DOCUMENTING
ISRAEL-EDOM RIVALRY

Topics: Apologetics; Belief; Bible; Doctrine; Doubt; Faith; Inerrancy; Insight; Inspiration of Scripture; Knowledge; Testing God; Truth; Unbelief; Uncertainties

References: Genesis 36; Numbers 20:14–21; 2 Samuel 8:11–14; 1 Kings 11:14–17; Isaiah 55:11; Galatians 1:11–12; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 5:9

Scholars have long debated history in the Bible. For example, they have argued that the Edomites, who were a nomadic people, could not have become a cohesive society by the tenth century BC—thus negating the biblical accounts of a genuine rivalry between the Israelites in Judah and the Edomites. These scholars say that the biblical writers exaggerated the advancement of both states.

But Dr. Thomas Levy—an archaeologist from the University of California, San Diego, and a leader of an excavation in the lowlands of Jordan—has concluded that archaeology supports the biblical account. Radiocarbon dating of charred wood, grain, and fruit has yielded the first high-precision dates in the region, and the discovery of hammers, grinding stones, scarabs, and ceramics is telling evidence of Edom’s stature at the time.

Levy and his fellow researcher, Dr. Mohammed Najjar, have received both enthusiastic support and heated criticism from their academic peers. Still, they maintain that the excavation of the copper works at Khirbat en-Nahas “demonstrates the weak reed on the basis of which a number of scholars have scoffed at the idea of a state or complex chiefdom in Edom at this early period.”

They added, “The biblical references to the Edomites, especially their conflicts with David and subsequent Judahite kings, garner a new plausibility.”

—John Noble Wilford, “In a Ruined Copper Works: Evidence That Bolsters a Doubted Biblical Tale,” The New York Times (June 13, 2006)