The American archaeologist and the French Dominican

 

 

by

Damien F. Mackey

  

 

A famous name for his authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls,

[Albright] can be a most fascinating study. Although a conventional scholar,

schooled in a system of chronology and archaeology that disallows its exponents from being able to demonstrate the historicity of the Bible – and imbued also with

the erroneous, pre-archaeological JEDP Documentary Theory – professor Albright yet had the ability occasionally to burst through the seams of that suffocating system and to produce some very insightful new observations.

 

 

 

Introduction

 

The nation of ancient Egypt, which had been so biblically prominent when Abram came to Canaan (c. 1900 BC), who was then forced to go to Egypt to survive a famine, and which completely dominated the biblical landscape during the long years of (Jacob) Joseph and Moses, will fade right out of the Bible now, for centuries, after the devastating Plagues, with Pharaoh Neferhotep’s seed destroyed, his army drowned (whether or not he himself had also died), and the invasion of Egypt and long occupation thereof by the Hyksos foreigners.

 

Joseph, but even more so Moses, had turned out to be quite complicated studies, not because of a lack of evidential material (which certainly used to be the case for me), but because of an excess of it, their long lives spanning, as they did, conventional Egyptian kingdoms and dynasties.

 

Thus it has taken an extended time for us to extricate ourselves from the land of Egypt, so as to follow the path of the MBI Israelites as they trek towards the Promised Land.

 

Indeed, Moses would learn that it was easier to take the Israelites out of the heart of Egypt than it was to take the hearts of Israel out of Egypt.

 

Anyway, here are we now standing on dry, if rather rocky and barren (moonscape) ground, ready to trace the Exodus Israelites archaeologically, to the Holy Mountain, and through the desert into Transjordania, and then across the River Jordan into the Promised Land.

 

There, the Israelites led by Joshua (Moses since having departed) will wreak havoc upon many of the old Canaanite cities and dwellings – a fact that ought to make the archaeology of it all very easy and obvious to pinpoint.

 

And so it is.

Unfortunately, however, a terrible mis-dating of the history and the archaeology of the Promised Land by the ‘experts’ has led to conclusions that can be described only as diabolical, sowing complete and utter confusion, and causing many people to doubt the historicity of the Old Testament.

 

Our American archaeologist and the French Dominican had a leading part to play in this.

 

Professor Foxwell Albright and

Fr. Louis-Hugues Vincent (OP)

 

William Foxwell Albright

 

A famous name for his authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, he can be a most fascinating study.

 

Although a conventional scholar, schooled in a system of chronology and archaeology that disallows its exponents from being able to demonstrate the historicity of the Bible – and imbued also with the erroneous, pre-archaeological JEDP Documentary Theory – professor Albright yet had the ability occasionally to burst through the seams of that suffocating system and to produce some very insightful new observations.

 

This may be explained partly as being due to his conservative Christian upbringing (Evangelist Methodist), according to which he was taught to revere the Bible as the Word of God.

 

And so we get some inspiring statements by W.F. Albright, which will turn out to be quite ironic given the damage that he also managed to do to biblical archaeology.

 

One outstanding example of W. F. Albright’s upsetting of the pattern of early dynastic history was his groundbreaking view – relevant to Abram – that Egypt’s first dynastic ruler, the famous Menes (traditionally thought to have been the Pharaoh of Abram), was conquered by the mighty Akkadian king, Naram-Sin.

 

Why this is so bold and striking for a conventional scholar is that, whereas Naram-Sin 

is considered to have reigned in the 2200’s BC, the reign of Menes is regarded as being the very beginning of Egyptian dynastic history, fixed at c. 3100 BC.

 

Yet here was W.F. Albright insisting that the Mannu dannu, Menes ‘the Great’, whom Naram-Sin claimed to have conquered, was the Menes typically dated nearly a millennium earlier: Menes and Narâm-Sin | Semantic Scholar

“… In a Babylonian chronicle … we read '(Naram-Sin) who went to Magan, and vanquished (not 'captured') [Mannu, the mighty], king of Magan'.”

 

This was most radical, indeed!

 

As an event contemporaneous with Abram – Menes being his Pharaoh and Naram-Sin being his northern contemporary, “Amraphel of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1) – the whole package needs to be re-dated even lower, to c. 1900 BC.

 

Now, this is only one example (albeit the most dramatic one) amongst several that I could give of Foxwell Albright’s uncanny ability (the Fox) to think outside the box.

 

Anyway, I had just completed an article listing the insights of W.F. Albright, more recently revised as:

 

William Foxwell Albright a conventional fox with insight ‘outside the box’

 

(2) William Foxwell Albright a conventional fox with insight 'outside the box'

 

when a fellow-Australian, an archaeologist, dampened my enthusiasm about him with this e-mail. She wrote:

 

….

Hi Damien. I am just coming up to the Balaam material in my thesis-writing, so this is welcome. I have had my sympathy for Albright considerably reduced, however, to find he was among those present at the secret meeting in Jerusalem in 1922 that 'fixed' the wrong dates to the archaeological eras ... Fr Pere Vincent's initiative, but Albright was complicit. ….

 

The Australian archaeologist has since corrected the original description, “secret meeting in Jerusalem”, by clarifying that it was not actually “secret”.

 

Mathilde Sigalas will recount how W. F. Albright came to be in Jerusalem in 1922, there connecting with “a French scholar from the École biblique, Father Louis-Hugues Vincent”: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55540-5_10

 

Between Diplomacy and Science: British Mandate Palestine and Its International Network of Archaeological Organisations, 1918–1938

 

….

The collaboration was also effective in terms of archaeological methodology at the beginning of the 1920s. The Presidents of the BSAJ, John Garstang (1920–1926), and of ASOR, William F. Albright (1920–1929/1933–1936), joined by a French scholar from the École biblique, Father Louis-Hugues Vincent, reflected together on a new dating method to classify antiquities. … This classification was designated as that of the “Three Ages” … dating of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Modern period was modified to adapt to recent discoveries and ethnographic information on Palestine. The three scholars submitted their method to the scientific community during meetings of the POS. Adopted in 1922, the classification was implemented in archaeological sites for antiquities registration and analysis. The political context was also a reason for the policy, in an attempt to avoid subjective interpretations in favour of a particular civilisation.

 

This classification is an example of the effects of international collaboration within a foreign intellectual knowledge network, which developed in Jerusalem at the beginning of the 1920s.

The three scholars were from “the three archaeological Schools in Jerusalem” … and two were on the Board of Directors of the Palestine Oriental Society in 1922, Albright as President and Garstang as Director. The “New Chronological Classification of Palestinian Archaeology” was published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (no. 7. October 1922) and the Revue Biblique (vol. 32. 1923) of the EBAF. This example demonstrates the openness of the scientific community based in Palestine and the shared aim of anchoring Palestinian archaeology as a scientific and formal discipline. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

 

 

Fr. Louis-Hugues Vincent (OP)

 

He and W. F. Albright were apparently very close, with the latter dedicating an article as a eulogy (1961) to the French Dominican, “In Memory of Louis Hugues Vincent”, after he had died aged 88:  In Memory of Louis Hugues Vincent on JSTOR

 

“To every generation and to every field there is given a man who is justly revered by his contemporaries and disciples. Pére L. H. Vincent, O.P., was such a man. In him were uniquely combined genius and industry, charm and humility, enthusiasm and balance. But for his tremendous contributions as scholar and as teacher, Palestinian archaeology could never have attained its present status among fields of antiquarian research”.

 

According to another article:

The connections to France - Graham Addison's Author Website

 

Father or Pere Vincent was a Dominican monk who had joined the order as a young man. Vincent came to the Ecole Biblique et Archaeologique in Jerusalem in 1891 and dedicated the rest of his long life to archaeological study in the Holy Land. He was a widely respected scholar and expert. In an obituary, the monk was described as combining ‘genius, industry, charm and humility, enthusiasm and balance’ in his work as a scholar and teacher.

…

Vincent brought his unrivalled knowledge of Jerusalem, gained over many decades, to his work. Professor Kathleen Kenyon said Father Vincent’s work in remapping the tunnels and shafts helped salvage a very unsatisfactory enterprise. She said Vincent was small, charming and elegant, but anyone who ‘disagreed with him came in for a terrific pounding, though always couched in the most polite terms.’ The plans he produced of the tunnels formed the basis of all archaeological work in these places for the next century. ….

[End of quote]

 

Herschel Shanks (1987) will add a further touch of colour and bite:

 

The Jerusalem Wall That Shouldn’t Be There - The BAS Library

“A Touch of Vehemence”—Père Vincent’s Passionate Rejection of the Third Wall

 

Father Louis-Hugues Vincent (1872–1960), head of Jerusalem’s famed École Biblique et Archéologique Française, with somewhat unscholarly aggression rejected the “Third Wall” hypothesis.

 

In the words of Israeli archaeologist Michael Avi Yonah … “The revered master [Vincent] unfortunately introduced into the debate [about the wall] a touch of vehemence. … One may even suspect that the force of his assertions in fact concealed a certain lack of confidence in them. No stick was too bad to belabour his opponents. Newspapers and weeklies which had nothing to do with the world of learning are quoted [by Vincent] at length; his adversaries and their opinions are described in terms which at the same time arouse our doubts about his scholarly impartiality and our admiration for his extensive vocabulary. Even the descriptions of the remains discovered, usually a tedious and dry-as-dust subject, are coloured by the same fervid style. …

The line rejected by P[ère] Vincent is nor a ‘normal’ wall—it becomes a Dracula-type ‘phantom rampart,’ a ‘moving rampart.’”

 

The debate on the Third Wall, says Avi-Yonah, “has suffered ever since” from the vehemence of Father Vincent’s critique. ….

 

Consequences

 

Thanks to the likes of Père Vincent and W.F. Albright, the Early Bronze III city of Jerich0 that fell to Joshua and his Israelite forces (c. 1450 BC), has been back-dated by a millennium (c. 2400-2300 BC), so that now historians and archaeologists must consider it to be far too early to accord with the biblical account. 

 

Joshua and his Conquest of Canaan are now to be viewed only as “a mirage”, a pious story based on a real historical event that had occurred about a millennium earlier.

A Proto-Joshuan event, if you like – some have admitted this, whilst refusing to accept a real historical Joshua.

 

So, in this case, and unlike the millennium shift forwards with Menes and Naram-Sin, W.F. Albright has shifted the dating backwards by a millennium, he and Père Vincent, with the most disastrous consequences for the historicity of the Bible.