George Ernest Wright is one of the outstanding Biblical archaeologists of our time. He is a professor at Harvard University and has been active in a number of Palestinian excavations over the years. He has written a number of books on Biblical archaeology and Biblical theology. In his book Biblical Archaeology<\/i>, Prof. Wright made the following significant comments on the role of archaeology.<\/p>\n
\u201c.. . the biblical scholar no longer bothers to ask whether archaeology proves the Bible. In the sense that the biblical languages, the life and customs of its peoples, its history, and its conceptions are illumintated in innumerable ways by the archaeological discoveries, he knows that such a question is certainly to be answered in the affirmative. No longer does this literature project from the chaos of prehistory \u2018as though it were a monstrous fossil, with no contemporary evidence to demonstrate its authenticity.\u2019 [W. F. Albright, \u201cRecent Discoveries in Bible Lands\u201d, Supplement to Young\u2019s Analytical Concordance<\/i> (20th ed., New York, 1936), p. 1.] Yet the scholar also knows that the primary purpose of biblical archaeology is not to \u2018prove\u2019 but to discover. The vast majority of the \u2018finds\u2019 neither prove nor disprove; they fill in the background and give the setting for the story. It is unfortunate that this desire to \u2018prove\u2019 the Bible has vitiated so many works which are available to the average reader. The evidence has been misused, and the inferences drawn from it are so often misleading, mistaken, or half true. Our ultimate aim must not be \u2018proof,\u2019 but truth. We must study the history of the Chosen People in exactly the same way as we do that of any other people, running the risk of destroying the uniqueness of that history. Unless we are willing to run that risk, truth can never be ours.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can be stated emphatically, however, that to those who have been willing to run this risk the literature of Israel and of the Church appears more distinctive than ever before. We are now in a position to evaluate it, because we have something with which to compare it in its time. We can now see that though the Bible arose in that ancient world, it was not entirely of it; though its history and its people resemble those of the surrounding nations, yet it radiates an atmosphere, a spirit, a faith, far more profound and radically different than any other ancient literature. The progress <\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 3:1 (Winter 1974) p. 9<\/p>\n
of archaeology, of textual, literary, and historical criticism has never obscured the fact that the biblical writers were the religious and literary giants of ancient times, though they themselves would never have said so. They claimed that they were simply bearing witness to what God had done, and that whatever was accomplished through them was God\u2019s work, not their own.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problems that troubled our fathers during the last three centuries no longer seem serious to a modern generation of Bible students. Few scholars trouble themselves with \u2018proving\u2019 the Bible, because they believe that it can stand by itself, that in some respects it has suffered more \u2018from its well-intentioned friends than from its honest foes.\u2019 As Professor Albright has so well written [in \u201cRecent Discoveries in Bible Lands\u201d, p. 43]: \u2018Climaxing and transcending all ancient religious literatures, it represents God\u2019s culminating revelation to man at the latter\u2019s coming to the age of maturity. At least a hundred thousand years had elapsed since man first learned to make artifacts \u2014 less than two thousand years have passed since the close of the Canon. Yet some ask us to believe that the Bible reflects so primitive a stage of cultural and even biological evolution that it no longer has a meaning for modern man!\u2019 We owe to the biblical scholars and archaeologists an everlasting debt for the perspective in which we are able to view and use this sacred literature.\u201d<\/p>\n
(From Biblical Archaeology<\/i>, by G. Ernest Wright. First published in the U.S.A., by The Westminster Press, and Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., London, 1957. New & Revised edition, 1962. Used by permission.)<\/p>\n
Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved<\/i>. Acts 4:12<\/p>\n
BSP<\/i> 3:1 (Winter 1974) p. 10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
George Ernest Wright is one of the outstanding Biblical archaeologists of our time. He is a professor at Harvard University and has been active in a number of Palestinian excavations over the years. He has written a number of books on Biblical archaeology and Biblical theology. In his book Biblical Archaeology, Prof. Wright made the … Continue reading “THE
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