BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

The Evolution of Biblical Archaeology

From proving the Bible to exploring everyday lives

A pillared or “four-room” house at Izbet Sartah, a building style long considered to be a hallmark of Israelite identity. Courtesy Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University.

What is biblical archaeology? The answer to this question has changed considerably over the 100-plus years since the discipline first emerged in the early 20th century. How one answers depends largely on how they view the relationship between archaeology and the Bible itself: Is the archaeology of biblical lands primarily a vehicle for proving the Bible? How does it impact our understanding of the biblical world? In the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review , leading archaeologist Jennie Ebeling lays out how the field of biblical archaeology has developed and shifted over the past century in her article “How Archaeology Illuminates the Bible.”

Ebeling begins by tracing the discipline back to its roots following the turn of the last century. She offers the perspective of William F. Albright (1891–1971), widely considered the father of biblical archaeology, who, along with many of his contemporaries, believed that archaeology proves the veracity of many key biblical events and people, from the Patriarchs in Genesis, to the Exodus story, to the conquest of Canaan as described in the Book of Joshua, and more. This perspective continued to drive the practice of field archaeology in the southern Levant for subsequent generations of scholars well into the second half of the 20th century.

One hundred years later, Ebeling writes, biblical archaeology has changed considerably. Most scholars now refute Albright’s assertions; while significant historical questions—such as the size and nature of David and Solomon’s kingdom—are still of interest, the primary focus has shifted away from the question of the Bible’s historicity toward the everyday lives of ordinary people in antiquity. From this standpoint, the Bible itself is understood as an important source that contributes, like archaeology, to our understanding of daily life during the Iron Age (c. 1200–586 BCE).

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Ebeling’s first demonstration of this point revolves around food culture and technology. She notes that the biblical authors themselves almost certainly did not operate grinding slabs, pestles, and mortars. Yet the biblical text occasionally references these technologies, which were ubiquitous in ancient Israel across the entire breadth of the biblical period. Grinding tools and installations are preserved in huge quantities across the first millennium BCE; the Bible, along with other sources of information—such as artistic representations, extrabiblical texts, and ethnography—helps us to interpret what we uncover in archaeological contexts.

Significantly, there is no clear archaeological evidence for commercial baking or milling in the ancient world; rather, such activities are evident within domestic contexts. This has led to a specific focus on the archaeology of the household, with “household” being understood as both a physical and a social space. This focus on household archaeology not only illuminates the “mundane” activities of daily life; it also sheds light on how ancient people thought about themselves in the context of a social group or identity. For instance, there is considerable debate around whether the absence of pig bones in domestic contexts in Iron Age Judah (as opposed to neighboring Philistia) reflects the real-life impact of the biblical taboos against eating pork, as explicitly commanded in Deuteronomy 14:8 and Leviticus 11:7.

Some archaeologists likewise point to architecture as a key element in group identity during the biblical period. The pillared or “four-room” house of the Iron Age is a style of domestic architecture that has its origin in earlier Late Bronze Age construction, having been adapted to the agrarian life of the central highlands during the early biblical period (1200–1000 BCE). The persistence of this form into the period of the Israelite and Judahite monarchies (1000–586 BCE) suggests that it signals a sense of group identity.

The household, moreover, was where all members of ancient Israelite society would have learned the traditions and norms of the group. Across the biblical world and the ancient Near East more broadly, the term bet ’ab, meaning “house of the father,” constituted not only a physical, multigenerational space/place, but also a basic framework on which the fabric of society was constructed. In this context, another important practice in the lives of ordinary people took place, namely, worship. Although the Hebrew Bible generally condemned cult activities that took place outside of centralized locations like the Tabernacle and the Jerusalem Temple, which were devoted specifically to the Israelite God Yahweh, there nevertheless are references to localized or domestic cultic practices undertaken by men, women, and children in household contexts (see, for example, Judges 17). This reality is borne out by archaeological evidence, which includes a wealth of domestic cult objects including figurines, amulets, miniature shrines, altars, stands for placing offerings or burning incense, and special ritual vessels.

Archaeological discoveries, Ebeling concludes, have transformed our understanding of life in biblical Israel. Rather than serving merely as a means of proving the Bible, biblical archaeology should now be considered a primary source of information about the lives of ordinary people in the Iron Age. This shift is far-reaching in that it provides us with a wealth of new data related to Israelite subsistence, technology, identity, ritual, and more, helping to paint for us a vibrant and detailed picture of life in ancient Israel in all its complexity and vitality.

For more on current directions in biblical archaeology, read the article by Jennie Ebeling entitled “How Archaeology Illuminates the Bible,” published in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

Subscribers: Read the full column, “How Archaeology Illuminates the Bible,” by Jennie Ebeling, in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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