POSTDOCTORAL Fellow 1999-2000
Steve Alter (History)
University of Notre Dame
Near Eastern Archaeology and Biblical
Criticism
in American Scholarship, 1850-1940
This is a study of American scholars' engagement with biblical
"higher" criticism and ancient Near Eastern archaeology,
c. 1850-1940. Although mainly of a history of ideas, it is grounded
biographically in the careers of roughly thirty biblical and Semitics
scholars associated with major American universities and seminaries.
I am especially interested in what these scholars made of the relationship
between these fields, between the different orders of evidence offered
by the various modes of criticism on the one hand and by archaeology
on the other. My ultimate question: how did these mostly religiously-committed
thinkers construe the Bible's prospects as a continued source of
cultural authority? I will also try to assess the intellectual struggles
of these scholars in the light of recent ferment in the humanities
on issues such as historical truth-telling and the genuineness and
significance of authorship.
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