Monday 30 January 2012

The Bible Unearthed (The Documentary)

Two days ago I got the following article from Dr. Ashraf Ezzat,

The Bible Unearthed (The Documentary)

Dr. Ashraf looks so excited with  Prof. Israel Finkelstein & Neil Silberman, asserting that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never existed,
"Dozens of digs in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon have changed experts’ understanding of ancient Israel and its neighbours- as well as their vision of the Bible’s greatest tales" In other words instead of digging somewhere else, the A masterful archaeological and biblical investigation, lead atheist the digs as a real evidence that "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never existed, that David and Solomon were not great kings but obscure chieftains and that the Exodus never happened" wrote Heather Campbell
"I think the genius and power lie with the scientists and scholars who have painstakingly put together what really happened, based on real evidence, even though it goes against what they have been told is holy and authoritative. This book is a testament to what the human mind can discover when it does not delude itself."
In his article, "Deconstructing the walls of Jericho" published by Ha'aretz.com Friday, October 29, 1999, Ze'ev Herzog asserted that:

"Following 70 years of intensive excavations in the Land of Israel, archaeologists have found out: The patriarchs' acts are legendary, the Israelites did not sojourn in Egypt or make an exodus, they did not conquer the land. Neither is there any mention of the empire of David and Solomon, nor of the source of belief in the God of Israel. These facts have been known for years, but Israel is a stubborn people and nobody wants to hear about it."

"The Bible Came From Arabia"
As a born-Muslim, who embraced Islam in his late fourties after extensive reading, and realized the very thin line seperating Islam (Quran) and the relative human understaing and the history of Islam (muslims), I accept archaeological facts, but at the same time I reject using it as an ideoligical tool to "Assert":
  • That "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never existed", Kaaba, in Mecca is the evidence that Irahim and Ismael existed.
  • that "David and Solomon were not great kings but obscure chieftains". This conclusion is political designed to justfy, the Israeli failure to find a single archaeological evidence to support Jewish claims in Palestine, So David and Solomon were not great kings, they were Tribe cheifs living in TENT, and therefore, the conquest of Palestine is judstified.  
  • That the men wrote the Bible, (Consequently Quran was written by Mohamad PUH).
We Muslims believe that the Bible is the world of God, Quran tells us that it was rewitten by men.

"2.79 . Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands anthem say , "This is from Allah , " that they may purchase a small gain therewith . Woe unto them for that their hands have written , and woe unto them for that they earn thereby ."
فويل للذين يكتبون الكتاب بأيديهم ثم يقولون هذا من عند الله ليشتروا به ثمناً قليلاً فويل لهم مما كتبت أيديهم وويل لهم مما يكسبون “79″)

One year ago, I commented on Juan Cole's article titled: Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis, adding that Palestine from River to see does not belong to Jewish Israelis.

Moreover, the prominent Israeli archeologist Israel Finkelstein and the American historian Neil Asher Silberman, should have heard about the Lebanon's historian Kamal Salibi and his book "The Bible Came From Arabia"
In his book Kamal Salibi solved the problem of the "Two of archaeology’s leading scholars Prof. Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman," and the conflict within the the Bible as a religious and historical work. Salibi claimed that Asir near Yemen was the original Israel and the original Judah. And the Jordan was not a river, but the escarpment between the highlands of Asir and the coastal plain below.
Research and analysis of the Old Testament place names, corroborated by contemporary Pharaonic and Mesopotamian sources, Kamal Salibi locates the ancient land of Israel, not in Palestine, but in the Najran province of what is now Saudi Arabia. According to Salibi, The Promised Land was Asir
More here and here

So, the wo of archaeology’s leading scholars were looking on the wrong place, and their conclusions are nothing but political assumptions.

Israel Finkelstein
The Bible Unearthed (The Documentary)

January 28, 2012

“Prof. Israel Finkelstein & Neil Silberman, Two of archaeology’s leading scholars shed new light on how the Bible came into existence. They assert, for example, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never existed, that David and Solomon were not great kings but obscure chieftains and that the Exodus never happened.”

For the first time, the true history of ancient Israel as revealed through recent archaeological discoveries-and a controversial new take on when, why and how the Bible was written. In the past three decades, archaeologists have made great strides in recovering the lost world of the Old Testament. Dozens of digs in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon have changed experts’ understanding of ancient Israel and its neighbours- as well as their vision of the Bible’s greatest tales.
Yet until now, the public has remained almost entirely unaware of these discoveries which help separate legend from historical truth. Here, at last, two of archaeology’s leading scholars shed new light on how the Bible came into existence. They assert, for example, that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never existed, that David and Solomon were not great kings but obscure chieftains and that the Exodus never happened.
They offer instead a new historical truth: the Bible was created by the people of the small, southern nation of Judah in a heroic last-ditch attempt to keep their faith alive after the demise of the larger, wealthier nation of Israel to the north. It is in this truth, not in the myths of the past, that the real value of the Bible is evident.

The Bible is both a religious and historical work, but how much is myth and how much is history? When and why was the Old Testament written, and by whom? What do contemporary archaeologists know about the Patriarchs? The Exodus? The Conquest of Canaan? Kings David and Solomon? Where do the people of Israel originally come from? Why were the historical accounts of the Bible written down?
A masterful archaeological and biblical investigation, The Bible Unearthed visits digs in Egypt, Jordan and Israel – including Megiddo, the cradle of biblical archeology, where 7,000 years of history have been excavated.
This far-ranging exploration of biblical history also makes use of archival footage of previous archaeological excavations, maps, biblical illustrations and computer animation, revealing ancient architecture, cuneiform tablets and other rare artifacts.
Based on the best-selling book (The Bible Unearthed) by prominent Israeli archeologist Israel Finkelstein & coauthored by American historian Neil Asher Silberman, this enthralling documentary features interviews with archaeological specialists and biblical scholars from all over the world, including experts from the Louvre, the Museum of Cairo, the Museum of Jerusalem, and the British Museum.
The Bible Unearthed does something which has never been done before: it reveals a still-unraveling revolution of what we know of the society, the history, and the men who wrote the Bible.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian


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1 comment:

Franklin Ryckaert said...

This is a dilemma for Muslims. On the one hand it undermines the claims of the Jews on Palestine and that is welcome. On the other hand,if the Bible is not true then much of the Qur'ân is not true either and that is not welcome. So what will they choose?