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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yaacov who wrote (6504)	12/30/2004 1:39:48 PM
From: Elmer Flugum	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 22250

Myths die hard.... Archaeologists rip out Jewish biblical roots USA Today November 3, 1999 page 11D By Mathew Kalman Jerusalem - An Israeli archaeologist is drawing fire for claiming that the biblical history of the Jewish people is probably fiction. In an article last week in Ha'aretz newspaper, Ze'ev Herzog, a professor at Tel Aviv University, argued that the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt probably never happened, the Ten Commandments were not given on Mount Sinai, and Joshua never conquered the land of Israel. Herzog says that if there was a King David, he probably was no more than a tribal chieftain. The same holds for King Solomon, Herzog says. "The many Egyptian documents known to us do not make any reference to the sojourn of Children of Israel in Egypt or the events of the Exodus," Herzog says. "Generations of scholars tried to locate Mount Sinai and the stations of the tribes of Israel in the desert. Despite all this diligent research, not onesite was identified that could correspond to the biblical picture." Herzog says there is no evidence that Joshua led the children of Israel into the Holy Land or brought down the walls of Jericho. "Repeated excavations by various expeditions….have only yielded disappointments," he says. "During the period when the conquest would have taken place, there were no cities there, and of course no walls to bring down." To many people in Israel, such a claim smacks of blasphemy, even though many scientists agree with Herzog. Not just religious leaders are angered. Many secular Israelis see modern Jewish state as revival of the biblical Hebrew kingdoms. To them, challenging the Bible means challenging the legitimacy of the modern Jewish claim to the land of Israel. "Archaeology has always been used in this society and used to point in one direction," Herzog says. "Now I am suggesting that perhaps it should be used to point in another direction." Palestinians and European archaeologists accuse their Israeli colleagues of politicizing archaeologyto bolster Jewish claims. Palestinian archaeologist Hamdan Taha has been excavating Tel El-Sultan, the ancient site ofJericho. "There is no proof of any wall from the assumed time Joshua's invasion," Taha says. "Nothing has been uncovered here in the last 100 years of excavations….. Archaeology must be viewed as a scientific enterprise and no more as an ideological means to prove modern political claims." Many contemporary biblical archaeologists support most of Herzog's views