The Bible's Buried Secrets, Chapter One: Merneptah Stele

Okay, so my plan to review PBS's "The Bible's Buried Secrets" on a chapter by chapter basis may be a little aggressive and overestimating the amount of information provided in each chapter, but we'll still give it a shot.

A quick note on production quality before I get angry (just guessing): it does appear to have been beautifully put together if the first chapter is any indication. The soundtrack is commingled with somber, atmospheric musical notes and sonorous sound effects, and a lot of the reenactments have an earthy, washed visual effect that makes for a very pleasant experience. The overall impact of the storytelling style is to create, in fact, a "buried secrets" feel. One becomes fully engrossed and almost edge-of-seat, as though the most amazing puzzle is going to be joined in your presence. Very well done.

Chapter One: Merneptah Stele, running time 6:45

This chapter introduces the Merneptah Stele and, I presume, creates the foundation upon which the puzzle will be worked. William Dever states, "You cannot afford to ignore the 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."

Merneptah Stele: The Merneptah Stele, dated to 1208 B.C., is the earliest, undisputed reference to a people known as Israel and places them in Canaan.

This, of course, would be argued by some, but no surviving books of the Bible exist that date to anything near this age, and the Amarna letters, which mention the Habiru, are in dispute, not as to their age or authenticity but as to who the Habiru were. Were they Hebrews or some other tribe? And, of course, there are other claims that are impossible to verify regarding early stages of the Hebrew language showing up in Egyptian caves. Nevertheless, the Merneptah Stele is now, and may forever be, the earliest undisputed reference to Israel.

Not that it's a polite reference. The one line devoted to the Israelites is this: "Israel has been shorn. Its seed no longer exists."

This means that the earliest verified mention of Israel is incorrect, but the accuracy of ancient texts, much like modern texts on the Internet, is never much of a stumbling block. You merely take what you can from such things. In this case, you take Israel in Canaan in 1208 b.c., possibly near devastated in a battle with Merneptah. That's pretty useful stuff.

You cannot afford to ignore the biblical text: This is a pretty generous statement by William Dever, don't you think? The truth is that there is not much else to go on, so folks like Dever must suffer it against their wills. Much like the Merneptah Stele, they will tell you that the Bible is filled with nonsense and/or exaggerations that one must sort through.

Be that as it may, archaeology does, in fact, require more than a "believing everything you read" attitude even if that includes the Bible, so the rest of his statement, "especially if you can isolate a kind of kernel of truth behind these stories and then you have the archaeological data," is to be the expected attitude among scholars.

Where exactly the stories and the artifacts match up for the makers of "The Bible's Buried Secrets" must be buried in future chapters because the first chapter essentially ends with the acknowledgement that there were Israelites in Canaan in 1208 b.c. One open question as Chapter One concludes is "How did the Israelites, alone among ancient peoples, discover the concept of one god?"

Perhaps this will be answered in Chapter Two, or maybe it will come later because the description for Chapter Two is:

Who Wrote the Bible?
Traditional beliefs hold that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, but scholars today identify the hand of at least four different groups of scribes writing over several hundred years. running time 6:52

Should be interesting. See you tomorrow.