Biblical minimalism

Biblical minimalism, also known as the Copenhagen School because two of its most prominent figures taught at Copenhagen University, is a movement or trend in biblical scholarship that began in the 1990s with two main claims:

1. that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence for what had happened in ancient Israel; and
2. that "Israel" itself is a problematic subject for historical study.^[1]

Minimalism is not a unified movement, but rather a label that came to be applied to several scholars at different universities who held similar views, chiefly Niels Peter Lemche and Thomas L. Thompson at the University of Copenhagen, Philip R. Davies, and Keith Whitelam. Minimalism gave rise to intense debate during the 1990s—the term "minimalists" was in fact a derogatory one given by its opponents, who were consequently dubbed "maximalists", but in fact neither side accepted either label.^{[citation needed]}

Maximalists, or neo-Albrightians, are composed of two quite distinct groups, the first represented by the archaeologist William Dever and the influential publication Biblical Archaeology Review, the second by biblical scholar Iain Provan and Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen.^[2] Although these debates were in some cases heated, most scholars occupied the middle ground, evaluating the arguments of both schools critically.

Since the 1990s, while some of the minimalist arguments have been challenged or rejected, others have been refined and adopted into the mainstream of biblical scholarship.^[3]