
I have summarized Yamauchi’s main points and quoted his explanations.[1]
1. The Fraction That Has Survived: “only a fraction of what is made or what is written ever survives.”
2. The Fraction That Has Been Surveyed: “only a fraction of the available sites have ever been surveyed.”
3. The Fraction That Has Been Excavated: “only a fraction of the surveyed sites have ever been excavated.”
4. The Fraction That Has Been Examined: “only a fraction of any excavated site is actually examined.”
5. The Fraction That Has Been Published: “only a fraction of the materials, and especially the inscriptions in languages other than Greek or Latin, produced by excavations has as yet been published.”[2]
Yamauchi goes on to note, “Now if one could by an optimistic estimate reckon that one-tenth of our materials and inscriptions has survived, that six-tenths of the available sites have been surveyed, that one-fiftieth of these sites have been excavated, that one-tenth of the excavated sites have been examined, and that one half of the materials and inscriptions excavated have been published, one would have (1/10 x 6/10 x 1/50 x 1/10 x 1/2) at hand but six, one hundred-thousandths of all the possible evidence” (p. 156).
Now certainly much has been done in the nearly forty years since Yamauchi published this statement, but I think it would be fair to say that we are still dealing with a small fraction of the evidence.
[1] Edwin Yamauchi, The Stones and the Scriptures (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972), 146–57.
[2] Interestingly, Hill and Walton attribute a sixth point to Yamauchi: “Only a fraction of what has been examined and published makes a contribution to biblical studies” (Andrew E. Hill and John H. Walton, A Survey of the Old Testament, 3rd ed. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009], 359). However, I could not find this sixth point in The Stones and the Scriptures.
2 comments:
Charles,
Good point. I'm not sure where the sixth point comes from, but a similar summary is made by Wiseman in volume 1 of the Expositor's Bible Commentary (1979).
I've also made a PowerPoint slide that represents the same idea:
http://bit.ly/lD4LQW
Thanks for the reference to Wiseman and the link to the PowerPoint slide.
Post a Comment