Repeated Stories

With the conclusion of the summer term, I can report completing the first few classes of my 5 year grad school career.  This benchmark feels like it has been a long time coming, but in the larger scope of my learning, I realize there are miles to go before I sleep.  Still I'd like to stop here and reflect, especially because one of the classes under our collective belts in Biblical History, a survey of early experiences and geography in this region.  We shared lectures and field trips to see remains of the civilizations that ruled the Levant and traversed Mesopotamia in the centuries before the common era.  This historical material record of building foundations, tools, inscriptions, and materials of daily life we placed in the context of the biblical narrative.

If walls could talk, would they also read the Bible?

It is fun to visit the places where the Matriarchs and Patriarchs lived and the sites of great religious significance, but it can be challenging to establish the historicity of all bible stories.  Some of the historical relics that archaeologists have uncovered are inconsistent with the chronology of the text.  Such anachronisms pose a serious challenge to views that the Bible is a record of the history of the Hebrew people.  This makes me wonder whether as a teacher or faith leader it is more important to study history or the text.  Are these mutually exclusive fields? We lack evidence for some of the places and people but clearly many parts of the Bible are corroborated by the mention of places that existed, actual internal leaders and the leaders of neighboring kingdoms.

My previous entry is a work of imagination inspired by our journey to Tel Laqish, a stronghold of the Judean kingdom, where Assyrian forces under Sennacherib held an 8 month siege around 701 BCE.  This conquest is documented in the Laqish letters found on the Tel and by the victory stele found in the Palace of Sennacherib in Ninevah.  These detailed composite illustrations (now on display in the British museum, copies in the Israel Museum) document the ramps and engines used to break through the stone walls built atop the already soaring tel.  Walking the site today, you can still see the stones of the ramp as well as the remaining structures of the gate, palace, and temple from the Iron Age occupation.

Photo credit to Josh Gischner 

Laqish is found in the Bible - several times actually - with the siege being described in II Kings 18, Chronicles, and Isaiah.  This, then, is an example of the biblical narrative upheld by history. However, just as I created a piece inspired by this story, it is possible to evaluate the biblical sources in reference to an author with an intended message.  Such a reading pulls me in contrary directions, feeling both sacrilegious and realistic. However, I think wrestling with these questions is precisely the point, and I hope to continue parsing out meaning with colleagues and congregants to come.