We have already become accustomed to the scene: Yeshiva students chasing archaeologists on the hills, cops chasing the yeshiva students. The diggers into holy books are at war with the diggers into antiquities.

And what is this fight about? On the face of it, they are fighting over dry bones in old graves. But that is only a pretense. The real bone of contention lies buried much deeper, in the subconscious of the warring parties.

When the founding fathers of Zionism decided to go to Palestine -- against the inclinations of Theodor Herzl the atheist -- they pulled out the Old Testament. It contained the divine Deed of Purchase to the land. It was also a record of a magnificent national history, which is essential for any modern national movement. We are not invading someone else's country. After all, it's right here in writing.

The Hebrew Bible is a extraordinary literary work which also tells a historical tale. But first and foremost, it is a religious document. It records the covenant between The Almighty God and his people Israel. Its writers used historical and literary materials solely for the purpose of driving home the religious moral lessons. ("And he did wrong in the eyes of The Lord..."). As far as the great Torah sages of the last century were concerned -- most of whom treated the Zionist Founding Fathers with venomous hatred -- the Old Testament had a purely religious significance.

The Zionists, on the other hand, completely ignored the religious contents of theHebrew Bible. They used its literary elements to create the new Hebrew culture and the new Hebrew language, but most of all, they used the "historical" story in order to establish their claim to the land. Generations of archaeologists swarmed the land in order to "prove" the correctness of the biblical descriptions. Numerous amateurs, from Moshe

Dayan to Rehavam Ze'evi, turned archaeology into a kind of national sport. All were feeding the public "evidence" and bent the "findings" in accordance with their imagination and enthusiasm. The orthodox, who did not need proof for matters of faith, did not care.

But as the Zionist fervor declined, and as the existence of the Hebrew nation on the land became an established fact no longer in need of "proof," the bitter truth began to trickle out: All that vast effort on the part of those archaeologists did not reveal a single proof to attest to any truth in those biblical stories. No exodus from Egypt, no conquest

of Canaan, no Kingdoms of Saul, David or Solomon -- none of these have left behind even a shred of evidence.

Learned professors, whose religious or nationalistic faith got the better of their scientific purity, were busy making up excuses for this astounding fact. Perhaps the Kingdom of David was not in the tenth century but instead in the ninth, perhaps all of David's and Solomon's buildings are actually buried under the Dome of the Rock, making it impossible for us to excavate there, and so on. But in recent years, a new crop of archaeologist has emerged, one no longer afraid to speak the truth: All those many centuries between the conquering of Canaan and the Kingdom of Solomon did not leave the slightest imprint on the land. And that is very strange indeed.

The result has been a kind of a draw: There is no evidence to support those biblical stories, but neither is there any evidence to disprove it. There are those who reasonably ask: How is it possible that there is no shred of historical truth in so many magnificent stories? After all, those fairy tales must have some historical kernel of truth! Moses, Joshua, David and Solomon probably existed, albeit not exactly as depicted in the Bible. Perhaps the writers exaggerated a bit.

But this, too, is not true. Archeologists did, indeed, provide the evidence that all those stories were pure fiction. Researchers of antiquities in Egypt decyphered thousands of Egyptian documents which span the entire biblical period. The land of Canaan had always been most vital to the Egyptian national security, as well as to its foreign affairs, its economy and its transportation. Throughout the different historical periods, Canaan was a permanent host to Egyptian envoys, diplomats, military commanders, spies, and merchants. All those individuals provided continuous reports on everything going on in Canaanite cities and in their environs. The pharaohs themselves also recorded in writing on stone their own victories and achievements, real and imagined.

Hence, there exists a rich body of contemporaneous documentation of events in virtually every city and at all times. And lo and behold: There is no exodus, no conquering of Canaan, no Kingdom of David, no Kingdom of Solomon. None of those ever happened or could have happened, since all the reports from the country of Canaan reveal an entirely different state of affairs in that land at the time when those events are purported to have taken place there.

Only during the period of the two Kingdoms -- Israel and Judea -- does the Biblical story begin to match the historical one. Everything prior to this period -- from the Book of Genesis through the Book of Samuel II-- is legend.

There is no escaping the conclusion -- one accepted by virtually every serious scientist in the world -- that the Hebew Bible, written after the Babylonian exile by religious preachers with stunning literary skills, is not a history book. And because the archaeologists proved it, they are hated by the orthodox.

Does this detract from the greatness of the Bible? Of course not. It has always been, and still remains, a work of literary, cultural and linguistic magnificence, on a par with nothing else among the cultures of the world. Its stories influenced billions throughout the ages. Even if Joshua never really conquered Canaan, and King David never really ruled in Jerusalem, and neither even existed -- still they have influenced our lives and our spiritual world more than any historical figures.

And as for the archaeologists -- they reveal what really happened, beyond the myths. It's their job.