Comparison Between Silberman And Dever

Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Israel and the Origin of Its sacred texts and William G. Dever book Who were the Early Israelites and Where did they Come From? Both try to explain and understand a well-argued question in the history community and the authors use different ways of proving their theory on where did the Israelites came from? The authors of both books refer to the biblical narrative of the old treatment for an account who and where the Israelites came from. Silberman and Dever both came to the same conclusion about who and where the Israelites came but the noticeable difference between them is the way that they interpreted the theories of their findings but a few

And where did they come from? These two questions have been on the minds of historian and archaeologist since the bible was written down. The bible is the main source of information that both authors use to get a better understanding of the nature of the Israelites. The chapters that were primarily studied for evidence of Israelites are the book of Genesis, the book of Numbers, the book of Joshua, and in The Bible Unearthed the book of Deuteronomy. These scriptures explain events of a single generation in slightly more than forty years (Finkelstein 48). William Dever skips Deuteronomy before he explains that “it is universally agreed that the book of Deuteronomy is a later addition to the Pentateuch (probably it was inserted not earlier than the late 7th century B.C.) (Dever 37). Finkelstein and Silberman never explain that Deuteronomy was added in the 7th century and could have been rewritten to fit in with the book of Numbers and the book of Joshua. Both books express their concerns with events in the bible that are not adding up. Many people still take the stories in the bible at face value and run with it forcing their beliefs on to other, case in point Nazi Germany using the bible to justify killing the Jews. Proving that the accounts in the bible is not once a moral issue but an academic one as well. In The Bible Unearthed and Who were the early Israelites the books explain the

They first look at Egyptian records to see it any mention of a large group of former slaves leaving Egypt. Their finding reveals that there are no records or mention of any group leaving Egypt or any enslaved people be the name of Israelites in Egypt. Another evidence that became well known is that Egypt did not enslave people they were devoted people who believe that the pharaoh of Egypt was a god on earth. Finkelstein and Silberman concluded that “the Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible – seems irritable when we examine the evidence at specific sites where the children of Israel were said to have camped for extended periods… (Finkelstein 63). Finkelstein and Silberman studied the places that the Bible mentions that the Israelites went to during their forty years in the desert. Egyptologist Donald Redford suggested that that the Exodus did happen but not in the time that the Bible had claimed. Redford explains by putting the Exodus in the last period of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty of Psammetichus I and his son Necho II (Finkelstein 66). His suggestion explains that the Israelites lived in the Egyptian delta under the rule of Psammetichus I and his son Necho II but the problems arise. The settlement where Redford says that the Israelites where is not an Egyptian name but a Semitic one (Finkelstein 67). This place was not