The Archeology of Biblical Literature

When we open a work from the distant past like the Torah, we may wonder whether it was intended for us, or whether we might instead be eavesdropping on conversations between long-dead people, ones who believed very different things from us. The text is full of miracles and contradictions, so how could we tell how much of it really happened? What was its original message, and how much of it can we hear today?

Seth Sanders is a Professor of Religious Studies at U.C. Davis, and he will explore these questions with us in an in-person presentation. The scholarly quest for the origins and meaning of the Torah is challenging, because there is hardly a single scrap of biblical literature that was actually found dating from the time period the Bible talks about. How much change in the many centuries between the origins of Israel, the first Hebrew writing, and the Dead Sea Scrolls – where we find the first copies of biblical books?

Two hundred years of archaeology has produced amazing discoveries that can help us put the Bible in context. This talk will summarize some of the most important discoveries that give us a better picture of where the Hebrew Bible really comes from and what some of its key ideas mean.

This presentation will not be available online (based on current plans); please register here to join in person to attend.