Challenges for Biblical Archaeology

  
“Today biblical archaeology is facing many of the same challenges encountered in biblical studies during the past 15 years. It is ironic that a wealth of archaeological and epigraphic finds has become available just as the prevailing intellectual trends of our time tend to discount the concepts of history and purposeful text. According to this late modern view, little of the Bible’s historical record can be trusted, regardless of ‘objective’ evidence. Paradoxically, the ‘Battle for the Bible’ has migrated to the realm of history, language, and archaeology at precisely the moment when corroborative evidence, which abounds as never before, is intentionally swept aside.”

John M. Monson, "The Role of Context and the Promise of Archaeology in Biblical Interpretation," in The Future of Biblical Archaeology, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 315–16.