I was born in Boston in 1950 and studied Religion at Wesleyan University and Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and I’ve spent most of my career writing and thinking about the politics and contemporary meanings of the past. After completing a series of books about the history and politics of archaeology in the Middle East, I teamed up with my good friend and colleague Israel Finkelstein to see what we could accomplish in the re-construction of modern views of biblical history. The result was The Bible Unearthed (2001) which got a lot of attention, but I’m not sure it changed many minds– particularly minds that are hardwired to believe that THEY are the authentic heirs of the biblical tradition.
Anyway, I spent 2000-2007 in Belgium, working at the Ename Center for Public Archaeology and Heritage Presentation on heritage projects in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and gradually came to realize just how many minds are hardwired to believe that they are the authentic heirs of something. And yet those claims for authenticity have generally been used as tools to get or maintain power, money, or just crude dominance. The Past has got to be useful for something more positive and life affirming than that.
I currently teach at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serve as the coordinator of Projects and Policy Initiatives at the newly established Center for Heritage and Society. I also serve as the president of the ICOMOS International Scientific Committee on Interpretation and Presentation.
In my work and travels I come across many paradoxes of the quest for cultural authenticity and will try to record just a few of them here.
–Neil Silberman
Scratching my head about your initial reaction to E. Mazar’s new anouncements.
How can anyone judge her claims without examining them in situ? Or reading an official publication?
Your initial comment – in some professor’s website – does not sound serious. It is rather like a reaction of someone who had made up his mind, regardless what future discoveries may be.
By: Uri Hurwitz on February 28, 2010
at 7:58 pm
Keep scratching. This is not an isolated incident. Eilat Mazar has done this before. It does have a context you know. I expressed my skepticism, not my final judgement, about a scholar who has time and again run to the press before proper publication– and who has made up her mind quite openly about the historicity of 1 Kings. Her approach, however quaint (“Bible in one hand, spade in the other”), displays a naive and quite discredited scholarly vision of BOTH the Bible and the spade. Where have you been for the last 25 years?
By: Neil Silberman on February 28, 2010
at 8:09 pm
[...] Neil Asher Silberman, a contributing editor for Archeology and author of eight books before The Bible Unearthed, is probably the one responsible for all the rhetoric. [...]
By: The Bible Unearthed-An Extended Review, Part 1 | Against Jebel al-Lawz on April 22, 2011
at 12:46 pm