I've finally finished my report on the lecture Walter Kaiser gave at Miami University back in March. (See the March 29 entry.) It was a very enjoyable project, but I got carried away. The print version of the article is 14 pages long, and there are 37 footnotes. Who is actually going to read this monstrosity?
In his lecture, Kaiser briefly mentioned some important archaeological finds from each period of biblical history. During the lecture I scratched down the list, with the idea that I would look up each one afterwards.
As it turned out, each discovery had its own interesting story. I made heavy use of my Biblical Archaeology Review CD-ROM. (It contains the first 27 years of the magazine.) Most of the discoveries in the list have received extensive coverage there. I also used
Kaiser's A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars and The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant?
the survey articles on archaeology from the Expositor's Bible Commentary.
Kenneth Westby recently sent me a link to a wonderful article by Dr. John Byl of Trinity Western University. The article is called "Theism and Mathematical Realism". The article's premise is that the existence of mathematical truth points to the existence of God.
When mathematicians do research, they are generally trying to discover patterns. Such an endeavor presupposes that
there are patterns to be found;
it is possible for humans to discover them.
Byl maintains that beliefs 1. and 2. are best explained by the existence of a Creator who has built patterns into the universe and makes the knowledge of them available to humans, whom he has created in his image. He argues for the "classical Christian view" proposed by Augustine that mathematical truths exist in the mind of God.
Byl's article covers a lot of ground in a clear and effective fashion. I highly recommend it.
Each year on the last Saturday night in March, there's a special lecture at Miami University, given by some noted evangelical scholar in honor of Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, a longtime history professor at Miami who retired in 2006.
The first three Yamauchi lectures were given by Darrell Bock, Richard Hess, and Craig Evans. The 2009 speaker was Old Testament scholar Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Kaiser was a graduate school classmate of Dr. Yamauchi's. The two of them (along with Marvin Wilson, another rather well known evangelical scholar) were students of Cyrus Gordon at Brandeis in the 1960s. Kaiser retired a few years ago from his position as president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and he has been working on a number of writing projects since then.
Dr. Kaiser is, among other things, the editor of the NIV Archaeological Study Bible, and his lecture was an overview of biblical archaeology, highlighting some of the top discoveries from each era of biblical history. I'll post an article on the G&K website when I have a chance.
Kaiser prefaced his remarks with the story of how he persuaded a very wealthy (and extremely conservative) former student to provide $500,000 to fund the...
