The Bible
a historical text not mythological

Every single word of the Bible has been studied and meditated upon by countless generations. Western Civilization has dedicated far more mental energy to the Bible than it has to all other literature put together. Naturally it has had an enormous influence upon our customs, our way of thinking, and in the final analysis, upon the very essence of our civilization. It would, therefore, seem that a work of such importance would hold no more secrets for us; yet it is enough to steep ourselves in the enormous amount of literature regarding biblical subjects to realize that it is now more than ever wrapped in an impenetrable veil of mystery. No reader, however, is likely to find this explicitly admitted anywhere. The Bible has been the Holy Book par excellence for more than two thousand years, taken as a measure of Good and Evil, and from which those moral laws that constitute the basis of Western Society's code of living are derived. Given the enormous importance the Holy Book has had and still has upon human behaviour, it is natural that its study and interpretation has been constantly claimed as the exclusive prerogative of certain bodies--organizations that have been guided more by sentiment and by moral, practical and even political considerations than by human intelligence and common sense. It follows, then, that works concerning the Bible are not normally noted for their logic and coherence and, thus, the validity of the conclusions drawn is generally based more upon the writer's authority than upon the strength of his analysis.

Those who read this type of literature are continually urged to put their faith in two different kinds of authority, the one religious and the other scientific. Personally, I have neither the one nor the other to offer; my only merit lies in the fact that I am free from any prejudice or passion concerning this specific subject.

One day I was confronted by a challenge which I found irresistible; it came from Dr. Emmanuel Anati, a scientist who is responsible for what is probably the greatest archaeological discovery of all times. It was this challenge that launched my serious involvement in the Bible. In 1955 Anati was in the Paran desert, a desolate waste of sand and rock in the Negev. On a hill no higher than 850 meters he discovered a site of rock engravings, depicting both religious and hunting scenes. This area is shown on Israeli maps with the poetic name of Har Karkom, that is, the Mount of Saffron. In the third millennium B.C. and at the beginning of the second, this was a sacred mountain, an exceptionally important religious site. According to Dr. Anati, it was the Mount Horeb of biblical tradition.

For thousands of years the mountain upon which Moses received the Tablets of the Law has been identified as the Gebel el-Musa in the St. Katherine's Group, the highest on the Sinai Peninsula, and for this sole reason it is indicated as the Holy Mount. In Byzantine times a monastery was there which exists even today. Although no traces of archaeological importance have been discovered, a millennia of tradition upholds its identification with the holy Sinai.

By the summer of 1984 Anati had amassed an enormous amount of archaeological evidence, but he was searching for something more. He asked me if I knew of a surveying technique for detecting the presence of a large amount of precious metal. According to the Bible, when the Jewish people reached the Holy Mountain they carried amounts of gold, silver and copper which they had brought with them from Egypt; they did not have these with them when they again departed, therefore, all that metal could be still hidden there somewhere. Finding it would constitute definitive proof that Har Karkom should be identified as the Mount Sinai of the Bible. Although this theory interested Anati greatly, he is not the sort of person to go on a treasure hunt; but I, on the other hand, was very keen to do so. Not for "treasure", but for the hunt. Instead of studying Physics and Electromagnetism which, on the basis of a perfunctory test did not seem to offer very real prospects, I endeavoured to reach the "treasure" by making the utmost use of the information furnished by the Bible. With the text in my hand I tried first to reconstruct the environment in which the people lived and the events occurred. I endeavoured to understand the character of those people, their culture, their motives, and their ambitions.

I re-enacted the events as faithfully as possible, identifying myself with the people and their situations. All this I have done as honestly as possible, scrupulously following the indications found in the text and my own reasoning, wherever logic and common sense took me, free of preconceptions, fears, or any conditioning whatsoever.

I began in a light-hearted manner, but soon the Bible became a pleasant obsession for me; for some years I could think of nothing else. What for me in the past had been boring and inconclusive reading now became incredibly charming and interesting and without doubt the most extraordinary thing I had ever read. I very soon realized, however, that what I was reading had nothing in common with what those who have been studying the Bible for centuries had been reading--God-fearing and bound by tradition as they are. Could it mean that my unleashed imagination was playing tricks? Maybe. But the re-establishment of the facts as they appeared is so logical and coherent, adhering so perfectly to the biblical text and so completely likely that--well, I could be right!

A well consolidated tradition of interpretation of the Bible exists today. When I was about to begin this work I deliberately ignored it, since it was my intention to start with a completely open mind. Nonetheless, given the level of the challenge with which I was confronted I had to accept certain basic presuppositions--exact working hypotheses which could not be avoided, but which, in any case, would lose their substance during the course of study if they were not correct.

The first and fundamental presupposition is that the Bible consistently presents us with very concrete human and natural facts[1]. The second presupposition is that it presents them exactly as the protagonists and eye-witnesses lived them, understood them and reported them, without premeditated embellishments or distortions.

In my analysis I have, therefore, followed a method that might appear revolutionary to a modern lay biblical scholar. This method scrupulously respects that fundamental principle of sacred hermeneutics: "The words of the Bible must be taken in their most obvious sense, that is, in the literal and proper sense, unless there are strong reasons to the contrary. Therefore, a narrative which by itself and in context is presented as historical, and in this sense gives no inconvenience may not be presented in an allegorical sense". (P.P.M. Sales O.P. The Holy Bible, L.I.C.E., Torino 1944, vol. I pag.57: "Historical Character of Genesis")

[1] Of course this is not the case of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which are clearly mythological.

GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL SETTINGS OF THE EVENTS IN THE BIBLE

Ur of the Chaldeans

The chronological frame
of the Bible

THE MEANING OF BIBLICAL NUMBERS

The biblical numbers
3, 7, 40, 70, 400

The age of the patriarchs

The real number
of the Jews of Exodus

Mythological numbers

Reminders

WRONG COMMONPLACES
ABOUT THE BIBLE

El, Elohim, Jahweh,Yahweh, Adonay, El Sadday