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IN ANOTHER PART OF THE WORLD, it would have been a straightforward public-works project. A highway was too narrow to handle the increasing flow of traffic, so the authorities brought in heavy equipment to widen it. Partway through the job, however, a road-leveling tractor uncovered the opening to a cave no one knew was there. Work came to an immediate halt, and within hours a scientific swat team descended on the site to study it.
That's the law in Israel, where civilization goes back at least 5,000 years and where a major archaeological find could be lurking under any given square foot of real estate. Just about every empire since the beginning of Western history has occupied these lands, or fought over them, or at least passed through--Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, Crusaders--leaving behind buildings or burial places or artifacts. Which is why there were about 300 active digs this year in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza--an area no bigger than New Jersey.
It's also a major reason why Israel has seized the opportunity to stage "Jerusalem 3000," a 17-month festival of art, music and archaeological exhibitions commemorating the 3,000th anniversary of the city's original conquest by the ancient Israelites. The festival, which opened in September, admittedly has more to do with luring tourists than with unraveling ancient history. And it has heightened resentment among Palestinian Arabs, who insist that Jerusalem belongs to them and fear that the Israelis' passion for excavating everything in sight threatens Islamic holy sites in the city, around the country and in surrounding areas.
But the celebration serves as a reminder that the region has witnessed a very special sort of history. For nearly 3 billion Jews, Christians and Muslims, this is the Holy Land, the place where the Bible and Koran say Jesus and Abraham and King David and King Solomon all walked the earth. Each spadeful of dirt an archaeologist turns up could yield evidence about how, and even whether, these and other biblical figures actually lived. As Hannukah and Christmas approach, believers around the world are attuned more than ever to the significance of archaeological finds of the past century, and especially the past few years, in establishing the reality of the events underlying their faith.
Some of the Bible's most familiar names, places and events, in fact--the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; King David, the slayer of Goliath; Moses and the Israelites' flight from bondage in Egypt; Joshua's conquest of the Promised Land and the gloomy prophecies of Jeremiah--are being seen in a new light thanks to a flood of recent discoveries. And archaeologists are always seeking new evidence that might help resolve some still-unanswered questions: Did Moses really exist? Did the Exodus happen? Did Joshua fight the Battle of Jericho? Did Jesus drive out the money changers? When--and why--were the earliest books of the Bible written?
At first, the Israelis who excavated the newly uncovered cave by the highway thought they'd found just that sort of evidence. Inside the rocky opening, located about 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem, were 23 burial containers filled with bones. A hasty analysis seemed to show that letters on one stone box spelled out part of the name Hasmonean, a family of Jewish patriots, also known as the Maccabees, whose encounter with a miraculous oil lamp is now celebrated in the lighting of Hannukah candles.
For the first time, it appeared, there was physical proof that this legendary family, known only from the words of the Apocrypha, actually existed. The discovery, announced last month, set off an international wave of excitement (and protests from ultra-Orthodox Jews, who believe that any tampering with human remains violates Jewish law). Then, two weeks ago, came disappointing word from the Israeli Antiquities Authority: the letters on the crypt had been misinterpreted. There is no reason to believe these were the bones of the Maccabees after all.
Such are the frustrations of life in the scientific minefields of biblical archaeology. Digging up the past is always a tricky business, as researchers attempt to reconstruct ancient societies from often fragmentary bits of pottery or statuary or masonry. But trying to identify artifacts from Old Testament times in the Holy Land is especially problematic. For one thing, virtually no written records survive from the times of King Solomon or earlier. The ancient Israelites, unlike many of their neighbors, evidently wrote mostly on perishable papyrus rather than durable clay.
Moreover, the whole subject is touchy because almost everyone has a stake in Scripture. Jewish and Christian ultraconservatives don't like hearing that parts of the Bible could be fictional. Atheists can't wait to prove that the whole thing is a fairy tale. And even for the moderate majority, the Bible underlies so much of Western culture that it matters a great deal whether its narratives are grounded in truth.
For every discovery like the Maccabees' burial cave that doesn't pan out, there seems to be another that does. Few scholars believe that miracles like Moses' burning bush or Jesus' resurrection will ever be proved scientifically; they are, after all, supernatural events. Conversely, few doubt that the characters in the latter part of the Old Testament and most of the New--Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah, Jesus, Peter--really existed, though some will always doubt parts of their stories.
But a series of crucial discoveries suggests that some of the Bible's more ancient tales are also based firmly on real people and events. In 1990, Harvard researchers working in the ancient city of Ashkelon, north of the Gaza Strip, unearthed a small silver-plated bronze calf figurine reminiscent of the huge golden calf mentioned in the Book of Exodus. In 1986, archaeologists found the earliest known text of the Bible, dated to about 600 B.C. It suggests that at least part of the Old Testament was written soon after some of the events it describes. Also in 1986, scholars identified an ancient seal that had belonged to Baruch, son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the prophecies of Jeremiah in 587 B.C. (Because Jews and Muslims don't consider the birth of Christ to be a defining moment in history, many scholars prefer the term B.C.E. to B.C. It stands for either "Before the Christian Era" or "Before the Common Era.") Says Hershel Shanks, founding editor of the influential magazine Biblical Archaeology Review: "Seldom does archaeology come face to face with people actually mentioned in the Bible."
In what may be the most important of these discoveries, a team of archaeologists uncovered a 9th century B.C. inscription at an ancient mound called Tel Dan, in the north of Israel, in 1993. Words carved into a chunk of basalt refer to the "House of David" and the "King of Israel." It is the first time the Jewish monarch's name has been found outside the Bible, and appears to prove he was more than mere legend.
On the other hand, say many scholars, much of what is recorded in the Bible is at best distorted, and some characters and events are probably totally fictional. Most scholars suspect that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Judaism's traditional founders, never existed; many doubt the tales of slavery in Egypt and the Exodus; and relatively few modern historians believe in Joshua's conquest of Jericho and the rest of the Promised Land. In the most extreme view, all of the above are complete fabrications, invented centuries after the supposed fact.
These discoveries and theories, and many more, are vigorously contested on all sides by archaeologists, religious scholars and historians. On some things just about everyone agrees. The Bible version of Israelite history after the reign of King Solomon, for example, is generally believed to be based on historical fact because it is corroborated by independent accounts of Kings and battles in Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions of the time.
Prior to that, though--before about 930 B.C.--the experts disagree on just about everything. At one pole in this scholarly version of Crossfire is the group known as the maximalists, who consider the Bible a legitimate guidebook for archaeological research. At the other are the minimalists, or biblical nihilists, who believe the Bible is a religious document and thus can't be read as any sort of objective account. "They say of Bible material, 'If it cannot be proved to be historical it's not historical,'" explains Frank Moore Cross, professor emeritus of Oriental languages at Harvard, who puts himself somewhere in the middle.
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