Finding Myth and History in the Bible - Scholarship, Scholars and Errors - Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano
The Siloam Tunnel Revisited
Finding Myth and History in the Bible - Scholarship, Scholars and Errors - Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano
Philip R. Davies† [+]
University of Sheffield, (Emeritus)
Philip R. Davies, who died in 2018, was Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield. Educated at Oxford and St Andrews, Scotland, he edited, authored or co-authored 37 books on the Dead Sea Scrolls and various aspects of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, including In Search of Ancient Israel (1992), Whose Bible Is It Anyway? (1995), Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures (1998), The Complete World of the Dead Sea Scrolls (2002) and Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical History (2008). He was co-founder of Sheffield Academic Press and former President of the British Society for Old Testament Study and European Association of Biblical Studies.
Description
The Siloam tunnel and inscription, long assumed to have been created in the reign of Hezekiah, has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the publication of an article by Rogerson and Davies (1996). The reaction to this article is reviewed, along with recent archaeological excavation at both ends of the tunnel, and the conclusion drawn that ‘assured results’, such as Hezekiah’s commissioning of tunnel and inscription, are far from assured and that scholarship always needs to question its own presuppositions and methods—a lesson that Giovanni Garbini has always taught.