The Bible and Believers, the Power of the Past and Antiquated Archaeology in the Middle East

From the very beginning of Israel’s history, two national concepts have dominated Jewish life: the concepts of the Chosen People and the Promised Land. Most Jews have lived in Palestine for merely a short period of the last three thousand years, and a Jewish state, or states, has only existed precariously, and just for a few centu-ries. Still, the Jews have throughout time felt tied to the Land by a close and unique link. Biblical archaeology and Israel as a nation state have a mutual interest in a certain type of archaeological interpretations and explanations. Both the religious and the na-tionalist prejudices favour an epistemology based on the tradi-tional cultural-historical paradigm that most scholars abandoned after the Second World War. Archaeology has by its nature an unavoidable political dimension. In the Near East, it is possible to trace a long history of politically inspired archaeology that has been harmful to archaeologists, its material and ethnic minori-ties. The paradoxical situation that the epistemology of biblical archaeology is similar to German archaeology before the Second World War has occurred. Thus, Israel claims that the nation’s pop-ulation is superior to others on the basis of past achievements. Biblical archaeology serve to establish political and territorial le-gitimacy and to the maintenance of cultural identity and ethnicity