[krapp]

>Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that:

Yes, I am certain of these things because I am an adult with an education, and an awareness of the difference between mythology and reality.

If you believe in magic, and that the Bible describes reality more correctly than the entirety of science, and that archaeology and Biblical scholarship are all wrong, and that somehow out of all of the religions that humans have concocted only the Abrahamic God is the correct one, then the onus is on you to prove that.

[coffeecat]

During Albright's time, the archaeological evidence was generally interpreted as being in support of Old Testament narratives. Later generations of archaeologists mostly took the opposite view. The bottom line is, there's very little to go by, and the little archaeological evidence that exists can be interpreted either way, depending on one's preferred conclusion.

[krapp]

Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,) or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference?

And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all.

On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?

[coffeecat]

> Could it be that later generations of archeologists took the opposite view because the preponderance of evidence uncovered in that time pointed in that direction (and because the cultural and political stigma against contradicting the Bible diminished over time,)

My understanding is that the shift can mostly be attributed to the rise of biblical minimalism as the dominant interpretive framework. Radiocarbon dating of the Jericho ruins did rule out Albright's preferred late Exodus date. But the radiocarbon date is consistent with an (in my opinion, far more interesting) earlier Exodus date, which would line up with the hypothesis that the Israeli people were the Hyksos, and which would also line up with a sequential interpretation of the timeline presented in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel.

> or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference?

Archaeological evidence constrains the set of defensible explanations. But the available evidence from this time period (Exodus, conquest of Canaan) is so scarce that it mostly comes down to personal preference.

> And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all.

How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural.

> On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?

I'm quite certain that mind is more fundamental than matter, and I'm not very sure about a whole lot else.

[simiones]

> How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural.

Imagine that we found, today, the burning bush, still on fire but not consumed by it, thousands of years later. Say someone tried all known techniques to extinguish it, but it wouldn't. We may be able to study and characterize it precisely and call it "natural" in that sense, but I think many would agree that it would be very clear evidence that this claim in Exodus was actually historically based.

Similarly, say that we had credible videos, and other instrument recordings, of the blue fire that the Orthodox Patriarchs claim descends from the heavens on Jesus' tomb every year on Orthodox Easter. We may even develop a theory of what the substance is and what it represents and where it originates (spatially) and so on - but if it happens spontaneously and only affects certain things (candles held by the faithful) and not others (say, gasoline-soaked rags prepared by a scientist to test this out), then even a scientist would have to conclude that this phenomenon is real and outside the realm of physics as it is understood today.

[senderista]

Archeology has certainly been affected by unscientific intellectual fashions: take the post-WW2 marginalization of mass migration hypotheses, which happened as a reaction to Nazism, not on the basis of any scientific evidence. It took the ancient DNA revolution (i.e. being embarrassed by outsiders who could prove the archeology consensus was wrong) to correct this purely political scientific bias. (Note that historical linguists generally continued believing in mass migration all along though.)

[simiones]

Not really. Sure, sometimes long established archaeological conclusions get overturned by new digs, new sources, or just new methods or new evidence of similar events in other places and so on.

But one very important thing to add here is that there is no bias against the naturalistic narratives of the Bible in mainstream archaeology / Bible scholarship / historiography. Huge swaths of the Bible are considered firmly historical, with many important Bible characters being well attested to and many events in the Bible being accepted as historical facts. For example, the prophet Elijah and King Ahab are widely considered to be real people. The events of the exile to Babylon are (now) considered as well to be real historical events.