The Victorians in the Holy Land– Dialogue with the Author

Last updated on: February 11, 2025 at 1:28 am by Ben Witherington

The Victorians in the Holy Land– Dialogue with the Author 2025-01-27T13:39:10-05:00 Ben Witherington

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Ben: Allan what was it that prompted you to write this particular book? In so many ways, it is a unique cross-disciplinary study, helpful in various ways?

Allan: All the subjects touched upon have fascinated me from childhood. Bible stories, travel narratives, and real adventures go back to my earliest years. My family, living in a gas-lit former coal mining cottage, was also full of story-tellers, and stories and the best way of telling them were absorbed from infancy onwards.

Ben: Though there have always been Christian pilgrimages to the Lands of the Bible, what is it, do you think, that motivated Victorians to make such a journey, especially in an age when it was not easy to travel to the Middle East? Was it mainly just pious curiosity, or a desire to see the Pyramids and other sites that connected with Biblical stories? How would you distinguish between adventure travel, and serious educational attempts to be better informed about the context of the Biblical stories, and when would you date the first real attempts at archaeology in Egypt and Israel that didn’t simply amount to treasure hunting?

Allan: The Victorian age, especially Evangelical Protestantism, was interested in the demonstrable reality of Christianity. It was also an age of burgeoning modest middle-class wealth. This inspired people to ‘go and see’.

Ben: Today of course there is a lot of talk about returning artifacts to the countries where they came from in the Lands of the Bible. On a recent visit I made with students to the new Parthenon museum in Athens, I was struck by the signs on the top floor basically saying please return the Elgin marbles here, where they belong. Why do you think it did not really occur to Lord Elgin, or even Howard Carter that it wasn’t appropriate to simply cart off another country’s antiquities and put them in the British Museum or the Louvre? Do you think they were convinced that the European museums would better preserve the artifacts at that point in time?

Allan: In 1840 people were fighting for liberation from Ottoman, French, and other rulers. Pots and pictures were less important. Only in modern times, with the growth of human rights, recognition of a person’s individual worth, and such, did ancient artworks come to matter culturally, as they do today. And yes, it was believed at the time that artifacts would be better looked after in a European museum. Yet if an artifact was sold legitimately by its then owners, where lies the morality of the 200+-year-old transaction? I am also wary of the interference of the professional ‘activist’, to whom rightful ownership may be just another thing to protest about.

Ben: One of the main judgments you make at several points in the book is that archaeology, even at its best can only give one a sense of the social and historical context of the Biblical stories not of the actual historical authenticity of what is said about the main characters and their actions in those stories. In other words, the Biblical accounts have verisimilitude, but archaeology cannot prove the claims of the stories about persons and events are true. I would say this is mostly correct, but there are clear exceptions— one thinks of the Erastus inscription in the ground at the Corinthian theater that matches up nicely with what Paul says in Rom. 16, or more recently the Aramaic inscription on the James ossuary, which has been once again been shown to be authentic by Ada Yardeni, the IAA inscription expert, as well as by Andre La’Mere of the Sorbonne. What it likely proves is that Jesus really did have a brother named James whose father was Joseph. But again, these are exceptions, not usually what archaeological finds can demonstrate. Comments?

Allan: I agree. Archaeology actually proves very little, but what it does is provide context and probability. Also, by excavating very ancient inscriptions, which can be translated, one discovers the real names and activities of Biblical characters and the locations (Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar), etc., all of which gives the Bible accounts a stronger probability of authenticity. As archaeology has become more extensive, it is true that we find more and more exact fits between Scripture and archaeological finds, such as the Delphic posting of Imperial Governors, and Pilate’s posting to Palestine.

Ben: The chapter on Thomas Cook was fascinating. I had no idea he was the one who facilitated ordinary folk getting to travel, at a reasonable price, to the lands of the Bible. And as you make clear, one of the major reasons for doing so was for the Biblical education and enhancing of the Christian faith of those folk. I would never have guessed this from my various dealings with Thomas Cook when we lived in Durham (where I did my D.Phil.) and then as recently as 12 years ago, But I gather now Thomas Cook travel is no more. Are there any agencies now in the U.K. That support religious travel?

Allan. Cook was a pioneer of Christian travel, beginning around the early 1840s, by chartering cheap train excursions to Temperance rallies in Midland towns. And yes, Cook’s has now folded, but from the sheer profitability, other companies had come into being in late Victorian Europe and the USA. After all, it was largely they who financed the first Middle Eastern modern hotels, railways, banks, and after 1913, cinemas.

Ben: I really appreciated all you did give us in this book, but I was really hoping for a chapter on that greatest of all Victorian Biblical scholars, J.B. Lightfoot, who did interact with the work of Ramsay and others, and saw and supported the importance of the nascent Biblical archaeology which was on the rise in the late 19th century. I had the honour of discovering Lightfoot’s missing papers and commentaries in the Dean and Chapter library at Durham Cathedral more than a dozen years ago, and then transcribing all his handwritten materials and turning them into 3 volumes published by InterVarsity Press. There are in those volumes also various articles Lightfoot published before his untimely death in 1889 that have some of his reflections on the importance of the archaeological work of Victorians, and its historical importance. Any chance we could get a second edition of your fascinating study with an additional chapter about this?

Allan: Yes, Lightfoot was one of the pioneers of analytical Biblical scholarship, along with Ramsay and others, and I should have included him. Apologies. But there was a limit to what I could adequately deal with in my given word length.

Ben: Having had a college professor at Carolina who was an archaeologist and OT scholar I was raised on Wright, Bright, and especially Albright. I was pleased to see in the final chapter that you gave him some attention. One of the more interesting things is that he actually spawned a whole bevy of archaeologists who continue to follow his approach, rather the minimalism of W. Devers and others who even object to the term biblical archaeology. The magazine for which I have written for, Biblical Archaeology Review, for many decades now, continues to probe the connections between the Biblical text, not only in regard to the context, but even in regard to persons and events mentioned in the Bible. (e.g. the finding of the marble top to a scepter with Solomon’s name on it). It led me to wonder if you had had occasion to look at that magazine, published since 1975? Yes, it’s written for the educated lay person, but many of the articles are written by actual archaeologists from all over the religious spectrum, and some who have no religious affiliations at all.

Allan: Yes, the Biblical Archeology Review is a major series, and brings home the richness of the field, and what there is left to discover, as scholars find and assemble ancient stone and papyrological fragments. An old Oxford friend, a retired Parliamentary lawyer and a devout Christian, works with others in assembling and translating scraps of Greek papyri, often found in AD-buried pots in the Egyptian desert. He says he never knows what he is getting, but hopes the fragments he is sent are Christian. He deals with high-definition photographs.

Ben: I wondered why some of the remarkable drawings and paintings of Roberts of the Holy Land were not included in your book, since there are other pictures. There are also wonderful paintings from the Victorian era by some Russian artists, some of whom who went to the Holy Land— Polenov, Ge, and Ivanov. Maybe in a second edition some of this could be included?

Allan: I understood that I, the author, and not Eerdmans, had to pay for the pictures. Therefore I restricted them to either pictures over 100 years old (out of copyright), in the public domain on the internet, or in old books that I own, such as Hole’s ‘Jesus’. I think that Hunt’s ‘Scapegoat’ is in the public domain. Hunt, like the Russian and other artists whom you mention, spent extensive periods in the Holy Land.

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