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Eric Cline

The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright

July 16, 2024
by Peter Feinman

The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright

An Elaboration on “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the ASOR Family Trees”

The current issue of NEA includes the article “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the ASOR Family Trees” by Diane Harris Cline, Eric H. Cline, and Rachel Hallote (NEA 87:2 2024:122-131). The article is based on a survey of ASOR members to determine educational experience and connections or family trees among the scholars. The results shed light on the “urban myth of William F. Albright as the ‘founder’ of biblical archaeology.” Instead the focus is on German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch (122).

They identify five of the eight founding members of the ASOR executive committee has having a connection to Delitzsch.

Morris Jastrow Jr., University of Pennsylvania and student of Delitzsch
James Montgomery, University of Pennsylvania and student of Hermann Hilprect a student of Delizsch and later a professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Albert C. Clay, Yale, also a student of Hilprecht
George A. Barton, Bryn Mawr College, another Hilprecht student
Cyrus Adler, The Johns Hopkins University, student of Paul Haupt a student of Delitzsch and later a professor at Johns Hopkins and teacher of Albright.

Thus Albright becomes a grandson of Delitzsch with many cousins before becoming a founder in his own right. The authors note that the “three generation ‘Delitzsch to Haupt to Albright’ trajectory is a good example for demonstrating that one cannot assume students share the same opinions or worldviews as their mentor” (129).

In this series of blogs, I wish to address four issues:

1. the true patriarch of Albright’s biblical scholarship
2. the Delitzsch/Albright relationship
3. why Albright did not attend the University of Pennsylvania
4. the Haupt/Foxwell Albright relationship.

The examination of these issues supplements the work in the NEA article.

THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN

Albright traced the origin of his journey into biblical scholarship to a childhood incident at age 10 when he was first exposed to the world of archaeology in the library of his Methodist missionary parents in Chile.  The incident was so important that his biographers asked on page 1 of their biography in 1975:

What forces had shaped his mind up to the age of ten, that he should so covet, and then devour and absorb, a book on ancient history?[1]

The goal in this analysis is to answer that question.  In so doing, it is necessary to explore the meaning of Methodism to the child at this precise time.  Certainly one can attribute the incident at age 10 to chance, coincidence, or providence, a more traditional Methodist term.  However, it is possible to identify more specific actions and events which contributed to the reading of this book which launched him on the career which would define his life.  In other words, instead of using the story Albright told about his childhood to begin the attempt to understand him, one should see it as a conclusion to his early childhood or a focal point to the life he subsequently would lead. By so doing, it is possible to place the larger story of Albright’s life within context and thus more fully answer the question posed by his biographers.

The story of this pivotal childhood event first appeared in print as part of an autobiographical essay published in 1948.  As the adult Albright recalled, he was a child abroad in a hostile environment both as a “gringo” (American) and a “canuto” (Protestant) and as a result “never felt secure”.[2]  Albright wrote of “the unknown terrors in the street” where “[i]nsults were frequently interspersed with stones” and of his minimal contact with other children in “play.”[3]  Instead, this nearsighted child with a metal brace on his left hand withdrew to his own father’s library and the “solitary games of his own contrivance.”[4] As he later put it, he did not “have a taste for picnics and outings enjoyed by other children.”[5] Albright student and colleague, George Ernest Wright later repeated Albright’s self-references of being a canuto, a member of a minority in a hostile environment enduring spoken insults and thrown stones.[6] In this description of Albright’s early life, one may draw two conclusions: (1) there were physical dangers to his life as the child of Methodist missionaries (in Catholic Chile); (2) the library was a place of refuge and solace.

Writing further in his autobiographical essay in 1948 about his childhood over 50 years earlier, Albright said of himself in the third person:

From the age of six he spent much of his time constructing imaginary worlds in his mind, and telling himself interminable tales of the wars and adventures of their heroes, covering centuries of time and thousand of miles in space, thus unconsciously cultivating a pronounced bend toward historical synthesis.[7]

These musings have the ring of verisimilitude: young boys do do exactly that type of thing usually in play with other children and perhaps not quite on so large a scale.  The goal of “historical synthesis” is the vocabulary of the adult Albright reflecting on his childhood being father to the man.  Albright saw here continuity in his own life and it is that proclaimed continuity which makes this story so important.

Albright would subsequently elaborate on this description in 1956:

Beginning at about the age of 7 [versus age 6][8] I constructed immense imaginary worlds, each of them having centuries of history which I invented.  Each of these worlds had its own geography, rivers, seaports, cities, lakes, mountains, covering thousands of miles.  And there were rich merchants, beggars, interminable wars and heroes of epic proportions.  I suppose my love of the romantic and wonderful was inspired by Tennyson and by Becquer, a Spanish romantic author whom I read in the original at that time.[9]

Certainly, one does not doubt that Albright did, in fact, read the books of these authors in childhood, although not necessarily at age seven.  Furthermore, these words better reflect what one would expect from John Ronald Reul Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame than from the founder of the science of biblical archaeology.  Still, they reveal a child eager to enter the world of imagination even as his parents attempted to shield the child from the prevailing popular cultural influences.

As Albright further recalled in his autobiographical essay, at age eight he became intensely interested in archaeology and biblical antiquities.[10] No explanation is provided of why such an interest in archaeology clicked in his mind.  Given the occupation of his parents as well as their own library, the interest in the Bible is understandable; exactly how archaeology manifested itself into his consciousness is not.  Obviously, though, it did have an impact.  Albright described how two years later (in 1901) he ran errands for his parents until he had saved $5 which he was free to spend as he saw fit: on an archaeology book by Robert W. Rogers.[11] As Albright remembered this moment, “[t]hereafter his happiest hours were spent in reading and rereading this work, which was fortunately written in beautiful English by a well-trained and accurate scholar.”[12] The reading of this book in the library of his father as a ten-year old child was the event which caused him to become the adult scholar he became…or so the story goes.

As to the book in question, it is appropriate here to provide some background information about it.  In some ways, the two-volume book, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, was misnamed.  The Prolegomena or Book I (which covered most but not all of Volume I), was really about the history of the discovery of the history of ancient Babylonia and Assyria.  This book served as the latest of a series of academic books bringing the story of discoveries up-to-date as additional discoveries continually were made.  Given the events in archaeology at the time such as the discovery of Hammurabi’s Law Code in 1900/1901, it was a story requiring almost constant revision. In the meantime, for 348 pages, Albright in the library of his father “telling himself interminable tales of the wars and adventures of their heroes” experienced the thrill of intrepid explorers and brilliant scholars bravely venturing forth into the fierce unknown to wrest hidden knowledge from the forgotten past.  In this book, one wasn’t simply informed of the story of cuneiform, one could follow step by step as cuneiform was found, copied, and deciphered by the heroic giants of the just ended 19th century.  In his description of one such individual, Rogers provided a blueprint for the path Albright was to follow as a philologist in his own right:

It were [sic] difficult, if not impossible, to define the qualities of mind which must inhere in the decipher of a forgotten language.  He is not necessarily a great scholar, though great scholars have been successful deciphers.  He may know but little of the languages that are cognate with the one whose secrets he is trying to unravel.  He may indeed know nothing of them, as has several times been the case.  But patience, the persistence, the power of combination, the divine gift of insight, the historical sense, the feeling for archaeological indications, these must be present, and all were present in the extraordinary man who now attacked the problem that had baffled so many.[13]

These were the qualities Rogers’s hero decipher must possess.

Certainly in the autobiographical essay of Albright, the reading of this book looms large as a defining one of his childhood.  Certainly also there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the event: Albright as a child saved money and spent his hard-earned funds on this archaeology book which had a profound effect on him for the rest of his life.  Still, for the historian interested in the origins of biblical archaeology, one might inquire further into this story.  One might delve into the issue of what had happened at age 8 and how the child even became aware of the existence of the book in the first place … or why he selected it for his first major purchase in life. One wonders how many other ten year olds beside Albright actually read this book by Rogers around Christmas, 1901. One might also inquire about the full extent of the impact it had on his life.

METHODIST REVIEW

So how then did the child in Chile learn about the Rogers book published in the United States?  The way in which Albright actually was introduced into the field of biblical archaeology appears to have been through Methodist Review, a magazine the Methodist missionary family received while away in Chile and after returning to America.[14]  This publication of the Methodist Church was a semi-prerequisite for being a minister in good-standing with the Church.  The Upper Iowa Conference, the local Methodist organizational unit Wilbur Albright belonged to before being reassigned due to his missionary work overseas, strongly recommended its purchase to its members at the annual conferences of 1889 which Wilbur attended and in 1890 just after the Albrights had left Iowa for Chile.[15] Albright stated that he read this journal with avid interest between 1897 and 1909[16] or until he began college.[17]

Methodist Review provided the connection between William Foxwell Albright and biblical archaeology as it existed in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  Without this journal, he would not have become aware of the field until later in life and back in Iowa.  This is not to claim that he would not still have become the scholar he became, only that the journey might have started later.  It is through this journal that one can document the origins of his interest in both Assyriology and biblical archaeology.  Now not only did he know the stories of Goliath and Sennacherib, he knew about the people who were excavating them from centuries of burial and revealing their truths to the light of day.

 The magazine itself was undergoing changes during the 1890s.  The editor had died in 1892 after leading an effort against agnosticism, Old Testament criticism, rationalism and upheavals in the path of Christian culture and progress.[18] When the president of Methodist Drew Theological Seminary turned down the position, it was offered to Rev. William Kelly in 1893.[19]

The following January, Kelley launched a separate department as it was called or recurring section on “Archaeology and Biblical Research.” He presumably wrote these columns or they were written with his guidance and approval (they are unsigned). The excitement generated by such discoveries as the Amarna Letters with their biblical implications and perhaps the Ben Hur phenomenon, a book written by Methodist Lew Wallace, may have contributed to this decision.

The purpose of this new column in Methodist Review resonated with the values of biblical archaeology later to be expressed by Albright.

Our chief reasons for introducing a department of biblical research and archaeology into the Review are an intense love of the Bible and a strong belief in its divine power.[20]

Indeed, the 1894 definition of the scope of biblical archaeology:

We shall hail with joy any light which Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, or any land may throw upon Old Testament chronology and history.  We shall welcome all the light which the study of comparative religions may furnish us regarding the origin of religion and the growth of revelation,[21]

anticipated the words Albright himself used in 1966:

Biblical archaeology is a much wider term than Palestinian archaeology, though Palestine itself is of course central, and is rightly regarded as peculiarly the land of the Bible.  But Biblical archaeology covers all the lands mentioned in the Bible, and thus is coextensive with the cradle of civilization.  This region extends from western Mediterranean to India, and from southern Russia to Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean.  Excavations in every part of this extensive area throw some light, directly or indirectly on the Bible.[22]

So the sciences of archaeology and comparative religions were the light to the revealed truth which should be welcomed: Albright couldn’t have said it any better himself and these words practically were a blueprint for Albright’s academic life.

There was, however, a problem: Higher Criticism.  The remainder of the article in the first issue of the column was devoted to “The Burning Question” of Higher Criticism with Julius Wellhausen being mentioned occasionally.[23]  Higher Criticism refers to the attempt to discover the source documents which allegedly were compiled to create the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. Wellhausen was its high priest, a term chosen deliberately.  Higher Criticism would emerge as a recurring theme in the publication of this normally four-page department in Methodist Review.

For young William to follow in his father’s footsteps as a missionary would have been to fight an old war while ignoring the new one.  Higher Criticism assaulted the very basis of the Methodist religion by denying the historical validity of the text on which the religion was based.  Why be either Methodist or Baptist if Jesus quoted from a book that was simply human written?  Why be either a Protestant or a Catholic if David was not an historical figure?  Why be a Christian if God was not involved in human history as attested in scripture?  While it is unlikely that the child asked these questions in precisely these terms, the precocious youth certainly recognized that the stakes were high in the showdown between destructive Higher Criticism and reverent Methodism. To succeed as a warrior of light in holding religion and science together, a lifelong ambition for which he was recognized,[24] he needed to master the weapons suitable for that war; such weapons were not those of the great Brush College warriors who had made Methodism the largest religion in America.[25]

Albright was only following the advice given by Rogers anyway.  In 1909, while Albright still was reading Methodist Review, Rogers wrote about the ongoing war waged against Wellhausen:

I am jealous of the reputation of our Methodist journals…. I take no exception to the writer’s expression of the hope that Wellhausenism is waning….  [But] Wellhausenism seems to me to be a pretty vigorous theory still.  If we wish to be rid of it, I fancy that we shall have to fight it with weapons forged directly out of its own armory.[26]

It is in this context that the purchase of the book by Rogers needs to be understood as well as Albright’s own studies at Johns Hopkins.

THE BOOK

In 1900 a series of ads appeared in Methodist Review for a new book by Robert W. Rogers. The price actually was $5 for the two-volume book so Albright in 1948 was correct in this memory. The ad stated:

This new history of Babylonia and Assyria contains in Book I, Prolegomena, the most elaborate account ever written of all the explorations and excavations in Assyria and Babylonia as well as the history of the decipherment of the inscriptions.  It is untechnical and popular in style, and is abundantly illustrated with copies of inscriptions, showing the processes of decipherment.  Book II gives the history of Babylonia from 4500 B.C. [long before 4004 BCE!] to the period of Assyrian domination, and Book III the history of Assyrian to the fall of Nineveh.  Book IV contains the history of the great Chaldean empire to the fall of Babylon.

All histories of Babylon and Assyria published prior to 1880 are hopelessly antiquated by the archaeological discoveries of the great expeditions to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.  Students of ancient oriental history in general, and of the history of Israel in particular, have longed desired a new history of the Babylonians and Assyrians which should be consistently based on original sources, and yet so written as to be intelligible and interesting to men who are not specially trained in the subject.  It is confidently believed that this great gap in modern historical literature is filled by this new history.[27]

A testimonial by Archibald Sayce in the ad saluted the book as a “veritable romance” of the history of the decipherment of inscriptions. One should not ignore the romance factor in the appeal of archaeology not only to men but to male and female children as well.

If this ad didn’t grab Albright’s attention, then two issues in 1901 were likely to have been the spur for him to save money to buy the newly published book.  The opening line of the January, 1901 “Notes and Discussions” reads:

A book of extraordinary interest, just issued by our Book Concern, in two volumes, octavo, is A History of Babylonia and Assyria, by Professor R.W. Rogers, of [Methodist] Drew Theological Seminary.  A full notice will appear in our pages in due time.[28]

So not only did Methodist Review report the publication of the book, it blessed the event as “our” book since it was published by the Methodists. Since the publisher in the ad and in the book is Eaton and Mains and not the Methodist Book Concern, the connection to Methodism may be overlooked or not realized.[29] The emphasis on the role of this book in the Albright mythology generally obscures the Methodist universe which created it, published it, blessed it, and informed Albright of it.

The subsequent book review characterized the Rogers’ book as fourth in a chain of transmission on the history of Assyria and Babylonia whereby each scholar expanded the synthesis as more and more information became available on the subject.[30]  The bringing together of the ancient chronological data is especially praised as an “unprecedented achievement” … and Rogers writes well, too! according to the review,[31] words similar to Albright’s characterization of it as “written in beautiful English by a well-trained and accurate scholar” previously noted.

This inquiry into the process whereby young William became aware of A History of Babylonia and Assyria reveals that it was part of the manner in which the Methodist world was being defined to him through Methodist Review.  On one level, the book simply furnished him with still more scripts for his dramas of stone wars on the patio of his mother or in the library of his father. On another level, the formal discipline of biblical archaeology may be construed as having emerged out of these battlelines textually revealed to him as a child in Methodist Review and the Rogers book.  Perhaps one day, Albright would cease fighting imaginary battles in the library of his father and fight real battles from the library of academia instead.[32]

In the next blog the pre-academic Albright/Delitzsch connection will be explored.

 

NOTES

[1] Leona Glidden Running and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright: A 20th Century Genius, (New York: The Two Continents Publishing Group, Morgan Press, 1975), reprinted Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1991), 1.

[2] William Foxwell Albright, “William Foxwell Albright,” in American Spiritual Biographies, ed. Louis Finkelstein, (New York: Harper and Brothers 1948), 158.

[3] Albright 1948:158.

[4] Albright 1948:159.

[5] Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1956, Section A.

[6] George Ernest Wright,  “The Phenomenon of American Archaeology in the Near East,” in Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck, ed. James A. Sanders, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970),  23.  According to a footnote, Wright derived his information on Albright both from the latter’s 1948 autobiographical essay and from private conversations with him (39n.42).

[7] Albright 1948:159.

[8] Albright 1948:159.

[9] Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1956, Section A.

[10] Albright 1948:159.

[11] Albright 1948:159.

[12] Albright 1948:159.

[13] Robert W. Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1900), I:46.

[14] Burke O. Long, Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 124.

[15] Minutes of the Upper Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, (1889) 119, 140; Minutes (1890) 200, 213.

[16] . Long 124, citing a 1947 letter by Albright.

[17] Based on a letter dated October 18, 1924, to Rogers from Albright (located in the uncatalogued Albright material at the American Philosophical Society), the latter not only had read his book, but had read articles by him both before and after the purchase as well as in his Sunday School class.  The “before” readings suggest that Albright did read the back issues of Methodist Review published before 1897, since the earlier articles of Rogers are from 1894 and 1895. The post-1901 article in Methodist Review is from 1909. Rogers wrote for the Sunday School Times from 1901 to 1906.

[18] James Mudge, “Seventy-five Years of the ‘Methodist Review,'” Methodist Review 10 [Fifth Series 76] 1894), 530-532.

[19] Mudge 533.

[20] The Hittites,” Methodist Review 76 [Fifth Series 10] (1894) 135.

[21] “The Hittites,”135-136.

[22] William Foxwell Albright, New Horizons in Biblical Research, (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 1.

[23] “The Hittites,” 136-138.

[24] At a symposium organized by Freedman in 1966 and with Albright present, Wright opined: “Palestinian archaeology is pursued by those in this country who for the most part are teachers of Bible in theological seminaries … and in the religion departments of our colleges and universities.  This holding together of Bible and archaeology is part of the interest and influence of W.F. Albright in this country” [George Ernest Wright, “Biblical Archaeology Today,” in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, eds. David Noel Freedman and Jonas Greenfield, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969,) 160].

[25] For an example of the heroic Brush College warrior see the novel Edward Eggleston, The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878) written by a former circuit rider.  For an account by one of the most famous circuit riders of his experiences see James B. Finley, Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley or Pioneer Life in the West, ed. W. P. Strickland, (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1858).  One can’t help but notice that Albright’s father Wilbur Finley Albright, born 1859, and William’s younger brother Finley both may have been named after this wilderness warrior hero.

[26] Robert W. Rogers, “Wellhausenism on the Wane,” Methodist Review 91 [Fifth Series 25] (1909) 294.

[27] This ad was taken from Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) no page number.

[28] “Notes and Discussions,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 113.

[29] The Methodist Book Concern itself was the subject of an article in the January, 1900, Methodist Review, celebrating eleven decades of publication in America as the arm of the Methodist denomination as the article concluded: “In our twentieth century Church the Book Concern should have a mission little less sacred in our thought than was that of the ark of God in the camp of ancient Israel” (George P. Mains, “Reviews and Views of the Methodist Book Concern, Methodist Review  82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 34-4949).  The author was from the publisher who took over the publication of the Rogers book.

[30] “Book Notices – A History of Babylonia and Assyria,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 505-506.

[31] . “Book Notices,” 507.

[32] One should note that simultaneously with the articles champion various warriors of light against Wellhausen, there also appeared a slew of articles on Tennyson, the romantic writer whom Albright also read in childhood (see James Kenyon, “Tennyson in New Aspects,” Methodist Review 80 {Fifth Series 14] (1898) 434-453;  Robert Ingraham, “Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning on the Future,” Methodist Review 81 [Fifth Series 15] (1899) 360-367; James Mudge, “Tennyson and His Teachings,” Methodist Review 81 [Fifth Series 15] (1899) 874-887; G. W. Baines, “The Faith of Tennyson,” Methodist Review 82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 582-591; Book review of The Mind of Tennyson by E. Hershey Sneath, Methodist Review 82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 833-835; Edwin Mims, “Mysticism in Tennyson,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 62-71.

Archaeologists Confirm Ancient Famine: Déjà Vu Joseph All Over Again

April 15, 2018
by Peter Feinman
Joseph and Potiphar's Wife by Guido Reni (Wikipedia)

On Easter Sunday, April 1, “Faced with Drought, the Pharaohs Tried (and Failed) to Adapt” appeared in the news section of the New York Times (the online version was posted March 30). According to the article, the famine among the Hittites in modern Turkey was so bad, the Queen was forced to reach out to longtime former enemy Egypt for grain.

The article reports that the Egyptians had anticipated the crisis and planned ahead unlike the now-starving Hittites desperate for food. The reporter’s source for this information was a study published in this year’s edition of the journal Egypt and the Levant [note -actually vol. 27, 2017]. The study cited research at Tel Aviv University conducted by Israel Finkelstein and his colleagues. They determined through archaeological evidence that Egypt had foreseen and planned for the drought that lasted from 1250 to 1100 B.C. covering from the middle of the reign of Ramses II until a few decades after the Egyptians had withdrawn from its empire in the land of Canaan.

According to the newspaper article, the Egyptians had:

1. Ordered increased grain production in the greener parts [of its Canaanite empire]
2. Crossbred cattle to produce a heat-resistant plow animal.

In addition tthe archaeologists discovered at Megiddo:

1. Sickle blades used for harvesting grain
2. An unusually high frequency of cattle bones suggesting animals that had been used for plowing and not food.

By putting the pieces together, the archaeological team concluded that Egypt had prepared for the drought while the Hittites had not.

I confess that I was not familiar with this unnamed article. However I was able to locate and download the article in the volume noted above. Its title is “Egyptian Imperial Economy in Canaan: Reaction to the Climate Crisis at the End of the Late Bronze Age” by Israel Finkelstein, Dafna Langgut, Meirav and Lidar Sapir-Hen. I hesitated before printing and reading it because it seemed familiar as if I read it before. So I went to my Late Bronze Age folder and found an article “Climate and the Late Bronze Collapse: New Evidence from the Southern Levant,” by Dafna Langgut, Israel Finkelstein, and Thomas Litt (Tel Aviv 40 2013:149-175). So a related article by some of the same authors had appeared four years earlier (which does not mean I had read it four years ago).

For me, the words Egypt, drought, and food, call to mind the story of Joseph. In that story, Pharaoh has a dream:

Genesis 41:1 After two whole years, Pharaoh dreamed that he was standing by the Nile, 2 and behold, there came up out of the Nile seven cows sleek and fat, and they fed in the reed grass. 3 And behold, seven other cows, gaunt and thin, came up out of the Nile after them, and stood by the other cows on the bank of the Nile. 4 And the gaunt and thin cows ate up the seven sleek and fat cows. And Pharaoh awoke. 5 And he fell asleep and dreamed a second time; and behold, seven ears of grain, plump and good, were growing on one stalk. 6 And behold, after them sprouted seven ears, thin and blighted by the east wind. 7 And the thin ears swallowed up the seven plump and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and behold, it was a dream.

As the story plays out, Joseph ,who is providentially in Egypt at that time, turns out to be the one and only person capable of explaining the meaning of the dreams to Pharaoh. But he doesn’t merely explain the dreams, he provides a solution. He informs Pharaoh what must be done to mitigate the pending disaster:

Genesis 41:33 Now therefore let Pharaoh select a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. 34 Let Pharaoh proceed to appoint overseers over the land, and take the fifth part of the produce of the land of Egypt during the seven plenteous years. 35 And let them gather all the food of these good years that are coming, and lay up grain under the authority of Pharaoh for food in the cities, and let them keep it. 36 That food shall be a reserve for the land against the seven years of famine which are to befall the land of Egypt, so that the land may not perish through the famine.”

So let it be written; so let it be done. Pharaoh wisely selects the dream-interpreter to be the solution-implementer as well and everything come to fruition as predicted and planned for.

As a result, we now have two incidents of people preparing for food shortages – the story of Joseph and archaeology in Canaan – just as we had two 400-year stories – the Hyksos and the brethren of Joseph in Egypt until Pharaoh forgot Joseph for having saved Egypt. Previously I suggested that the two 400-year stories were related and part of the secular reality that the Levites were Hyksos (Were the Levites Hyksos? – No! That Would Mean Having to Take the Exodus Seriously as a Secular Event in History).  Now, what if anything does the Joseph story have to do with the archaeologically-confirmed time of plenty in the land of Canaan? We are all used to the reverse condition of a food shortage in Canaan necessitating sojourning to Egypt for food. In fact, that exact situation occurs later in the Joseph story.

Genesis 41:57 Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.
Genesis 42:1 When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you look at one another?” 2 And he said, “Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt; go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live, and not die.”

Perhaps, the story and the archaeology refer to two different time periods. Perhaps not.

The first consideration is to recognize the cultural memory of the Israelites. That memory included events that were not part of the direct Israelite experience as Israelites but were memories that subsequently became part of the Israelite heritage. I can think of five such examples:

1. Middle Bronze Age destruction of Sodom (Lot cycle)
2. Middle Bronze Age Amorite settlement in Haran (patriarchal stories)
3. Late Bronze Age onset of Egyptian empire in the Land of Canaan by Thutmose III at Megiddo (Song of Deborah and prose story)
4. Late Bronze Age 400-Year Stela by Ramses II of the Hyksos in Egypt (Exodus)
5. Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age famine in the eastern Mediterranean (Joseph)

I suggest that each of these oral memories became part of the written tradition of Israel. It happened not necessarily at the same time or for the same reason. In each instance it is necessary to determine what the trigger was that caused the written narrative to come to be.

In this instance, the New York Times article serves as an excellent case study for what happened in ancient times. The reporter does not appear to have an archaeological background. Nor was the article written as history. Some research into previous articles by the reporter indicates stories about climate change and global warming. Indeed, a close reading of the text, the NYT article, reveals that the article is really about climate change. Consider the following passages by the reporter:

[T]he study shows how recognizing and preparing for climate disaster can make societies more resilient.

The lesson for our own civilization — which is likely to face increasingly severe droughts as humans change the climate far faster than nature has ever done — is to plan ahead, Dr. Finkelstein said. “This collapse of the Late Bronze Age is not just a matter of ancient history that has no relevance to us,” said Eric H. Cline….Just as drought was among the “stressors” leading to famine and war during the Bronze Age, Dr. Cline said, today’s drought could amplify existing problems.

Slightly over three of the six columns of the printed article are devoted to climate change and the leadership failure to address this looming crisis to human civilization. The article ends with Cline warning us that we may be no better the Hittites. How exactly the NYT reporter became aware of this academic journal article and its connection to climate change is not specified although I can make a guess.

By the way with all the focus on Assad, Islamic terrorism, and geo-politics with Russia and Iran, we tend to forget or overlook the drought in Syria that helped generate the Arab Spring revolt there in the first place.

The bottom line is that an article with an archaeological headline and data really is a political polemic against the failure of political leadership to deal with a crisis. The article gives the appearance of one thing at first glance but turns out to be quite another once one examines it. I suggest the exact same thing happened with the original story of Joseph. It was not written as a history of the Israelite people in Egypt or even an explanation for the background to the Exodus. We need to put aside the additions to the original story about the political relationships among the tribes of Israel, within the tribe of Joseph, the Hyksos, and the Exodus. Instead we should focus on the original core story of an individual advising the person in power of the course of action to take in the present.

Seen in this light, the original story is not about what happened in Egypt; it is about what is happening in Israel at the time it was written. So why set the story in Egypt? Why use well-known Egyptian motifs? What adapt an Egyptian story? Who in the Israelite audience would even recognize the Egyptian allusions? Who in the Israelite audience in a position of power would even recognize the Egyptian allusions? To recognize the story as a political polemic necessitates an audience who would understand it. Who was that audience?

Pharaoh’s daughter, queen of Israel, that’s who. The answer to the questions is the woman behind the throne who was the real power after Bathsheba died. Pharaoh’s daughter recognized the Egyptian allusions (and she was not the Potiphar’s wife character). Solomon lacked the wisdom and leadership skills to act in the way envisioned of the king by the Joseph story. But the Egyptian woman could help steer the action just as Rebekah did with the patriarch who could not see.

The suggestion that Pharaoh’s daughter actually was queen of Israel naturally is rejected in biblical scholarship since there is no archaeological evidence for it. Once upon time 400 years earlier, a Pharaoh had said no intermarriage for Egyptian daughters of the king. Presumably the idea of an Egyptian queen reaching out for a Hittite prince to marry or an Egyptian king marrying a Hittite princess once must have seem equally farfetched as well although both then did in fact happen. Pharaoh’s daughter marrying Solomon doesn’t violate the laws of science; it violates the idea that Solomon didn’t exist and didn’t have a wealthy kingdom, the preferred idea in biblical scholarship. That’s a preference not a proof and I prefer a different interpretation.

I am not suggesting that there was famine in the land at the time of the writing of the original Joseph story. I am suggesting that someone had the foresight to know that no matter how good things were today there would come a time when there would be famine in the land:

1 Kings 18:2 So Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. Now the famine was severe in Samaria.

As prophecies go, the prediction in the mid-10th century BCE that there would be a famine a century later is a bit of a stretch. People tend to want their prophecies to be about something that is going to happen now or in the immediate future and not a century or more away. Be that as it may, the call for preparing for the future instead of simply waiting for it to occur generally is sound advice.

The questions then arise who would author such a political polemic and for what purpose. In my previous blog (Massacre Survivor David Hogg and the Origin of Biblical Prose Narrative Writing)  I suggested that Saul was catalyst for the development of the alphabet prose narrative. I then suggested that Abiathar was the ancient David Hogg, massacre survivor, who became the father of the alphabet prose narrative with his political polemics against Saul. I went on to say that he wrote throughout his life on multiple occasions in the time of Saul, David, and Solomon. I stated there is an opportunity to study and trace the writings of a single individual over time, a rare if not impossible act for the ancient world. Here we have an example of writing towards the end of his life in the time of Solomon.

In the original Joseph story, we can see how Abiathar, a Hyksos Levite in exile sought to return to power. He used the figure of the falsely-accused-and-imprisoned Joseph to represent himself. Joseph could see the truth of what was best for the kingdom. The king’s advisors (Zadokites and Aaronids) who opposed Abiathar could not. Abiathar wrote the original story of Joseph to plea for an end to his exile and to be restored to the good graces of the crown. He claimed he saw something which needed to be done for the long-term best interests of the kingdom. He drew on the memory of events two centuries earlier. He hoped Pharaoh’s daughter would be wise enough to see that truth and welcome him back to the capital. The effort failed just as Adonijah’s had with Bathsheba. Abiathar remained in exile until he died and the glory days of the united monarchy were soon over. Rehoboam wasn’t any good at taking sound advice either.

I will conclude with the same sentiments I expressed at the conclusion of the previous blog. 10th century Israel is the best documented century in the ancient Near East for the quantity of writing, quality of writing, and diversity of views expressed. Just as American historians can analyze the writings of Hamilton and Jefferson to reconstruct American history, so biblical scholars have the opportunity to analyze the writings of Abiathar, his rivals, and his successor to reconstruct the history of 10th century Israel.