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The story involves so many miracles - plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, manna from heaven, the giving of the Ten Commandments - that some critics feel the whole story has the flavor of pure myth. A massive exodus that led to the drowning of Pharaoh's army, says Father Anthony...
Just because most scholars no longer accept Joshua's war of conquest, though, doesn't mean the question is settled by any means. Conservatives have plenty of ideas about how the tide could swing back to a more biblical interpretation. Experts like Abraham Malamat, a biblical historian at the Hebrew...
Even the widely accepted notion that the Patriarchs were mythical figures has been challenged. Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool offered what has been called an "extraordinary demonstration" in Biblical Archaeology Review earlier this year that the stories about Abraham are plausible. Drawing on nonbiblical records, Kitchen argued...
Is he right? Most scholars don't think so, but one crucial discovery - an independent, ancient chronicle of Abraham's wanderings, perhaps - could change their minds in an instant. Similarly, a single discovery could erase all doubts about the Exodus or the sacking of Jericho or just about anything else...
If and when Ben-Tor or his successors locate the archive, the effect on biblical scholarship would be be profound. Instead of relying on half-legible inscriptions and fragments of clay and stone, historians would suddenly have access to huge amounts of information, set down not to advance religious ideas...