Nothing is more appalling and embarrassing than to see once more an expedition go out with much confidence and publicity to find Noah's Ark or the Ark of Covenant and return without any result and with ridicule and frustration. But that cannot be all, and I am grateful that my class has not given up pressing me about the relevance of archaeology for our quest for truth. It is here, in the life of ordinary people, where Biblical religion first took shape, here where it developed, and here where people related their lives to their God. It is within these traces of ordinary people, where the truth that we still treasure today has, sometimes identifiably by us, left its traces. If you ask what a Roman cooking pot has to do with God, you might as well ask yourself what your sofa at home or your car in the shed might have to do with God.
Archaeology shows that religion is a constant process of inculturation.
Archaeologically, there is nothing like an absolute revelation. As a theologian, archaeology makes you think what it means that we Christians speak of Christ as our Lord Incarnate, as God having become flesh. Archaeology challenges our confidence in the reliability of textual information. Of course you can point out to deep differences between Jewish and Christian religion about the question if Jesus was the Messiah or what God wants you to do, but with a few exceptions, people at the same time used the same cooking pots, basically shared the same ways of producing their food, and for a long time might even have lived together in the same street. Regarding the relevance of archaeology today, I Think this shows us that religion might have something to do with the way how people orientate themself in a world they to a great extent share with people of a different faith and not so much with the job to create one's own world as opposed to the world of the others.