Hello, I'm Gary Stevens, and welcome to the History in the Bible podcast.

All the history, in all the books, in all the Bibles.

Thank you. Episode 1.24 Disappearing the Patriarchs

We have come to the end of our story on the Patriarchs and the Exodus,

as told in the Torah, the Pentateuch.

What do modern scholars make of the Bible story?

The answer is, not so much.

In episode 1.6, I discussed how the brilliant American scholar, William Foxwell-Albright,

had dominated the entire field of biblical studies from the 1930s. Albright was one smart guy. He mastered dozens of ancient languages

and religions and writings. He calculated ancient chronologies. He refined the dating of pottery and pioneered

techniques and methods that are in use today. He founded whole research institutes and entire

journals. Over 60 years of publication until his death, more than a thousand papers and books,

he established himself as the towering figure in the discipline.

Albright was a Protestant Christian who deeply believed that archaeology could validate the history

in the Bible, because the religious value of the Bible

lay in its testimony to divine acts in history. Again and again, he hammered home his position.

The Bible was a reliable guide to the history of the Israelites, and that was confirmed by

archaeological excavations.

At Albright's death in 1971, Anglo-American scholars agreed that Genesis and Exodus

preserved traditions handed down from the Middle Bronze Age.

These more or less accurately depicted the realities of

the Patriarch's lives. The Bible correctly described the origins of the Hebrews in southern

...