describing the Second Exodus (Return from Babylonian Exile - See Isa 40-55) but ultimately for shaping the narrative of Jesus’ ministry and passion. Obviously, Jesus’ bodily resurrection represents the absolute bare minimum of “facts” needed as a foundation for faith, but I would say that the Exodus serves a similar function for the revelation in the OT. The rest of the OT narrative moves forward by understanding itself in light of God’s salvific acts found in Exodus (Exodus from Egypt and Covenant at Sinai). Israel certainly believed that these events happened in human space and time and not merely in the world of story created by some human author. Does this not suggest that historicity remains an importance issue today?

Missional Implication

Many persons in the West are well acquainted to the historical-critical issues/problems involved in biblical study. Network and Cable television routinely air programs that deal with the historical background of the Bible. The shows typically shoot for balance via a compendium of video clips from scholars of diverse backdrops, but there is little consensus. It is vital then for followers of Jesus to be aware of the issues involved so that they can dialogue with outsiders to the faith if historical questions arise in the course of conversation.

What do you think?

Copyright 2007 Brian Russell

In Genesis 12, a new chapter in the Biblical story of holiness, mission, and community opens. Roughly four thousand years ago, God called Abraham to serve as the progenitor of a new missional community through whom the world would be blessed:

NIV Genesis 12:1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

This is one of the most important passages in all of Scripture. It marks the election of Abraham and the nation of Israel which will emerge from his descendents as God’s new community in the world. In response to the rampant and pervasive infestation of sin (Gen 3-11) into God’s “very good” creation (Gen 1-2), God calls one man who lived during the Middle Bronze age (2000/1800 - 1550 B.C.) as the initial member of God’s covenant people.

In these initial verses of chapter Twelve, God calls Abram away from his country, his people, and his family to live in a new land. There God promises to build Abram into a great nation and to use Abram as an instrument by which to bless “all peoples on earth.”

The stories that follow in the remainder of Genesis tell of how these great promises to Abraham pass from generation to generation. The key is to focus on their overall intent. God is not cutting off Abraham from the world in an exclusive move of privilege. Rather Abraham is being called to form a new community for the rest of the world. In other words in context, Abraham’s family will be the agency by which God will bring blessing to the world as described in Genesis 3-11. This is important. Abram is called to separate so that he can learn to embody a new ethos by which the surrounding cultures can be reached for God.

God’s Universal Intent and God’s Particular Election of Abram
Let me emphasize as least two key aspects here: God’s universal intent and God’s particular election.

First, verse 3 “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” is the interpretive key. This clause brings mission to the forefront. God’s purposes here are much wider than merely calling Abraham to a new life and offering promises to him and his descendants. Rather Genesis 12:1-3 demonstrates that the Bible is ultimately the story of God’s working to bring salvation and wholeness to all creation. Abraham’s family will serve as God’s agency to bring blessing to all peoples on earth. Just as humanity was crafted for participation in God’s mission at the time of Creation (see Gen 1:26-31), God’s recreated people are born anew to work toward the fulfillment of God’s creational purposes.

Second, God has chosen to work through a called people. This raises the issue of particularity. Why didn’t God call multiple persons from all over the planet? The answer is that God’s plan called for the sending of his own Son. The call of Abraham established a beachhead into which God would send his Son. The point here is that Abram and his descendents were not called to a life of privilege as God’s people. Rather they were called to mission. They were called to be the conduits of God’s blessing to the nations.

Third, the call of Abraham is about the creation of a new community. Abraham is called to separation. As noted above, this is a separation not for privilege but for service/mission. It is also a means of God creating a new community. In Genesis 1, God created humanity last in order of created things (living and non-living). Humanity was crafted to serve as a missional community to reflect God’s character to and for the Creation. In an analogous way, God calls Abraham and his family to live and serve as a new humanity. This communal aspect is vital. It is easy for us to view Abraham’s call as a solitary one, but from the beginning, Abraham is not alone. He is accompanied by his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, and his servants. At the beginning God created humanity for authentic relationships. This continues in the new humanity that God creates. The stories in Genesis 12-50 are typically marked by the leading man–Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, but at their core, these are family stories.

The Ethics of God’s New Missional Community
You may be wondering how holiness fits into this story. Does it not appear that the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are unconditional and that their character matters little? After all, none of Israel’s ancestors stand as paragons of virtue - how many times did they pass off their wives as their sisters? (chuckle - chuckle)

These stories are fundamentally about God’s faithfulness in the progress of his mission to bring blessing to the world through Abraham, but there are clear hints that conduct and lifestyle truly matters for this mission to be successful (Christopher J. H. Wright, “Covenant: God’s Mission Through God’s People” in The God of Covenant: Biblical, theological and contemporary perspectives [eds. Jamie A. Grant and Alistair I. Wilson; Leicester: Appolos, 2005], 61-63). We will now briefly consider three texts:

1) NIV Genesis 17:1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

This text occurs in the wider context of the institution of the rite of circumcision and Abram’s name changes to Abraham to indicate the change in status with the official sealing of the Covenant (see also Genesis 15).

The highlighted passages emphasize God’s expectation for character transformation as a part of the new relationship forged between Creator and the recipients of the new covenant.

The combination of “walk” (Heb: hlk) and “blameless” (Heb: tmym) occurs elsewhere in the Pentateuch to describe Noah:

NIV Genesis 6:9 This is the account of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.

Several Psalms also use similar phraseology to describe the ethical norm for God’s people:

NIV Psalm 15:2 He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart

NIV Psalm 101:6 My eyes will be on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me; he whose walk is blameless will minister to me.

What precisely this would have entailed for Abraham is not explicitly stated in Genesis. Again, the emphasis is more on God’s faithfulness. The next passage however serves to establish further the force of God’s exhortation:

NIV Genesis 18:17 Then the LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? 18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. 19 For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

These verses occur in the segment in which Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed and in which Abraham intercedes on behalf of his nephew Lot. With the negative example of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah in the immediate context, verse 19 clearly presents a contrast between God’s expectations for Abraham and the lifestyle/ethos of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, this verse establishes an expectation that part of Abraham’s vocation was to “direct” (NIV) his children in the way of the Lord. Implicit here is that Abraham was to instill an ethic of faithful obedience into his household. Note here the links between holiness, mission, and community. Abraham’s family (the new community) was to embody a distinct ethos (holiness) as part of receiving the promises from God (mission - remember: God’s promises are ultimately for all nations).

NIV Genesis 26:2 The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, “Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. 3 Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham. 4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, 5 because Abraham obeyed me and kept my requirements, my commands, my decrees and my laws.”

We don’t want to over-interpret these three passages, but the implications are clear: holiness matters. Too much is at stake in God’s mission to disregard this aspect. Too often we make too much of the debate over the nature of the Abrahamic covenant: Is it conditional or unconditional? This is an important question, but it is not the whole story. God’s call of Abraham is certainly an unconditional offer of promise and blessing. It is the unmerited and unexpected grace of God to Abram. Yet, this unconditional offer nonetheless requires Abram’s human response to enact it. These opening chapters of the story of Israel’s mission to the world are more about establishing God’s faithfulness, but the necessity of a holy community is clearly implicit and anticipates a more thorough treatment later in Scripture.

Abraham’s Legacy
1) The call of Abraham cannot be overemphasized. It is a key moment in God’s salvation history. It establishes the thread that would ultimate reach its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (the son of Abraham - Matt 1:1). The call of Abraham links the Creation - Fall sequence of Genesis 1-11 with the story of Israel (Genesis 12 and following). How does Israel fit into world history? It was the nation through whom God chose to bring salvation and blessing to all Creation. Israel’s purpose was to serve as God’s missional community to the world. Abraham marks the beginning of this legacy.

2) Paul offers Abraham as the Forerunner of the Gospel
For Paul, Abraham is the OT example of the good news received by faith and lived out (Romans 4). Paul also clearly saw in Jesus Christ the end time fulfillment of Genesis 12:3.

NIV Galatians 3:6 Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” 7 Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8 The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

3) Linkage between God’s grace and human response.
Abraham also offers a portrait of the tension between God’s promises and the need for human response. As noted above, Abraham was called to embody a new ethos in which God’s character was reflected in his life. Modern believers often struggle with the tension between salvation by faith and the demands of obedience. How many of us are not taken aback for example by James’ appropriation of the Abraham story (especially in contrast with Paul - see above):

NIV James 2:20 You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

James is merely making explicit the necessity of holiness is fulfilling God’s missional purposes. As we discussed above, this is mainly implicit in Genesis in comparison to the theme of God’s faithfulness, but it becomes explicit in the Sinai covenant. The key though is to not make the mistake of making obedience the grounds for salvation. Holiness is created in followers of Jesus following their reception of salvation. Faithful obedience is the human response to God’s grace.

4) Model for living as a sojourner in a foreign land.
Abraham died before seeing the fulfillment of God’s promise of the Land of Canaan. Ironically, it was only with the passing of his wife Sarah that Abraham even tasted partial fulfillment of God’s promises. At the death of Sarah, Abraham purchased Ephron’s field in Machpelah near Mamre– both the field and the cave in it for use as a burial plot (Gen 23:1-20). It was for later generations to experience the gift of the land. Abraham spent his days moving around the land of Canaan living as a stranger in a strange land. This is the calling of the modern believer as well. Following the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus sends his disciples into world (Matthew 28; Luke 24; Acts 1). Paul reminds the proud citizens of Philippi that their true citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). In other words, followers of Christ today find themselves in a position similar to Abraham. We live in a land that is not truly ours. Instead, our focus is to live as tangible embodiments of God in our world. Like Abraham and through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we become Jesus’ ambassadors (2 Cor 5) and conduits of God’s grace to the world around.

What do you think?

© 2007 Brian D. Russell.
This essay is a revised version of one posted in January 2006. I want to thank those who commented on the earlier post. In particular, Claude Mariottini a professor of OT at Northern Baptist Seminary offered some helpful commentary on it. Check it out.

This essay functions as a review of several recent histories of Israel that have been written by Evangelical scholars. It is framed against the skepticism present in many critical circles today in terms of the reliablity of the Old Testament. This article was written to help my students at Asbury Theological Seminary taking “Introduction to the Old Testament.”

Since the rise of modern skepticism, scholars have debated the proper presentation of ancient Israelite history. The eminent 20th century scholar Gerhard von Rad (Old Testament Theology, vol 1, translated by D. M. G. Stalker [San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1962], 107-108) framed the issue cogently a generation ago:

These two pictures of Israel’s history lie before us ““ that of modern critical scholarship and that which the faith of Israel constructed “¦The one is rational and “objective””¦with the aid of historical method and presupposing the similarity of all historical occurrence, it constructs a critical picture”¦as it really was in Israel”¦The other activity is confessional “¦ Historical investigation searches for a critically assured minimum — the kerygmatic picture tends towards a theological maximum. The fact that these two views of Israel’s history are so divergent is one of the most serious burdens imposed today upon Biblical scholarship. (italics added)

The clause italicized above describes the assumption behind most modern histories of ancient Israel: a critical reconstruction based on modern rules of evidence (such as the principals of falsification and analogy) is more scientific and thus a more accurate portrait than the one offered in Israel’s own writings.

This dichotomy between Israel’s own testimony and modern critical reconstruction has reached its zenith in the writings of a group of scholars, who are often labeled minimalists. In a stream of publications (e.g., Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel [Sheffield, 1992], Thomas L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People [Leiden 1992], Keith W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History [New York, 1996], and Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition [Louisville, 1998] among others), they have argued that the biblical portrait of Israel is largely a fictional one invented during the Persian or Hellenistic periods.

Although the consensus of scholars does not share this radical skepticism about the Bible’s historical testimony, the difference is only one of degree. Few critical scholars give much credence to the narratives found in Genesis to Judges, and most begin their histories with the rise of David and Solomon. For example, William G. Dever’s What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It (Grand Rapids, 2001) offers a blistering critique of the minimalist camp and demonstrates that parts of the Bible can be corroborated by archaeology. Dever, however, privileges the evidence of archaeology over the Bible. He is frank in his assessment that much of the Bible is unusable by historians. For example, he regards Genesis to Numbers as “prehistory” and the Exodus-Conquest tradition as myth in the sense of “historical fiction.” Thus, while Dever does locate a “Proto-Israel” in the highlands of the Early Iron period (12th-11th centuries B.C.E.), he does not find any correlation between the biblical record and the archaeological data until the 10th century.

Thus, although there is a wide chasm between the representative works of Dever and the minimalists, they are in essential agreement that the biblical record is problematic as a source for historiography. We turn now to this issue.

The Problem of the Sources

All scholars have access to the same sources (the writings of the Hebrew Bible, site reports of archaeological digs, and published textual evidence from the ancient Near East), but they privilege them in varying ways. The use of the Bible remains the controversial element.

Contemporary scholarship confronts three issues when using the Bible as a historical source. First, it is book of theology rather than an “objective” history that a modern historian would write. Given its ideological agenda, many critical scholars hesitate to view its writings as dependable sources unless the biblical narrative can be corroborated by extra-biblical materials. Thus, there is a tendency in critical scholarship to privilege the testimony of archaeology and extra-biblical texts.

Second, there has been a general trend toward an exilic to post-exilic dating for much of the Old Testament. Along with dates of composition long after the reported events, many scholars assume that the historiography in the Bible tells the scholar more about the time in which the literature was composed than about the past that it describes.

Third, in recent decades, the narrative texts of the Old Testament have been appreciated increasingly for their literary artistry. Ironically, scholars have tended to devalue the historical testimony of the biblical literature to the degree that its narrative displays a high level of literary skill. The assumption is that the higher the level of sophistication in the presentation the less reliable the historical testimony.

Evangelicals and History Writing

Evangelicals have not remained on the sidelines of this scholarly debate. For the remainder of this essay, I will sketch three lines of response: Traditional, Apologetic, and Critical Engagement. Attention will be paid to how each approaches the Bible as a source.

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.’s A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars (Nashville, 1998) represents a traditional evangelical approach. By traditional, I mean that Kaiser writes as an evangelical for like-minded readers. His history is essentially a paraphrase of the biblical portrait of Israel. As we will see, there is nothing wrong with taking seriously the Bible’s historical testimony, but by assuming its truthfulness because “Jesus held this view, the text makes such a claim for itself, and the church has received it as such for these centuries” (15), Kaiser limits the possibility for serious dialogue with mainstream scholarship. Kaiser’s work is thus a “safe” volume, but little of it is fresh or particularly insightful. By assuming the Bible’s truthfulness and traditional dates for its composition, he sidesteps the first two problems discussed above. To his credit, Kaiser demonstrates that a close reading of the text often provides a more cogent starting point for understanding Israel’s history than do certain critical reconstructions.

Kenneth Kitchen’s On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, 2003) takes an apologetic tact. He accepts the assumptions about sources noted above, but challenges their validity with respect to the Bible. He does this principally by appealing to the material and textual sources from several millennia of Near Eastern history. He compares the events, characters, and geography mentioned in the Bible with extant textual and archaeological data. If a biblical text can be shown to fit its putative historical context on the basis of extra-biblical evidence, there is no warrant for judging it to be unreliable as a historical source or for positing a later date for its composition. Students will learn much about the context of the Bible in this work. Kitchen also reminds scholars that “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” i.e., it is unrealistic to expect archaeology and extra-biblical materials to reference every detail in the biblical narrative. Furthermore, Kitchen musters evidence in support of a Mosaic authorship for the Pentateuch and early dates for Joshua ““ 2 Kings.

Finally, Iain Provan, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III’s A Biblical History of Israel (Louisville, 2003) represents a critical engagement with recent historiography. Provan et al offer just as robust a portrait of Israel as Kaiser and Kitchen, and more importantly, they offer a fresh approach to history writing. In their view, “history is fundamentally openness to acceptance of accounts of the past that enshrine other people’s memories” (47). They argue for an epistemological openness in which evidence is required for not trusting historical testimony. Their work thus presents a challenge to some of the ruling assumptions of modern scholarship. The strength of their accomplishment is two-fold: 1) They argue persuasively for the acceptance of bibical testimony as a historical source; and 2) Their presentation of Israel’s history is credible. The following is a sketch of their argument.

The Problem of the Bible’s ideology
Provan et al argue that all testimony of the past is ideological. There are no neutral sources. Artifactual evidence is mute apart from its interpretation by an archaeologist. Extra-biblical texts are as ideologically shaped as the Bible is. Furthermore, they suggest that there is no reason to deny the trustworthiness of an account of the past simply because it is cast in an ideological framework.

The Problem of the date of composition of the Bible
Although Provan et al express skepticism about some of the late dates posited for the biblical literature, they argue nonetheless that it is unreasonable to presume that a textual witness is less trustworthy because it derives from a time subsequent to the events that it narrates. Humorously, they point out that modern scholars certainly believe their work to be more accurate than their source material.

The Problem of the Artistry of the Bible
Provan et al suggest that the Old Testament’s sophisticated writing style is misunderstood by some scholars, who equate an artistic presentation with a fictional one. Furthermore, they argue that biblical accounts must be studied carefully as narratives before they can be used for history writing. Thus, rather than being a liability, the Bible’s artistry is the avenue by which to understand its historical testimony.

Thus, Provan et al demonstrate that historical reconstruction turns on which sources one privileges. Their arguments offer compelling reasons for listening to the Bible’s testimony as a reliable witness in combination with other available evidence. The following quote from their work answers von Rad poignantly:

Our knowledge of the past is dependent on testimony. This being the case, and biblical testimony being the major testimony about Israel’s past that we possess, to marginalize biblical testimony in any modern attempt to recount the history of Israel must be folly. Considering that testimony along with other testimonies should be considered perfectly rational. It should be considered irrational, however, to give epistemological privilege to these other testimonies, even to the extent of ignoring biblical testimony altogether. (73)