Iain W. Provan

The following is only a review of Part 1--

It would not come as a shock to many Christians to hear that those in the ivory tower place very little trust in the historical accuracy of the Old Testament. After all, we are finding it increasingly difficult today to find even self-described Christians who affirm events like the flood narrative, the parting of the Red Sea, or the rescue of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as historical realities. What may come as a revelation, however, is the show more rejection of a historical Israel at all. “Biblical history is apparently dead!” report Provan, Long, and Longman (3). What are we to do with such a radical dismissal of the biblical testimony?

Christians have largely responded in one of two ways. The first is retreat. It's not wrong to say academia is hostile to historical, traditional Christianity. Many Christian scholars no longer receive an audience in the halls they once roamed only a few decades ago. Newer spaces in evangelical colleges and seminaries provide scholars with much needed freedom to continue their research in a context friendly to their deeply held religious beliefs. However, a certain level of expertise has been sacrificed in the exchange. The result is a “Christianized” form of the academic pursuit with little cross-pollination with the field broadly. Today, evangelical discourse looks and sounds different. It has developed its own jargon and assumptions which are alien to most scholars in the field.

A second approach has been what the authors of A Biblical History of Israel call “methodological nontheism,” or the willingness to argue the case by systematically adopting the nontheist standards, categories, and definitions of “the naked public square.” It requires complete willingness on behalf of the believing scholar to think and write as though he did not believe at all. I do not believe it too harsh to call it capitulation. Provan, Long, and Longman are right to reject the so-called naked public square for what it is: “a misleading and dangerous label, since there is nothing naked about it” (147).

Indeed, the value of the first half of the book is the authors’ willingness to expose the hidden ideology and assumptions of modern scholars who fancy themselves stewards of objectivity and unbiased history. In their devastating critique of modern historiography and its practitioners, the authors demonstrate a better method for Christian scholars: lively debating peers on their own terms. Their case is refreshingly free of modern ideology and evangelical nonsense. They painstakingly address every criticism, often by turning the question back on their critics and challenging their own assumptions and methodologies. In the end, it is their critics who are revealed to be the ideologically poisoned ones.

Provan, Long, and Longman begin by pointing out the marginalization of the biblical text in the study of biblical history. Many of their critics, they argue, are now committed to correcting the course of biblical history by focusing on supposedly objective archeological data and extrabiblical sources. But is objectivity, in the modern sense, even possible? The authors are skeptical. After all, no historian can get behind partiality or ideology, even in fields like archeology. Even archeological data must be interpreted and argued by scholars who themselves are animated by a host of presumptions. They continue to raise concerns with the nascent positivism within the field of biblical history. Can it be that history is truly more a science than an art, interested only in empirical proof of specific historical events and the transcendent laws which guide them?

The substance of the authors’ thesis rests on two counterfactuals. The first is that history largely comes to us through testimony and there is no reason to discount testimony as a legitimate form of transmission. The second is that history is an art, dependent on the choices, styles, and motivations of the storyteller. We will deal with these two points in turn.

History as Testimony
The authors are correct to frame the question as a matter of epistemology: “How do we know what we claim to know about the past?? (38) In the early part of their second chapter, Provan, Long, and Longman argue testimony is as much a valid source of historical knowledge as archeological data, anthropology, sociology, or any other darling of modern scholars:

We know about the past, to the extent that we know about it all, primarily through the testimony of others. Testimony lies at the very heart of our access to the past. There is the testimony of people from the past about their own past, communicated in oral and written forms. There is the testimony of people from the past about the past of other peoples, also communicated in oral and written forms. Figures from the present also offer testimony about the past–the past of their own and of other peoples…Testimony gives us access to the past, to the extent that anything does. All historiography is founded upon it (39).

Because history is testimony, we cannot avoid the category of trust, or faith. Indeed, the two are synonymous (39). It is perhaps for this reason alone that modern scholars with grand visions of absolute rationality and objectivity disdain the testimony of the biblical texts. Instead, they prefer the scientific pursuits of archeological observation. The problem is no such objectivity exists. “We understand more clearly than many of our predecessors how what is perceived in the so-called real world is inevitably connected with the knowledge, prejudices, and ideologies that the perceiving person brings with her to the observation” (40). No evidence is neutral, and no evidence can be neutrally observed. Thus, the debate is as Provan, Long, and Longman argue at the outset: “what counts as evidence” (9).

For the authors, there is no logical reason–only ideological biases–as to why the biblical testimony ought to be rejected. The rest of the chapter touches on matters such as the modern skepticism toward tradition and the postmodern dismissal of objective truth at all. Christians familiar with the more popular works of Os Guinness or Carl Trueman will find Provan, Long, Longman’s own contributions similar without shedding much new light. However, the question remains: if the myth of modern rationalism and objectivity is just that, what keeps us from the slippery slope of postmodernism?

History as an Art
Christians may find themselves in an awkward position saying all historical knowledge is subject to interpretation. After all, is this not simply a suggestion that no such thing actually exists? Our postmodern age would certainly agree. But Provan, Long, and Longman are no postmodernists and, in fact, spend as much time debunking their epistemology as much as that of the modernists.

The answer requires a shift in one’s paradigm. For so long, we have trained our brains to think of history as a science. But that was not always so. History was an art for much of the pre-Enlightenment world, best exemplified in Plutarch’s Lives or Tactitus’ Histories. These were historical narratives of impressive men and women with pedagogical ends. Yes, these ancient historians crafted their narratives according to aesthetic decisions, intentionally selecting certain details and not others in order to argue a particular interpretation of the events at hand. But this does not necessarily disqualify their histories as history. It simply requires a different way of thinking about history.

Provan, Long, and Longman employ a helpful analogy. Imagine a Renaissance painter hired to paint a young woman of his day. Years later, historians discover his painting. Is the painting history? Is it fiction? Or is it some combination of the two?

In one sense, a portrait is all history, since its essential purpose is to represent a historical subject. Ideally, every brushstroke in the portrait serves that purpose. In another sense, however, a portrait is all fiction–that is, it is all “fabrication,” just paint on canvas. No brushstroke or combination of brushstrokes exactly duplicates the historical subject. Taken together, however, the brushstrokes depict, or represent, the historical subject (115).

The historian–or the artist–is free to depict the historical event according to his own “voice,” but he is always bound by the actual event itself (118). A different historian may add his voice to the chorus, adding a different perspective. But never does this negate the reality of the historical event itself. As the authors so simply put it, “History is one, but historiographies may be many” (118).

Conclusion
As Provan, Long, and Longman clearly demonstrate, biblical history is far from dead! In fact, it remains an important source of knowledge about the Ancient Near East and the people who populated it. Turning people’s opinions on the merit of biblical testimony will be difficult. Academia is replete with ideologues, fervently committed to the priors of modernism and increasingly open to the relativism of its postmodern heir.

Perhaps then confessional Christians will find hope in their respective doctrines of Scripture. The Westminster Larger Catechism confidently attests to Scripture’s self-evident majesty, purity, and coherence (WLC 4). But it is quick to remind us of the darkness of man’s heart. Though self-evident, sin clouds our judgment in such a way that it requires the illuminating power of the Holy Spirit to persuade us of its quality. Without divine intervention, we are blind to the power of its testimony. But if Provan, Long, and Longman are any example, that ought not dissuade us from proclaiming its truth. show less

You can tell sometimes how even people you are aligned with dost protest too much, and in the process, reveal and expose a bit more about themselves than they would perhaps have desired.

So it ultimately goes with Provan, Long, and Longman III’s A Biblical History of Israel (Second Edition) (galley received as part of early review program, but full book read).

Based on the title, you might imagine the authors intend to present a Biblical history of Israel. And, about a quarter of the way show more into the book, the authors do begin to systematically present an analysis of the story of Israel following the Biblical arc, beginning with the patriarchs and ending with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.

But that’s only after the first quarter of the book, and in this portion the reader gets to see what the book is really about.

According to the authors, the book is really about defending and upholding the Bible primarily, and other historical documents secondarily, as credible sources to consider and use when telling the story of Israel. They spend some time exploring the question and issue and dig deeply into epistemological priors and how one might be able to know about the history of Israel, how we might have any confidence, or lack thereof, in the Biblical text as historical evidence, how we can glean historical truth and insights from stories told with agendas and within various literary schema, and how we consider matters of proof versus making the best possible case for a given scenario based on all evidence we understand.

Throughout the authors are in conversation with various scholars and others who have a far more critical and skeptical view of the Bible. In general, they do well at pointing out the unreasonableness of many of the postures they are resisting as well as the many points of hypocrisy. The authors want to position themselves as the reasonable adults in the room, taking seriously a lot of the world opened up by historical-critical methods and other forms of criticism while making a defense for the Biblical text as history.

So it is from this vantage point that the authors then explore Biblical history. And, in general, they make good cases and manage evidence and expectations well. They will always make the best case scenario for upholding the integrity of the Biblical witness. Sometimes, like in Genesis, that will mean pointing out the points of consistency with Early and Middle Bronze Age archaeological and textual discoveries while recognizing a significant dearth of corroborating evidences. Sometimes it means pointing out, as with the location of Ai, how there still is a lot of uncertainty and vagary in what we think we know archaeologically, and so there might well be a way forward in vindicating the way the Biblical text presents itself. Likewise, it also will involve showing how literary form need not discount historical integrity, and showing sometimes how format may actually be the best way to uphold the integrity of a Biblical text.

So how do the authors protest too much? One can perceive such things in how frequently they are tussling in the text with their opponents, and all the more so in the appendix. It’s important to note how this is the second edition of BHI, and most of the expansions have involved the authors’ responses to the various critiques of the first edition. The authors do well point out a lot of the fallacies used in the arguments against them, the different standards, and the overall party viewpoint which seems to want to wall off what is deemed “serious scholarship” from anything remotely resembling a conservative Evangelical view.

But in all such protesting, the authors do truly manifest a trend and tendency the critics point out. One need not agree with the critics on all points, or even most points, in order to be able to perceive, even in the arguments made against them, how they are noticing something which works against the conceit of the authors.

…and that is how the authors want to position themselves as without a predetermined agenda and are just trying to follow the evidence where it goes, when in fact the exposition quite manifestly displays the standard conservative Evangelical posture of defending the Biblical text as is in all and every respect.

I find the best evidence of this in the authors’ treatment of the Book of Esther in p. 400ff. They recognize how much of scholarship has come to the conclusion the Book of Esther is a novella, or romantic novel, and prove quite skeptical about any historical basis for the character of Esther.

If the authors really did want to show some kind of critical bonafides, this would be a great place to do so. But Tremper Longman III has already written a book in which he attempts to defend the historicity of Esther, and so this work is gonna try to defend the historicity of Esther.

And some of the points made are valid. Even those who believe it a romance do recognize how the author is very well acquainted with the Persian court and how the Achaemenids ran their Empire. This is true. The authors would present themselves as reasonable and conciliatory by granting how the story is indeed written as a romance with a lot of dramatic and literary factors.

But then they try to give their evidence for Esther as intending to be historical (“genre signals within the book communicate a historical concern,” whatever that might mean; p. 401). They argue it is “grouped with other historical books in the Septuagintal order of the biblical books,” and how the “history of interpretation confirms that Esther has usually been taken as a historical narrative” (ibid.).

The authors will later attempt to cast aspersions on the details given by Herodotus and others which stand at variance with the text of Esther as presented: Xerxes only having one wife, Amestris, who was among the Persian elite, as if the possible existence of some question about her origin means the whole thing is still up for debate (p. 402). The last line in this section seems a bit rich: “the duty of historians is to handle all sources, not merely some of them, with intelligence” (ibid.).

Yeah, about that…

At no point do the authors seem to even want to concede the historical problems with the Esther narrative as written. Unless all of our understanding of time in Xerxes’ reign is off, Xerxes was in Greece or was coming back to Persia at the time he is suggested to be meeting and elevating Esther (ca. 480-479 BCE), let alone how all the sources are quite consistent in portraying Xerxes as having one wife, Amestris, throughout his reign. Granted, the portrayal of Xerxes’ character in Esther is spot on, but just because you’ve well portrayed a character doesn’t mean what you’re presenting the character as doing is actually historical. And it remains quite rich to start demeaning a historical source which is saying things which are at variance with what you would like for them to say (Herodotus, The Histories), when you’ve been railing at everyone for ignoring, neglecting, or suppressing historical documents as sources when they do not align with a more skeptical posture.

We shouldn’t necessarily expect to find any documented evidence of people like Mordecai or Haman, but Haman as an Agagite with Mordecai as a descendant of Kish, thus Saul, seems quite convenient in light of the Saul versus Agag of Amalek contest in 1 Samuel 15. This difficulty is compounded by how Agag was killed by Samuel and the Amalekites cease to be a going concern after David defeats them after they overran Ziklag.

But the big and completely unaddressed issue in all of this is the presence of Esther in the Septuagint and the existence of similar romances in the Septuagint. No mention is made in BHI of how there are expansions of the Book of Esther in the Greek Septuagint not found in the Hebrew text. The Septuagint presents the Book of Esther as grouped among the “historical books”? Yes, it does…right after Tobit and Judith, and right before 1 and 2 Maccabees.

If we’re going to be intellectually critical and honest and maintain the same standard of judgment across books claiming historical precedent, according to the pretense of the authors, I do not understand how you justify the Book of Esther as presenting a true historical story in a highly literary fashion but then immediately criticize and challenge the Books of Tobit and Judith as fictive romances.

Tobit and Judith present themselves as historically as does Esther: they are characters presented as living in a time before the author writes (Tobit, during the days of the Assyrians; Judith, during the days of the Babylonians). Both stories will make appeals to certain historical details, and they will also often stand at variance with what we read from other sources to some degree or another. Judith in particular features Judith saving her people from Holofernes the Assyrian (=Babylonian) general, and shares a lot of common features with Esther.

Oh, and in the history of interpretation? Early Christians absolutely believed Esther was a historical figure. They were equally confident in Tobit, Tobiah, Judith, and Holofernes as being historical figures.

In this the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are consistent: they recognize all of these as canonical works, and even if many of their scholars today cast aspersions on their historicity and instead emphasize the importance of these stories as historical romances to encourage faith in God during Second Temple Judaism and beyond, they have no canonical or dogmatic need to treat Esther any differently from Tobit and Judith, etc.

Yet the authors of BHI are Evangelicals; perhaps I am being presumptuous, but I imagine they would argue Tobit and Judith are historical romances and novellas, were not actual people in the days in which they are claimed to exist, and while their stories might have profit in encouraging faith, we should not deem them inspired and we certainly should not consider them as representing actual history.

And if first century BCE and CE Judaism had put Esther in that same category, what would the authors of BHI argue about the Book of Esther? I have a sneaking suspicion they would categorize Esther in the same way.

I am not trying to be presumptuous here as much as wanting to honor the spirit of the authors more than where they’ve actually turned out. I actually don’t disagree with the primary premises of the authors. I agree with their primary premises to the point of being willing to countenance the Book of Esther as a historical novella which may have not actually happened. My faith is not compromised by such a view; I completely grant that Herodotus and others might be quite mistaken and the author of Esther might be vindicated as a historian. But that’s not where all the evidence is right now. One should be able to make the argument in all seriousness and in full honor of the witness and integrity of the Biblical text and say that Esther is more like Tobit and Judith than it even is Daniel, let alone 1/2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and the historical prophets.

If the authors were truly handling “all sources” with “intelligence,” they would have at least broached the reality of the other historical novella within the Septuagint and grant many points of connection among them. You would never know that Tobit and Judith existed based upon what is presented in BHI.

Because in the end, while I do completely agree with the general posture of the authors, I will not grant their conceit. They are conservative Evangelicals who are working diligently to affirm and confirm their priors in justifying the Old Testament in its canonical form as historically accurate or credible in all points, and maintaining a maximalist view of what passes for presenting historical data.

Their critics are right about that, even if they do not prove quite willing to confess it themselves.

So that’s what the book is. Maybe you’re even inclined to completely agree with them about such things. Excellent! Go for it. Maybe it’s really important for you in your faith to believe Esther and Mordecai really did live in Susa, Esther was elevated to Persian queen, and delivered her people. I’m not here to argue with you.

But let’s not pretend BHI is some kind of objectively created and curated, balanced in all ways portrayal of Biblical history. It has its agenda from its posture and is committed to a fully canonical defense of the Hebrew Bible, and its authors would do well to be a lot more honest about it, and be willing to concede at least that much to their critics. show less

On Song of Songs Provan pushes a strong egalitarian agenda which regularly overwhelms his exegesis. He's a great writer and has insightful comments on both text and society but his agenda leaves the text behind and at points rejects the wisdom of Old Testament texts (especially law).

I came to read this as part of course work with an Introduction to the OT module through the LST.
Excellent but not an easy read, written by scholars for scholars. However, it is well worth persevering reading through it. It you want to explore what archaelogy and ancient texts testify to and how they reflect on the ancient history of Israel, then this book is for you.