My 40-Year Search for Israel’s Origins
Nine Years
In the Cloistered Halls – Forty Years Ago
I walked into my first doctoral seminar on the Pentateuch on an autumn morning. I remember it clearly. That day I elected to do my seminar research paper on the Israelite Exodus, excited to find application for my archaeological field work in Israel.
But what I discovered in my research shook my understanding of the Bible, challenged my faith, and set me on a path that became an obsession.
The Bible in Crisis
By the early 1970s archaeological discoveries coming to light in Israel and the Transjordan contradicted the traditional dates for the Israelite Exodus and Conquest. I discovered that sites the Israelites supposedly encountered and destroyed—in some cases—did not yet exist in the only periods considered possible by conservative scholars. It was common in those days to hear that “archaeology proves the Bible.” I discovered that was not true, and that people who made that claim were either ignorant of the facts or were selectively citing exceptions to the growing body of evidence that suggested just the opposite—at least in the case of the narrative of the first nine books of the Old Testament (and comparable texts in the Hebrew Bible).
A Crisis of Faith
I struggled to reconcile my intellectual questions about the authority of the Scripture with my personal conviction. There was no comfort to be had from other conservatives in academia who were also dealing quietly with the apparent paradox that the source document of the Judeo-Christian faith traditions was historically unreliable. From that time in my studies, I avoided dealing with historicity issues of the Bible in my seminar papers while struggling to reconcile my life of faith with the intellectual realities of academia.
Tel Dan Iron I Pottery Assemblage (photo courtesy of David Ilan)
Dissertation – First Try
Four years of course work passed; it was time to begin the dissertation. I spent a year at Baylor University in the chemistry department studying and applying archaeometric techniques to the study of pottery; I obtained a grant to use Texas A&M’s nuclear reactor where I conducted a neutron activation study of 250 pottery sherds from a biblical site I was excavating in Israel. And I sandwiched in one semester to study pottery with Central American Maya experts at SMU in Dallas.
My objective in these studies was to explore a likely explanation for the regional uniformity of pottery types in the archaeological record of the late second millennium BC in biblical Israel/Canaan. I believed this uniformity in pottery style was best explained by the existence of pottery production centers/villages that marketed their wares throughout a limited range—giving only the impression of ethnic homogeneity at sites where this material was found.
If my thesis was true, the arrival of the seminomadic Israelites in Canaan (with no pottery traditions) would have been impossible to detect archaeologically, an idea that was gaining traction with some scholars.
My research seemed promising. But after more than a year of study I discovered that my major professor had no intention of approving my topic! If I wanted the degree I would have to deal with the problem of the origins of the Israelites in Canaan.
Dissertation – Final Try
I pondered how I could possibly contribute to a discussion that had reached an impasse. The story of the Conquest simply could not be reconciled with the evidence. But then it occurred to me to ask: What if the Exodus and the Conquest had been dated to the wrong periods? This would ensure the archaeology was incompatible with projected biblical dates. I decided to try an experiment. I picked one reliable archaeological date at a Conquest site and projected from this the Bible’s relative dates of key events. I then set out to compare those projected dates against the hard evidence.
According to the excavator of et-Tell (biblical Ai), a destruction level or “disturbance” occurred there c. 1125 BC (modified here to 1135 BC). If he was right, this would have been the year the Conquest began. From this date a simple calculation provided the year of the Exodus c. 1175 BC, along with the dates for other events back to the time of Abram. During the year I researched this topic, it became apparent that the projected dates of biblical events from Gen. 12 through the period of the Judges were consistent with the evidence.
But there were several insoluble problems also. These included the supposed Israelite encounter with the king of Edom during the Wandering period (considered a fictional account in academia); the identification of Sodom’s location was not satisfactory; I could not resolve the problem of the Merenptah Stele’s reference to Israel; and there were other issues such as the destruction of Greater Hazor and the duration of the period of the Judges. Despite these problems the 12th century BC chronology had far stronger support in the archaeological record than the two dominant conservative chronologies that continue to appear in the literature. Despite these deficiencies, the dissertation was accepted and the degree was granted. But for what good purpose?
Across Oceans and Continents
By the time I finished my study I was intellectually fatigued, frustrated, and broke. My wife, family, and friends questioned my motives in spending nine years in seminary (master’s and PhD)—and this was in addition to eight years of earlier study before my military service. Proving my detractors right about the folly of my interminable sojourn in academia, I could not find a teaching job (a sad reality for most PhDs). I was forced to return to flying to make a living, a skill I had learned in the U.S. Air Force.
I spent the next twenty-two years as an international airline captain, check captain, test pilot, and manager for an international airline (World Airways) while working simultaneously full-time for American Airlines (for whom I developed the International Flight Training program). In those years of global flight operations, I flew countless times over Cairo southbound to Luxor where I turned east to cross the Gulf of Aqaba into Saudi Arabia. And on flights northbound over the Red Sea, I many times crossed the non-directional radio beacon at St. Catherine’s in the southern Sinai (near the holy mountain), turned left toward Cairo, then set a heading for Frankfurt, Shannon, or the entry point to the North Atlantic tracks to North America.
In those flight segments over Egypt and Sinai I studied the bleak terrain below, pondering the Israelite experience and how they could have survived in any numbers in the utter desolation that stretched below me. Always, I was troubled by the feeling of unfinished business. I had not, in my own mind, resolved the conflict between the Bible’s story of Israel’s origins and the evidence.
Origins Revisited
Some years passed when a chance conversation occurred in the cockpit of a DC10-30 somewhere over the Indian Ocean (if memory serves). My first officer informed me that his father was a prominent Old Testament scholar—whose reputation I knew. Fast forward. His father read my dissertation, commended the research and its implications, and encouraged me to update my study—which I immediately began to do. That was 30 years ago.
The research soon became my life’s focus as I found new discoveries and insights that had come to light since my dissertation. This new information dramatically strengthened the thesis and filled gaping holes in the argument that were insoluble in 1988 (when I submitted my dissertation).
Finally, in the fall of 2024, a little over forty years after I encountered the headwaters of academia’s fading belief in the historicity of the Bible’s story of Israel’s origins, I reached the end of the quest. I am satisfied that the research is comprehensive and that my early intuition was correct: the Bible’s story of Israel’s origins is historically accurate.
80 for 80
The Bible and the Origins of Ancient Israel is the distillation of my life of research. It is based upon the examination of every identifiable biblical event at known sites that have independent extrabiblical dating evidence. I have discovered at least 80 such events. In every instance, the evidence is compatible with the projected dates of these events (based on a Conquest date of 1135 BC).
What this Means
For those who believe God has communicated faithfully with humanity in the pages of the Bible (historicity being a key parameter), the evidence here justifies intellectually what faith asserts.