Approaching biblical archaeology

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that many books can be tagged with the words “Biblical Archaeology”. Unfortunately, however, some of them are out “to prove the Bible true” by relating the results of biblical research with those of the relevant archaeological discoveries in the wrong way, namely without really following the rules of interpretation of the two respective fields, above all by not reading the Bible critically. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are also a substantial number of very good publications on “Biblical Archaeology”. Such, for example, is the case with The Bible & Archaeology (only recently published in English), whose author, Matthieu Richelle, succeeds in giving a very good overview of the field of “Biblical Archaeology” in a clear, concise, and precise manner, without endorsing any extreme position: neither that of fundamentalism nor that of relativism. [excerpt]