Biblical Archaeology as an Academic Discipline in Search of Its Academic Identity

Opsomming

While the history of the term 'biblical archaeology' shows that it has no single meaning, debates on the disciplinary status of biblical archaeology point towards its long-standing struggle to define itself as a scholarly discipline. A critical discussion of these two aspects results in a rejection of the recent trend to define biblical archaeology as a subsidiary of biblical studies. Instead, it is suggested that biblical archaeology should be defined as a subspecies of general archaeology. This argument finds support in three features of general archaeology: the impetus Of new archaeology, the nature of archaeological scholarship and its interdisciplinary features.