Figments of Chronological Debates

When R. A. S. Macalister began the first excavations at Tell el-Jezari in 1902, he was, as the saying goes, holding a trowel in one hand and the Hebrew Bible in the other. And so have all other excavators of the site ever since, including those of the Tandy expedition that led the current study on the chronology of the site discussed in this Forum. This is perfectly acceptable, of course, especially when the motivation to shed light on various aspects of the holy book—from its composition history to the reality behind its historical narratives and the lives of its authors—is explicitly stated and the discussion is rooted in the unearthed data. This is, in fact, the essence of biblical archaeology, a discipline whose research questions stem from the interface between the Bible and archaeology and in which Tell el-Jezari, or biblical Gezer, has played a major role.