The Bible Unearthed

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The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts is a controversial book about the origin of the Bible. The bold thesis of this book is that there is no archaeological evidence for the existence of Abraham, the Patriarchs, Moses, or the Exodus, and that the monarchies of David or Solomon were much smaller than the Bible implies.

The authors, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, argue that it is impossible to say much of anything about ancient Israel until the 7th century BC, around the time of the reign of King Josiah and that the Bible might have been created at that time to further the religious reform and territorial ambitions of the Kingdom of Judah.

The assertions of the book depend upon a "low chronology" which on the basis of the paucity of archaeological finds of the reigns of David and Solomon would shift dates a century. In the July–August 2006 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Michael Coogan of Stonehill College, editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible, contends that Finkelstein and Silberman "move from the hypothetical to the improbable to the absurd."^{[citation needed]}

Finkelstein's revised chronology is "not accepted by the majority of archaeologists and biblical scholars," Coogan asserts, citing four scholarly anthologies from the past three years.

However, Professor Baruch Halpern, one of the scholars on whom Coogan relies, praised The Bible Unearthed, as "the boldest and most exhilarating synthesis of Bible and archaeology in fifty years."^{[citation needed]} Professor David Noel Freedman, editor of the authoritative Anchor Bible series, called it "readable and revolutionary."^{[citation needed]}