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  • NARRATOR: God is dead...

  • or so it must have seemed

  • to the ancestors of the Jews in 586 B.C.

  • Jerusalem and the temple to their god are in flames

  • The nation of Israel founded by King David is wiped out

  • WILLIAM DEVER: It would have seemed to have been the end,

  • but it was rather the beginning

  • NARRATOR: For out of the crucible of destruction

  • emerges a sacred book: the Bible...

  • and an idea that will change the world:

  • the belief in one God

  • ¶ ¶

  • THOMAS CAHILL: This is a new idea

  • It was an idea that nobody had ever had before

  • LEE LEVINE: Monotheism is well-ensconced,

  • so something major happened which is very hard to trace

  • NARRATOR: Now a provocative new story

  • from discoveries deep within the Earth and the Bible

  • EILAT MAZAR: We wanted to examine the possibility

  • that the remains of King David's palace are here

  • DEVER: We can actually see vivid evidence here of a destruction

  • AMNON BEN-TOR: Question number one: Who did it?

  • NARRATOR: An archaeological detective story puzzles together clues

  • to the mystery of who wrote the Bible, when and why

  • And it was very clear

  • it was some kind of a tiny scroll

  • I immediately saw very clear, very distinct letters

  • This is the ancestor of the Hebrew script

  • NARRATOR: And from out of the Earth

  • emerge thousands of idols that suggest God had a wife

  • We just found this exceptional clay figurine

  • showing a fertility goddess

  • NARRATOR: Powerful evidence sheds new light on how one people,

  • alone among ancient cultures,

  • finally turn their back on idol worship

  • to find their one God

  • This makes the god of ancient Israel

  • the universal god of the world that resonates with people,

  • at least in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition

  • to this very day.

  • (thunder crashes)

  • NARRATOR: Now science and scripture converge to create

  • a powerful new story of an ancient people,

  • God and the Bible

  • Up next on NOVA "The Bible's Buried Secrets"

  • Captioning sponsored by EXXONMOBIL

  • DAVID H. KOCH

  • the HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE

  • the CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING

  • and VIEWERS LIKE YOU

  • Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following: NARRATOR: Near the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt in 1896,

  • British archaeologist Flinders Petrie leads an excavation

  • in Thebes, the ancient city of the dead

  • Here, he unearths one of the most important discoveries

  • in biblical archaeology

  • (worker yelling)

  • From beneath the sand appears

  • the corner of a royal monument, carved in stone

  • Dedicated in honor of Pharaoh Merneptah,

  • son of Ramesses the Great,

  • it became known as the Merneptah Stele

  • Today it is in the Cairo Museum

  • DONALD REDFORD: This stele is

  • what the Egyptians would have called a "triumph stele,"

  • a victory stele commemorating victory over foreign peoples

  • NARRATOR: Most of the hieroglyphic inscription celebrates

  • Merneptah's triumph over Libya, his enemy to the West

  • But almost as an afterthought, he mentions his conquest

  • of people to the East in just two lines

  • REDFORD: The text reads,

  • "Ashkelon has been brought captive

  • "Gezer has been taken captive

  • "Yanoam in the North Jordan Valley has been seized

  • Israel has been shorn, its seed no longer exists"

  • NARRATOR: History proves the pharaoh's confident boast to be wrong

  • Rather than marking their annihilation,

  • Merneptah's Stele announces the entrance

  • onto the world stage of a people named Israel

  • REDFORD: This is priceless evidence

  • for the presence of an ethnical group called Israel

  • in the central highlands of southern Canaan

  • NARRATOR: The well-established Egyptian chronology

  • gives the date as 1208 B.C.

  • Merneptah's Stele is powerful evidence

  • that a people called the Israelites are living in Canaan,

  • in what today includes Israel and Palestine

  • over 3,000 years ago

  • The ancient Israelites are best known through familiar stories

  • that chronicle their history

  • Abraham and Isaac...

  • (thunder crashes)

  • Moses and the Ten Commandments...

  • David and Goliath

  • It is the ancient Israelites who write the Bible

  • (reading aloud)

  • Through writing the Hebrew Bible,

  • the beliefs of the ancient Israelites survive

  • to become Judaism, one of the world's oldest

  • continuously practiced religions

  • And it is the Jews who give the world an astounding legacy:

  • the belief in one God

  • ¶ ¶

  • This belief will become the foundation

  • of two other great monotheistic religions:

  • Christianity...

  • and Islam

  • Often called the Old Testament,

  • to distinguish it from the New Testament,

  • which described the events of early Christianity,

  • today the Hebrew Bible and a belief in one God

  • are woven into the very fabric of world culture

  • But in ancient times, all people from the Egyptians

  • to the Greeks to the Babylonians,

  • worshipped many gods, usually in the form of idols

  • How did the Israelites, alone among ancient peoples,

  • discover the concept of one god?

  • (man chanting)

  • How did they come up with an idea

  • that so profoundly changed the world?

  • Now archaeologists and biblical scholars are arriving

  • at a new synthesis that promises to reveal

  • not only fresh historical insights,

  • but a deeper meaning

  • of what the authors of the Bible wanted to convey

  • They start by digging into the earth...

  • and the Bible

  • DEVER: You cannot afford to ignore biblical text,

  • especially if you can isolate a kind of kernel of truth

  • behind these stories,

  • and then you have the archaeological data

  • Now, what happens when text and artifact seem to point

  • in the same direction?

  • Then I think we are on a very sound ground historically

  • NARRATOR: Scholars search for intersections

  • between science and scripture

  • The earliest is the victory stele

  • of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah from 1208 B.C.

  • Both the stele and the Bible place a people

  • called the Israelites in the hill country of Canaan,

  • which includes modern-day Israel and Palestine

  • It is here, between two of history's greatest empires,

  • that Israel's story will unfold

  • PETER MACHINIST: The way to understand Israel's relationship

  • to the superpowers Egypt and Mesopotamia on either side

  • is to understand its own sense of its fragility as a people

  • The primary way in which the Bible looks at the origins

  • of Israel is as a people coming to settle in the land of Israel

  • It's not indigenous

  • It's not a native state

  • NARRATOR: The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of Israel's origins

  • The first is Abraham,

  • who leaves Mesopotamia with his family

  • and journeys to the Promised Land, Canaan

  • READER: "The Lord said to Abraham,

  • 'Go forth from your native land, and from your father's house,

  • 'to the land that I will show you

  • 'I will make of you a great nation

  • 'And I will bless you

  • I will make your name great"

  • "Genesis 12:1 and 2"

  • NARRATOR: According to the Bible,

  • this promise establishes the covenant,

  • a sacred contract between God and Abraham

  • To mark the covenant, Abraham and all males are circumcised

  • His descendants will be God's chosen people

  • They will be fruitful, multiply, and inhabit all the land

  • between Egypt and Mesopotamia

  • In return, Abraham and his people,

  • who will become the Israelites, must worship a single God

  • This is a new idea

  • NARRATOR: It is hard to appreciate today

  • how radical an idea this must have been

  • in a world dominated by polytheism--

  • the worship of many gods and idols

  • The Abraham narrative is part

  • of the first book of the Bible, Genesis,

  • along with Noah and the Flood, and Adam and Eve

  • Though they convey a powerful message,

  • to date, there is no archaeology or text

  • outside of the Bible to corroborate them

  • DAVID ILAN: The farther back you go in the biblical text,

  • the more difficult it is to find historical material in it

  • The patriarchs go back to Genesis

  • Genesis is, for the most part,

  • a compilation of myths, creation stories, things like that

  • And to find a historical core there is very difficult

  • NARRATOR: This absence of historical evidence leads scholars

  • to take a different approach to reading the biblical narrative

  • They look beyond our modern notion of fact or fiction

  • to ask why the Bible was written in the first place

  • DEVER: There is no word for "history" in the Hebrew Bible

  • The biblical writers were telling stories

  • They were good historians, and they could tell it

  • the way it was when they wanted to,

  • but their objective was always something far beyond that

  • NARRATOR: So what was their objective?

  • To find out, scholars must uncover

  • who wrote the Bible and when

  • READER: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words,

  • 'for, in accordance with these words,

  • I make a covenant with you and with Israel"

  • "Exodus 34:27"

  • NARRATOR: The traditional belief

  • is that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible--

  • Genesis: The story of creation

  • Exodus: Deliverance from slavery to the Promised Land

  • Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy:

  • Laws of morality and observance

  • Still read to this day, together they form the Torah,

  • often called the Five Books of Moses

  • MICHAEL COOGAN: The view that Moses had personally written down

  • the first five books of the Bible

  • was virtually unchallenged until the 17th century

  • There were a few questions raised about this

  • For example, the very end of the last book of the Torah,

  • the Book of Deuteronomy,

  • describes the death and burial of Moses

  • And so some rabbi said,

  • "Well, Moses couldn't have written those words himself

  • because he was dead and was being buried"

  • NARRATOR: And, digging deeper into the text,

  • there are even more discrepancies

  • COOGAN: For example, how many of each species of animal

  • is Noah supposed to bring into the ark?

  • One text says two-- a pair of every kind of animal

  • Another text says seven pair of the clean animals,

  • and only two of the unclean animals

  • NARRATOR: In one chapter, the Bible says

  • the flood lasts for 40 days and 40 nights

  • But, in the next, it says 150 days

  • To see if the floodwaters have subsided,

  • Noah sends out a dove

  • But, in the previous sentence, he sends a raven

  • There are two complete versions of the flood story

  • interwoven on the same page

  • Many similar discrepancies throughout its pages suggest

  • that the Bible has more than one writer

  • In fact, within the first five books of the Bible,

  • scholars have identified the hand

  • of at least four different groups of scribes writing

  • over several hundred years

  • This theory is called the Documentary Hypothesis

  • COOGAN: One way of thinking about it is, as a kind of anthology

  • that was made over the course of many centuries

  • by different people adding to it,

  • subtracting from it, and so forth

  • NARRATOR: But when did the process of writing the Bible begin?

  • Tel Zayit is a small site

  • on the southwestern border of ancient Israel

  • that dates back to biblical times

  • Since 1999, Ron Tappy has been excavating here

  • It was the last day of what had been a typical dig season

  • TAPPY: As I was taking aerial photographs

  • from the cherry picker,

  • a volunteer notified his square supervisor

  • that he thought he had seen some interesting marks--

  • scratches, possibly letters-- incised in a stone

  • Which? Right here? Yeah

  • NARRATOR: Letters would be a rare find.

  • So, when he kneeled to look at the marks,

  • Tappy got the surprise of a lifetime

  • TAPPY: As I bent down over the stone,

  • I immediately saw very clear, very distinct letters

  • NARRATOR: Tappy excavated the rock

  • and brought it back to his lab at the nearby kibbutz

  • It was only then that he realized he had more

  • than a simple inscription

  • TAPPY: "Aleph, bet, gimmel, dalet..."

  • I realized that this inscription represented an abecedary

  • That is to say, not a text narrative, but the letters

  • of the Semitic alphabet

  • written out in their correct order

  • "Nun" and then "pe" and "'ayin" are difficult to read,

  • but they're out here

  • NARRATOR: This ancient script is an early form

  • of the Hebrew alphabet

  • McCARTER: What was found

  • was not a random scratching of two or three letters

  • It was... it was the full alphabet

  • Everything about it says

  • that this is the ancestor of the Hebrew script

  • NARRATOR: The Tel Zayit abecedary

  • is the earliest Hebrew alphabet ever discovered

  • It dates to about 1000 B.C.,

  • making it possible that writing the Hebrew Bible

  • could have already started by this time

  • To discover the most ancient text in the Bible,

  • scholars examine the Hebrew spelling,

  • grammar and vocabulary

  • McCARTER: The Hebrew Bible is a collection of literature

  • written over about a thousand years

  • And, as with any other language,

  • Hebrew naturally changed quite a bit

  • over those thousand years

  • The same would be true of English

  • I'm speaking English of the 21st century

  • And, if I were living in Elizabethan times,

  • the words I choose, the syntax I use,

  • would be quite different

  • NARRATOR: Scholars examine the Bible in its original Hebrew

  • in search of the most archaic language,

  • and, therefore, the oldest passages

  • They find it in Exodus, the second book of the Bible

  • (hoofbeats thudding, horse neighing)

  • READER: "Pharaoh's chariots and his army He cast into the sea

  • His picked officers are drowned in the Red Sea."

  • "Exodus 15:4"

  • NARRATOR: This passage, known as the "Song of the Sea,"

  • is the climactic scene of Exodus,

  • the story of the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt,

  • and how Moses leads them to freedom

  • In all of the Bible,

  • no single event is mentioned more times than the Exodus

  • With the development of ancient Hebrew script,

  • the "Song of the Sea" could have been written by 1000 B.C.,

  • the time of Tappy's alphabet

  • But it was probably recited as a poem

  • long before the beginning of Hebrew writing

  • LAWRENCE STAGER: It's very likely that it was a kind of story

  • told in poetic form that you might tell around the campfire

  • Just as our poems are easier to remember, generally,

  • than prose accounts, so we generally think

  • that the poetry is orally passed on from one to another

  • long before they commit things to writing

  • NARRATOR: Because the poetry in Exodus is so ancient,

  • is it possible the story has some historical core?

  • Here, in the eastern Nile Delta of Egypt,

  • in a surreal landscape of fallen monuments and tumbled masonry,

  • archaeologists have uncovered a lost city

  • Inscribed on monuments throughout the site

  • is the name of Ramesses II,

  • one of the most powerful Egyptian rulers

  • It is Ramesses who is traditionally known

  • as the Pharaoh of the Exodus

  • Ancient Egyptian texts call the city Pi-Ramesse,

  • or House of Ramesses, a name that resonates

  • with the biblical story of Exodus

  • COOGAN: The only specific

  • item mentioned in the Exodus story

  • that we can probably connect with nonbiblical material

  • is the cities that the Hebrews were ordered to build,

  • and they are named Pithom and Ramesses

  • NARRATOR: Scholars agree that the biblical city Ramesses

  • is the ancient Egyptian city Pi-Ramesse

  • (wind whistling softly)

  • Its ruins are here in present-day Tanis

  • MANFRED BIETAK: Most of the Egyptologists

  • identified Piramesse, the Ramesses town, with Tanis,

  • because here you have an abundance

  • of Ramesside monuments

  • NARRATOR: This convergence between archaeology and the Bible

  • provides a time frame for the Exodus

  • It could not have happened

  • before Ramesses became king around 1275 B.C.

  • And it could not have happened after 1208 B.C.,

  • when the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah,

  • Ramesses II's so

  • specifically locates the Israelites in Canaan

  • (crowd clamoring)

  • The Bible says the Israelites leave Egypt in a mass migration,

  • 600,000 men and their families,

  • and then wander in the desert for 40 years

  • But even assuming the Bible is exaggerating,

  • in a hundred years of searching,

  • archaeologists have not yet found evidence of migration

  • that can be linked to the Exodus

  • DEVER: No excavated site gives us any information

  • about the route of the wandering through the wilderness

  • An Exodus is simply not attested anywhere

  • NARRATOR: Any historical or archaeological confirmation

  • of the Exodus remains elusive

  • Yet scholars have discovered that all four groups

  • of biblical writers contributed

  • to some part of the Exodus story

  • Perhaps it is for the same reason

  • its message remains powerful to this day...

  • ...its inspiring theme of freedom

  • CAROL MEYERS: Freedom is a compelling notion,

  • and that is one of the ways that we can understand

  • the story of the Exodus,

  • from being controlled by others to controlling oneself,

  • the idea of a change from domination to autonomy

  • These are very powerful ideas

  • that resonate in the human spirit

  • And the Exodus gives narrative reality to those ideas

  • (distant chatter)

  • NARRATOR: Following the Exodus,

  • the Bible says God finally delivers the Israelites

  • to the Promised Land-- Canaan

  • Archaeology and sources outside the Bible

  • reveal that Canaan consisted of well-fortified city-states,

  • each with its own king,

  • who in turn served Egypt and its pharaoh

  • The Canaanites,

  • a thriving Near Eastern culture for thousands of years,

  • worshipped many gods in the form of idols

  • The Bible describes how a new leader, Joshua,

  • takes the Israelites into Canaan

  • in a blitzkrieg military campaign

  • (crowd clamoring)

  • READER: "So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown

  • "As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets,

  • they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat"

  • "Joshua 6:20"

  • NARRATOR: But what does archaeology say?

  • In the 1930s,

  • British archaeologist John Garstang

  • excavated at Jericho,

  • the first Canaanite city in Joshua's campaign

  • Garstang uncovered dramatic evidence of destruction

  • and declared he had found the very walls

  • that Joshua had brought tumbling down

  • (helicopter blades whirring)

  • And at what the Bible describes

  • as the greatest of all Canaanite cities, Hazor,

  • there is more evidence of destruction.

  • (speaking Hebrew)

  • Today, Hazor is being excavated

  • by one of the leading Israeli archaeologists,

  • Amnon Ben-Tor,

  • and his protégé and codirector, Sharon Zuckerman

  • I'm walking through a passage between two of the rooms

  • of the Canaanite palace of the kings of Hazor

  • Signs of the destruction

  • you can still see almost everywhere

  • You can see the dark stones here,

  • and most importantly, you can see

  • how they cracked into a million pieces

  • It takes tremendous heat

  • to cause such damage

  • The fire here was, how should I say,

  • the mother of all fires

  • NARRATOR: Among the ashes,

  • Ben-Tor discovered a desecrated statue,

  • most likely the king or patron god of Hazor

  • Its head and hands are cut off,

  • apparently by the city's conquerors

  • This marked the end of Canaanite Hazor

  • BEN-TOR: Question number one: Who did it?

  • Who was around?

  • Who is a possible candidate?

  • So, number one, the Egyptians

  • They don't mention having done anything at Hazor

  • In any of the inscriptions of the time, we don't see Hazor

  • Another Canaanite city-state could have done it?

  • Maybe, but who was strong enough to do it?

  • Who are we left with?

  • The Israelites

  • The only ones about whom there is a tradition that they did it

  • So, let's say they should be considered guilty

  • of destruction of Hazor until proven innocent

  • NARRATOR: And there's another Canaanite city-state

  • that Joshua and his army of Israelites

  • are credited with laying waste

  • (men talking indistinctly)

  • It's called Ai, and has been discovered

  • in what is now the Palestinian territory of the West Bank

  • Here, archaeologist Hani Nur el-Din and his team

  • are finding evidence

  • of a rich Canaanite culture

  • (speaking indistinctly)

  • EL-DIN: The village first appears

  • and developed a city,

  • and then there was a kind of fortification

  • surrounding this settlement

  • (wind whistling)

  • NARRATOR: These heaps of stones

  • were once a magnificent palace and temples,

  • which were eventually destroyed

  • But when the archaeologists date the destruction,

  • they discover it occurred about 2200 B.C.

  • They date the destruction ofericho to 1500 B.C...

  • and Hazor's to about 1250 B.C.

  • Clearly, these city-states were not destroyed at the same time

  • They range over nearly a thousand years

  • In fact, of the 31 sites

  • the Bible says that Joshua conquered,

  • few showed any signs of war

  • DEVER: There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these sites

  • At the same time it was discovered

  • that most of the large Canaanite towns

  • that were supposed to have been destroyed by these Israelites

  • were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by others

  • NARRATOR: A single, sweeping military invasion led by Joshua

  • cannot account for how the Israelites arrived in Canaan

  • But the destruction of Hazor does coincide with the time

  • that the Merneptah Stele locates the Israelites in Canaan

  • So who destroyed Hazor?

  • Amnon Ben-Tor still believes it was the Israelites

  • who destroyed the city

  • (speaking Hebrew)

  • But his codirector, Sharon Zuckerman,

  • has a different idea

  • ZUCKERMAN: The final destruction itself

  • consisted of the mutilation

  • of statues of kings and gods

  • It did not consist of signs of war

  • or of any kind of fighting

  • We don't see weapons in the street

  • like we see in other sites that were destroyed by foreigners

  • (both speaking Hebrew)

  • NARRATOR: So if there was no invasion, what happened?

  • Bobby, just, uh, be careful about the stones there, okay?

  • NARRATOR: Excavations reveal that Hazor

  • had a lower city of commoners, serfs and slaves,

  • and an upper city with a king and wealthy elites

  • Zuckerman finds within the grand palaces of elite Hazor

  • areas of disrepair...

  • and abandonment--

  • to archaeologists, signs of a culture in decline...

  • and rebellion from within.

  • ZUCKERMAN: I would not rule out the possibility

  • of an internal revolt

  • of Canaanites living at Hazor

  • and, uh...

  • revolting against the elites that, uh, ruled the city

  • NARRATOR: In fact, the entire Canaanite city-state system,

  • including Hazor and Jericho, breaks down

  • Archaeology and ancient texts clearly show

  • that it is the result of a long period of decline and upheaval

  • that sweeps through Mesopotamia,

  • the Aegean region

  • and the Egyptian empire around 1200 B.C.

  • MACHINIST: And when the dust, as it were, settles,

  • when we can begin to see what takes the place of these...

  • of this great-state system,

  • we find a number of new peoples suddenly coming into focus

  • in a kind of void that is created

  • with the dissolution of the great-state system

  • NARRATOR: Can archaeologists find the Israelites

  • among these new people?

  • In the 1970s, archaeologists started wide-ranging surveys

  • throughout the central hill country of Canaan,

  • today primarily the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank

  • ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN: I was teaching at that time

  • We used to take students and go twice a week to the highlands

  • And every day we used to cover

  • between two and three square kilometers

  • And this accumulates very slowly

  • into the coverage of the entire area

  • NARRATOR: Israel Finkelstein and teams of archaeologists

  • walked out grids over large areas,

  • collecting every fragment of ancient pottery

  • lying on the surface

  • NARRATOR: Over seven years, he covered nearly 400 square miles,

  • sorting pottery and marking the locations

  • of where it was found on a map

  • FINKELSTEIN: In the beginning, the spots were there on the map

  • and they meant nothing to me

  • But later, slowly, slowly,

  • I started seeing sort of phenomena and processes

  • NARRATOR: By dating the pottery, Finkelstein discovered

  • that before 1200 B.C.,

  • there were approximately 25 settlements

  • He estimated the total population of those settlements

  • to be 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants

  • But just 200 years later,

  • there's a very sharp increase in settlements and people

  • FINKELSTEIN: Then you get this boom of population growing and growing,

  • then we are speaking about 250 sites

  • And the population grows also ten times

  • from a few thousand to 45,000 or so

  • Now, this is very dramatic

  • and cannot be explained as natural growth

  • This rate is impossible in ancient times

  • NARRATOR: If not natural growth,

  • perhaps these are the waves of dispersed people settling down

  • following the collapse of the great state systems

  • Then, more evidence of a new culture is discovered,

  • a new type of simple dwelling never seen before

  • And it's in the exact location

  • where both the Merneptah Stele and the Bible

  • place the Israelites

  • AMNON BEN-TOR: The sites in which this type of house appears

  • throughout the country, this is where Israelites lived.

  • They are sometimes even called the Israelite house

  • or Israelite type house

  • The people who lived in those villages seemed to be arranged

  • more or less in a kind of an egalitarian society,

  • because there are no major architectural installations

  • If you look at the finds, the finds are relatively poor

  • Pottery is more or less mundane--

  • I don't want to offend the early settlers

  • or the early Israelites-- very little art

  • NARRATOR: Curiously, the mundane pottery

  • found at these new Israelite villages

  • is very similar to the everyday pottery

  • found at the older Canaanite cities like Hazor

  • In fact, the Israelite house

  • is practically the only thing that is different

  • This broad similarity

  • is leading archaeologists to a startling new conclusion

  • about the origins of the ancient Israelites

  • The notion is that most of the early Israelites

  • were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites

  • The Israelites were always in the land of Israel

  • They were natives, but they were different kinds of groups

  • They were basically the have-nots

  • So what we are dealing with is a movement of peoples,

  • but not an invasion of armed hordes from outside,

  • but rather a social and economic revolution

  • NARRATOR: Ancient texts describe how the Egyptian rulers

  • and their Canaanite vassal kings

  • burden the lower classes of Canaan

  • with taxes and even slavery

  • A radical new theory based on archaeology

  • suggests what happens next

  • As that oppressive social system declines,

  • families and tribes of serfs, slaves, and common Canaanites

  • seize the opportunity

  • In search of a better way of life,

  • they abandon the old city-states and head for the hills

  • Free from the oppression of their past,

  • they eventually emerge in a new place as a new people--

  • the Israelites

  • FINKELSTEIN: In the text, you have the story

  • of the Israelites coming from outside,

  • and then besieging the Canaanite cities,

  • destroying them and then becoming a nation

  • in the land of Canaan

  • Whereas archaeology tells us something which is the opposite

  • According to archaeology, the rise of early Israel

  • is an outcome of the collapse of Canaanite society,

  • not the reason for that collapse

  • NARRATOR: Archaeology reveals that the Israelites

  • were themselves originally Canaanites

  • So why does the Bible consistently cast the Israelites

  • as outsiders in Canaan?

  • Abraham's wanderings from Mesopotamia...

  • (thunderclap)

  • ...Moses leading slaves out of Egypt

  • and into the Promised Land...

  • and Joshua conquering Canaan from outside

  • The answer may lie in their desire

  • to forge a distinctly new identity

  • MACHINIST: Identity is created, as psychologists tell us,

  • by talking about what you are not, by talking about another

  • In order to figure out who I am,

  • I have to figure out who I am not

  • NARRATOR: Conspicuously absent from Israelite villages

  • are the grand palaces and the extravagant pottery

  • associated with the kings and rich elites of Canaan

  • AVRAHAM FAUST: The Israelites did not like the Canaanite system

  • and they defined themselves in contrast to that system

  • By not using decorated pottery, by not using imported pottery,

  • they developed an ideology of simplicity,

  • which marked the difference between them

  • and the Egyptian Canaanite system.

  • NARRATOR: If the Israelites wanted to distinguish themselves

  • from their Canaanite past,

  • what better way than to create a story about destroying them?

  • But the stories of Abraham, Exodus, and the Conquest

  • serve another purpose

  • They celebrate the power of what the Bible says

  • is the foremost distinction between the Israelites

  • and all other people-- their God

  • In later Judaism,

  • the name of God is considered so sacred,

  • it is never to be spoken

  • COOGAN: We don't know exactly what it means,

  • we don't know how it was pronounced,

  • but it seems to have been the personal name

  • of the God of Israel

  • So his title, in a sense, was God,

  • and his name was these four letters,

  • which in English would be YHWH,

  • which we think were probably pronounced

  • something like Yahweh

  • NARRATOR: But Yahweh only appears in the Hebrew Bible

  • His name is nowhere to be found in Canaanite texts or stories

  • So where do the Israelites find their God?

  • The search for the origins of Yahweh

  • leads scholars back to ancient Egypt

  • Here in the royal city of Karnak,

  • for over a thousand years,

  • Pharaohs celebrated their power with statues,

  • obelisks, and carved murals on temple walls

  • REDFORD: Here on the north wall of Karnak,

  • we have scenes depicting the victories in battle

  • of Seti I, the father of Ramesses the Great

  • Seti here commemorates one of his greatest victories

  • over the Shasu

  • NARRATOR: The Shasu were a people

  • who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan,

  • now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia,

  • around the same time as the Israelites emerged

  • Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived

  • is called "YHW,"

  • probably pronounced "Yahu,"

  • likely the name of their patron god

  • That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh,

  • the name of the Israelite god

  • In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived

  • is referred to as Midian

  • It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us

  • Moses first encounters Yahweh in the form of a burning bush

  • READER: "Come no closer

  • "Remove the sandals from your feet,

  • for the place on which you are standing is holy ground"

  • "Exodus 3:5 and 15"

  • COOGAN: So we have in Egyptian sources,

  • something that appears to be a name like Yahweh

  • in the vicinity of Midian

  • Here is Moses in Midian, and there

  • a deity appears to him

  • and reveals his name to Moses as Yahweh

  • NARRATOR: These tantalizing connections

  • are leading biblical scholars to reexamine the Exodus story

  • While there is no evidence to support a mass migration,

  • some now believe that a small group did escape from Egypt;

  • however, they were not Israelites,

  • but rather Canaanite slaves

  • On their journey back to Canaan, they pass through Midian,

  • where they are inspired by stories

  • of the Shasu's god, Yahu

  • FAUST: There was probably a group of people who fled from Egypt

  • and had some divine experience

  • It was probably small, a small group demographically,

  • but it was important at least in ideology

  • NARRATOR: They find their way to the centrahill country,

  • where they encounter the tribes

  • who had fled the Canaanite city-states

  • Their story of deliverance resonates

  • in this emerging egalitarian society

  • The liberated slaves attribute their freedom

  • to the god they met in Midian,

  • who they now call Yahweh

  • MEYERS: They spread the word to the highlanders,

  • who themselves perhaps had escaped

  • from the tyranny of the Canaanite city-states

  • They spread the idea

  • of a god who represented freedom,

  • freedom for people to keep the fruits of their own labor

  • This was a message that was so powerful

  • that it brought people together

  • and gave them a new kind of identity

  • NARRATOR: The identity of Israelites

  • They are a combination of disenfranchised Canaanites,

  • runaway slaves from Egypt, and even nomads settling down

  • The Bible calls them a mixed multitude

  • According to the Hebrew Bible,

  • early Israel is a motley crew, and we know that's the case now

  • But these people are bound together by a new vision

  • and I think the revolutionary spirit

  • is probably there from the beginning

  • NARRATOR: The chosen people may actually be people who chose to be free

  • Their story of escape, first told

  • by word of mouth and poetry, helps forge

  • a collective identity among the tribes.

  • Later, when written down, it will become a central theme

  • of the Bible-- Exodus and divine deliverance

  • Deliverance by a god who comes from Midian,

  • exactly where the Bible says,

  • adopted by the Israelites

  • from slavery to freedom

  • So is this the birth of monotheism?

  • COOGAN: The common understanding of what differentiated

  • the ancient Israelites from their neighbors

  • was that their neighbors worshipped

  • many different gods and goddesses,

  • and the Israelites worshipped only the one true God

  • But that is not the case

  • NARRATOR: This bull figurine, likely representing El,

  • the chief god of the Canaanite deities,

  • is one of thousands of idols discovered in Israelite sites

  • COOGAN: The Israelites frequently worshipped other gods

  • Now, maybe they weren't supposed to, but they did

  • So at least on a practical level,

  • many, if not most, Israelites were not monotheists

  • NARRATOR: The Bible's ideal of the Israelite worship of one god

  • will have to wait

  • About two centuries pass after the Merneptah Stele

  • places the Israelites in Canaan

  • Families grow into tribes

  • Their population increases

  • Then about 1000 B.C., one of the Bible's larger-than-life figures

  • emerges to unite the 12 tribes of Israel

  • against a powerful new enemy

  • READER: "David put his hand into the bag;

  • "he took out a stone and slung it

  • "It struck the Philistine in the forehead;

  • "the stone sank into his forehead

  • "and he fell down on the ground

  • First Samuel 17:49"

  • NARRATOR: The Bible celebrates David as a shepherd boy

  • who vanquishes the giant Goliath,

  • a lover who lusts after forbidden fruits,

  • and a poet who composes lyric psalms still recited today

  • Of all the names in the Hebrew Bible,

  • none appears more than David

  • Scriptures say, David creates a kidom

  • that stretches from Egypt to Mesopotamia

  • He makes Jerusalem his royal capital

  • And in a new covenant, Yahweh promises

  • that he and his descendants will rule forever

  • David's son Solomon builds the temple

  • where Yahweh, now the national God of Israel,

  • will dwell for eternity

  • The Kingdom of David and Solomon--

  • one nation, united under one god-- according to the Bible

  • DEVER: Now, some skeptics today have argued

  • there was no such thing as a United Monarchy

  • It's a later biblical construct

  • and particularly a construct of modern scholarship

  • In short, there was no David

  • As one of the biblical revisionists have said,

  • David is no more historical than King Arthur

  • NARRATOR: But then, in 1993, an amazing discovery

  • literally shed new light on what the Bible calls

  • ancient Israel's greatest king

  • Gila Cook was finishing up some survey work with an assistant

  • at Tel Dan, a biblical site in the far north of Israel today

  • The excavation was headed

  • by the eminent Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran

  • It was near the end of the day,

  • and Cook was getting her last measurements

  • when she hears a yell from below.

  • MAN (yelling): Gila!

  • And it was Biran in his booming voice yelling, "Gila, let's go"

  • And so I waved to him...

  • Hold on.

  • ...and continued working

  • Okay.

  • NARRATOR: After being summoned by Biran

  • a second time,

  • Cook had her assistant load her up

  • And she started down the hill

  • COOK: So I get there and I just drop my bag and drop the board

  • and I set my stuff down

  • NARRATOR: But something catches her eye

  • A stone,

  • with what appeared to be random scratches,

  • but was actually an ancient inscription

  • This time she yelled for Biran

  • And he looks at it and he looks at me

  • and he says, "Oh, my God!"

  • NARRATOR: Cook had found a fragment of a victory stele,

  • written in Aramaic, an ancient language very similar to Hebrew

  • Dedicated by the king of Damascus,

  • or one of his generals,

  • it celebrates the conquest of Israel,

  • boasting, "I slew mighty kings

  • "who harnessed thousands of chariots

  • "and thousands of horsemen

  • I killed the king of the House of David"

  • Those words, "the House of David,"

  • make this a critical discovery

  • They are strong evidence that David really lived

  • Unlike Genesis, the stories of Israel's kings

  • move the biblical narrative out of the realm of legend

  • and into the light of history

  • DEVER: The later we come in time,

  • the firmer ground we stand on

  • We have better sources, we have more written sources

  • We have more contemporary eyewitness sources

  • NARRATOR: When the biblical chronology of Israel's kings

  • can be cross-referenced with historical inscriptions,

  • like the Tel Dan Stele,

  • they can provide scholars with fairly reliable dates

  • King David is the earliest biblical figure

  • confirmed by archaeology to be historical

  • And most scholars agree he lived around 1000 B.C.,

  • the 10th century

  • Could any of the Bible have been written during David's reign?

  • The earliest Hebrew alphabet discovered by Ron Tappy

  • carved on a stone at Tel Zayit provides an enticing clue

  • Across this wall here

  • TAPPY: The stone was incised with this alphabet,

  • the stone was then used to build a wall,

  • and the structure itself suffered massive destruction

  • by fire sometime near the end of the 10th century B.C.E.

  • NARRATOR: The find is even more significant

  • because Tel Zayit was a biblical backwater,

  • on the fringes of David's kingdom

  • McCARTER: Surely if there was a scribe that could write this alphabet

  • that far away, way out in the boondocks

  • at the extreme western boundary of the kingdom,

  • surely if there is a scribe that could do that out there,

  • there were scribes, much more sophisticated scribes

  • back in the capital

  • NARRATOR: Could these scribes have been in the court of King David

  • and his son Solomon?

  • Could they have been the earliest biblical writers?

  • In the 18th century, German scholars uncovered a clue

  • to who wrote the Bible,

  • hidden in two different names for God

  • COOGAN: According to one account,

  • Abraham knew God by his intimate, personal name,

  • conventionally pronounced Yahweh

  • NARRATOR: Passages with the name Yahweh,

  • which in German is spelled with a J,

  • scholars refer to as J

  • COOGAN: But according to other accounts, Abraham knew God

  • simply by the most common Hebrew word for God, which is Elohim

  • NARRATOR: So the two different writers became known

  • as E for "Elohim" and J for "Yahweh"

  • Most likely based on poetry and songs

  • passed down for generations, they both write a version

  • of Israel's distant past--

  • the stories of Abraham in the Promised Land,

  • Moses and the Exodus

  • (thunder)

  • COOGAN: The earliest of these sources

  • is the one that is known as J, which many scholars dated

  • to the 10th century B.C., the time of David and Solomon

  • NARRATOR: And because the backdrop for J's version of events

  • is the area around Jerusalem, it's likely he lived there,

  • perhaps in the royal courts of David and Solomon

  • (monks singing)

  • For over a hundred years,

  • archaeologists have searched Jerusalem for evidence

  • of the Kingdom of David

  • (monks singing)

  • But excavating here is contentious

  • because Jerusalem is sacred

  • to today's three monotheistic religions

  • JOAN BRANHAM: For Christians, Jesus comes in his final week

  • to worship at the Jerusalem temple

  • He's crucified, he's buried,

  • he's resurrected in the city of Jerusalem

  • (monks singing)

  • For Islam, it is the site where Mohammed comes

  • in a sacred night journey,

  • and today the Dome of the Rock marks that spot

  • In Judaism, the stories of the Hebrew Bible, of Solomon,

  • of David, of the temples of Jerusalem,

  • all of these take place, of course, in Jerusalem

  • So, Jerusalem is a symbol of sacred space today,

  • important for all three traditions

  • NARRATOR: Despite the difficulties,

  • Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar went digging

  • in the most ancient part of Jerusalem,

  • today called the City of David

  • MAZAR: We started excavations here

  • because we wanted to check

  • and to examine the possibility that the remains

  • of King David's palace are here

  • NARRATOR: But because this area has been fought over, destroyed

  • and rebuilt over thousands of years,

  • it was a long shot that any biblical remains would survive

  • But then...

  • MAZAR: Large walls started to appear,

  • three-meter wide, five-meter wide

  • And then we saw that it goes all directions

  • It goes from east, 30 meters to the west,

  • and we don't see the end of it yet

  • NARRATOR: Such huge walls can only be part of a massive building

  • And Mazar believes her excavations to date

  • represent only 20% of its total size

  • MAZAR: Such a huge structure shows centralization

  • and capability of construction

  • It can be only royal structure

  • Pottery dating is based on two ideas:

  • pottery styles evolve uniformly over time,

  • and the further down you dig, the further back in time you go

  • If "pottery style A" comes from the lowest stratum,

  • then it is earlier than "pottery style B"

  • that comes from the stratum above it

  • By analyzing pottery from well-stratified sites,

  • excavators are able to create

  • what they call a "relative chronology"

  • But this chronology is "floating" in time

  • without any fixed dates

  • To anchor this chronology, William Foxwell Albright,

  • considered the father of biblical archaeology,

  • used events mentioned in both the Bible

  • and Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts to assign dates

  • to pottery styles

  • Albright's chronology, slightly modified, is what Mazar uses

  • to date her massive building,

  • and what most archaeologists use today

  • MAZAR: What we found is a typical tenth-century pottery,

  • meaning bowls with hand burnish you can see from inside,

  • together with an import; a beautiful black-on-red juglet

  • What is so important

  • is that this is a tenth-century typical juglet

  • NARRATOR: So has Mazar discovered the Palace of David?

  • She adds up the evidence-- the building is huge,

  • it is located in a prominent place

  • in the oldest part of Jerusalem,

  • and the pottery, according to Albright's chronology,

  • dates to the 10th century B.C., the time of David

  • Mazar believes she has indeed found the Palace of David

  • But that evidence and indeed the kingdom itself

  • rest on the dates associated with fragments of pottery

  • And some critics argue the system for dating that pottery

  • relies too heavily on the Bible

  • Archaeologists in the past did not rely too heavily

  • on the Bible

  • They relied only on the Bible

  • We have a problem in dating

  • How do you date in archaeology?

  • You need an anchor from outside

  • NARRATOR: Today, there is a more scientific method

  • to anchor pottery to firm dates, radiocarbon dating

  • It is a specialty of Elisabetta Boaretto

  • of the Weizmann Institute

  • BOARETTO: The first step is, of course, in the field,

  • which relates this sample mateal like olive pits

  • or seeds or charcoal to the archaeological context

  • NARRATOR: If an olive seed is found at the same layer

  • as a piece of pottery, the carbon in the seed can be used

  • to date the pottery

  • When the seed dies, its radioactive carbon 14 decays

  • into stable carbon 12 at a consistent rate over time

  • By measuring the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12,

  • Boaretto can determine the age of the olive seed,

  • which in turn can be used to date the pottery

  • (hissing)

  • Boaretto has meticulously collected and analyzed

  • hundreds of samples from over 20 sites throughout Israel

  • Her carbon samples date the pottery that Albright

  • and most archaeologists associate with the time of David

  • and Solomon to around 75 years later

  • For events so long ago, this may seem like a trivial difference

  • But if Boaretto is right,

  • Mazar's Palace of David

  • and Tappy's ancient Hebrew alphabet have to be redated

  • This places them in the time of the lesser-known kings

  • Omri, Ahab and his despised wife Jezebel,

  • all worshippers of the Canaanite god Baal

  • With no writing or monumental building,

  • suddenly the Kingdom of David and Solomon is far less glorious

  • than the Bible describes

  • FINKELSTEIN: So David and Solomon did not rule over a big territory

  • It was a small chiefdom, if you wish,

  • with just a few settlements, very poor,

  • the population was limited, there was no manpower

  • for big conquest, and so on and so forth

  • NARRATOR: This would make David a petty warlord ruling over a chiefdom,

  • and his royal capital, Jerusalem,

  • nothing more than a cow town

  • FINKELSTEIN: These are the results of the radiocarbon dating

  • He or she who decides to ignore these results,

  • I treat them as if arguing that the world is flat,

  • that the Earth is flat, and I cannot argue anymore

  • NARRATOR: But it's not so simple

  • Other teams collected radiocarbon samples

  • following the same meticulous methodology

  • According to their results,

  • Mazar's Palace and Tappy's alphabet can date

  • to the 10th century, the time of David and Solomon

  • How can this discrepancy be explained?

  • The problem is that these radiocarbon dates have

  • a margin of error of plus or minus 30 years,

  • about the difference between the two sides

  • Pottery and radiocarbon dating alone cannot determine

  • if the Kingdom of David and Solomon was as large

  • and prosperous as described in the Bible

  • Fortunately, the Bible offers clues of other places to dig

  • for evidence of this kingdom

  • The Bible credits David with conquering the Kingdom,

  • but it is Solomon, his son, who is the great builder

  • READER: "This was the purpose of the forced labor

  • "which Solomon imposed

  • "It was to build the House of YHWH

  • and the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer"

  • "First Kings 9:15"

  • NARRATOR: Here in Hazor, Amnon Ben-Tor, director of excavations,

  • believes this may be evidence of Solomon's building campaign

  • Archaeologists call it a six-chambered gate--

  • a massive entryway fortified with towers and guard rooms

  • Ben-Tor's predecessor, Yigal Yadin,

  • first uncovered this structure

  • BEN-TOR: It turned out to be a six-chambered gate,

  • and Yadin immediately remembered

  • that a very, very similar gate was excavated at Gezer

  • And then the Chicago University

  • excavated this gate here at Megiddo

  • NARRATOR: Stunned by the similarity of these three gates,

  • Yadin recalled the passage in the Bible

  • BEN-TOR: Here we have a wonderful connection

  • of the biblical passage as it shows up in archaeology

  • NARRATOR: Three monumental gates, all based on the same plan,

  • would seem to be powerful evidence not only of prosperity,

  • but also of a central authority

  • Throughout its history, the Israelites

  • had been divided into tribes,

  • then into kingdoms, north and south

  • The locations of these strikingly similar gates

  • in both regions suggest a single governing authority

  • throughout the land

  • But how can we be sure

  • this is the kingdom of David and Solomon?

  • The answer once again lies in Egypt

  • REDFORD: The head-smiting scene which you see on this wall

  • commemorates a military campaign

  • conducted by Pharaoh Shishak or Sheshonk,

  • the founder of Dynasty 22 in Egypt

  • NARRATOR: The Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak invades Israel,

  • an event the Bible reports

  • and specifically dates to five years after Solomon's death,

  • during the reign of his son, Rehoboam

  • READER: "In thfifth year of King Rehoboam,

  • "King Shishak of Egypt marched against Jerusalem

  • "and carried off the treasures of the House of Yahweh

  • "and the treasures of the royal palace

  • He carried off everything"

  • "First Kings 14:25 and 26"

  • REDFORD: The importance of this in fixing

  • one of the earliest dates, specific dates

  • in which Egyptian history coincides with biblical history

  • is really startling and has to be taken note of

  • NARRATOR: This stunning convergence

  • between the Bible and Egyptian history

  • gives a firm date for the death of Solomon

  • Shishak's campaign, according to the well-established

  • Egyptian chronology, dates to 925 B.C.

  • And the Bible says Solomon dies five years earlier,

  • which means 930 B.C.

  • This is further evidence that David and Solomon

  • lived in the 10th century

  • But there's even more hidden in these walls

  • These ovals, with their depictions of bound captives

  • and city walls, represent places

  • Pharaoh Shishak conquered in Israel

  • One of those places is Gezer,

  • where archaeologists find the hallmark

  • of Solomon's building program, a six-chambered gate

  • Bill Dever directed the excavations in the late 1960's

  • DEVER: We can actually see vivid evidence here of a destruction

  • Down below, we have the original stones pretty much in situ

  • But if you look in here, you see the stones are badly cracked

  • You can even see where they're burned

  • from the heat of a huge fire that has been built here

  • And then up in here, you see the fire has been so intense

  • that the soft limestone has melted into lime,

  • and it flows down like lava

  • This is vivid evidence of a destruction,

  • and we would connect that

  • with this well-known raid of Pharaoh Shishak

  • NARRATOR: And if the gate was destroyed by Shishak in 925 B.C.,

  • then it must have been built during the lifetime of Solomon,

  • who died just five years earlier

  • DEVER: Surely this kind of monumental architecture

  • is evidence of state formation,

  • and if it's in the 10th century, then Solomon

  • NARRATOR: Although a minority of archaeologists

  • continue to disagree, this convergence of the Bible,

  • Egyptian chronology, and Solomon's gates

  • is powerful evidence that a great kingdom existed

  • at the time of David and Solomon, spanning all of Israel,

  • north and south, with its capital in Jerusalem

  • But Jerusalem is more than a political center...

  • It is the center of worship

  • SHAYE COHEN: The magic of Jerusalem is the magic of the temple

  • One temple for the one god

  • The result is that Jerusalem and the temple

  • emerge as powerful symbols not just of the oneness of God,

  • but also of the oneness of the Jewish people

  • NARRATOR: The worship of the ancient Israelites

  • bears little resemblance to Judaism today

  • It centered around the temple, built by David's son Solomon,

  • and seen as Yahweh's earthly dwelling

  • To understand how the ancient Israelites worshipped their god,

  • scholars must discover what the Temple looked like

  • and how it functioned

  • But although archaeologists know where its remains should be,

  • it is impossible to dig there

  • It lies under the third holiest site in Islam,

  • which includes the Dome of the Rock

  • Not a stone of Solomon's Temple has ever been excavated,

  • but the Bible offers a remarkably detailed description

  • READER: "The house which King Solomon built for Yahweh

  • "was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide

  • "and 30 cubits high

  • "In the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim--

  • "each ten cubits high

  • He overlaid the cherubim with gold"

  • "First Kings 6:2, 23, and 28"

  • NARRATOR: The Bible's description suggests a floor plan

  • for Solomon's Temple,

  • and it is strikingly similar to those of temples built

  • by neighboring peoples who worship many gods

  • The closest in appearance

  • is a temple hundreds of miles to the north of Jerusalem

  • at Ain Dara in modern-day Syria

  • They have similar dimensions and the same basic floor plan

  • Guarding both temples are sphinxes or cherubim,

  • as t Bible calls them

  • Unique to the temple at Ain Dara

  • are the enormous footprints of the god who lived here

  • They mark his progress as he strode to his throne

  • in the innermost sanctuary

  • STAGER: If we take the details that we find of Solomon's Temple

  • in the Book of Kings and compare it with the Ain Dara temple,

  • we can piece together

  • a fairly good picture, I think,

  • of what this temple might have looked like

  • in the age of Solomon

  • NARRATOR: Now it is possible to reconstruct with some confidence

  • how Solomon's Temple may have looked

  • and how the ancient Israelites worshipped their god

  • BRANHAM: Out front was an enormous altar

  • Beyond that was a porch area

  • that led into the inside of the temple

  • There was a room, the holy place,

  • and then beyond that, the most sacred room--

  • the holy of holies,

  • where, tradition says, the Ark of the Covenant

  • held the tablets of the law

  • And this room was considered to be

  • the most sacred site on Earth,

  • because it is the room where God's presence could be found

  • NARRATOR: And the ancient Israelites believed

  • their god demanded a very specific form of worship

  • Evidence of this survis today on Mount Gerizim in Palestine

  • The Samaritans, who live here,

  • claim direct descent from the ancient tribes of Israel

  • According to their tradition,

  • for over 2,500 years, they have been practicing

  • the ancient Israelite form of worship--

  • animal sacrifice

  • (goat bleating)

  • (chanting)

  • BRANHAM: The primary function is to make a connection

  • between our mundane world and the divine world

  • (men chanting)

  • And the means for the ancient Israelites

  • is embodied in blood

  • Blood is the most sacred substance on the altar

  • And blood is the substance that embodies life

  • So it is the most precious substance in the human world

  • NARRATOR: But while the priests were offering sacrifice to Yahweh

  • in the Temple, many Israelites were not as loyal

  • At Tel Rehov, archaeologists are digging

  • at an Israelite house that illuminates

  • the religious practices of its ancient inhabitants

  • AMIHAI MAZAR: We just found

  • this beautiful, exceptional clay figurine

  • showing a goddess, a fertility goddess,

  • that was worshipped here in Israel

  • Here, in this case, she is shown holding a baby

  • NARRATOR: Who is this fertility goddess,

  • and what is a pagan idol doing in an Israelite home?

  • Dramatic evidence as to her possible identity

  • first surfaced in 1968

  • Bill Dever was carrying out salvage excavations

  • in tombs in southern Israel

  • when a local brought him an inscription

  • that had been robbed from one of them

  • When I got home and brushed it off,

  • I thought I was going to have a heart attack

  • Executed in clear 8th century script,

  • it's a tomb inscription

  • And it gives the name of the deceased

  • and it says, "Blessed may X be by Yahweh"

  • That's good Biblical Hebrew

  • But it says "by Yahweh and his Asherah," and Asherah

  • is the name of the old Canaanite mother goddess

  • NARRATOR: More inscriptions associating Yahweh and Asherah

  • have been discovered...

  • and thousands of figurines unearthed throughout Israel

  • Many scholars believe this is the face of Asherah

  • Dever concludes God had a wife

  • Even hundreds of years after the Israelites

  • rise from their Canaanite pagan roots,

  • monotheism has still not completely taken hold

  • This is awkward for some people,

  • the notion that Israelite religion

  • was not exclusively monotheistic,

  • but we know now that it wasn't

  • NARRATOR: The Bible admits the Israelites continue

  • to worship Asherah and other Canaanite gods, such as Baal

  • (thunderclap)

  • In fact, the prophets--

  • holy men speaking in the name of God--

  • consistently rail against breaking the covenant

  • made with Moses to worship only Yahweh

  • READER: "The more I called them, the more they went from me;

  • "they kept sacrificing to the Baals

  • and offering incense to idols Hosea 11:2."

  • The Israelites had made a contract with God

  • If they kept it, God would reward them

  • If they broke it, he would punish them

  • He would punish them by using

  • foreign powers as his instruments

  • NARRATOR: Events seem to fulfill the prophet's dire predictions

  • Soon after Solomon's death, the ten northern tribes rebel

  • and form the Northern Kingdom of Israel

  • Then a powerful new enemy storms out of Mesopotamia

  • to create the largest empire

  • the Near East had ever known-- the Assyrians

  • MACHINIST: The Assyrians were the overpowering military force,

  • and Israel and Judah, the two states

  • that the Bible talks about

  • as the states making up the people Israel,

  • fell under the sway of the Assyrian juggernaut

  • NARRATOR: Numerous Assyrian texts and reliefs vividly document

  • their domination of Israel and Judah

  • (swords clanging, men clamoring)

  • In 722 B.C., the Assyrian army crushes the Northern Kingdom

  • Those who escape death or exile to Assyria

  • flood south into Jerusalem,

  • where the descendants of David and Solomon continue to reign

  • One of them, Josiah, according to the Bible,

  • finally heeds what the prophets prescribe

  • COOGAN: We're told in the Book of Kings that King Josiah

  • in the late 7th century B.C. was told that a scroll

  • had been discovered in the temple archives

  • The scroll was brought to him

  • and as the scroll was being read,

  • Josiah began to weep, because he realized

  • that it was a sacred text containing divine commands

  • which the people had been breaking

  • NARRATOR: Scholars believe that the lost scroll

  • is part of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy,

  • a detailed code of laws and observance

  • It inspires another group of scribes

  • in the 7th century B.C., whom scholars call the D writers

  • According to the Documentary Hypothesis, after J and E,

  • D is the third group of scribes

  • who write part of the Hebrew Bible

  • D retells the Exodus story

  • and reaffirms the covenant Moses made

  • between God and the Israelite people

  • COOGAN: You should love the Lord your God

  • because he has loved you

  • He has loved you more than any other nation

  • So, the divine love for Israel requires

  • a corresponding loyalty to God, an exclusive loyalty to God,

  • and Deuteronomy, more than other parts of the Bible,

  • is insistent that only the God of Israel is to be worshipped

  • NARRATOR: To enforce the covenant,

  • Josiah orders that idols and altars

  • to all other deities be destroyed.

  • The book of Deuteronomy

  • contains the clearest prohibition

  • of the worship of other gods-- the Ten Commandments

  • (thunder)

  • READER: "I am Yahweh your God"

  • "You shall have no other gods before me."

  • "You shall not make for yourself an idol"

  • "You shall not bow down to them

  • or worship them"

  • "Deuteronomy 5:6 through 9"

  • NARRATOR: The Ten Commandments appears in two books of the Bible,

  • in Deuteronomy and in Exodus

  • It is not only a contract th Yahweh,

  • it is also a code of conduct between people

  • CAHILL: The revelation of the Ten Commandments

  • is an ethical revelation,

  • and that's where the idea of justice comes in,

  • and we will not lie about him

  • We will abide by the Commandments

  • The Commandments,

  • as God himself repeatedly says through the later prophets,

  • are already written on the hearts of human beings

  • (thunder)

  • NARRATOR: By associating the belief in one god

  • with moral behavior,

  • the Ten Commandments establishes a code of morality

  • and justice for all--

  • the ideal of Western civilization

  • Despite Josiah's reforms, the ancient Israelites

  • continue to worship other gods

  • Their acceptance of one god and the triumph of monotheism

  • begins with a series of events

  • vividly attested through archaeology,

  • ancient texts and the Bible

  • It starts with the destruction of Yahweh's earthly dwelling,

  • the Jerusalem Temple

  • In 586 B.C., after defeating the Assyrians,

  • a new Mesopotamian Empire invades Israel

  • The Babylonians ransack the temple

  • and systematically burn the sacred city

  • Before his eyes, the Babylonian victors

  • slay the sons of Zedekiah, the last Davidic king,

  • then blind him

  • The covenant-- the promise made by Yahweh

  • to his chosen people and to David, that his dynasty

  • would rule eternally in Jerusalem-- is broken

  • After 400 years, Israel is wiped out

  • ERIC MEYERS: The destruction of Jerusalem

  • created one of the most significant

  • NARRATOR: The Babylonians round up the Israelite priests, prophets

  • and scribes and drag them in chains to Babylon

  • Babylonian records confirm the presence of Israelites,

  • including the king, in exile

  • DEVER: In every age of disbelief,

  • one is inclined to think God is dead,

  • and surely those who survived the fall of Jerusalem

  • must have thought so

  • After all, how could God allow his temple,

  • his house, the sign, visible sign

  • of his presence among his people, to be destroyed?

  • NARRATOR: Without temple, king or land,

  • how can the Israelites survive?

  • Their journey begins with the ancient scrolls,

  • which some scholars speculate

  • were rescued from the flames of the destruction

  • Among the exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon

  • were priests from the temple,

  • and they seem to have brought with them

  • their sacred documents, their sacred traditions

  • NARRATOR: According to the widely accepted Documentary Hypothesis,

  • it is here in Babylon, far from their homes in Israel,

  • that priests and scribes will produce

  • much of the Hebrew Bible as it is known today.

  • Scholars refer to these writers as "P" or the Priestly Source

  • COOGAN: It was P who took all of these earlier traditions,

  • the J source, the E source,

  • the D source and other sources as well,

  • and combined them into what we know as the Torah,

  • the first five books of the Bible

  • NARRATOR: But more than just compiling, P edits and writes a version

  • of Israel's distant past, including the Abraham story,

  • that provides a way for the Israelites to remain a people

  • and maintain their covenant with God

  • READER: "You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins,

  • and it shall be a sign of a covenant between me and you"

  • Genesis 17:11.

  • When Genesis 17 attributes

  • a covenantal value to circumcision,

  • it is not really talking about Abraham

  • It is really talking about the exiles of the 6th century B.C.E.

  • who, far from their native home, were desperately trying

  • to find a way to reaffirm their difference

  • Therefore, they began to look at circumcision

  • as not simply another practice,

  • but rather as the marker of the covenant,

  • and they attributed this view back to Abraham

  • NARRATOR: To the exiles, the Babylonians are the new Canaanites,

  • the idol-worshipping, uncircumcised peoples

  • from whom they must remain apart

  • (baby crying)

  • But the Abraham story, with its harrowing tale

  • of a father's willingness to sacrifice his own son,

  • is also about the power of faith

  • It is no coincidence that the exiled P scribes

  • place Abraham's origins in Ur,

  • just down the river from Babylon

  • Perhaps with the same faith as Abraham had,

  • so, too, will the Exiles be returned to the Promised Land

  • COOGAN: One of the pervasive themes in the Torah

  • is the theme of exile and return

  • Abraham goes down to Egypt and comes out of Egypt

  • that theme must have resonated very powerfully

  • God, who had acted on their behalf in the past,

  • would presumably do so again

  • NARRATOR: But the Israelites still have a problem

  • How, in a foreign land, without the temple and sacrifice,

  • can they redeem themselves in the eyes of Yahweh?

  • (singing in Hebrew)

  • COOGAN: To assure that divine protection,

  • the P tradition

  • emphasizes observances such as the Sabbath observance

  • You don't need to be in the land of Israel to keep the Sabbath

  • ERIC MEYERS: And we have allusions

  • in the biblical writings and the prophets

  • to the fact that the Exiles also learned to pray

  • in groups, in what was to become the forerunner of the synagogue

  • (all reciting Hebrew prayer)

  • COHEN: It is during this period through the Exile

  • that the Exiles realized

  • that even far away from their homeland,

  • without a temple, without the priesthood,

  • without kings,

  • they are still able to worship God,

  • be loyal to God

  • and to follow God's commandments

  • ALL: Amen

  • This is the foundation of Judaism

  • NARRATOR: The experience of the Exile

  • transforms ancient Israelite cult

  • into a modern religion

  • By compiling the stories of their past,

  • originally written by the scribes J, E and D,

  • the Exodus, from slavery to freedom,

  • Moses and the Ten Commandments,

  • Abraham's Journey to the Promised Land,

  • P creates what we know today

  • as the first five books of the Bible

  • (birds chirping)

  • Though this theory is widely accepted,

  • physical evidence of any biblical text

  • from the Exile or earlier is hard to come by

  • (stone clatters)

  • The most celebrated

  • surviving biblical texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls

  • First discovered by accident in 1947,

  • the scrolls represent nearly all 39 books of the Hebrew Bible,

  • at least in fragments

  • They survived because they were deposited

  • in the perfect environment for preservation--

  • the hot, dry desert

  • Archaeologists suspect there were at least

  • hundreds more scrolls throughout Israel,

  • but because they were written on papyrus or animal skins,

  • they have long since decomposed

  • JODI MAGNESS: Even though the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls

  • date to the third and second centuries B.C.,

  • that doesn't mean that they're the first copies or examples

  • of this work that were ever written

  • It means that they already stand in a line of tradition

  • that had been established

  • by the time the scrolls were written

  • NARRATOR: Still, the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls

  • dates to at least 300 years after the Babylonian Exile

  • In the absence of proof of earlier text,

  • some scholars claim the entire Bible is pious fiction...

  • and even doubt whether Israel and the Israelites ever existed

  • DEVER: For many of the revisionists, these extreme skeptics,

  • there was no ancient Israel

  • Israel is an intellectual construct

  • In other words, these people were not rethinking their past,

  • they were inventing their past

  • They had no past

  • So the Bible is a myth, a foundation myth,

  • told to legitimate a people who had no legitimacy

  • NARRATOR: The legitimacy of the Israelite past

  • hinges on finding a piece of evidence

  • to prove the ancient origins of the Bible

  • What would be the discovery of a lifetime

  • starts outside the walls of Jerusalem in an old cemetery

  • GABRIEL BARKAY: We came here and excavated

  • seven of these burial caves

  • The burial caves date back to the 7th century B.C.,

  • somewhere around the time of King Josiah

  • But the caves were found looted,

  • so we didn't anticipate too much

  • NARRATOR: Gabriel Barkay instructed a 13-year-old volunteer

  • to clean up a tomb for photographs

  • BARKAY: Instead of that, he was bored,

  • he was alone, and he had a hammer,

  • and he began banging on the floor

  • (distorted, echoing thud)

  • NARRATOR: But the floor turned out to be a fallen ceiling...

  • and beneath it were some artifacts

  • that had escaped the looters

  • Among the hundreds of grave goods,

  • one artifact stood out

  • BARKAY: It looked like a cigarette butt

  • It was cylindrical, about an inch in size,

  • about half an inch in diameter,

  • and it was very clear it is made of silver

  • It was some kind of a tiny scroll

  • NARRATOR: A second, slightly smaller scroll was also found,

  • and both were taken to the labs at the Israel Museum

  • But unraveling the scrolls

  • to see if they contain a readable inscription

  • could risk destroying them completely

  • Andy Vaughn was one of the epigraphers on the project

  • Archaeology is basically a destructive science

  • In order to learn anything,

  • you have to destroy what's there

  • Gabriel Barkay and his team had to make a decision

  • Does one unroll these amulets, or does one preserve them?

  • They decided that it was worth the risk,

  • and hindsight would tell us

  • that they could not have been more correct

  • NARRATOR: Through painstaking conservation,

  • technicians devised a special method

  • for unrolling the scrolls and revealing their contents

  • BARKAY: I went over there, and...

  • I was amazed to see the whole thing full

  • of, uh...

  • very delicately scratched,

  • very shallow, uh, characters

  • The first word that I could decipher

  • already on the spot

  • was yod-het-waw-het,

  • which is the four-letter unpronounceable name of God

  • NARRATOR: Further investigation revealed more text

  • and a surprisingly familiar prayer

  • still said in synagogues and churches to this day

  • READER: "May the Lord bless you and keep you;

  • "may the Lord make his face to shine upon you,

  • "and be gracious to you;

  • "may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,

  • and give you peace"

  • Numbers 6:24 through 26

  • VAUGHN: There is no doubt at all that these two amulets

  • contain the Priestly Benediction found in Numbers 6

  • These inscriptions are thus very important

  • because they are the earliest references we have

  • to the written biblical narratives

  • The archaeological context was very clear,

  • because it was found together with pottery

  • dating back to the 7th century B.C.

  • Also the paleography, the shape of letters,

  • As modern scholars suspect, the Torah,

  • the first five books of the Bible,

  • takes its final form during the Babylonian Exile

  • But dwarfed by the mighty temples

  • and giant statues of Babylonian gods...

  • (whip cracks, man yells)

  • ...the Israelites must also confront

  • the fundamental question--

  • why did their god, Yahweh, forsake them?

  • COOGAN: In the ancient world,

  • if your country was destroyed by another country,

  • it meant that their gods were more powerful than your god

  • And the natural thing to do

  • was to worship the more powerful god

  • But the survivors

  • continued to worship Yahweh

  • and struggled to understand how this could have happened

  • They resort first

  • to a standard form of explanation,

  • which is found elsewhere in the ancient Near East

  • We must have done something wrong

  • to incur the wrath of our god

  • It's out of this that comes the reflection

  • that polytheism was our downfall;

  • there is, after all, only one god

  • NARRATOR: The Israelites abandon the folly of polytheism

  • Monotheism triumphs,

  • and the archaeological evidence proves it

  • Before the destruction of the First Temple,

  • wherever we dig in whatever part of the Judean country,

  • we find sanctuaries, and more often we find

  • hundreds and thousands of figurines

  • even in Jerusalem itself

  • NARRATOR: But after the destruction, there are none

  • We are speaking about thousand in before

  • and nothing, completely nothing at all after

  • LEVINE: Monotheism is well ensconced,

  • firmly ensconced,

  • so something major happened,

  • which is very hard to trace

  • But that was a searing experience,

  • that time in the Exile

  • NARRATOR: Through the experience of the Exile

  • and writing the Bible,

  • the concept of God, as it is known today, is born

  • McCARTER: In a way, P created something that was much greater,

  • because it was greater than any individual land or kingdom

  • It was a kind of a universal religion

  • based on a creator god--

  • not just a god of a single nation,

  • but the god of the world, the god of the universe

  • CAROL MEYERS: This moves Yahweh

  • into the realm of being a universal deity

  • who has the power to affect

  • what happens in the whole universe

  • This makes the god of ancient Israel

  • the universal god of the world that resonates with people,

  • at least in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition,

  • to this veryay

  • NARRATOR: In 539 B.C.,

  • the Babylonian Empire is toppled by the Persians

  • As written in the Bible,

  • Yahweh, in his new role as the one invisible God,

  • orchestrates a new Exodus

  • (reading in Hebrew)

  • Among one group of returning exiles

  • is the prophet Ezra

  • Back in Jerusalem, he gives a public reading

  • of the newly written Torah to reestablish the covenant

  • READER: "All the people gathered together

  • "They told the scribe Ezra

  • "to bring the book of the law of Moses,

  • "which the Lord had given to Israel

  • "He read from it from early morning until midday,

  • "and the ears of all the people

  • were attentive to the book of the law"

  • Nehemiah 8:1 through 3

  • ERIC MEYERS: To me, it's one of the most moving moments

  • in the whole Bible

  • Ezra returns with the Bible in his hands,

  • so we have the feeling

  • that the process begun in the Exile

  • NARRATOR: The scrolls that chronicle

  • the Israelites' relationship with their god

  • is now the Hebrew Bible...

  • the Old Testament...

  • a sacred text for over three billion people

  • Through its writing,

  • an ancient cult becomes a modern religion

  • (chanting in Hebrew)

  • And the Israelite deity Yahweh

  • transforms into the God

  • of the three great monotheistic religions

  • Through its teachings,

  • the Bible established a code of morality and justice,

  • aspirations that resonate through the ages

  • More than fact or fiction,

  • at the intersection of science and scriptures

  • is a story that began over 3,000 years ago

  • and continues to this day

  • On NOVA's "Bible's Buried Secrets" Web site,

  • share your thoughts on the program,

  • ask questions of biblical scholars,

  • explore a timeline of archaeology and more

  • Find it at pbs.org

NARRATOR: God is dead...

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聖經埋藏的秘密 The Bible's Buried Secrets

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