The Bible's Buried Secrets: The Real Garden of Eden

Having looked at whether David really existed, and whether God may have had a wife, BBC2's Francesca Stavrakopoulou moves back in time to tackle the question of Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden.

Or does she? Because at the heart of the final instalment of this series is Stavrakopoulou's hypothesis that the original Eden story had nothing to do with creation but actually referred to the Jerusalem temple and its fall at the hands of the Babylonian Empire.

I must admit that even having studied this passage quite a bit in my younger days this was not a theory I'd heard before. Perhaps because quite so much debate rages as to whether or not the passage should be really literally, or whether it's all disproved by science, that the origins of the story rarely get a look in.

The programme opens with a couple of talking heads, one a fundamentalist, the other a moderate, but we quickly move on to Stavrakopoulou's theory that "Eden was a real place built by human hands".

Travelling to the British Museum she is able to demonstrate, from the stone reliefs that hang on the walls in the museum's ancient near east section, what gardens in that place and time were like. A few other pieces of evidence to show that gardens were a combination of the natural and the human-made.

There's a brief foray into the understanding of Eden in Islam. Eden isn't on earth, it's heaven. Initially this might seem like a bit of a tangent, but the programme uses it to drive home the point that in the ancient near east gardens such as these were seen as places where heaven touched earth, and that the prevalent understanding of Paradise was that of a man made garden.

But not just any old garden Stavrakopoulou tells us, "Eden was a garden built by humans for their god". It was a place on earth where God could come and be. A garden where God could walk around.

If that's starting to sound familiar then the next part of the programme ratchets up the links still further. The only person traditionally allowed access to these gardens was the king. The king was considered to be a mediator between the gods and men, he was allowed into the garden to tend it and this is, of course, the role we find Adam take in Genesis 2. The conclusion? "Adam was originally a king too".

It's at this point that the first other biblical expert is consulted - Nicholas Wyatt of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity. Wyatt looks at Ezekiel 28 casting a fresh light on verses 13-19, which are sometimes applied to Satan rather than a human figure. It's argued that Ezekiel 28:13-14 locates Eden on the holy mount of God, which is understood as Mount Zion, where the Jerusalem temple was located. The links here are a little tenuous and the correct interpretation of this passage lacks any sense of consensus, so it's a shame that the argument here is skipped over rather quickly rather than being buttressed by further evidence.

In similarly brief fashion it's argued that the search of the whereabouts of Eden shouldn't be determined by the location of the River Tigris and the River Euphrates, but the River Gihon. This Stavrakopoulou tells us is in Jerusalem, where the water "bubbles up like a spring". The trouble is that, yet again, there is a wide divergence of views as to where the the Gihon is with numerous locations from Mesopotamia to Ethiopia being cited. I suspect that the way Stavrakopoulou is mapping out her argument is not the same route which lead her to the destination in the first place, which is probably fair enough. This is, after all, a mainstream television programme, on at a peak time. Whilst I would liked to have seen these things fleshed out a little more, there was only an hour available.

Stavrakopoulou's destination turns out, as it happens, to be the ancient Jerusalem Temple. The cherubs marked the outside of both Eden and the temple. 1 Kings describes the horticultural theme in the temple's decoration, evoking thoughts of a garden where heaven might touch earth. Solomon's temple was "both mythical and real".

Of course Stavrakopoulou would debate whether or not the first temple in Jerusalem was, in fact Solomon's, and there's a little blurring of the evidence here. We're told that the original temple was burnt, but it's also implied that it's this temple, rather than the one of the returning exiles and Herod the great, which stands in ruins today. But that's a minor quibble.

It's at this point that some of the scholars from previous episodes re-appear, namely Herbert Niehr, Judith Hadley and Walter Moberly, because the film turns to the question of why the Eden narrative includes a vilified serpent and a woman. Stavrakopoulou ties this into some of the theories discussed in the previous programme. Originally the temple was used for several kinds of worship, and among them, she goes on to say, snake-worship.

Such a proposal sounds controversial, but is, of course, largely based on the Bible. It's not until the reign of Hezekiah that we read of Moses' bronze snake being smashed because the people were worshipping it (2 Kings 18:4). The portrayal of the snake as the villain in the story of the Garden of Eden was a smear campaign to discredit such serpents worshippers.

A similar campaign is also suggested to explain Eve's presence. At various points in the Bible we find wives blamed for their husband's failings (Solomon and Ahab are cited). Perhaps whichever king it was that is being portrayed by the original story (Jehoiachin presumably) was being accused of being unduly influenced by his wife. This casts an interesting light on Eve's initial absence from creation in the second Genesis creation account, but casts a shadow across the treatment of women in the three monotheistic faiths.

So the thrust of Stavrakopoulou's argument seems to be that the story should never have been altered and inserted after Genesis' opening creation account. Rescuing it from this alien context may upset those of monotheistic faith, but it "allows us to engage with the real passions and the anxieties of people from long ago". The documentary concludes on a political note, if Jerusalem is where heaven touched earth and God came down "is it any wonder that no-one wants to give it up?"

Of the three films in the series, I think this was my favourite, perhaps because the theory was sufficiently new to me that I not only found it interesting, but also wasn't able to find as many disagreements as others found. That said, those of us that reject a more literal interpretation of the story, don't feel that connection with its historicity. What the story came to mean is of far more significance that its historical referent, and, to be honest, it's strange that the programme is more captivated by the kernel from which this impressive tree grew, than the plant itself.

However, I suspect that Stavrakopoulou just doesn't see the plant as being particularly impressive. Once or twice she suggests that it's this story that has caused Christianity (and perhaps the other monotheistic faiths) to take a negative view of humanity. Yet rather than the story creating our belief in the fallenness of humankind, its the other way around. The story resonates for us, and presumably whoever it was that ripped it from its supposed historical context, precisely because it reflects the fallenness we see as inherent in humanity.

That's not to deny that there's good in humanity as well. Indeed the coupling of the Eden story with Genesis 1 creates wonderful balance: we are made in the image of God and animated by his spirit, and yet we also bring evil into his world. If Eden is heaven on earth, then its understandable why we yearn for it so, and why the Bible ends with a glorious re-imaging of Eden housing a renewed Jerusalem.

The Bible's Buried Secrets: Did God Have a Wife?

As the internet seems to have proved time and time again the more tenuous a given hypothesis is, the more those who defend it resort to peppering their arguments with confident-sounding phrases such as 'certainly', 'clearly' and 'undoubtedly'. In a similar vein I suspect that those seeking to promote rather dull, and fairly obvious theories resort to describing them with phrases such as "grounbreaking" and "revolutionary". Then again, it would be a mistake to extrapolate too far on the basis of one programme.

Part 2 of BBC2's The Bible's Buried Secrets - Did God Have a Wife? didn't just resort to such melodramatic terminology in its opening abstract, but seasoned its entire run-time with such overblown metaphors. Time and again presenter Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou told us that what she was telling us "rocks [monotheism] to its core", is "the biggest secret of all" one that "shakes the very heart of monotheism" and "rocks the foundation of modern monotheism".

The source of all this rocking and shaking is Stavrakopoulou's revelation that Israel was not always monotheistic. Whilst this may shake some fundamentalists and those who have only paid passing attention to their Hebrew Bible, such a conclusion is the only reasonable reading of the books of 1 and 2 Kings, not to mention Judges, Samuel, Chronicles and the prophets. Israel and Judah were frequently being chastised for worshipping other Gods. There's less unity behind Stavrakopoulou's claim that monotheism didn't emerge until the Jewish exile in Babylon, but the evidence to support such a claim is relatively thin. The odd archaeological find showing "God's wife" only proves that some of the Israelites worshipped a female deity. It hardly proves that this was the belief of the entire nation, nor even a significant percentage.

Part of the problems here seem to come from a implied theory that the various parts of the Hebrew Bible present a united front. There are of course many who would hold to such a theory overall, but few who really knew the subject would insist that "the story the Bible tells us" is of a nation who were monotheistic from God's very first words to Abraham, apart from "occasional lapses".

In reality, the Bible accuses the northern kingdom (Israel) of being almost entirely idolatrous from the moment Solomon's Empire divided. What's strange about this presentation is that despite Stavrakopoulou explaining in the previous programme about the split between Judah in the South and Israel in the north, and about how Jewish writers may have attempted to smear their rivals in the north, none of this gets a look in. Israel is presented in the documentary as if it were a united nation from the time of Abraham to the exile. Yet Israel no longer even existed by the time of the latter event.

The experts were also a little disappointing this time around. In the traditional corner was Rabbi Ken Spiro, who is heard saying that his message is "not PC" before he has even been introduced. He pops up again and again to presumably to provide a bit of balance, but the excerpts included don't really present him as having credible reasons for his disagreement. There's also a couple of brief clips of Walter Moberly, who doesn't say a great deal, and of Islamic scholar Muhsin Yusuf in the programme's brief, and seemingly token, mention of Islamic monotheism. And there are also brief words from Judith Hadley and Ze'er Meshel. But the main scholarly contribution is from Herbert Niehr who is agrees with Stavrakopoulou to such an extent that at times they seem almost like an unlikely double act.

That's not to say that the programme was not interesting. I picked up several things that I had not known before from the nature of the archaeological artefacts at Ugarit to the pottery finds linking Yahweh and Asherah, though the latter didn't really strike me as "the most important artefact in the history of God". And it was good to see that the programme had made a late correction to incorporate the news that this once lost piece of pottery looks to have re-emerged.

As with the first instalment the technical quality of the documentary was very good: nice images, reasonably good pacing and catching an archaeological dig as they uncovered something must have been particularly pleasing. But the arguments here are just far too overblown so that rather than developing the understanding of a wide range of people, both believers and sceptics, the film is so couched in melodramatic language that only DanBrown-o-phile conspiracists will take its information seriously.

BBC2's The Bible's Buried Secrets

I'd somehow not really caught on that there was about to be a new Bible related documentary being broadcast on BBC2, despite reading Doug Chaplin's two posts and even commenting on one of them. I should also point out that this is not simply a re-hashed version of 2008's PBS documentary of the same name. Here's my review
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The Bible's Buried Secrets is the latest in a long line of modern BBC documentaries about the Bible going back to Son of God a decade ago. Like the 2001 series The Bible's Buried Secrets has been produced by Jean-Claude Bragard who also worked on The Miracles of Jesus, Moses and Mary.

This series starts with David and Solomon and presenter Francesca Stavrakopoulou starts off by asking "Can we even talk about a historical David at all?" There are a few introductory preview clips before Stavrakopoulou sums up what the programme will be about. "Is the biblical account of King David true, and what are the consequences if it isn't?"

As usual with this type of documentary the presenter tours round the relevant locations switching between speaking to experts and monologuing into the camera. Thankfully though Stavrakopoulou avoids the all too typical manner of presenting the programme as if she hadn't a clue about what she's just been told. Just as well given Charlie Brooker scathing dismantling of the modern day documentary in last Tuesday's final instalment of "How TV Ruined Your Life". Instead she played it smart, allowing the archaeologists to speak for themselves and then discretely offering her disagreements once they were off camera.

Such an approach typifies the technical quality of the programme. It was nicely shot, clearly argued and well structured, working through the different historical layers of archaeologists before Stavrakopoulou delivered her own conclusion.

Stavrakopoulou's journey starts in Gath in conversation with Aren Maeir. The Philistines he tells us weren't barbarians they were actually very cultured and we have found remains of their cities. If the Bible's history is correct then we would expect similar finds in Israel.

This is followed by a summary of the work of Yigael Yadin whose work in the middle of the last century concluded that biblical archaeology confirms the narratives found in the Hebrew Bible. Yet whilst Yadin's view were dominant going into the 1970s, his work was eventually re-evaluated, and shown to be rather limited. Israel Finkelstein takes up the story from there. Yadin's finds were significantly later than he calculated. The film rather skims over things here, and it leaves me with more questions than answers, which I suspect might pass many other viewers by.

Stavrakopoulou alternates between experts in and out of agreement with a simple reading of the texts. After Finklestein comes Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he describes as "biblical Pompeii". The large city gates are an indicator of some form of semi-complex statehood. But there are questions about the dating and so Stavrakopoulou investigates the evidence that it was Omri, not David, who was responsible for much of the building in the region from that time. This section includes discussion of the Tel Dan Stele which refers to the "house of David" but she remains rather sceptical.

After that diversion it's back to Jerusalem where Doron Spielman claims to have found David's fortress after taking a closer look at 2 Samuel 5:17. Finkelstein dismisses Spielman's whole approach but doesn't offer a great deal of evidence to explain why the site definitely isn't related to David.

Stavrakopoulou's penultimate interview is with Baruch Halpern. Halpern is clearly of great importance. Not only does he get to have a nice meal at the King David Hotel (geddit?) rather than having to explain his theories in a dusty archaeological site. Oddly we also see Stavrakopoulou getting having her make-up done beforehand. We never saw Robert Beckford doing his hair or Jeremy Bowen trimming his moustache, so why do we get this for her? That said, interviewing Halpern inside does make a modicum of sense, as he discusses how to read the texts rather than simply deal with the archaeological evidence in a black and white fashion. Halpern's argument is that the type of warts-and-all material we have on David seems unlikely to be entirely fabricated. It's unlikely that someone would make a mythical character quite so flawed.

Ultimately, Stavrakopoulou dismisses Halpern's theories, preferring to advance her own. The Mesha Stele tells us about the exploits of the Israelite king Omri, almost entirely ignored by the biblical authors. It was he, not David, that expanded the kingdom and built many of the structures we find in Northern Israel (though the identity of builder of the Jerusalem structures is not explained). It was the southern nation (Judah) that wrote the history and they largely expunged the prowess of Omri and invented a series of myths about their own great, expansionist king - David. As a theory it's not entirely satisfying to me. Why was the builder of Jerusalem's fort not named in the Bible and elevated to mythical status? Isn't it likely that the now carbon dated seeds found at one of the structures simply show that the site was still in use a century or so later?

This being the BBC things have to end on an ambiguous note, and as usual there are comments (this time from Yonathan Mizrachi) about how the archaeological evidence or lack thereof shouldn't be used to stake a political claim for the land and Stavrakopoulou concludes rather weakly that what's important is that its the "meaning of the story that has proved so resilient" and so on. It feels very token, somewhat like the unconvincing endings to various production code era Hitchcock films.

Whilst, based on the evidence I've seen here, I disagree with the film's conclusions, it's nevertheless one of the better made and better presented religious documentaries I've seen in recent years, and, aside from that one particular disappointing moment it respects its audience and doesn't talk down to them, covering a good deal of ground in just under an hour. Next week Stavrakopoulou will explore the possibility the God may have been assigned a wife.

N.B. This article was edited to remove material that was probably somewhat sexist. I think my intention was good, but still a bit ignorant and poorly executed.Apologies.

Review: The Bible's Buried Secrets

The relationship between archaeology and the Bible has evolved massively over the last hundred or so years. Back then people set out to verify the biblical accounts with the results of their digs, and as archaeology was still a relatively young science, early signs were very positive. People like William Albright found what they were looking for and the Biblical Archaeology movement grew out of the work of these initial pioneers.

However, as archaeology matured as a discipline it was clear that things were not as simple as they had first appeared. If the early pioneers had dug where they thought Jericho was, and found a city whose walls had indeed been destroyed, then that had been taken of proof of the accounts in Joshua of Jericho's destruction. But when evidence started to emerge that this had perhaps occurred around 1550BCE rather than significantly later, what then? What do we make of the biblical accounts of what happened?

Such is the question at the heart of Gary Glassman's documentary The Bible's Buried Secrets. Running at close to two hours it looks at the historicity of the Old Testament in the light of the findings of archaeology and textual criticism. Even before it aired on PBS last week certain groups had sought to protest about it, refusing to listen to the evidence it presented before making their judgement.
The programme itself focuses on two main parts of the Bible - the Torah and the conquest under Joshua; and the joint kingdom of David and Solomon when the glory of Israel was said to be at its peak. It then goes on to address some secondary issues such as the movement from polytheism into fully fledged monotheism.

Historical evidence relating to the earliest part of the Bible is fairly scant, however. As the programme rightly says, there's nothing at all that helps us corroborate the Abraham story. But there is the Merneptah Stele (c.1208BC), perhaps the first piece of evidence aside from the Bible which confirms Israel's existence, not to mention the discovery of the Zayit Stone which suggests that the written Hebrew alphabet goes back to at least 950BC. Both get a good airing here. There's also passing mention of the lack of evidence (thus far) of hundreds of thousands of people wandering in the Sinai desert for 40 years, but, surprisingly no mention of the various inscriptions mentioning the Habiru/Apiru.

All of which brings us to the evidence of Joshua's conquest. As noted above, there's evidence of a destroyed city wall at Jericho, and the programme also tells us about similar findings at Ai and Hazor. But, as the programmes talking heads tell us, the dating of these walls is 1550 BCE, 2200BCE and 1200BC respectively, meaning that, at best, only one of these destructions can be credited to Joshua (although personally, I find it strange that anyone would be keen to 'credit' such atrocities to one of God's followers anyway).The programme puts forward an alternative theory; since the evidence from Hazor suggests that it fell not because of outside sources but from internal revolt - the have-nots deposing their overlords in the upper city - and there is good reason to think that this was not just happening in Hazor but all over Canaan, perhaps it is these proletariat Canaanites who ultimately became the Israelites. But it's a little unclear, however, whether the evidence really supports such a theory or whether this is just a convenient story to fill in the gaps in the archaeological record.

The documentary then turns its attention to the question of how these freshly liberated Canaanites happened upon their monotheistic beliefs. Citing evidence of a God YHW from Midian, the theory is put forward that a group of Canaanites escaped from Egypt, got converted into followers of YHW and travelled through Midian, and, in turn, became the greatest exponents of their new found religion. But as a theory it raises more questions than it answers. Why did the Canaanites go to Midian in the first place instead of straight 'home'. And, having settled in Midian long enough to adopt their religion, why did they then move on? And how did they escape from the Egyptians? And how is this any better as a theory than the one where a charismatic leader returns from Midian because he thinks his new found God has told him to lead his people to freedom?

There significantly less such speculation in the second part of the documentary which jumps to the time of David and Solomon. First up is the 1993 discovery of the Tel Dan Stele, an inscription referring to the house of David (making David the earliest Biblical character to have been mentioned outside of the Bible). There's further finds relating to David as well. Eilat Mazar is interviewed about her claim to have discovered David's palace. It proves to be the film's most controversial moment as it unpacks the basis of Mazar's claim (based on Albright's dating methodology), but then turns to carbon dating to debunk her theory, before ultimately stating that the majority of archaeologists support Mazar's claims.Such disagreements are largely absent from this documentary, indeed not one of the talking heads attempts to assert the infallibility of the Bible, or attempts to dispute the fact that much of the Old Testament narrative in uncorroborated. Whilst, I suppose, that leaves it open to a charge of being one-sided, it actually proves to be a wise choice. Liberated from having to devote valuable screen time from such debates it's able to lay out the evidence its audience to consider, rather than having everything bogged down in arguments that are rooted in theology rather than archaeology.

With the debate over whether or not Mazar has found David's palace left up in the air, The Bible's Buried Secrets moves on to look at Solomon. It establishes that three matching gates houses probably were built during his era and discusses the significance and design of his temple. There's a brief mention of the Israelites worship of idols alongside the worship of God before it's time to move on to Solomon's descendant Josiah. Having previously introduced us to the "J" and "E" sources, we're now told about the discovery of Deuteronomy and the "D" source.

Yet strangely, the programme informs us, it was not the rise of piety under Josiah's reforms that ushered in a more faithful period of monotheism, but a time of national disaster - the destruction of Solomon's temple in 586BCE. This caused a reform of Judaism and the realisation that it was the Israelites polytheism that had lead to their downfall. In one of several dramatisations, we're shown Ezra, less than 50 years after the fall of the temple, reading the Torah to his people and instructing them to follow it as their ancestors never did. The dramatisations are actually fairly few and far between. Visually speaking the film much prefers turning classic illustrations of the biblical stories and sliding different elements of them around to give the impression of a 3D image. But the film's real triumph, visually at least, is the range of on-site footage taken from the very sites that are being discussed. This really gives a feel for the subject matter being discussed and brings it home far more.

There's also a great range of experts on show - 28 by my count (not including the unlikely choice of Liev Schreiber as narrator)¹, and the different excerpts are kept fairly punchy without things feeling too rushed. In fact Glassman's directing is well disciplined, never allowing one section of his ocerall narrative to outstay its welcome. Instead subtitles point those viewers wanting to find out more in the direction of the official website where more detailed articles await them.

Not everything is quite as rosy. The dramatic reconstructions never seemed, to me at least, particularly believable, and, at certain points, as is inevitable with a project with such a large scope, some of the more complex issues were over simplified. And of course, occasionally, though to its credit it is only occasionally, the film sensationalises things a little too much - after all much of this information has been around for decades now.But of course, to many of the film's viewers, much of this will be new. And for a mainstream documentary aimed at non-experts The Bible's Buried Secrets does a commendable job exploring the historical evidence behind part 1 of the world's number 1 best seller.

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The Bible's Buried Secrets is currently available to view online.

1 - The 28 are - William G Dever, Peter Machinist, Thomas Cahill, David Ilan, Michael Coogan, Ron E Tappy, Lawrence Stager, Manfred Bietak, Carol Meyers, Amnon Ben Tor, Hani Nur El-din, Sharon Zuckerman, Israel Finkelstein, Avraham Faust, Donald Redford, Gila Cook, Amihar Maza, Elisabeth Boaretto, Gabriel Barkai, Jodi Magnus, Eilat Mazar, P. Kyle McCarter, Joan Branham, Eric M Meyers, Andrew Vaughn, Shayne JD Cohen, Lee I Levine and Ephraim Stern