Bible’s Buried Secrets

I am troubled after watching the BBC TV programme – Bible’s Buried Secrets. This programme has 3 episodes and presented by Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou who is not a believer of Christianity herself. So far two of the episodes have been released and can be watched from BBC iPlayer.

Episode 1. Did King David's Empire Exist?
To me, the way she presented the evidences in this episode seems to be taking a very objective view. Why I think she was objective? This is because I think she let the evidence leads her to the conclusion(s). Also, she appeared to be very close to the Mainstream / Middle scholarship.

Therefore it sounds quite convincing to me that the Kingdom of David was not such a great one. Anyway this did not disturb me so much because it is not directly related to my fundamental faith/belief.

The objective view of her and the interest in the topics led me to continue watching the second episode.

Episode 2. Did God Have a Wife?
In this episode she put forward 3 claims:
1) Abraham was serving a pagan god -El
2) Israelites was not embracing Monotheism but Polytheism
3) Asherah as the goddess/wife of god

In this episode, she sounded more like a Sceptical scholar. One reason I think she is sceptical is because the evidences did not seem to be very convincing to me for her to make the claims/conclusions. Some of the ways she interpreted the Old Testament also seems to me very unreasonable and unacceptable. Lastly, a very disturbing statement to me appeared towards the end of the episode- “A pure monotheism is impossible” . This episode has a much more intense influence on me because it does relate to my fundamental belief of God.

My thoughts
As she was a PHD theology scholar of Oxford University, I just simple cannot leave the matter behind as if nothing has happened. I think she has a very creditable education background in particularly her expertise in the study of the Old Testament. Perhaps her education training also helps her to examine the evidences from a very scientific ways of taking the Archaeological and Historical point of views.

This is why I write to you to hear about your opinions. I hope you would allow me to ask two questions:
1) Are these questions/problems have already been existed in the academia for quite some time already (only recently being raised up by Dr Francesca)?
2) Was she taking an objective view or just being very sceptical?

Episode 3. The Real Garden of Eden
Just finished watching the last episode by Dr Francesca. Although I am not very convincing about the speculation of the real geographical/physical location of the Garden of Eden, but there are still some issues that trouble me. It is quite convincing to me that the Book of Genesis was written between 10th to 5th century BC instead of 1600BC by Moses. It happened that the Book of Genesis appears as the first book in the Bible. The implications are Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman, it is about the falling of a king/Adam instead of the fall of humanity. It troubles me in two ways:
1) Original sin
2) Creation of the world and human
The Book of Genesis provides the foundation for the two points above simply cannot stand if the descriptions are not about “the beginning”.