DAJ

“The impression that one has now is that the debate has settled down. Although they do not seem to admit it, the minimalists have triumphed in many ways. That is, most scholars reject the historicity of the 'patriarchal period', see the settlement as mostly made up of indigenous inhabitants of Canaan and are cautious about the early monarchy. The exodus is rejected or assumed to be based on an event much different from the biblical account. On the other hand, there is not the widespread rejection of the biblical text as a historical source that one finds among the main minimalists… Most who write on the history of ancient Israel now take a position that accepts some minimalist positions (as just noted) but is also willing to make use of the biblical text as one of the sources in reconstructing the history of Israel and Judah.”
― Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?

“Whoever reduces the destruction of the environment, even in a very limited way, helps promote survival and improves the quality of life; whoever does so increases rather than decreases maat.”
― Erik Hornung, Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought

“One sometimes notes in the research certain evasive strategies designed to avoid the conclusion that the notion of dying and rising deities might be a pre-Christian phenomenon. Ancient Near Eastern gods are freely granted the privilege of rising or returning—as long as they behave like gentlemen and do not do so before Christ.”
― Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, Riddle of Resurrection: Dying and Rising Gods in the Ancient Near East

“Inexorably history destroys all 'eternal' and 'absolute' values and demonstrates the relativity of every absolute point of reference which we seek to establish. Hence the fanatical opposition to anything historical—or scorn for it which takes the form of unscrupulous distortion—on the part of those who wish to establish definitive, binding norms.”
― Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many