Excavations Dever was director of the
Harvard Semitic Museum–
Hebrew Union College excavations at
Gezer in 1966–1971, 1984, and 1990; director of the dig at
Khirbet el-Kôm and Jebel Qacaqir (West Bank) 1967–1971; principal investigator at Tell el-Hayyat excavations (Jordan) 1981–1985, and assistant director, University of Arizona Expedition to
Idalion,
Cyprus, 1991, among other excavations.
Topics He used his background in
Near Eastern field archaeology to argue, in
Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (2005), for the persistence of the veneration of
Asherah in the everyday religion of "ordinary people" in ancient
Israel and
Judah. Discussing extensive archaeological evidence from a range of Israelite sites, largely dated between the 12th and the 8th centuries BCE, Dever argued that this
folk religion, with its local altars and
cultic objects,
amulets and
votive offerings, was representative of the outlook of the majority of the population, and that the
Jerusalem-centred "book religion" of the
Deuteronomist circle set out in the
Hebrew Bible was only ever the preserve of an elite, a "largely impractical" religious ideal. Dever's views on the worship of Asherah are based to a significant extent on inscriptions at
Khirbet el-Qom and
Kuntillet Ajrud (though see also his discussion of the significance of a cultic stand from
Taanach), as well as thousands of Asherah figurines that archaeologists have found in various Israel locations, including a dump near the First Temple (a dump he attributes to Josiah's iconoclastic reform efforts). His views on worship of the goddess as expressed in this book have been
criticised by some. On his methodological approach more generally,
Francesca Stavrakopoulou has suggested that his use of the term "
folk religion" "ultimately endorses the old stereotype of 'popular' or 'folk' religion as the simplistic practices of rural communities", so perpetuating existing "derogatory assumptions" that more recent discourses on the topic have sought to counter. Others, however, praise Dever's contributions to understanding the history of Israel and Judah in the Iron Age.
On the historicity of the Bible In retirement, Dever has become a frequent author on questions relating to the
historicity of the Bible, criticizing many scholars who deny any historical value to the biblical accounts. However he is far from being a supporter of
biblical literalism either. Instead he has written: I am not reading the Bible as Scripture… I am in fact not even a
theist. My view all along—and especially in the recent books—is first that the biblical narratives are indeed 'stories,' often fictional and almost always propagandistic, but that here and there they contain some valid historical information. That hardly makes me a 'maximalist.' and Archaeology as it is practiced today must be able to challenge, as well as confirm, the Bible stories. Some things described there really did happen, but others did not. The Biblical narratives about
Abraham,
Moses,
Joshua and
Solomon probably reflect some historical memories of people and places, but the 'larger than life' portraits of the Bible are unrealistic and contradicted by the archaeological evidence. However, Dever is also clear that his historical field should be seen on a much broader canvas than merely how it relates to the Bible: The most naïve misconception about
Syro-Palestinian archaeology is that the rationale and purpose of '
biblical archaeology' (and, by extrapolation, Syro-Palestinian archaeology) is simply to elucidate the Bible, or the lands of the BibleBecause of these positions, Dever can be considered a centrist in the biblical field: while he is far more skeptical on the historicity of the Bible than biblical maximalists (whom he often accuses of fundamentalism), he is also vigorously critical of
biblical minimalists like
Philip R. Davies,
Thomas L. Thompson and
Niels Peter Lemche (whom he accuses of
postmodernism and
nihilism). In his books
Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? and
Has Archeology Buried the Bible? Dever denies the historicity of much of the
Pentateuch (while admitting that its content may contain some historical kernels) and the
Book of Joshua, but states that historical materials can be found from the
Book of Judges and onwards.
At Lycoming College (since 2008) Dever joined the faculty at
Lycoming College in autumn 2008. He was appointed Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology. == Criticism ==