2.1 OVERVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF THEIR RELATION

Before attempting to write history, some methodological considerations are necessary. Until the modern era, the historicity of the Bible was not an issue in the Christian tradition, although there were glimpses of doubt in the Jewish tradition. The Bible was read as the word of God, which left no room for criticism of any kind. There was little doubt over the veracity of the stories it recorded and truth was not founded on historicity. In fact, before the eighteenth century CE, there was little difference between story and history. The stories of the Bible were considered as holy stories and they were almost the only sources of knowledge about the history of the ancient Near East.

The traditional view was challenged by the development of history as a modern science and by the discovery of archaeological finds that brought to light discrepancies between the Bible and other sources. The likelihood of multiple human writers for most of the biblical books gradually imposed itself. The Old Testament and then the New Testament began being studied like other ancient texts and submitted to historical criticism. Archaeology evolved from treasure hunting to scientific stratigraphy and pottery sequences.

In reaction to historical criticism, the first biblical archaeologists turned to archaeology as a means to prove the credibility of the Bible (Knauf 2001a: 264).

The enterprise, however, was a mixed blessing.