The Bible Unearthed

Choice excerpts from Kenneth A. Kitchen's review of Israel Finkelstein's and Neil Asher Silberman's The Bible Unearthed in Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament:

"[A] careful critical perusal of this work - which certainly has much to say about both archaeology and the biblical writings - reveals that we are dealing very largely with a work of imaginative fiction, not a serious or reliable account of this subject." (p. 464)

"The whole correlation of the archaeological record for the eleventh to early eighth centuries is based upon Finkelstein's arbitrary, idiosyncratic, and isolated attempt to lower the dates..." (ibid.)

"F. & S. have gone mad on 'Deuteronomism.'" (ibid.)

"On the patriarchal and exodus periods our two friends are utterly out of their depth, hopelessly misinformed, and totally misleading." (p. 465)

"Their treatment of the exodus is among the most factually ignorant and misleading that this writer has ever read." (p. 466)

"[O]ur pair are clueless here." (ibid.)

"Then, in Transjordan, we are treated to the usual sociological poppycock..." (p. 467)

"The mishmash on Joshua and Judges is an idle repetition of all the usual nineteenth-century poppycock..." (p. 468)

UPDATE: Relevant article in this past week's Forward.