What exactly is Biblical Archaeology?
This might seem like an unnecessary question, but in fact, nobody can quite agree on what it should be. Archaeology is the study of the life and culture of the past. Biblical archaeology, then, would be the study of the life and culture of the peoples mentioned in the Bible. There is a current debate about doing away with the term “biblical archaeology” because it is a hindrance to the study of the past on its own terms. Replacements such as “Near Eastern Archaeology” (Eurocentric in its own right), “Syro-Palestinian Archaeology” (cumbersome), have been suggested. However, it is undeniable that historically, the study of Palestine as it relates to the biblical narrative was the main motivating force for the development of archaeology in Palestine, so I have retained the term. Archaeology concerns itself with finding and then developing theories to account for the artifacts buried under deep layers of sediments. Why are they there? What can they tell us about the people who used these t
