聖經埋藏的秘密　The Bible's Buried Secrets

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NARRATOR: God is dead...
or so it must have seemed
to the ancestors of the Jews in 586 B.C.
Jerusalem and the temple to their god are in flames
The nation of Israel founded by King David is wiped out
WILLIAM DEVER: It would have seemed to have been the end,
but it was rather the beginning
NARRATOR: For out of the crucible of destruction
emerges a sacred book: the Bible...
and an idea that will change the world:
the belief in one God
¶ ¶
THOMAS CAHILL: This is a new idea
It was an idea that nobody had ever had before
LEE LEVINE: Monotheism is well-ensconced,
so something major happened which is very hard to trace
NARRATOR: Now a provocative new story
from discoveries deep within the Earth and the Bible
EILAT MAZAR: We wanted to examine the possibility
that the remains of King David's palace are here
DEVER: We can actually see vivid evidence here of a destruction
AMNON BEN-TOR: Question number one: Who did it?
NARRATOR: An archaeological detective story puzzles together clues
to the mystery of who wrote the Bible, when and why
And it was very clear
it was some kind of a tiny scroll
I immediately saw very clear, very distinct letters
This is the ancestor of the Hebrew script
NARRATOR: And from out of the Earth
emerge thousands of idols that suggest God had a wife
We just found this exceptional clay figurine
showing a fertility goddess
NARRATOR: Powerful evidence sheds new light on how one people,
alone among ancient cultures,
finally turn their back on idol worship
to find their one God
This makes the god of ancient Israel
the universal god of the world that resonates with people,
at least in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition
to this very day.
(thunder crashes)
NARRATOR: Now science and scripture converge to create
a powerful new story of an ancient people,
God and the Bible
Up next on NOVA "The Bible's Buried Secrets"
Captioning sponsored by EXXONMOBIL
DAVID H. KOCH
the HOWARD HUGHES MEDICAL INSTITUTE
the CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING
and VIEWERS LIKE YOU
Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following: NARRATOR: Near the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt in 1896,
British archaeologist Flinders Petrie leads an excavation
in Thebes, the ancient city of the dead
Here, he unearths one of the most important discoveries
in biblical archaeology
(worker yelling)
From beneath the sand appears
the corner of a royal monument, carved in stone
Dedicated in honor of Pharaoh Merneptah,
son of Ramesses the Great,
it became known as the Merneptah Stele
Today it is in the Cairo Museum
DONALD REDFORD: This stele is
what the Egyptians would have called a "triumph stele,"
a victory stele commemorating victory over foreign peoples
NARRATOR: Most of the hieroglyphic inscription celebrates
Merneptah's triumph over Libya, his enemy to the West
But almost as an afterthought, he mentions his conquest
of people to the East in just two lines
REDFORD: The text reads,
"Ashkelon has been brought captive
"Gezer has been taken captive
"Yanoam in the North Jordan Valley has been seized
Israel has been shorn, its seed no longer exists"
NARRATOR: History proves the pharaoh's confident boast to be wrong
Rather than marking their annihilation,
Merneptah's Stele announces the entrance
onto the world stage of a people named Israel
REDFORD: This is priceless evidence
for the presence of an ethnical group called Israel
in the central highlands of southern Canaan
NARRATOR: The well-established Egyptian chronology
gives the date as 1208 B.C.
Merneptah's Stele is powerful evidence
that a people called the Israelites are living in Canaan,
in what today includes Israel and Palestine
over 3,000 years ago
The ancient Israelites are best known through familiar stories
that chronicle their history
Abraham and Isaac...
(thunder crashes)
Moses and the Ten Commandments...
David and Goliath
It is the ancient Israelites who write the Bible
(reading aloud)
Through writing the Hebrew Bible,
the beliefs of the ancient Israelites survive
to become Judaism, one of the world's oldest
continuously practiced religions
And it is the Jews who give the world an astounding legacy:
the belief in one God
¶ ¶
This belief will become the foundation
of two other great monotheistic religions:
Christianity...
and Islam
Often called the Old Testament,
to distinguish it from the New Testament,
which described the events of early Christianity,
today the Hebrew Bible and a belief in one God
are woven into the very fabric of world culture
But in ancient times, all people from the Egyptians
to the Greeks to the Babylonians,
worshipped many gods, usually in the form of idols
How did the Israelites, alone among ancient peoples,
discover the concept of one god?
(man chanting)
How did they come up with an idea
that so profoundly changed the world?
Now archaeologists and biblical scholars are arriving
at a new synthesis that promises to reveal
not only fresh historical insights,
but a deeper meaning
of what the authors of the Bible wanted to convey
They start by digging into the earth...
and the Bible
DEVER: You cannot afford to ignore biblical text,
especially if you can isolate a kind of kernel of truth
behind these stories,
and then you have the archaeological data
Now, what happens when text and artifact seem to point
in the same direction?
Then I think we are on a very sound ground historically
NARRATOR: Scholars search for intersections
between science and scripture
The earliest is the victory stele
of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah from 1208 B.C.
Both the stele and the Bible place a people
called the Israelites in the hill country of Canaan,
which includes modern-day Israel and Palestine
It is here, between two of history's greatest empires,
that Israel's story will unfold
PETER MACHINIST: The way to understand Israel's relationship
to the superpowers Egypt and Mesopotamia on either side
is to understand its own sense of its fragility as a people
The primary way in which the Bible looks at the origins
of Israel is as a people coming to settle in the land of Israel
It's not indigenous
It's not a native state
NARRATOR: The Hebrew Bible is full of stories of Israel's origins
The first is Abraham,
who leaves Mesopotamia with his family
and journeys to the Promised Land, Canaan
READER: "The Lord said to Abraham,
'Go forth from your native land, and from your father's house,
'to the land that I will show you
'I will make of you a great nation
'And I will bless you
I will make your name great"
"Genesis 12:1 and 2"
NARRATOR: According to the Bible,
this promise establishes the covenant,
a sacred contract between God and Abraham
To mark the covenant, Abraham and all males are circumcised
His descendants will be God's chosen people
They will be fruitful, multiply, and inhabit all the land
between Egypt and Mesopotamia
In return, Abraham and his people,
who will become the Israelites, must worship a single God
This is a new idea
NARRATOR: It is hard to appreciate today
how radical an idea this must have been
in a world dominated by polytheism--
the worship of many gods and idols
The Abraham narrative is part
of the first book of the Bible, Genesis,
along with Noah and the Flood, and Adam and Eve
Though they convey a powerful message,
to date, there is no archaeology or text
outside of the Bible to corroborate them
DAVID ILAN: The farther back you go in the biblical text,
the more difficult it is to find historical material in it
The patriarchs go back to Genesis
Genesis is, for the most part,
a compilation of myths, creation stories, things like that
And to find a historical core there is very difficult
NARRATOR: This absence of historical evidence leads scholars
to take a different approach to reading the biblical narrative
They look beyond our modern notion of fact or fiction
to ask why the Bible was written in the first place
DEVER: There is no word for "history" in the Hebrew Bible
The biblical writers were telling stories
They were good historians, and they could tell it
the way it was when they wanted to,
but their objective was always something far beyond that
NARRATOR: So what was their objective?
To find out, scholars must uncover
who wrote the Bible and when
READER: "And the Lord said to Moses, 'Write down these words,
'for, in accordance with these words,
I make a covenant with you and with Israel"
"Exodus 34:27"
NARRATOR: The traditional belief
is that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible--
Genesis: The story of creation
Exodus: Deliverance from slavery to the Promised Land
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy:
Laws of morality and observance
Still read to this day, together they form the Torah,
often called the Five Books of Moses
MICHAEL COOGAN: The view that Moses had personally written down
the first five books of the Bible
was virtually unchallenged until the 17th century
There were a few questions raised about this
For example, the very end of the last book of the Torah,
the Book of Deuteronomy,
describes the death and burial of Moses
And so some rabbi said,
"Well, Moses couldn't have written those words himself
because he was dead and was being buried"
NARRATOR: And, digging deeper into the text,
there are even more discrepancies
COOGAN: For example, how many of each species of animal
is Noah supposed to bring into the ark?
One text says two-- a pair of every kind of animal
Another text says seven pair of the clean animals,
and only two of the unclean animals
NARRATOR: In one chapter, the Bible says
the flood lasts for 40 days and 40 nights
But, in the next, it says 150 days
To see if the floodwaters have subsided,
Noah sends out a dove
But, in the previous sentence, he sends a raven
There are two complete versions of the flood story
interwoven on the same page
Many similar discrepancies throughout its pages suggest
that the Bible has more than one writer
In fact, within the first five books of the Bible,
scholars have identified the hand
of at least four different groups of scribes writing
over several hundred years
This theory is called the Documentary Hypothesis
COOGAN: One way of thinking about it is, as a kind of anthology
that was made over the course of many centuries
by different people adding to it,
subtracting from it, and so forth
NARRATOR: But when did the process of writing the Bible begin?
Tel Zayit is a small site
on the southwestern border of ancient Israel
that dates back to biblical times
Since 1999, Ron Tappy has been excavating here
It was the last day of what had been a typical dig season
TAPPY: As I was taking aerial photographs
from the cherry picker,
a volunteer notified his square supervisor
that he thought he had seen some interesting marks--
scratches, possibly letters-- incised in a stone
Which? Right here? Yeah
NARRATOR: Letters would be a rare find.
So, when he kneeled to look at the marks,
Tappy got the surprise of a lifetime
TAPPY: As I bent down over the stone,
I immediately saw very clear, very distinct letters
NARRATOR: Tappy excavated the rock
and brought it back to his lab at the nearby kibbutz
It was only then that he realized he had more
than a simple inscription
TAPPY: "Aleph, bet, gimmel, dalet..."
I realized that this inscription represented an abecedary
That is to say, not a text narrative, but the letters
of the Semitic alphabet
written out in their correct order
"Nun" and then "pe" and "'ayin" are difficult to read,
but they're out here
NARRATOR: This ancient script is an early form
of the Hebrew alphabet
McCARTER: What was found
was not a random scratching of two or three letters
It was... it was the full alphabet
Everything about it says
that this is the ancestor of the Hebrew script
NARRATOR: The Tel Zayit abecedary
is the earliest Hebrew alphabet ever discovered
It dates to about 1000 B.C.,
making it possible that writing the Hebrew Bible
could have already started by this time
To discover the most ancient text in the Bible,
scholars examine the Hebrew spelling,
grammar and vocabulary
McCARTER: The Hebrew Bible is a collection of literature
written over about a thousand years
And, as with any other language,
Hebrew naturally changed quite a bit
over those thousand years
The same would be true of English
I'm speaking English of the 21st century
And, if I were living in Elizabethan times,
the words I choose, the syntax I use,
would be quite different
NARRATOR: Scholars examine the Bible in its original Hebrew
in search of the most archaic language,
and, therefore, the oldest passages
They find it in Exodus, the second book of the Bible
(hoofbeats thudding, horse neighing)
READER: "Pharaoh's chariots and his army He cast into the sea
His picked officers are drowned in the Red Sea."
"Exodus 15:4"
NARRATOR: This passage, known as the "Song of the Sea,"
is the climactic scene of Exodus,
the story of the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt,
and how Moses leads them to freedom
In all of the Bible,
no single event is mentioned more times than the Exodus
With the development of ancient Hebrew script,
the "Song of the Sea" could have been written by 1000 B.C.,
the time of Tappy's alphabet
But it was probably recited as a poem
long before the beginning of Hebrew writing
LAWRENCE STAGER: It's very likely that it was a kind of story
told in poetic form that you might tell around the campfire
Just as our poems are easier to remember, generally,
than prose accounts, so we generally think
that the poetry is orally passed on from one to another
long before they commit things to writing
NARRATOR: Because the poetry in Exodus is so ancient,
is it possible the story has some historical core?
Here, in the eastern Nile Delta of Egypt,
in a surreal landscape of fallen monuments and tumbled masonry,
archaeologists have uncovered a lost city
Inscribed on monuments throughout the site
is the name of Ramesses II,
one of the most powerful Egyptian rulers
It is Ramesses who is traditionally known
as the Pharaoh of the Exodus
Ancient Egyptian texts call the city Pi-Ramesse,
or House of Ramesses, a name that resonates
with the biblical story of Exodus
COOGAN: The only specific
item mentioned in the Exodus story
that we can probably connect with nonbiblical material
is the cities that the Hebrews were ordered to build,
and they are named Pithom and Ramesses
NARRATOR: Scholars agree that the biblical city Ramesses
is the ancient Egyptian city Pi-Ramesse
(wind whistling softly)
Its ruins are here in present-day Tanis
MANFRED BIETAK: Most of the Egyptologists
identified Piramesse, the Ramesses town, with Tanis,
because here you have an abundance
of Ramesside monuments
NARRATOR: This convergence between archaeology and the Bible
provides a time frame for the Exodus
It could not have happened
before Ramesses became king around 1275 B.C.
And it could not have happened after 1208 B.C.,
when the stele of Pharaoh Merneptah,
Ramesses II's so
specifically locates the Israelites in Canaan
(crowd clamoring)
The Bible says the Israelites leave Egypt in a mass migration,
600,000 men and their families,
and then wander in the desert for 40 years
But even assuming the Bible is exaggerating,
in a hundred years of searching,
archaeologists have not yet found evidence of migration
that can be linked to the Exodus
DEVER: No excavated site gives us any information
about the route of the wandering through the wilderness
An Exodus is simply not attested anywhere
NARRATOR: Any historical or archaeological confirmation
of the Exodus remains elusive
Yet scholars have discovered that all four groups
of biblical writers contributed
to some part of the Exodus story
Perhaps it is for the same reason
its message remains powerful to this day...
...its inspiring theme of freedom
CAROL MEYERS: Freedom is a compelling notion,
and that is one of the ways that we can understand
the story of the Exodus,
from being controlled by others to controlling oneself,
the idea of a change from domination to autonomy
These are very powerful ideas
that resonate in the human spirit
And the Exodus gives narrative reality to those ideas
(distant chatter)
NARRATOR: Following the Exodus,
the Bible says God finally delivers the Israelites
to the Promised Land-- Canaan
Archaeology and sources outside the Bible
reveal that Canaan consisted of well-fortified city-states,
each with its own king,
who in turn served Egypt and its pharaoh
The Canaanites,
a thriving Near Eastern culture for thousands of years,
worshipped many gods in the form of idols
The Bible describes how a new leader, Joshua,
takes the Israelites into Canaan
in a blitzkrieg military campaign
(crowd clamoring)
READER: "So the people shouted, and the trumpets were blown
"As soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpets,
they raised a great shout, and the wall fell down flat"
"Joshua 6:20"
NARRATOR: But what does archaeology say?
In the 1930s,
British archaeologist John Garstang
excavated at Jericho,
the first Canaanite city in Joshua's campaign
Garstang uncovered dramatic evidence of destruction
and declared he had found the very walls
that Joshua had brought tumbling down
(helicopter blades whirring)
And at what the Bible describes
as the greatest of all Canaanite cities, Hazor,
there is more evidence of destruction.
(speaking Hebrew)
Today, Hazor is being excavated
by one of the leading Israeli archaeologists,
Amnon Ben-Tor,
and his protégé and codirector, Sharon Zuckerman
I'm walking through a passage between two of the rooms
of the Canaanite palace of the kings of Hazor
Signs of the destruction
you can still see almost everywhere
You can see the dark stones here,
and most importantly, you can see
how they cracked into a million pieces
It takes tremendous heat
to cause such damage
The fire here was, how should I say,
the mother of all fires
NARRATOR: Among the ashes,
Ben-Tor discovered a desecrated statue,
most likely the king or patron god of Hazor
Its head and hands are cut off,
apparently by the city's conquerors
This marked the end of Canaanite Hazor
BEN-TOR: Question number one: Who did it?
Who was around?
Who is a possible candidate?
So, number one, the Egyptians
They don't mention having done anything at Hazor
In any of the inscriptions of the time, we don't see Hazor
Another Canaanite city-state could have done it?
Maybe, but who was strong enough to do it?
Who are we left with?
The Israelites
The only ones about whom there is a tradition that they did it
So, let's say they should be considered guilty
of destruction of Hazor until proven innocent
NARRATOR: And there's another Canaanite city-state
that Joshua and his army of Israelites
are credited with laying waste
(men talking indistinctly)
It's called Ai, and has been discovered
in what is now the Palestinian territory of the West Bank
Here, archaeologist Hani Nur el-Din and his team
are finding evidence
of a rich Canaanite culture
(speaking indistinctly)
EL-DIN: The village first appears
and developed a city,
and then there was a kind of fortification
surrounding this settlement
(wind whistling)
NARRATOR: These heaps of stones
were once a magnificent palace and temples,
which were eventually destroyed
But when the archaeologists date the destruction,
they discover it occurred about 2200 B.C.
They date the destruction ofericho to 1500 B.C...
and Hazor's to about 1250 B.C.
Clearly, these city-states were not destroyed at the same time
They range over nearly a thousand years
In fact, of the 31 sites
the Bible says that Joshua conquered,
few showed any signs of war
DEVER: There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these sites
At the same time it was discovered
that most of the large Canaanite towns
that were supposed to have been destroyed by these Israelites
were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by others
NARRATOR: A single, sweeping military invasion led by Joshua
cannot account for how the Israelites arrived in Canaan
But the destruction of Hazor does coincide with the time
that the Merneptah Stele locates the Israelites in Canaan
So who destroyed Hazor?
Amnon Ben-Tor still believes it was the Israelites
who destroyed the city
(speaking Hebrew)
But his codirector, Sharon Zuckerman,
has a different idea
ZUCKERMAN: The final destruction itself
consisted of the mutilation
of statues of kings and gods
It did not consist of signs of war
or of any kind of fighting
We don't see weapons in the street
like we see in other sites that were destroyed by foreigners
(both speaking Hebrew)
NARRATOR: So if there was no invasion, what happened?
Bobby, just, uh, be careful about the stones there, okay?
NARRATOR: Excavations reveal that Hazor
had a lower city of commoners, serfs and slaves,
and an upper city with a king and wealthy elites
Zuckerman finds within the grand palaces of elite Hazor
areas of disrepair...
and abandonment--
to archaeologists, signs of a culture in decline...
and rebellion from within.
ZUCKERMAN: I would not rule out the possibility
of an internal revolt
of Canaanites living at Hazor
and, uh...
revolting against the elites that, uh, ruled the city
NARRATOR: In fact, the entire Canaanite city-state system,
including Hazor and Jericho, breaks down
Archaeology and ancient texts clearly show
that it is the result of a long period of decline and upheaval
that sweeps through Mesopotamia,
the Aegean region
and the Egyptian empire around 1200 B.C.
MACHINIST: And when the dust, as it were, settles,
when we can begin to see what takes the place of these...
of this great-state system,
we find a number of new peoples suddenly coming into focus
in a kind of void that is created
with the dissolution of the great-state system
NARRATOR: Can archaeologists find the Israelites
among these new people?
In the 1970s, archaeologists started wide-ranging surveys
throughout the central hill country of Canaan,
today primarily the Palestinian Territory of the West Bank
ISRAEL FINKELSTEIN: I was teaching at that time
We used to take students and go twice a week to the highlands
And every day we used to cover
between two and three square kilometers
And this accumulates very slowly
into the coverage of the entire area
NARRATOR: Israel Finkelstein and teams of archaeologists
walked out grids over large areas,
collecting every fragment of ancient pottery
lying on the surface
NARRATOR: Over seven years, he covered nearly 400 square miles,
sorting pottery and marking the locations
of where it was found on a map
FINKELSTEIN: In the beginning, the spots were there on the map
and they meant nothing to me
But later, slowly, slowly,
I started seeing sort of phenomena and processes
NARRATOR: By dating the pottery, Finkelstein discovered
that before 1200 B.C.,
there were approximately 25 settlements
He estimated the total population of those settlements
to be 3,000 to 5,000 inhabitants
But just 200 years later,
there's a very sharp increase in settlements and people
FINKELSTEIN: Then you get this boom of population growing and growing,
then we are speaking about 250 sites
And the population grows also ten times
from a few thousand to 45,000 or so
Now, this is very dramatic
and cannot be explained as natural growth
This rate is impossible in ancient times
NARRATOR: If not natural growth,
perhaps these are the waves of dispersed people settling down
following the collapse of the great state systems
Then, more evidence of a new culture is discovered,
a new type of simple dwelling never seen before
And it's in the exact location
where both the Merneptah Stele and the Bible
place the Israelites
AMNON BEN-TOR: The sites in which this type of house appears
throughout the country, this is where Israelites lived.
They are sometimes even called the Israelite house
or Israelite type house
The people who lived in those villages seemed to be arranged
more or less in a kind of an egalitarian society,
because there are no major architectural installations
If you look at the finds, the finds are relatively poor
Pottery is more or less mundane--
I don't want to offend the early settlers
or the early Israelites-- very little art
NARRATOR: Curiously, the mundane pottery
found at these new Israelite villages
is very similar to the everyday pottery
found at the older Canaanite cities like Hazor
In fact, the Israelite house
is practically the only thing that is different
This broad similarity
is leading archaeologists to a startling new conclusion
about the origins of the ancient Israelites
The notion is that most of the early Israelites
were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites
The Israelites were always in the land of Israel
They were natives, but they were different kinds of groups
They were basically the have-nots
So what we are dealing with is a movement of peoples,
but not an invasion of armed hordes from outside,
but rather a social and economic revolution
NARRATOR: Ancient texts describe how the Egyptian rulers
and their Canaanite vassal kings
burden the lower classes of Canaan
with taxes and even slavery
A radical new theory based on archaeology
suggests what happens next
As that oppressive social system declines,
families and tribes of serfs, slaves, and common Canaanites
seize the opportunity
In search of a better way of life,
they abandon the old city-states and head for the hills
Free from the oppression of their past,
they eventually emerge in a new place as a new people--
the Israelites
FINKELSTEIN: In the text, you have the story
of the Israelites coming from outside,
and then besieging the Canaanite cities,
destroying them and then becoming a nation
in the land of Canaan
Whereas archaeology tells us something which is the opposite
According to archaeology, the rise of early Israel
is an outcome of the collapse of Canaanite society,
not the reason for that collapse
NARRATOR: Archaeology reveals that the Israelites
were themselves originally Canaanites
So why does the Bible consistently cast the Israelites
as outsiders in Canaan?
Abraham's wanderings from Mesopotamia...
(thunderclap)
...Moses leading slaves out of Egypt
and into the Promised Land...
and Joshua conquering Canaan from outside
The answer may lie in their desire
to forge a distinctly new identity
MACHINIST: Identity is created, as psychologists tell us,
by talking about what you are not, by talking about another
In order to figure out who I am,
I have to figure out who I am not
NARRATOR: Conspicuously absent from Israelite villages
are the grand palaces and the extravagant pottery
associated with the kings and rich elites of Canaan
AVRAHAM FAUST: The Israelites did not like the Canaanite system
and they defined themselves in contrast to that system
By not using decorated pottery, by not using imported pottery,
they developed an ideology of simplicity,
which marked the difference between them
and the Egyptian Canaanite system.
NARRATOR: If the Israelites wanted to distinguish themselves
from their Canaanite past,
what better way than to create a story about destroying them?
But the stories of Abraham, Exodus, and the Conquest
serve another purpose
They celebrate the power of what the Bible says
is the foremost distinction between the Israelites
and all other people-- their God
In later Judaism,
the name of God is considered so sacred,
it is never to be spoken
COOGAN: We don't know exactly what it means,
we don't know how it was pronounced,
but it seems to have been the personal name
of the God of Israel
So his title, in a sense, was God,
and his name was these four letters,
which in English would be YHWH,
which we think were probably pronounced
something like Yahweh
NARRATOR: But Yahweh only appears in the Hebrew Bible
His name is nowhere to be found in Canaanite texts or stories
So where do the Israelites find their God?
The search for the origins of Yahweh
leads scholars back to ancient Egypt
Here in the royal city of Karnak,
for over a thousand years,
Pharaohs celebrated their power with statues,
obelisks, and carved murals on temple walls
REDFORD: Here on the north wall of Karnak,
we have scenes depicting the victories in battle
of Seti I, the father of Ramesses the Great
Seti here commemorates one of his greatest victories
over the Shasu
NARRATOR: The Shasu were a people
who lived in the deserts of southern Canaan,
now Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia,
around the same time as the Israelites emerged
Egyptian texts say one of the places where the Shasu lived
is called "YHW,"
probably pronounced "Yahu,"
likely the name of their patron god
That name Yahu is strangely similar to Yahweh,
the name of the Israelite god
In the Bible, the place where the Shasu lived
is referred to as Midian
It is here, before the Exodus, the Bible tells us
Moses first encounters Yahweh in the form of a burning bush
READER: "Come no closer
"Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place on which you are standing is holy ground"
"Exodus 3:5 and 15"
COOGAN: So we have in Egyptian sources,
something that appears to be a name like Yahweh
in the vicinity of Midian
Here is Moses in Midian, and there
a deity appears to him
and reveals his name to Moses as Yahweh
NARRATOR: These tantalizing connections
are leading biblical scholars to reexamine the Exodus story
While there is no evidence to support a mass migration,
some now believe that a small group did escape from Egypt;
however, they were not Israelites,
but rather Canaanite slaves
On their journey back to Canaan, they pass through Midian,
where they are inspired by stories
of the Shasu's god, Yahu
FAUST: There was probably a group of people who fled from Egypt
and had some divine experience
It was probably small, a small group demographically,
but it was important at least in ideology
NARRATOR: They find their way to the centrahill country,
where they encounter the tribes
who had fled the Canaanite city-states
Their story of deliverance resonates
in this emerging egalitarian society
The liberated slaves attribute their freedom
to the god they met in Midian,
who they now call Yahweh
MEYERS: They spread the word to the highlanders,
who themselves perhaps had escaped
from the tyranny of the Canaanite city-states
They spread the idea
of a god who represented freedom,
freedom for people to keep the fruits of their own labor
This was a message that was so powerful
that it brought people together
and gave them a new kind of identity
NARRATOR: The identity of Israelites
They are a combination of disenfranchised Canaanites,
runaway slaves from Egypt, and even nomads settling down
The Bible calls them a mixed multitude
According to the Hebrew Bible,
early Israel is a motley crew, and we know that's the case now
But these people are bound together by a new vision
and I think the revolutionary spirit
is probably there from the beginning
NARRATOR: The chosen people may actually be people who chose to be free
Their story of escape, first told
by word of mouth and poetry, helps forge
a collective identity among the tribes.
Later, when written down, it will become a central theme
of the Bible-- Exodus and divine deliverance
Deliverance by a god who comes from Midian,
exactly where the Bible says,
adopted by the Israelites
from slavery to freedom
So is this the birth of monotheism?
COOGAN: The common understanding of what differentiated
the ancient Israelites from their neighbors
was that their neighbors worshipped
many different gods and goddesses,
and the Israelites worshipped only the one true God
But that is not the case
NARRATOR: This bull figurine, likely representing El,
the chief god of the Canaanite deities,
is one of thousands of idols discovered in Israelite sites
COOGAN: The Israelites frequently worshipped other gods
Now, maybe they weren't supposed to, but they did
So at least on a practical level,
many, if not most, Israelites were not monotheists
NARRATOR: The Bible's ideal of the Israelite worship of one god
will have to wait
About two centuries pass after the Merneptah Stele
places the Israelites in Canaan
Families grow into tribes
Their population increases
Then about 1000 B.C., one of the Bible's larger-than-life figures
emerges to unite the 12 tribes of Israel
against a powerful new enemy
READER: "David put his hand into the bag;
"he took out a stone and slung it
"It struck the Philistine in the forehead;
"the stone sank into his forehead
"and he fell down on the ground
First Samuel 17:49"
NARRATOR: The Bible celebrates David as a shepherd boy
who vanquishes the giant Goliath,
a lover who lusts after forbidden fruits,
and a poet who composes lyric psalms still recited today
Of all the names in the Hebrew Bible,
none appears more than David
Scriptures say, David creates a kidom
that stretches from Egypt to Mesopotamia
He makes Jerusalem his royal capital
And in a new covenant, Yahweh promises
that he and his descendants will rule forever
David's son Solomon builds the temple
where Yahweh, now the national God of Israel,
will dwell for eternity
The Kingdom of David and Solomon--
one nation, united under one god-- according to the Bible
DEVER: Now, some skeptics today have argued
there was no such thing as a United Monarchy
It's a later biblical construct
and particularly a construct of modern scholarship
In short, there was no David
As one of the biblical revisionists have said,
David is no more historical than King Arthur
NARRATOR: But then, in 1993, an amazing discovery
literally shed new light on what the Bible calls
ancient Israel's greatest king
Gila Cook was finishing up some survey work with an assistant
at Tel Dan, a biblical site in the far north of Israel today
The excavation was headed
by the eminent Israeli archaeologist Avraham Biran
It was near the end of the day,
and Cook was getting her last measurements
when she hears a yell from below.
MAN (yelling): Gila!
And it was Biran in his booming voice yelling, "Gila, let's go"
And so I waved to him...
Hold on.
...and continued working
Okay.
NARRATOR: After being summoned by Biran
a second time,
Cook had her assistant load her up
And she started down the hill
COOK: So I get there and I just drop my bag and drop the board
and I set my stuff down
NARRATOR: But something catches her eye
A stone,
with what appeared to be random scratches,
but was actually an ancient inscription
This time she yelled for Biran
And he looks at it and he looks at me
and he says, "Oh, my God!"
NARRATOR: Cook had found a fragment of a victory stele,
written in Aramaic, an ancient language very similar to Hebrew
Dedicated by the king of Damascus,
or one of his generals,
it celebrates the conquest of Israel,
boasting, "I slew mighty kings
"who harnessed thousands of chariots
"and thousands of horsemen
I killed the king of the House of David"
Those words, "the House of David,"
make this a critical discovery
They are strong evidence that David really lived
Unlike Genesis, the stories of Israel's kings
move the biblical narrative out of the realm of legend
and into the light of history
DEVER: The later we come in time,
the firmer ground we stand on
We have better sources, we have more written sources
We have more contemporary eyewitness sources
NARRATOR: When the biblical chronology of Israel's kings
can be cross-referenced with historical inscriptions,
like the Tel Dan Stele,
they can provide scholars with fairly reliable dates
King David is the earliest biblical figure
confirmed by archaeology to be historical
And most scholars agree he lived around 1000 B.C.,
the 10th century
Could any of the Bible have been written during David's reign?
The earliest Hebrew alphabet discovered by Ron Tappy
carved on a stone at Tel Zayit provides an enticing clue
Across this wall here
TAPPY: The stone was incised with this alphabet,
the stone was then used to build a wall,
and the structure itself suffered massive destruction
by fire sometime near the end of the 10th century B.C.E.
NARRATOR: The find is even more significant
because Tel Zayit was a biblical backwater,
on the fringes of David's kingdom
McCARTER: Surely if there was a scribe that could write this alphabet
that far away, way out in the boondocks
at the extreme western boundary of the kingdom,
surely if there is a scribe that could do that out there,
there were scribes, much more sophisticated scribes
back in the capital
NARRATOR: Could these scribes have been in the court of King David
and his son Solomon?
Could they have been the earliest biblical writers?
In the 18th century, German scholars uncovered a clue
to who wrote the Bible,
hidden in two different names for God
COOGAN: According to one account,
Abraham knew God by his intimate, personal name,
conventionally pronounced Yahweh
NARRATOR: Passages with the name Yahweh,
which in German is spelled with a J,
scholars refer to as J
COOGAN: But according to other accounts, Abraham knew God
simply by the most common Hebrew word for God, which is Elohim
NARRATOR: So the two different writers became known
as E for "Elohim" and J for "Yahweh"
Most likely based on poetry and songs
passed down for generations, they both write a version
of Israel's distant past--
the stories of Abraham in the Promised Land,
Moses and the Exodus
(thunder)
COOGAN: The earliest of these sources
is the one that is known as J, which many scholars dated
to the 10th century B.C., the time of David and Solomon
NARRATOR: And because the backdrop for J's version of events
is the area around Jerusalem, it's likely he lived there,
perhaps in the royal courts of David and Solomon
(monks singing)
For over a hundred years,
archaeologists have searched Jerusalem for evidence
of the Kingdom of David
(monks singing)
But excavating here is contentious
because Jerusalem is sacred
to today's three monotheistic religions
JOAN BRANHAM: For Christians, Jesus comes in his final week
to worship at the Jerusalem temple
He's crucified, he's buried,
he's resurrected in the city of Jerusalem
(monks singing)
For Islam, it is the site where Mohammed comes
in a sacred night journey,
and today the Dome of the Rock marks that spot
In Judaism, the stories of the Hebrew Bible, of Solomon,
of David, of the temples of Jerusalem,
all of these take place, of course, in Jerusalem
So, Jerusalem is a symbol of sacred space today,
important for all three traditions
NARRATOR: Despite the difficulties,
Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar went digging
in the most ancient part of Jerusalem,
today called the City of David
MAZAR: We started excavations here
because we wanted to check
and to examine the possibility that the remains
of King David's palace are here
NARRATOR: But because this area has been fought over, destroyed
and rebuilt over thousands of years,
it was a long shot that any biblical remains would survive
But then...
MAZAR: Large walls started to appear,
three-meter wide, five-meter wide
And then we saw that it goes all directions
It goes from east, 30 meters to the west,
and we don't see the end of it yet
NARRATOR: Such huge walls can only be part of a massive building
And Mazar believes her excavations to date
represent only 20% of its total size
MAZAR: Such a huge structure shows centralization
and capability of construction
It can be only royal structure
Pottery dating is based on two ideas:
pottery styles evolve uniformly over time,
and the further down you dig, the further back in time you go
If "pottery style A" comes from the lowest stratum,
then it is earlier than "pottery style B"
that comes from the stratum above it
By analyzing pottery from well-stratified sites,
excavators are able to create
what they call a "relative chronology"
But this chronology is "floating" in time
without any fixed dates
To anchor this chronology, William Foxwell Albright,
considered the father of biblical archaeology,
used events mentioned in both the Bible
and Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts to assign dates
to pottery styles
Albright's chronology, slightly modified, is what Mazar uses
to date her massive building,
and what most archaeologists use today
MAZAR: What we found is a typical tenth-century pottery,
meaning bowls with hand burnish you can see from inside,
together with an import; a beautiful black-on-red juglet
What is so important
is that this is a tenth-century typical juglet
NARRATOR: So has Mazar discovered the Palace of David?
She adds up the evidence-- the building is huge,
it is located in a prominent place
in the oldest part of Jerusalem,
and the pottery, according to Albright's chronology,
dates to the 10th century B.C., the time of David
Mazar believes she has indeed found the Palace of David
But that evidence and indeed the kingdom itself
rest on the dates associated with fragments of pottery
And some critics argue the system for dating that pottery
relies too heavily on the Bible
Archaeologists in the past did not rely too heavily
on the Bible
They relied only on the Bible
We have a problem in dating
How do you date in archaeology?
You need an anchor from outside
NARRATOR: Today, there is a more scientific method
to anchor pottery to firm dates, radiocarbon dating
It is a specialty of Elisabetta Boaretto
of the Weizmann Institute
BOARETTO: The first step is, of course, in the field,
which relates this sample mateal like olive pits
or seeds or charcoal to the archaeological context
NARRATOR: If an olive seed is found at the same layer
as a piece of pottery, the carbon in the seed can be used
to date the pottery
When the seed dies, its radioactive carbon 14 decays
into stable carbon 12 at a consistent rate over time
By measuring the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12,
Boaretto can determine the age of the olive seed,
which in turn can be used to date the pottery
(hissing)
Boaretto has meticulously collected and analyzed
hundreds of samples from over 20 sites throughout Israel
Her carbon samples date the pottery that Albright
and most archaeologists associate with the time of David
and Solomon to around 75 years later
For events so long ago, this may seem like a trivial difference
But if Boaretto is right,
Mazar's Palace of David
and Tappy's ancient Hebrew alphabet have to be redated
This places them in the time of the lesser-known kings
Omri, Ahab and his despised wife Jezebel,
all worshippers of the Canaanite god Baal
With no writing or monumental building,
suddenly the Kingdom of David and Solomon is far less glorious
than the Bible describes
FINKELSTEIN: So David and Solomon did not rule over a big territory
It was a small chiefdom, if you wish,
with just a few settlements, very poor,
the population was limited, there was no manpower
for big conquest, and so on and so forth
NARRATOR: This would make David a petty warlord ruling over a chiefdom,
and his royal capital, Jerusalem,
nothing more than a cow town
FINKELSTEIN: These are the results of the radiocarbon dating
He or she who decides to ignore these results,
I treat them as if arguing that the world is flat,
that the Earth is flat, and I cannot argue anymore
NARRATOR: But it's not so simple
Other teams collected radiocarbon samples
following the same meticulous methodology
According to their results,
Mazar's Palace and Tappy's alphabet can date
to the 10th century, the time of David and Solomon
How can this discrepancy be explained?
The problem is that these radiocarbon dates have
a margin of error of plus or minus 30 years,
about the difference between the two sides
Pottery and radiocarbon dating alone cannot determine
if the Kingdom of David and Solomon was as large
and prosperous as described in the Bible
Fortunately, the Bible offers clues of other places to dig
for evidence of this kingdom
The Bible credits David with conquering the Kingdom,
but it is Solomon, his son, who is the great builder
READER: "This was the purpose of the forced labor
"which Solomon imposed
"It was to build the House of YHWH
and the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer"
"First Kings 9:15"
NARRATOR: Here in Hazor, Amnon Ben-Tor, director of excavations,
believes this may be evidence of Solomon's building campaign
Archaeologists call it a six-chambered gate--
a massive entryway fortified with towers and guard rooms
Ben-Tor's predecessor, Yigal Yadin,
first uncovered this structure
BEN-TOR: It turned out to be a six-chambered gate,
and Yadin immediately remembered
that a very, very similar gate was excavated at Gezer
And then the Chicago University
excavated this gate here at Megiddo
NARRATOR: Stunned by the similarity of these three gates,
Yadin recalled the passage in the Bible
BEN-TOR: Here we have a wonderful connection
of the biblical passage as it shows up in archaeology
NARRATOR: Three monumental gates, all based on the same plan,
would seem to be powerful evidence not only of prosperity,
but also of a central authority
Throughout its history, the Israelites
had been divided into tribes,
then into kingdoms, north and south
The locations of these strikingly similar gates
in both regions suggest a single governing authority
throughout the land
But how can we be sure
this is the kingdom of David and Solomon?
The answer once again lies in Egypt
REDFORD: The head-smiting scene which you see on this wall
commemorates a military campaign
conducted by Pharaoh Shishak or Sheshonk,
the founder of Dynasty 22 in Egypt
NARRATOR: The Egyptian Pharaoh Shishak invades Israel,
an event the Bible reports
and specifically dates to five years after Solomon's death,
during the reign of his son, Rehoboam
READER: "In thfifth year of King Rehoboam,
"King Shishak of Egypt marched against Jerusalem
"and carried off the treasures of the House of Yahweh
"and the treasures of the royal palace
He carried off everything"
"First Kings 14:25 and 26"
REDFORD: The importance of this in fixing
one of the earliest dates, specific dates
in which Egyptian history coincides with biblical history
is really startling and has to be taken note of
NARRATOR: This stunning convergence
between the Bible and Egyptian history
gives a firm date for the death of Solomon
Shishak's campaign, according to the well-established
Egyptian chronology, dates to 925 B.C.
And the Bible says Solomon dies five years earlier,
which means 930 B.C.
This is further evidence that David and Solomon
lived in the 10th century
But there's even more hidden in these walls
These ovals, with their depictions of bound captives
and city walls, represent places
Pharaoh Shishak conquered in Israel
One of those places is Gezer,
where archaeologists find the hallmark
of Solomon's building program, a six-chambered gate
Bill Dever directed the excavations in the late 1960's
DEVER: We can actually see vivid evidence here of a destruction
Down below, we have the original stones pretty much in situ
But if you look in here, you see the stones are badly cracked
You can even see where they're burned
from the heat of a huge fire that has been built here
And then up in here, you see the fire has been so intense
that the soft limestone has melted into lime,
and it flows down like lava
This is vivid evidence of a destruction,
and we would connect that
with this well-known raid of Pharaoh Shishak
NARRATOR: And if the gate was destroyed by Shishak in 925 B.C.,
then it must have been built during the lifetime of Solomon,
who died just five years earlier
DEVER: Surely this kind of monumental architecture
is evidence of state formation,
and if it's in the 10th century, then Solomon
NARRATOR: Although a minority of archaeologists
continue to disagree, this convergence of the Bible,
Egyptian chronology, and Solomon's gates
is powerful evidence that a great kingdom existed
at the time of David and Solomon, spanning all of Israel,
north and south, with its capital in Jerusalem
But Jerusalem is more than a political center...
It is the center of worship
SHAYE COHEN: The magic of Jerusalem is the magic of the temple
One temple for the one god
The result is that Jerusalem and the temple
emerge as powerful symbols not just of the oneness of God,
but also of the oneness of the Jewish people
NARRATOR: The worship of the ancient Israelites
bears little resemblance to Judaism today
It centered around the temple, built by David's son Solomon,
and seen as Yahweh's earthly dwelling
To understand how the ancient Israelites worshipped their god,
scholars must discover what the Temple looked like
and how it functioned
But although archaeologists know where its remains should be,
it is impossible to dig there
It lies under the third holiest site in Islam,
which includes the Dome of the Rock
Not a stone of Solomon's Temple has ever been excavated,
but the Bible offers a remarkably detailed description
READER: "The house which King Solomon built for Yahweh
"was 60 cubits long, 20 cubits wide
"and 30 cubits high
"In the inner sanctuary, he made two cherubim--
"each ten cubits high
He overlaid the cherubim with gold"
"First Kings 6:2, 23, and 28"
NARRATOR: The Bible's description suggests a floor plan
for Solomon's Temple,
and it is strikingly similar to those of temples built
by neighboring peoples who worship many gods
The closest in appearance
is a temple hundreds of miles to the north of Jerusalem
at Ain Dara in modern-day Syria
They have similar dimensions and the same basic floor plan
Guarding both temples are sphinxes or cherubim,
as t Bible calls them
Unique to the temple at Ain Dara
are the enormous footprints of the god who lived here
They mark his progress as he strode to his throne
in the innermost sanctuary
STAGER: If we take the details that we find of Solomon's Temple
in the Book of Kings and compare it with the Ain Dara temple,
we can piece together
a fairly good picture, I think,
of what this temple might have looked like
in the age of Solomon
NARRATOR: Now it is possible to reconstruct with some confidence
how Solomon's Temple may have looked
and how the ancient Israelites worshipped their god
BRANHAM: Out front was an enormous altar
Beyond that was a porch area
that led into the inside of the temple
There was a room, the holy place,
and then beyond that, the most sacred room--
the holy of holies,
where, tradition says, the Ark of the Covenant
held the tablets of the law
And this room was considered to be
the most sacred site on Earth,
because it is the room where God's presence could be found
NARRATOR: And the ancient Israelites believed
their god demanded a very specific form of worship
Evidence of this survis today on Mount Gerizim in Palestine
The Samaritans, who live here,
claim direct descent from the ancient tribes of Israel
According to their tradition,
for over 2,500 years, they have been practicing
the ancient Israelite form of worship--
animal sacrifice
(goat bleating)
(chanting)
BRANHAM: The primary function is to make a connection
between our mundane world and the divine world
(men chanting)
And the means for the ancient Israelites
is embodied in blood
Blood is the most sacred substance on the altar
And blood is the substance that embodies life
So it is the most precious substance in the human world
NARRATOR: But while the priests were offering sacrifice to Yahweh
in the Temple, many Israelites were not as loyal
At Tel Rehov, archaeologists are digging
at an Israelite house that illuminates
the religious practices of its ancient inhabitants
AMIHAI MAZAR: We just found
this beautiful, exceptional clay figurine
showing a goddess, a fertility goddess,
that was worshipped here in Israel
Here, in this case, she is shown holding a baby
NARRATOR: Who is this fertility goddess,
and what is a pagan idol doing in an Israelite home?
Dramatic evidence as to her possible identity
first surfaced in 1968
Bill Dever was carrying out salvage excavations
in tombs in southern Israel
when a local brought him an inscription
that had been robbed from one of them
When I got home and brushed it off,
I thought I was going to have a heart attack
Executed in clear 8th century script,
it's a tomb inscription
And it gives the name of the deceased
and it says, "Blessed may X be by Yahweh"
That's good Biblical Hebrew
But it says "by Yahweh and his Asherah," and Asherah
is the name of the old Canaanite mother goddess
NARRATOR: More inscriptions associating Yahweh and Asherah
have been discovered...
and thousands of figurines unearthed throughout Israel
Many scholars believe this is the face of Asherah
Dever concludes God had a wife
Even hundreds of years after the Israelites
rise from their Canaanite pagan roots,
monotheism has still not completely taken hold
This is awkward for some people,
the notion that Israelite religion
was not exclusively monotheistic,
but we know now that it wasn't
NARRATOR: The Bible admits the Israelites continue
to worship Asherah and other Canaanite gods, such as Baal
(thunderclap)
In fact, the prophets--
holy men speaking in the name of God--
consistently rail against breaking the covenant
made with Moses to worship only Yahweh
READER: "The more I called them, the more they went from me;
"they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and offering incense to idols Hosea 11:2."
The Israelites had made a contract with God
If they kept it, God would reward them
If they broke it, he would punish them
He would punish them by using
foreign powers as his instruments
NARRATOR: Events seem to fulfill the prophet's dire predictions
Soon after Solomon's death, the ten northern tribes rebel
and form the Northern Kingdom of Israel
Then a powerful new enemy storms out of Mesopotamia
to create the largest empire
the Near East had ever known-- the Assyrians
MACHINIST: The Assyrians were the overpowering military force,
and Israel and Judah, the two states
that the Bible talks about
as the states making up the people Israel,
fell under the sway of the Assyrian juggernaut
NARRATOR: Numerous Assyrian texts and reliefs vividly document
their domination of Israel and Judah
(swords clanging, men clamoring)
In 722 B.C., the Assyrian army crushes the Northern Kingdom
Those who escape death or exile to Assyria
flood south into Jerusalem,
where the descendants of David and Solomon continue to reign
One of them, Josiah, according to the Bible,
finally heeds what the prophets prescribe
COOGAN: We're told in the Book of Kings that King Josiah
in the late 7th century B.C. was told that a scroll
had been discovered in the temple archives
The scroll was brought to him
and as the scroll was being read,
Josiah began to weep, because he realized
that it was a sacred text containing divine commands
which the people had been breaking
NARRATOR: Scholars believe that the lost scroll
is part of the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy,
a detailed code of laws and observance
It inspires another group of scribes
in the 7th century B.C., whom scholars call the D writers
According to the Documentary Hypothesis, after J and E,
D is the third group of scribes
who write part of the Hebrew Bible
D retells the Exodus story
and reaffirms the covenant Moses made
between God and the Israelite people
COOGAN: You should love the Lord your God
because he has loved you
He has loved you more than any other nation
So, the divine love for Israel requires
a corresponding loyalty to God, an exclusive loyalty to God,
and Deuteronomy, more than other parts of the Bible,
is insistent that only the God of Israel is to be worshipped
NARRATOR: To enforce the covenant,
Josiah orders that idols and altars
to all other deities be destroyed.
The book of Deuteronomy
contains the clearest prohibition
of the worship of other gods-- the Ten Commandments
(thunder)
READER: "I am Yahweh your God"
"You shall have no other gods before me."
"You shall not make for yourself an idol"
"You shall not bow down to them
or worship them"
"Deuteronomy 5:6 through 9"
NARRATOR: The Ten Commandments appears in two books of the Bible,
in Deuteronomy and in Exodus
It is not only a contract th Yahweh,
it is also a code of conduct between people
CAHILL: The revelation of the Ten Commandments
is an ethical revelation,
and that's where the idea of justice comes in,
and we will not lie about him
We will abide by the Commandments
The Commandments,
as God himself repeatedly says through the later prophets,
are already written on the hearts of human beings
(thunder)
NARRATOR: By associating the belief in one god
with moral behavior,
the Ten Commandments establishes a code of morality
and justice for all--
the ideal of Western civilization
Despite Josiah's reforms, the ancient Israelites
continue to worship other gods
Their acceptance of one god and the triumph of monotheism
begins with a series of events
vividly attested through archaeology,
ancient texts and the Bible
It starts with the destruction of Yahweh's earthly dwelling,
the Jerusalem Temple
In 586 B.C., after defeating the Assyrians,
a new Mesopotamian Empire invades Israel
The Babylonians ransack the temple
and systematically burn the sacred city
Before his eyes, the Babylonian victors
slay the sons of Zedekiah, the last Davidic king,
then blind him
The covenant-- the promise made by Yahweh
to his chosen people and to David, that his dynasty
would rule eternally in Jerusalem-- is broken
After 400 years, Israel is wiped out
ERIC MEYERS: The destruction of Jerusalem
created one of the most significant
NARRATOR: The Babylonians round up the Israelite priests, prophets
and scribes and drag them in chains to Babylon
Babylonian records confirm the presence of Israelites,
including the king, in exile
DEVER: In every age of disbelief,
one is inclined to think God is dead,
and surely those who survived the fall of Jerusalem
must have thought so
After all, how could God allow his temple,
his house, the sign, visible sign
of his presence among his people, to be destroyed?
NARRATOR: Without temple, king or land,
how can the Israelites survive?
Their journey begins with the ancient scrolls,
which some scholars speculate
were rescued from the flames of the destruction
Among the exiles from Jerusalem to Babylon
were priests from the temple,
and they seem to have brought with them
their sacred documents, their sacred traditions
NARRATOR: According to the widely accepted Documentary Hypothesis,
it is here in Babylon, far from their homes in Israel,
that priests and scribes will produce
much of the Hebrew Bible as it is known today.
Scholars refer to these writers as "P" or the Priestly Source
COOGAN: It was P who took all of these earlier traditions,
the J source, the E source,
the D source and other sources as well,
and combined them into what we know as the Torah,
the first five books of the Bible
NARRATOR: But more than just compiling, P edits and writes a version
of Israel's distant past, including the Abraham story,
that provides a way for the Israelites to remain a people
and maintain their covenant with God
READER: "You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins,
and it shall be a sign of a covenant between me and you"
Genesis 17:11.
When Genesis 17 attributes
a covenantal value to circumcision,
it is not really talking about Abraham
It is really talking about the exiles of the 6th century B.C.E.
who, far from their native home, were desperately trying
to find a way to reaffirm their difference
Therefore, they began to look at circumcision
as not simply another practice,
but rather as the marker of the covenant,
and they attributed this view back to Abraham
NARRATOR: To the exiles, the Babylonians are the new Canaanites,
the idol-worshipping, uncircumcised peoples
from whom they must remain apart
(baby crying)
But the Abraham story, with its harrowing tale
of a father's willingness to sacrifice his own son,
is also about the power of faith
It is no coincidence that the exiled P scribes
place Abraham's origins in Ur,
just down the river from Babylon
Perhaps with the same faith as Abraham had,
so, too, will the Exiles be returned to the Promised Land
COOGAN: One of the pervasive themes in the Torah
is the theme of exile and return
Abraham goes down to Egypt and comes out of Egypt
that theme must have resonated very powerfully
God, who had acted on their behalf in the past,
would presumably do so again
NARRATOR: But the Israelites still have a problem
How, in a foreign land, without the temple and sacrifice,
can they redeem themselves in the eyes of Yahweh?
(singing in Hebrew)
COOGAN: To assure that divine protection,
the P tradition
emphasizes observances such as the Sabbath observance
You don't need to be in the land of Israel to keep the Sabbath
ERIC MEYERS: And we have allusions
in the biblical writings and the prophets
to the fact that the Exiles also learned to pray
in groups, in what was to become the forerunner of the synagogue
(all reciting Hebrew prayer)
COHEN: It is during this period through the Exile
that the Exiles realized
that even far away from their homeland,
without a temple, without the priesthood,
without kings,
they are still able to worship God,
be loyal to God
and to follow God's commandments
ALL: Amen
This is the foundation of Judaism
NARRATOR: The experience of the Exile
transforms ancient Israelite cult
into a modern religion
By compiling the stories of their past,
originally written by the scribes J, E and D,
the Exodus, from slavery to freedom,
Moses and the Ten Commandments,
Abraham's Journey to the Promised Land,
P creates what we know today
as the first five books of the Bible
(birds chirping)
Though this theory is widely accepted,
physical evidence of any biblical text
from the Exile or earlier is hard to come by
(stone clatters)
The most celebrated
surviving biblical texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls
First discovered by accident in 1947,
the scrolls represent nearly all 39 books of the Hebrew Bible,
at least in fragments
They survived because they were deposited
in the perfect environment for preservation--
the hot, dry desert
Archaeologists suspect there were at least
hundreds more scrolls throughout Israel,
but because they were written on papyrus or animal skins,
they have long since decomposed
JODI MAGNESS: Even though the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls
date to the third and second centuries B.C.,
that doesn't mean that they're the first copies or examples
of this work that were ever written
It means that they already stand in a line of tradition
that had been established
by the time the scrolls were written
NARRATOR: Still, the earliest of the Dead Sea Scrolls
dates to at least 300 years after the Babylonian Exile
In the absence of proof of earlier text,
some scholars claim the entire Bible is pious fiction...
and even doubt whether Israel and the Israelites ever existed
DEVER: For many of the revisionists, these extreme skeptics,
there was no ancient Israel
Israel is an intellectual construct
In other words, these people were not rethinking their past,
they were inventing their past
They had no past
So the Bible is a myth, a foundation myth,
told to legitimate a people who had no legitimacy
NARRATOR: The legitimacy of the Israelite past
hinges on finding a piece of evidence
to prove the ancient origins of the Bible
What would be the discovery of a lifetime
starts outside the walls of Jerusalem in an old cemetery
GABRIEL BARKAY: We came here and excavated
seven of these burial caves
The burial caves date back to the 7th century B.C.,
somewhere around the time of King Josiah
But the caves were found looted,
so we didn't anticipate too much
NARRATOR: Gabriel Barkay instructed a 13-year-old volunteer
to clean up a tomb for photographs
BARKAY: Instead of that, he was bored,
he was alone, and he had a hammer,
and he began banging on the floor
(distorted, echoing thud)
NARRATOR: But the floor turned out to be a fallen ceiling...
and beneath it were some artifacts
that had escaped the looters
Among the hundreds of grave goods,
one artifact stood out
BARKAY: It looked like a cigarette butt
It was cylindrical, about an inch in size,
about half an inch in diameter,
and it was very clear it is made of silver
It was some kind of a tiny scroll
NARRATOR: A second, slightly smaller scroll was also found,
and both were taken to the labs at the Israel Museum
But unraveling the scrolls
to see if they contain a readable inscription
could risk destroying them completely
Andy Vaughn was one of the epigraphers on the project
Archaeology is basically a destructive science
In order to learn anything,
you have to destroy what's there
Gabriel Barkay and his team had to make a decision
Does one unroll these amulets, or does one preserve them?
They decided that it was worth the risk,
and hindsight would tell us
that they could not have been more correct
NARRATOR: Through painstaking conservation,
technicians devised a special method
for unrolling the scrolls and revealing their contents
BARKAY: I went over there, and...
I was amazed to see the whole thing full
of, uh...
very delicately scratched,
very shallow, uh, characters
The first word that I could decipher
already on the spot
was yod-het-waw-het,
which is the four-letter unpronounceable name of God
NARRATOR: Further investigation revealed more text
and a surprisingly familiar prayer
still said in synagogues and churches to this day
READER: "May the Lord bless you and keep you;
"may the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
"and be gracious to you;
"may the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace"
Numbers 6:24 through 26
VAUGHN: There is no doubt at all that these two amulets
contain the Priestly Benediction found in Numbers 6
These inscriptions are thus very important
because they are the earliest references we have
to the written biblical narratives
The archaeological context was very clear,
because it was found together with pottery
dating back to the 7th century B.C.
Also the paleography, the shape of letters,
As modern scholars suspect, the Torah,
the first five books of the Bible,
takes its final form during the Babylonian Exile
But dwarfed by the mighty temples
and giant statues of Babylonian gods...
(whip cracks, man yells)
...the Israelites must also confront
the fundamental question--
why did their god, Yahweh, forsake them?
COOGAN: In the ancient world,
if your country was destroyed by another country,
it meant that their gods were more powerful than your god
And the natural thing to do
was to worship the more powerful god
But the survivors
continued to worship Yahweh
and struggled to understand how this could have happened
They resort first
to a standard form of explanation,
which is found elsewhere in the ancient Near East
We must have done something wrong
to incur the wrath of our god
It's out of this that comes the reflection
that polytheism was our downfall;
there is, after all, only one god
NARRATOR: The Israelites abandon the folly of polytheism
Monotheism triumphs,
and the archaeological evidence proves it
Before the destruction of the First Temple,
wherever we dig in whatever part of the Judean country,
we find sanctuaries, and more often we find
hundreds and thousands of figurines
even in Jerusalem itself
NARRATOR: But after the destruction, there are none
We are speaking about thousand in before
and nothing, completely nothing at all after
LEVINE: Monotheism is well ensconced,
firmly ensconced,
so something major happened,
which is very hard to trace
But that was a searing experience,
that time in the Exile
NARRATOR: Through the experience of the Exile
and writing the Bible,
the concept of God, as it is known today, is born
McCARTER: In a way, P created something that was much greater,
because it was greater than any individual land or kingdom
It was a kind of a universal religion
based on a creator god--
not just a god of a single nation,
but the god of the world, the god of the universe
CAROL MEYERS: This moves Yahweh
into the realm of being a universal deity
who has the power to affect
what happens in the whole universe
This makes the god of ancient Israel
the universal god of the world that resonates with people,
at least in Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition,
to this veryay
NARRATOR: In 539 B.C.,
the Babylonian Empire is toppled by the Persians
As written in the Bible,
Yahweh, in his new role as the one invisible God,
orchestrates a new Exodus
(reading in Hebrew)
Among one group of returning exiles
is the prophet Ezra
Back in Jerusalem, he gives a public reading
of the newly written Torah to reestablish the covenant
READER: "All the people gathered together
"They told the scribe Ezra
"to bring the book of the law of Moses,
"which the Lord had given to Israel
"He read from it from early morning until midday,
"and the ears of all the people
were attentive to the book of the law"
Nehemiah 8:1 through 3
ERIC MEYERS: To me, it's one of the most moving moments
in the whole Bible
Ezra returns with the Bible in his hands,
so we have the feeling
that the process begun in the Exile
NARRATOR: The scrolls that chronicle
the Israelites' relationship with their god
is now the Hebrew Bible...
the Old Testament...
a sacred text for over three billion people
Through its writing,
an ancient cult becomes a modern religion
(chanting in Hebrew)
And the Israelite deity Yahweh
transforms into the God
of the three great monotheistic religions
Through its teachings,
the Bible established a code of morality and justice,
aspirations that resonate through the ages
More than fact or fiction,
at the intersection of science and scriptures
is a story that began over 3,000 years ago
and continues to this day
On NOVA's "Bible's Buried Secrets" Web site,
share your thoughts on the program,
ask questions of biblical scholars,
explore a timeline of archaeology and more
Find it at pbs.org

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