British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Understanding the History of Ancient Israel

Abstract

Method in the Application of Source Material to Historical Writing (With Particular Reference to the Ninth Century BCE): Textual Sources

Marc Zvi Brettler, Brandeis University

Evaluating how biblical texts might be used to reconstruct the ninth century is connected to the general issue of how biblical texts, or ancient texts in general, might be used for reconstructing history. This is as much an art as a science, and judgments that are made are rarely certain. Biblical texts may be shown to be false on the basis of internal or external evidence, but may only be proven true on the basis of external evidence. In analyzing biblical texts, no initial presumption of historicity or lack or historicity should be made—each text starts out as historically 'possible'. As a result of analyzing representative texts that purport to narrate this period, only a small number are likely to be accurate; many are improbable, and many others, due to the paucity of information, remain 'possible'. The modern historian of Israel should not compensate for this fact by finding more historicity in the texts than they present.