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Bible QuestDavid Plotz takes readers' questions on archaeology in the Holy Land.


Posted Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008, at 4:45 PM ET

Slate deputy editor David Plotz was online at Washingtonpost.com on Thursday, Jan. 17, to discuss his recent travels to Israel to search for archaeological evidence of the Bible's stories, an extension of his "Blogging the Bible" project. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

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Tour Guides/David's Palace: Wow. Well you can ask for no more in the way of scientific gravitas than a tour guide. We could. But it sounds like you couldn't!

David Plotz: You're willfully missing my point. Mazar allows a tiny bit of wiggle room, but essentially points people directly to: Palace of David. Elad, through which everyone who visits the City of David must pass and which controls public access to it and which for all intents and purposes represents the City of David to the world, calls it the Palace of David.

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Washington: Were you aware of A.J. Jacobs' similar book project, The Year of Living Biblically, prior to your blogging/digging projects? If not, how can you explain this (possibly) recent revival of "secular bible study" in literature? Does it have much to do with the recent emergence of books like God Is Not Great by your colleague Mr. Hitchens? If you were aware of Jacobs's book, how did it affect your own project, "Blogging the Bible"?

David Plotz: AJ and I are now friends. We discovered each other when we were both midway through our projects. He's a wonderful, funny writer, and he's written a really delightful book. AJ's book didn't affect "Blogging the Bible," and "Blogging the Bible" didn't affect AJ. I was well into my blog before I heard about AJ, and AJ was well into his year of living biblically before he saw my blog. We both gulped, and then realized it was no problem for either of us. We've even done a Web video chat together on bloggingheads.com

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Kensington, Md.: The Bible is a fascinating and important historical document, but you may have noted through the years that its followers believe it was written by an all-knowing magic figure who lives in the heavens. Have you in your work found any shred of evidence for the validity of these fantastical notions? Thank you!

David Plotz: I've found no evidence that it was written by an all-knowing magic figure. On the other hand, I can't prove that it wasn't.

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Beit Shemes, Israel: Although much of "ancient" Israel is in the Judean Hills—what is now called the West Bank—the rest of modern Israel was also part of Biblical Israel. Areas such as the Galilee, the Valley of Elah (as you mentioned yourself) and the Negev all played major roles in the Bible. Beersheba, a town in the Negev, played an important role in Abraham's life. Also, many of the Talmudic sages of the post-Biblical era lived in the Galilee.

David Plotz: Fair point. I do think it's funny that the coastal population centers where 75 percent of Israelis live were the lands of the Philistines. That was where the enemy was, back in Bible days.

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A.J. Jacobs: Were you intentionally dodging the second half of my question, which asks for your opinion on the late abundance of books being published on this topic?

David Plotz: Oh, no dodge. I don't have a great explanation. The atheist books are blowback against the growing religiosity of politics in the Bush years. But I can't explain me and AJ—we just got interested at the same time, I guess.

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Patrick Henry College, Va.: You're married to Hanna Rosin, who wrote God's Harvard, about Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va. Has there been any blowback post-publication for your wife? I liked the book quite a bit.

David Plotz: Thanks. Hanna's book God's Harvard is awesome. The rise of Huckabee really demonstrates the phenomenon she was writing about.

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David Plotz: Thanks for all the questions, and good bye.

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David Plotz, Slate's deputy editor, is author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank and is writing a book based on his "Blogging the Bible" series for Slate.
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