It is common among many Christian believers to hold that the Bible is sufficient authority for all that it contains. Even so, the faithful ardently welcome extra-Biblical evidence of Biblical truths. "BAR" Managing Editor Feldman: "Well, there are people for whom the Bible is sufficient. But I think that even for many devout Christians and Jews or what have you, that whenever you come across an object or a site that is associated with a Biblical event or a Biblical person, there's an immediacy that is just very powerful. And even if it's no more than just a confirmation of one's beliefs, it is still very powerful confirmation."
This eagerness to find historic evidence, writer Lazare says, contributes to a problem. In his "Harper's" article, Lazare says that many Biblical archaeologists make the nonscientific error of beginning from a set of beliefs and then fitting the evidence they discover into those beliefs: "[This view] tends to assume that whatever archaeologists find will somehow buttress Christian or Jewish faith, and tends to look at it from that perspective."
Lazare continues: "Well, the 'Biblical Archeology Review' is a very interesting publication. It's kind of imbued with that kind of mentality. It's a magazine that's written for and read by believers."
Not so, says "BAR's" Feldman: "Well, we try to be impartial. We've been accused of having a point of view, but we've been accused of having contrary.... You know, some people think we're too liberal and some people think we're too conservative. So, I like to think that we're just right -- somewhere in the middle."
