Review
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Title: The Cities that Built the Bible
Author: Robert R. Cargill
Publisher: HarperOne
Genre: History (Bible Archaeology)
Year: 2016
Pages: 337
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-236674-0
Price: $29.99
Reviewed by Greg Seppi for the Association for Mormon Letters
Author Robert R. Cargill is an assistant professor of Judaism and Christianity at the University of Iowa. He seems committed to sharing Bible history with the public, having appeared on a number of television programs, and his new book, “The Cities that Built the Bible,” is thoroughly in the vein of public history. More a gloss or introduction to the geography of the Bible than a “traditional” history, Cargill approaches his subject in a gentle, easygoing manner that only occasionally dips into celebrity name-dropping (such as his introduction, which opens in Nicole Kidman’s on-site trailer for *Bewitched*). The book is arranged chronologically by the communities that influenced the construction of the Bible, beginning with the Phoenicians and their contribution of the alphabetic system that would allow any written text, such as the Bible, to be communicated. It ends with a chapter on Rome and the influence of the emperors on the final selection of books into the Bible—a process that is by turns haphazard and motivated by church politics.
Cargill writes from what has been (sometimes pejoratively) termed the “humanist” tradition—that is, his writing does not favor one religious tradition over any other. The only real position he takes is a hard stand against is the concept of biblical inerrancy, the concept that the Bible is free from any errors. Those who have substantial knowledge of the history of the Bible pre-400 CE are not the target audience for this book! Clearly, the text is meant to illuminate the textual history—that is, the history of transmission—of the Bible for an audience whose only experience with the Bible comes from a church pulpit.
As such, the book attempts to condense the past two hundred years of Bible scholarship, which has increasingly recognized the problems (historical and sometimes even moral) that preclude a simple understanding of the Bible. Cargill does an excellent job of communicating scholarship to his audience, but the relatively straightforward analysis of archaeological and historical scholarship that he presents to the reader is surprisingly well-balanced by extensive endnotes at the back of the book. While I can certainly understand his, and probably his publisher’s, desire to keep the presentation of the text relatively simple, I would have preferred to have the footnotes and the text noted on the same page.
Despite its many strengths, Cargill is sometimes forced to cut corners or oversimplify his narrative. For example, he describes the authors of the New Testament books of doubtful authorship (such as Paul’s letter to the Colossians and I and II Peter) as “forgers,” though this both cheats the reader of context that comes from describing the possible motivations of a pseudepigraphic author and the careful study, debate and analysis that has led most scholars to reject, at least in part but often entirely, claims regarding their authorship by the New Testament’s Christian editors and sometimes the letters themselves.
At other points, Cargill condenses much more wisely. For example, he keeps his chapter on the valley of Har Megiddo—a “strategic pass from north to south and east to west in northern Israel… [containing] the remains of… five thousand years of battles”—fairly short, and focuses on the archaeological value of discoveries at the site, which he describes as extensive (p. 100). He briefly reviews some of the major conflicts fought over the site, and demonstrates that an individual living in the time of John the Revelator would have seen the region as the obvious symbolic site for the war to end all wars.
Brief but highly detailed chapters such as the above are sometimes interrupted by lengthy divergences on other subjects—for example, Cargill includes the story of the son of a research opponent who “targeted” Cargill and other scholars who had dismissed the theories of Norman Golb, his father. Cargill explains that he compiled data regarding the email aliases and IP addresses used by Raphael Golb to spam institutions hosting a traveling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit (p. 206-208).
A much more relevant and interesting story included in Cargill’s chapter on Bethlehem traces his complicated trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem in the company of several family members of a good friend, to enjoy a traditional Palestinian dinner. After a somewhat harrowing journey, which included a car switch, Cargill safely arrived. He realized during his meal that the Palestinians he was eating with shared many of the same hopes and dreams regarding their families and their futures that he had for his own family. This simple moment of cultural communication could, for me, stand in for the experience that perhaps all readers of the Bible could aspire to—to recognize that the Bible was created by individuals much the same as us, people with faults and biases and hopes and dreams, who tried to leave a trace of their faith to future generations. While Cargill’s book does not, in my opinion, go far enough in communicating either the essential strangeness of ancient peoples or a sense of what we as humans share with them, it does serve as a straightforward and simple introduction to a lay reader beginning to dig a little deeper into the Bible.
I would likely recommend this book to readers interested in a very general outline of the history of the Bible in ancient times, or perhaps a religious educator who wanted to get a sense of the direction of current Bible scholarship. It might also serve as a reasonable inclusion, alongside other options, for an introductory course on the history of civilization, or the history of religion.