Gleason L. Archer,
Jr.
The 5
Books of Moses and Archaeology
"It was
only natural that the Wellhausen hypothesis should base its
judgments concerning the historicity of the Old Testament
record upon the data of archaeology then available in the
nineteenth century. Yet those data were regrettably meager
during the formative period of the documentary theory, and
it was possible on the basis of the ignorance which then
prevailed to discount many statements in Scripture which had
not yet found archaeological confirmation.
For example, at that time it was assumed that writing was
unknown in Palestine during the Mosaic period, and that the
Pentateuch could not, therefore, have found a written form
until the tenth or ninth centuries BC. The references to the
Hittites were treated with incredulity and condemned as mere
fiction on the part of the late authors of the Torah; the
same was true of the Horites and even the historicity of
Sargon II (722-705 BC), since no extrabiblical references to
him had yet been discovered.
The existence of such a king as Belshazzar (in the book of
Daniel) was ruled out of possibility because no Greek author
had mentioned him, and the biblical record could be presumed
to be wrong. Since the days of Hupfeld, Graf, and Kuenen,
archaeological discovery has confirmed the use of
alphabetical writing in the Canaanite-speaking cultures
before 1500 BC, and has contributed large numbers of
documents to demonstrate the existence and major importance
of both the Hittites and Horites (or Hurrians, as they are
more commonly known), and also cuneiform tablets containing
the name of Belshazzar.
In case after case where alleged historical inaccuracy was
pointed to as proof of late and spurious authorship of the
biblical documents, the Hebrew record has been vindicated by
the results of recent excavation, and the scornful judgments
of the documentarian theorists have been proved without
foundation."
Gleason L.
Archer, Jr. "A Survey Of Old Testament Introduction"
Translated from the French by Ruby Miller (Chicago:
Moody Bible Institue, 1974) p. 165
|