Biblical archaeology: The case of William Foxwell Albright

This thesis focuses on biblical archaeology as an example of an interdisciplinary study that brings together the sciences of archaeology and the history of religions, and the archaeological excavations at Tell el-Fūl/Gibeah of Saul (1922-23 and 1933) by William Foxwell Albright (d. 1971), who gave the field its "golden age" with his important studies in this field, from a methodist perspective. The study aims to demonstrate how Albright, from a strict methodist perspective, utilized the science of archaeology to verify the accuracy of the biblical narrative in the case of the archaeological excavations at Tell el-Fūl/Gibeah of Saul. As a matter of fact, archaeology is one of the sciences from which the discipline of the history of religions makes the most use of its knowledge. Archaeology is the branch of science that investigates, records, and tries to interpret the social, cultural, and social life and order of human communities that lived in the past by focusing on the material remains that have survived from the period they lived in to the present day. The term Bible, in its most general form, refers to the Old Testament and New Testament books considered sacred by Jews and Christians. The term biblical archaeology, as the name implies, refers to the historical, geographical, and other aspects of the narratives of the Old and New Testaments in relation to the science of archaeology. This study, which aims to bring to the fore how biblical archaeology can maximize the use of the discipline of archaeology when one has a strict methodist religious background through Albright's archaeological excavations at Tell el-Fūl/Gibeah of Saul, consists of four chapters: an introduction, two main chapters and a conclusion. The introduction deals with the purpose, significance, methodology, limitations, and sources of the thesis. The second chapter is an Albright-centered archaeology of biblical archaeology, so to speak. In other words, this chapter deals with the Albright-centered historical development of the concept of biblical archaeology, the problem of nomenclature, and its major schools. The third and most important chapter of the thesis deals with William Foxwel Albright's methodological religious background, the biblical narrative of Gibeah, Albright's archaeological excavations at Tell el-Fūl/Gibeah of Saul to verify the accuracy of this narrative, and the subsequent criticisms of these archaeological studies. The fourth and final section is the conclusion.