Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World (Routledge Studies in the Biblical World) 9781032105413, 9781032105420, 9781003215813, 1032105410

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
The Origins and Direction of the Project
Bodies of Evidence Considered
Why This Book?
Notes
2. Conceptual Frameworks for Studying Mobility, Migration, and Religion in the Ancient Past
Movement, Mobility, Motility, and Migration
Past and Present Terminology for Movement and Migration
Insecurity and the Household: Agency and Decision-Making
Defining Religion and Religiosities
Households and Religiosity in the Ancient Near East
Migrants' Religiosities
Cultural Mutability and Internal Religious Pluralism in Contexts of Mobility
Notes
3. Cultures of Mobility in the Lands around Canaan
Overland Movement
River Travel and Seafaring
Interregional Competition and Exchange
Mobile Functionaries
Mobile Pastoralism
Pilgrimage
Controlling Mobility
Borders and Boundaries
The Question of a Ubiquitous Code of Hospitality
Population Displacement and Relocation
Perceptions of Mobile Persons
ʿ3mu
Shasu
Habiru
Sea Peoples
Amorites/Amurru
Arameans
Notes
4. Religiosity(ies) on the Move around Canaan
Defining Divinity
Deities on the Move
Mobility and Religiosities in Egypt and Mesopotamia
Notes
5. Cultures of Mobility and Migration in Canaan, Israel, and Judah
Israel's Emergence in Light of Migration Studies
Emergent Social Structures and Networks of Connectivity
Migration and Ethnogenesis
Cultures of Mobility within Processes of State Formation
The "Israelite Household" and Mobility
Mobility and Migration between Israel and Judah in the Iron Age II
Notes
6. Yahweh: Israel's Mobile Deity
Yahweh's Emergence
Yahweh, Mountains, and Mobility
Yahweh's Mobility and His Rise to the Head of the Pantheon
Mobility and Yahweh's Personhood in Judah's Bible
Notes
7. Mobility-Informed Religiosity(ies) in Israel and Judah
Identifying Spaces of Religious Life
Civic Spaces of Religiosity
The Question of Temples in Israel and Judah
bāmôt
Gradients of Mobility and Civic Religious Participation
Mobile Religious Specialists: Priests and Prophets
Material Remnants of Mobility-Informed Civic Religiosities
Arad
Beersheva
The "Bull Site"
Dan
Mt. Ebal
Lachish
Shiloh
Taanach
Kuntillet ʿAjrud: Mobilities and Civic Religiosities at the Crossroads
Household Spaces of Religiosity
Domestic Spaces of Veneration
Food Preparation and Dietary Habits
Birthing Spaces and Naming Practices
Burial Spaces and Practices
Judges 17-18: Migration Memories and Household Religiosities
Notes
8. Conclusion: Final Reflections on Divinity and Religiosities in Contexts of Mobility
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Routledge Studies in the Biblical World

CULTURES OF MOBILITY, MIGRATION, AND RELIGION IN ANCIENT ISRAEL AND ITS WORLD Eric M. Trinka

Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World

This book examines the relationship between mobility, lived religiosities, and conceptions of divine personhood as they are preserved in textual corpora and material culture from Israel, Judah, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. By integrating evidence of the form and function of religiosities in contexts of mobility and migration, this volume reconstructs mobility-informed aspects of civic and household religiosities in Israel and its world. Readers will find a robust theoretical framework for studying cultures of mobility and religiosities in the ancient past, as well as a fresh understanding of the scope and texture of mobility-informed religious identities that composed broader Yahwistic religious heritage. Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World will be of use to both specialists and informed readers interested in the history of mobilities and migrations in the ancient Near East, as well as those interested in the development of Yahwism in its biblical and extra-biblical forms. Eric M. Trinka is an instructor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University. His research takes place at the intersections of mobilities and religiosities in both ancient and modern contexts. He is particularly interested in the development of the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint as migration-informed textual corpuses. His work is internationally known among religionists, biblical scholars, and migration scholars.

Routledge Studies in the Biblical World

Routledge Studies in the Biblical World publishes edited collections and monographs which explore the Hebrew Bible in its ancient context. The series encompasses all aspects of the world of the Hebrew Bible, including its archaeological, historical, and theological context, as well as exploring cultural issues such as urbanism, literary culture, class, economics, and sexuality and gender. Aimed at biblical scholars and historians alike, Studies in the Biblical World is an invaluable resource for anyone researching the ancient Levant. A Commentary on Numbers Narrative, Ritual, and Colonialism Pekka Pitkänen Masculinities in the Court Tales of Daniel Advancing Gender Studies in the Hebrew Bible Brian Charles DiPalma Religion, Ethnicity, and Xenophobia in the Bible A Theoretical, Exegetical and Theological Survey Brian Rainey Job’s Body and the Dramatised Comedy of Moralising Katherine E. Southwood Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible Malignant Fraternities Barbara Thiede Embodiment of Divine Knowledge in Early Judaism Andrei A. Orlov Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World Eric M. Trinka For more information about this series please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-the-Biblical-World/book-series/BIBWORLD

Cultures of Mobility, Migration, and Religion in Ancient Israel and Its World Eric M. Trinka

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Eric M. Trinka The right of Eric M. Trinka to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-10541-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-10542-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-21581-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813 Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

for Jenna

‫כי כל־העמים ילכו אישׁ בשׁם אלהיו ואנחנו נלך בשׁם־יהוה אלהינו לעולם ועד‬ For all the peoples walk, each in the name of their own gods; but we will walk in the name of Yahweh our god forever and ever. Micah 4:5

Contents

Acknowledgments

x

1

Introduction The Origins and Direction of the Project 1 Bodies of Evidence Considered 4 Why This Book? 6

1

2

Conceptual Frameworks for Studying Mobility, Migration, and Religion in the Ancient Past Movement, Mobility, Motility, and Migration 14 Past and Present Terminology for Movement and Migration 16 Insecurity and the Household: Agency and Decision-Making 22 Defining Religion and Religiosities 26 Households and Religiosity in the Ancient Near East 28 Migrants’ Religiosities 31 Cultural Mutability and Internal Religious Pluralism in Contexts of Mobility 35

3

Cultures of Mobility in the Lands Around Canaan Overland Movement 56 River Travel and Seafaring 58 Interregional Competition and Exchange 61 Mobile Functionaries 66 Mobile Pastoralism 69 Pilgrimage 71 Controlling Mobility 72 Borders and Boundaries 73 The Question of a Ubiquitous Code of Hospitality 77 Population Displacement and Relocation 80 Perceptions of Mobile Persons 82

14

55

viii Contents ʿ3mu 84 Shasu 87 Habiru 87 Sea Peoples 88 Amorites/Amurru 89 Arameans 92 4

Religiosity(ies) on the Move around Canaan Defining Divinity 108 Deities on the Move 109 Mobility and Religiosities in Egypt and Mesopotamia 115

5

Cultures of Mobility and Migration in Canaan, Israel, and Judah Israel’s Emergence in Light of Migration Studies 123 Emergent Social Structures and Networks of Connectivity 131 Migration and Ethnogenesis 135 Cultures of Mobility within Processes of State Formation 137 The “Israelite Household” and Mobility 140 Mobility and Migration between Israel and Judah in the Iron Age II 144

108

123

6

Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity Yahweh’s Emergence 162 Yahweh, Mountains, and Mobility 164 Yahweh’s Mobility and His Rise to the Head of the Pantheon 170 Mobility and Yahweh’s Personhood in Judah’s Bible 176

162

7

Mobility-Informed Religiosity(ies) in Israel and Judah Identifying Spaces of Religious Life 184 Civic Spaces of Religiosity 184 The Question of Temples in Israel and Judah 185 bāmôt 189 Gradients of Mobility and Civic Religious Participation 191 Mobile Religious Specialists: Priests and Prophets 193 Material Remnants of Mobility-Informed Civic Religiosities 195 Arad 195 Beersheva 197 The “Bull Site” 197 Dan 199 Mt. Ebal 200 Lachish 202

184

Contents

ix

Shiloh 202 Taanach 204 Kuntillet ʿAjrud: Mobilities and Civic Religiosities at the Crossroads 205 Household Spaces of Religiosity 214 Domestic Spaces of Veneration 214 Food Preparation and Dietary Habits 217 Birthing Spaces and Naming Practices 219 Burial Spaces and Practices 221 Judges 17-18: Migration Memories and Household Religiosities 225 8

Conclusion: Final Reflections on Divinity and Religiosities in Contexts of Mobility

245

Bibliography Index

252 292

Acknowledgments

This book is a revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation, completed at the Catholic University of America in the spring of 2020. To live the life of the mind is a gift, but to lead that life in bad company can be a curse. Fortunately, I have been given the benefit of working on this project in the best of company. I extend my deepest gratitude to my advisors, Robert Miller and David Bosworth. Both were model teachers and conversation partners throughout my time of study at CUA. I must also offer a word of thanks to William Dinges for allowing me to join his Religion and Globalization course in the Fall of 2016, which opened several doors collectively leading to this project. The origins of this volume run deeper than my time as a doctoral student. Much of my interest in the intersections of biblical studies and mobility studies was spurred on by Linford Stutzman, a former teacher and now colleague, who first introduced me to the joys of kinetic learning about ancient history through hiking tours of the Middle East and sailing research trips in the Mediterranean. Thanks are also due to Jeffery Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, who I met together on the top of a mountain in Turkey. Both their work on migration studies and their friendship have been transformative. I extend a special note of gratitude to Isaac Alderman, a colleague and friend who continues to sharpen my thinking and writing. His careful review of this manuscript on multiple occasions has been greatly appreciated. Thanks also to Pekka Pitkänen for his judicious reading of the manuscript. Any errors that remain are my own. I am grateful to the Routledge editorial staff, especially to Amy Davis-Poynter for seeing the potential in this volume. Finally, to my wife, Jenna, I cannot endeavor a thank you that would be expansive enough. She remains an unending source of light and encouragement.

1

Introduction

The Origins and Direction of the Project Biblical scholars have long observed that key stories of Israel’s origins and existence are stories of movement. However, it is only in recent years that scholars have begun to explore the biblical texts using the modern category of migration as a heuristic device. The primordial myths of Genesis ground the human condition in the experiences of expulsion, wandering, and dispersion. Ancestral traditions catalog the movements of Abraham and Sarah’s journeys, Hagar’s eviction, Jacob’s flight from Esau, and the sale of Joseph into foreign servitude. The stories of exodus from Egypt and Wilderness wanderings, as well as repeated moments of displacement and relocation at the hands of different hegemonic powers, reveal cyclical themes of promise, salvation, judgement, and restoration. Collectively, these narratives establish the claim that Israel’s story of coming to know their God, Yahweh, unfolds primarily through the experiences of people who are on the move. In a similar way, historians of ancient Israel have spent the better part of half a century attempting to clarify which aspects of textually recorded movement are verifiable within the historical record. The importance of answering questions of this latter type revolves around the concerns to elucidate not only the particulars of Israel’s emergence but also to better understand how historic instances of movement, namely those of the so-called exilic period, relate to the compositional history of the biblical text. All societies operate according to socially patterned norms of space and movement. These cultures of mobility influence, among other things, conceptions of divinity and religious praxis. This book investigates prevailing cultures of mobility and migration in the ancient Near East and their influence on religious life in Israel and Judah. My primary goal is to reexamine familiar evidence of mobility and migration in ancient Israel, Judah, and their environs through the lens of modern mobility and migration studies. The need for such a treatment arises from the reality that much biblical scholarship that has so far attempted migration-informed readings of biblical texts has frequently done so with limited reference to the fields of mobility and migration studies or, more problematically, by shallowly DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-1

2

Introduction

representing migration studies literature for the purpose of introducing sleek or provocative readings. Readers have become increasingly attuned to the reality that race, gender, class, and other subjectivities have a purchase on the interpretive enterprise. It is time that our own ideological assumptions about mobility are explicitly accounted for as hermeneutical factors and that cultures of mobility within and around the biblical corpus become part of our historical reconstructions and textual expositions. Just as with readings that pay careful attention to other subjectivities, mobility and migration-informed readings must account for the world of the reader and the world(s) of the biblical corpus. This is no simple task since modern cultures of mobility do not always maintain parity with the world of the text. Nevertheless, our readings will be enriched by exploring texts for the cultures of mobility that they contain, affirm, and contest. This book does not present a theology of migration. Many such works already exist and scholars who exegete biblical texts in response to current contexts of migration should be lauded for their efforts. The findings of this monograph may even be useful for such work. Nevertheless, the purpose of this volume is to present dominant cultures of mobility in ancient Israel and Judah and their worlds with a view to how religiosities were responsive to both mundane and extraordinary experiences of human movement. In this vein, I aim to accomplish two primary tasks. The first is reinterpreting material cultural assemblages for evidence of migrations and mobility-related uses of objects and spaces. The second, and broader task, is analyzing biblical and extra-biblical texts for patterns of religiosity and trajectories of internal religious pluralism evidenced in contexts of mobility. An important area of research that lies beyond the purview of this volume is the networks of mobility and exchange between the Aegean and the Levant during the same time scope. Much research has been conducted on such Mediterranean mobilities. I refer readers to the appropriate starting points for such scholarship below.1 The seeds of this project were sown several years ago when I first read Anne Porter’s Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilization.2 Porter’s work is not a history of mobile pastoralism, as she acknowledges herself, but a treatise on archaeological and historiographical methods. Ultimately, she views the divide between sedentary societies and mobile pastoralists as an intellectual construct and “not an inevitable condition of animal husbandry.”3 The question driving her investigation is: “What happens to our reconstructions of the past when the mobile and sedentary components of the ancient world are thoroughly interrelated parts of the same societies?”4 Porter’s work has transformed scholarly discussions of the relationship between sedentary and mobile populations in the ancient Near East. It is no longer acceptable to speak in the traditional binary terms of agrarian vs. pastoral or urban vs. rural because ancient Levantine and Mesopotamian people might have been any combination of these things at different points in their lifetime. The dimorphic social model that Porter challenges is rooted in an ancient metanarrative that society’s essence is marked by the qualities of emplacement,

Introduction 3

sedentarism, and stasis. Accordingly, movers, in all of their various dimensions, are investigated primarily from the perspective of statis and often understood as undermining or destabilizing the structures of “real” (read: sedentary) society. Social dimorphism is not an invention of scholars studying the ancient world. Instead, the use of the model began through ethnographic comparison as anthropologists built on the basic premise of modern sociology that the sedentary is the core of social existence. Sociologists have since, however, begun to deconstruct this fundamental assumption on which their discipline was predicated. In response to the spatial and mobilities turns, some have championed the position that society is better understood as being constituted by persons and things that are essentially mobile and in dynamic entanglement with one another.5 Perhaps an understanding that society is generated through movement underlies the overlap in the terminology for mobility and ethics captured in words like the Akkadian alāku or the Hebrew ‫הלכה‬/‫הלך‬. Just as today, mobility, as both dynamic and symbiotic forms of movement, lies at the core of ancient people’s existence. Even for those who themselves never traveled far from home, the political and socio-cultural environment of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages was one of intensive inter-regional movement and cross-cultural exchange. Although cities and smaller settlements constituted centers of political power and social control, we should not mistake such emplaced structures for immobility or assume that they were the only sites of encounter, exchange, innovation, or sophistication. Those aspects of society that appear to be unmoving are often created by social and resource flows that serve as points of circulation to facilitate movement. Many seemingly static places undergo movement on their own, albeit at different scales than other people and things.6 The cities of the ancient Near East – those places that historians often consider to be the most sedentary – required massive systems of mobilities for water and land management, evidenced in complex canal systems, interdependent herding economies, agricultural and resource distribution circuits, and circulations of labor capital. The oldest-known Mesopotamian nomenclature for a road is the Sumerian logogram KASKAL, which is written by drawing the intersection of two sets of parallel lines.7 Even though the sign is used in later Akkadian to signify harranu (road) or hulu (path), it serves as a reminder that roads are not simply linear connections between points. If so, one set of parallel lines would do. Instead, roads are construed primarily as cross-roads and therefore as nodes in networks of encounter and exchange from which society emerges.8 As we will see, it was frequently the mobile elements of society that both made centralized governance possible and could also most easily upset political balance. Mobility, then as now, was simultaneously a source of power and a means of response to it. The ubiquity of human movement in these ancient contexts raises questions about the effects of small- and large-scale mobility on the religious lives of persons at all levels of society. Epistemologies (ways of knowing) are shaped primarily by ontology (ways of being). The ways we move through the world

4

Introduction

contribute to our constructions and conceptions of it. Prevailing cultures of mobility influenced the ways persons envisioned themselves as agents in earthly and cosmic landscapes and informed how religious practitioners understood/portrayed their deities. It was Porter’s work that first caused me to revisit earlier claims made by biblical scholars about the relationship between Israelite religion and mobile lifeways, and to question whether experiences of mobility/movement instigate unique conceptions of divinity. Scholars have intensively explored inter-cultural exchange between Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Some have even interpreted the data using the general rubric of migration, exploring movement and trade as catalysts of contact and conduits of interchange.9 Yet, among most scholars working beyond the boundaries of the Agean/Mediterranean, integration of current migration theory and data remains lacking, and problematic diffusionist models of cultural transfer persist.10 Perspectives cultivated vis-à-vis the “new mobilities paradigm,” which has influenced practical and theoretical trajectories in migration studies, are also conspicuously absent.11 To the extent that movement, mobility, and migration are acknowledged to play a part in the development of Israelite and Judahite religious identity, few, if any, scholars have attempted to explain the processes of religious exchange and development by reference to growing collections of data on migrants’ religiosities. The challenge, then, is to bring collective findings on how migrants actually move and on what migrants actually do with religion to bear on our studies of religious life in the ancient world. My intention going forward is not so much to intervene in discussions regarding external religious influences from Israel and Judah’s neighbors. Much work has been undertaken to shed light on such socio-cultural developments in Late Bronze and Iron Age Canaan.12 I am instead more interested in showing how findings from mobility and migration studies provide new angles to approach the intersections of mobilities and religiosities in Israel and Judah. Reconstructions of the contents and functions of Israelite religion ought to rely on findings about how human experiences of mobility and movement catalyze processes of ethnogenesis, inform cultural production and transmission, and facilitate the exchange, translation, and accrual of practices. The outcome of analyzing relevant textual, iconographic, and archaeological data through the lenses of these foundational evidential bodies is a fresh set of conclusions regarding internal religious diversity in Israel and Judah from the time of Israel’s emergence in the Central Highlands until the exilic period.

Bodies of Evidence Considered In many ways, this project is an acceptance of Thomas Tweed’s invitation for “scholars to attend to the multiple ways that religious flows have left traces, transforming people and places, the social arena and the natural terrain.”13 The primary objective at the start is to locate and analyze the various data points, be

Introduction 5

they textual, material cultural, or ethnographic analogs, that can shed light on the operationalization of religiosity in the ancient world.14 Investigations of mobility, migration, and religion in the ancient past share the common challenge of constructively integrating textual and archaeological data. Those working to reconstruct ancient mobilities and religiosities must challenge the oft-held assumption that mobile elements of ancient society and their cultural lifeways are not traceable in the archaeological record. Despite common misconceptions, mobile persons do leave traceable remains in the archaeological record. The problem is that archaeologists of the biblical periods often operate according to the assumption that society is to be understood primarily according to the activities and ideas of sedentary populations.15 Not only are scholars often looking for religion and mobility in the wrong places, they are also not always asking the correct questions about material culture found in what are presumed to be primarily sedentary contexts. This is where Porter’s pursuit of indirect evidence proves such assumptions otherwise.16 The archaeological record is rich with artifacts that can be assessed to better understand the lifeways of ancient peoples when texts are silent on such matters; be it in non-literate mobile societies or in contexts of mobility where texts do not maintain the primacy of place in the religious lives of movers.17 What is required is simply a mindset to ask how seemingly situated remains bear the markers of previous mobilities. The goal of understanding religion in the ancient world is not achieved simply by unearthing artifacts and cataloging them by relative location, dating, and material attributes.18 The objective of “thinking from things” in a way that moves beyond cataloging material attributes and establishing chronologies is also fraught with challenges but recognizing the inherent difficulties of studying religion in the archaeological record should not preclude further attempts to understand or make informed claims about the possible uses and attendant meaning(s) of material culture.19 In a similar way, we must approach the worlds of the text and the archaeological record with due humility, recognizing the very real chasms that stand between the lived experiences of ancients and moderns. Nevertheless, I do not assume that the essence of human personhood has changed so much across time so as to render present investigators incapable of relating to ancient persons. Both then and now, religion and migration can be investigated as socially patterned processes that function according to varying scales of decisionmaking across multiple spheres of personal, corporate, and environmental interaction. With these considerations in mind, I turn now to enumerate the various constellations of evidence under examination in this volume. Several bodies of textual and inscriptional evidence are integral to this project. No doubt, biblical texts play a central role in certain formulations of Israelite religiosity. However, I recognize that they are the works of elite audiences, have undergone significant redaction, and cannot be said to always depict religious contexts accurately beyond the purview of their authors. None of these attributes excludes them as usable data for this project.

6

Introduction

I take such factors into account when analyzing various texts as forms of migration or mobility-informed literature that are both products and containers of cultures of mobility. In addition to the biblical corpus, I explore the broad datasets of inscriptional and iconographic evidence that include onomastic data, personal seals, inscriptions, petroglyphs, letters, accounts of festivals, and texts with specific religious functions like incantations. I will also present, and reinterpret, when necessary, contemporary investigations of cultic sites and installations throughout the region. In addition to analyses of temples, massēbôt, altars, incense altars, and offering remains, I will discuss religiously significant objects such as amulets, figurines, petitionary deposits, items potentially employed in acts of ancestral veneration, and home furnishings that may have been used in religious rites. These investigations of material culture will be situated in the broader cultural contexts of foodways, birthing and naming practices, and mortuary customs. Finally, readers should know that my approach to mobility/migration studies and religious/biblical studies is grounded in the meta-theoretical constellation known as critical realism.20 Without a full exposition of this philosophical grounding, it will suffice to say that my evaluations of textual data and material culture center realist notions of causation, agency, and contingency in experiences of mobility, migration, and religiosity.

Why This Book? The work of historians depends in part on an assumed equivalence between past and present experience that allows one to speak of the past in presently intelligible terms. While the strength of such continuities ebb and flow, there are moments in the present that find heightened consonance with those long-passed by their similarities in kind, if not also degree. This characterization is particularly appropriate in discussions comparing human movements and migrations of the 20th and 21st centuries with those of the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Although humans have been a mobile species for much of their existence, there are points at which movement has been more extensive than at others. In both scale and scope, the range of mobilities in these ancient eras maintains continuity with the present so as to invite comparative investigation that other periods of history have not afforded. From the end of the Bronze Age throughout the Iron Age, the Levant was a place of expansive mobilities. The Late Bronze Age (1500–1200 BCE) was an age of robust inter-regional contact and exchange among polities in the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Elam that has been described as an “age of internationalism.”21 The political structure of the period was one in which independent territorial kingdoms maintained political parity with one another through a system that employed the diplomatic language of the patrimonial household.22 The hierarchy and diplomatic language of the system is especially apparent in the international correspondence known as the Amarna letters.23 Limited autonomy was granted and a balance of power

Introduction 7

struck among these regional polities that, for a time, benefited the elites of both ruling and vassal classes enough that attempts at territorial expansion were limited. In the end, the age of imperial parity was not to last forever. The period of transition between the Bronze and Iron Age is commonly explained using the language of systemic collapse.24 Data from the Aegean to the Zagros indicate major changes in the political, economic, and even climatic status quo. Significant population declines and movements occurred, as did the widespread reorganization of both rural and urban socio-economic networks. Ascertaining the causes of this systemic change is difficult. Even as the significant changes in imperial structures and socio-economic organization are acknowledged, it should be recognized that the “dark ages” between the end of the Bronze Age and the beginning of the Iron Age were not as “dark” as we might imagine, a testament to the fact that persons and groups maintain differing capacities for resiliency in the face of disruptions.25 Mobility continued to flourish during this era as populations relocated and interacted with new groups through the processes of resettlement and reorganization.26 Several scholars have shown that a great deal of cultural creation and exchange continued to take place.27 Human flourishing was made possible, in part, by older mobility networks that persisted and also by novel ones created in the aftermath of regional reorientations. Thus, Hodos writes of the Mediterranean in the Iron Age, “For the first time in Mediterranean history, individuals and groups of people travelled further, in greater numbers and with increasing frequency than ever before witnessed.”28 Therefore, while there is relatively less evidence for monumental achievements like textual creation or of material cultural artifacts that would qualify as fine art, there is no reason to assume any longer that this period was one of socio-cultural stagnation and parochialism. Instead, it is clearer now than ever that it was a time of increasing cultural pluriformity, particularly when viewed in comparison to the predominantly homogeneous material culture found in the Late Bronze Age Levant.29 This increasingly mobile world is the landscape within which Israel emerges, and one of the contexts that inform its religious identity. By the Iron II period, new imperial actors arrived on the scene and the peoples of Canaan fell under the spheres of subsequent Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian influence. Already at the end of the Bronze Age, Assyrian leaders like Assur-uballit I, Tukulti-Ninurta I, and Tiglath-pileser I extended their reach to the doorstep of the Levant. Renewed Assyrian domination of the region began under Assurbanipal II in the 9th century but was more fully recognized with Shalmaneser III’s repeated campaigns beyond the Euphrates to squelch Neo-Hittite growth.30 In the 8th century, Tiglath-pileser III initiated a powerful resurgence of Assyrian control over the Levant.31 Collectively, these incursions, which spanned multiple centuries, resulted in the provincializing of Levantine polities. While the reborn Babylonian empire continued similar efforts in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE by overtaking many of the territories previously subdued by the Assyrians, it did so in a different fashion. Finally, we also witness Egypt’s momentary

8

Introduction

resurgence around the time of Neo-Babylonia’s rise to power. As a result of re-emergent Egyptian pressure, Babylon’s energies were focused on the Levant in different ways than those of the unchallenged Neo-Assyrians.32 Each of these transitions in hegemonic power brought with its distinct cultures of mobility. Throughout, people’s religious identities were influenced by being on the move and through indirect participation within various cultures of mobility. The importance of this project is found in the reality that as humanity moves further into the 21st century, neither human migration nor religious activity appears to be losing momentum. The current number of humans circulating our planet is unprecedented. Globalization, climate change, and conflict zones have generated movements of more people than ever before. In 2020, the number of international migrants reached 280.6 million.33 Ecological and political conditions that were catalysts of movement in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages are surfacing once again.34 Some of the most traveled migration routes in the Middle East, North Africa, and Eastern Europe follow the same paths that ancient movers once trod. Today, as in the ancient world, cultures of religiosity are interconnected with cultures of mobility. Unfortunately, the intersections of mobilities and religiosities have received less attention than they deserve. Assumptions that the secularization of society would continue, and that religion would eventually go the way of the buffalo allowed researchers to discount religion as an integral aspect of the migration experience. Nevertheless, the fundamental claims of secularization theory have not come to fruition. This is not only apparent in the United States, but throughout the 2/3s world, and even in parts of Europe, such as Austria and Norway, where the theory has maintained solid traction in the last decades.35 Some have taken the current situation as an indication that the world is witnessing a kind of re-enchantment. Others have argued that secularized society and religion are not mutually exclusive of one another. The point to be made here is that we cannot adequately understand processes of human migration without accounting for religion in the lives of migrants. Therefore, we must work to further understand the interrelationships of mobilities and religiosities if we are to provide an accurate account of the drivers and modes of human movement and of the effects of movement on religious belief and action. Our recognition of the significant role that religion plays in the lives of many migrants can be a starting point from which we might better understand occurrences of migration in the ancient world and respond to present questions and issues arising from human movement. This pursuit includes deepening our understanding of migrants’ religiosities as toolkits that migrants enact throughout all stages of the migration process as well as accounting for religion as a complex set of social forces that maintain causative influence over their lives. A growing body of anecdotal and ethnographic data indicates that migrants draw on, adapt, and add to their religious toolkits throughout the various

Introduction 9

stages of their moves in order to accomplish physical, social, and spiritual ends. Religious identity can be seen, along with other micro-factors of solvency, such as economic or social capital, to influence the perceptions and realities of choice for a particular migrant at a given time and location.36 Moreover, religious affiliations and attachments offer personal and socially located criteria by which one constructs a complex evaluative schema for determining if and when to leave as well as how to respond to particular opportunities, dangers, successes, and failures along the way. In these ways, migrants’ religious identities can inform, overwhelm, and restructure their priorities. Research around migrants’ religious behaviors indicates that religious practice and belief in pre-migrational, migrational, and post-migrational contexts has profound influences over migrants’ conceptions of movement, responses to place, and overall decision-making throughout the migration process. Many migrants make religiously informed decisions according to different sets of criteria than those generally assumed according to dominant social or economic theories. Just as scholars of religion and migration work together to better understand and account for the mutually influential relationship between migration and religion, it is imperative that scholars of the Bible and of Israelite religion also integrate these findings in their textual exegesis and historical accounts. The goal is to take migration and religion seriously as social enterprises. This is to say, that neither are social processes that merely happen to people, but rather, both religion and migration are constructive aspects of reality that persons participate in. Studying mobility and religiosities in the ancient world should cause moderns to ponder our own understandings of religious expression as it relates to personal geographies and movement. By recognizing that continuities exist among the archaeological material, textual records, and modern experiences of religiosity in contexts of mobility and migration, we see that the shared search for such ontological clarity binds moderns to ancient peoples. This shared bond should be explored as a resource for answering long-standing questions about what it means to be human. In particular, we should ask what it means to be human when, for most of human history, being human has entailed being on the move.

Notes 1 Arthur Bernard Knapp and Peter Van Dommelen, eds., The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Jan Driessen, ed., Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean (Leuven: Peeters, 2018); Antonis Kotsonas and Jana Mokrišová, “Mobility, Migration, and Colonization,” in The Wiley Companion to the Archaeology of Early Greece and the Mediterranean, eds. Irene S. Lemos and Antonis Kotsonas (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 217–46; Peter van Dommelen, “Colonialism and Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean,” The Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): 393–409; Tamar Hodos, The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age: A Globalising World c.1100–600 BCE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). Assaf Yasur-Landau, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Bronze Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

10 Introduction 2 Anne Porter, Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 3 Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 3. 4 Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 2. 5 Thomas Nail, The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 3–5; John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the 21st Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 1–3. Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 71. 6 Nail, Figure of the Migrant, 39. 7 Cf. Da Riva and Fink, “Introduction,” 108. 8 Cf. John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 1–5. 9 Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “Migration, Hybridization, and Resistance: Identity Dynamics in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter Van Dommelen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 252–65; Walter Burkert, “Migrating Gods and Syncretisms: Forms of Cult Transfer in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in Kleine Schriften II, eds. Walter Burkert, Christoph Riedweg, and M. Laura Gemelli Marciano (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 17–36; Tamar Hodos, Local Responses to Colonization in the Iron Age Mediterranean (New York: Routledge, 2006); Thomas Staubli, Das Imagen der Nomaden im Alten Israel und in der Ikonographie seiner sesshaften Nachbaren, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 107 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991); Melanie Wasmuth, ed., Handel als Medium von Kulturkontakt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015); Gina Konstantopoulos, “Migrating Demons, Liminal Deities, and Assyria’s Western Campaigns,” Advances in Ancient Biblical, and Near Eastern Research 1 (2021): 129–48. 10 Some exceptions to this trend are Melanie Wasmuth and Pearce Paul Creaseman, eds., “People on the Move: Framework, Means, and Impact of Mobility across the Eastern Mediterranean Region in the 8th to 6th Century BCE,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Connections 12 (2016); Melanie Wasmuth, Handel als Medium von Kulturkontakt; and a handful of scholars in Jan Driessen, ed., An Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13thc. BCE Eastern Mediterranean (Louvain: Presses Univeritaires de Louvain, 2018). 11 Cf. Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” Environment and Planning 38 (2006): 207–26. 12 Tero Alstola, “Judean Merchants in Babylonia and Their Participation in LongDistance Trade,” Welt des Orients 47 (2017): 25–51; Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “Swinging on the ‘Sorek Seesaw’: Tel Beth-Shemesh and the Sorek Valley in the Iron Age,” in The Shephelah during the Iron Age: Recent Archaeological Studies, eds. Oded Lipschits and Aren M. Maeir (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 27–43; Anne Killebrew, “The Emergence of Ancient Israel: The Social Boundaries of a ‘Mixed Multitude’ in Canaan,” in I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, eds. Aren M. Maeir et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 555–72; Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion, and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2014); Ido Koch, “Settlements and Interactions in the Shephelah during the Late Second through Early First Millennia BCE,” in The Shephelah during the Iron Age: Recent Archaeological Studies, eds. Oded Lipschits and Aren M. Maeir (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 181–207; Benjamin W. Porter, “Assembling the Iron Age Levant: The Archaeology of Communities, Polities, and Imperial Peripheries,” Journal of Archaeological Research 24 (2016): 373–420. 13 Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 62.

Introduction

11

14 Yorke M. Rowan, “Beyond Belief: The Archaeology of Religion and Ritual,” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 21 (2012): 1–10. 15 Rosen, Revolutions in the Desert, 3. See also Øystein S. LaBianca, “Subsistence Pastoralism,” in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richard (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 116–23, 116. 16 Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 8–65. 17 Steven A. Rosen, Revolutions in the Desert: The Rise of Mobile Pastoralism in the Southern Levant (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 4; Timothy Insoll, Archaeology, Ritual, Religion (London: Routledge, 2004). 18 Rowan, “Beyond Belief,” 3–4. 19 Alison Wylie, Thinking from Things: Essays in the Philosophy of Archaeology (Berkley: University of California Press, 2002), 1–22. 20 Peter Ratcliffe, “Migration Studies,” in Dictionary of Critical Realism (New York: Routledge, 2007), 313–14. See also Theodoros Iosifides, Qualitative Methods in Migration Studies: A Critical Realist Perspective (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–4; 231–38. 21 Ann E. Killebrew, “Introduction to the Levant during the Transitional Late Bronze/ Iron Age I and Iron Age I Periods,” in The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology in the Levant, eds. Margreet L. Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 595–606. 22 Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000–323 BC, 3rd ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 142. The parity of these powers is well captured in EA 29; William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). For an excellent introduction to the contours of household relations from the Old Babylonian period which were mirrored in subsequent periods, see Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria, and Israel: Continuity and Change in Forms of Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 13–41. 23 While the leaders of the “club of great powers,” consistently related to one another through fraternal association, the vassal kingdoms in the regions over which they ruled were addressed as “servants” of their client kingdom “fathers.” Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 144. Written primarily in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the time, many of these letters catalog the requests of regional “mayors” (Akk. ḫazannu: Egypt. ḫ3ty-‘) to the Pharaoh (Akk. rābisu), identified as the “overseer of all the northern lands,” for intervention in matters of territorial disputations, taxation, and quibbling between local powers competing for status and protection. See Gösta W. Alhström, “Administration of the State in Canaan and Ancient Israel,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000), 587–603. Others stretch beyond the realm of vassal-lord inquiries to display the communication between the imperial actors of the time wherein they discuss the matters of marital exchanges, gifts sent and received by royal households, and the general business of diplomacy. Nadav Na’aman, “The Egyptian-Canaanite Correspondence,” in Canaan in the Second Millennium B.C.E. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 25–39. Cf. Van De Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 146. For examples of correspondence capturing such exchanges, see EA 11 and 16. 24 Cf. Eric H. Cline, 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); William G. Dever, Beyond the Text: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 107–12; Jan Driessen, ed., Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean (Leuven: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2018); Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: History, Society, and Economy, trans. Soraia Tabatabai (London: Routledge, 2014), 383–89. 25 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Beth Alpert Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron Age 1,” Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999): 62–127; Benjamin W. Porter, “Assembling the Iron Age Levant: The Archaeology of Communities, Polities, and Imperial

12 Introduction

26

27

28 29 30

31

32 33 34

35

Peripheries,” Journal of Archaeological Research 24 (2016): 373–420. See also Pitkänen, who uses the language of collapse, though appropriately tempers it by asserting that “[O]ne does not need to assume everything collapsed in the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition; on the contrary, in some parts life may, or is even likely to, have more or less gone on as before.” Pitkänen, Migration and Colonialism, 94. Tamar Hodos, Local Responses to Colonization in the Iron Age Mediterranean (London: Routledge, 2006), 3–9. See also Tamar Hodos, The Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age: A Globalising World c.1100–600 BCE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 94–97; Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, “Egypt and the Levant in the Iron Age I-IIa: The Pottery Evidence,” Tel Aviv 38 (2011): 94–119; Gregory D. Mumford, “Egypt and the Levant,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000-332 BCE, eds. Margreet Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 69–89; Paula Waiman-Barak, Ayelet Gilboa, and Yuval Goren, “A Stratified Sequence of Early Iron Age Egyptian Ceramics at Tel Dor, Israel,” Ägypten und Levante 24 (2014): 315–42. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “Migration, Hybridization, and Resistance: Identity Dynamics in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 252–65; A. Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen, “Mediterranean Introductions,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze & Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter Van Dommelen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1–6; Tamar Hodos, “Colonisations and Cultural Developments in the Central Mediterranean,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze & Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter Van Dommelen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 215–29. Hodos, “Colonisations and Cultural Developments,” 215. Killebrew, “Introduction to the Levant,” 596–606. Avraham Faust and Shawn Zelig Aster, “The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination: An Introduction,” in The Southern Levant Under Assyrian Domination, eds. Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 1–19; Margreet L. Steiner, “Introduction to the Levant in the Iron Age II Period,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, c. 8000-323BCE, eds. Margreet L. Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 677–82. Steiner, “Levant in the Iron Age II,” 678; Cf. Tammi J. Schneider, “Mesopotamia (Assyrians and Babylonians) and the Levant,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, c. 8000-323BCE, eds. Margreet L. Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 98–106. Schneider, “Mesopotamia (Assyrians and Babylonians) and the Levant,” 104–5. https://migrationdataportal.org/international-data?i=stock_abs_&t=2020 See the various chapters in Natalia Ribas-Mateos, ed., Migration and Mobilities and the Arab Spring: Spaces of Refugee Flight in the Eastern Mediterranean (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2016). See also Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom, “Understanding Migrant Decisions: From Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region,” in Understanding Migrant Decisions: From Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–16. Alastair Ager and Joey Ager, “Challenging the Discourse on Religion, Secularism, and Displacement,” in The Refugee Crisis and Religion: Secularism, Security, and Hospitality in Question, eds. Luca Mavelli and Erin K. Wilson (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 37–51; Isabella Buber-Ennser et al., “Multi-Layered Roles of Religion among Refugees Arriving in Austria around 2015,” Religions 9 (2018): doi:10.3390/rel9050154; Stephen M. Cherry, “Exploring the Contours of Transnational Religious Spaces and Networks,” in Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer B. Saunders et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 195–224; John Coffey and Alister

Introduction

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Chapman, “Introduction: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion,” in Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, eds. Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 1–23; Fenggang Yang and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 269–88; Alex Stepick, “God is Apparently Not Dead: The Obvious, the Emergent, and the Still Unknown in Immigration and Religion,” in Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America, eds. Karen Isaksen Leonard et al. (Walnut Creek: Altamira, 2005), 11–37. 36 Samadia Sadouni, “‘God Is Not Unemployed’: Journeys of Somali Refugees in Johannesburg,” African Studies 68 (2009): 235–49.

2

Conceptual Frameworks for Studying Mobility, Migration, and Religion in the Ancient Past

Movement, Mobility, Motility, and Migration Throughout the final quarter of the 20th century, social scientists worked to answer difficult but necessary questions raised by postmodernist critiques of positivist empiricism.1 Their investigations rightly brought to light methodological and epistemological deficiencies in the fields of religious studies and geography, among others, which led to several theoretical transitions broadly referred to as the turn to the subject. In geography, these shifts took the form of the spatial turn – seen prominently in the work of those like David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, Doreen Massey, and Edward Soja – and the more recent new mobilities turn, as visible in the work of scholars such as Peter Adey, Mimi Sheller, and John Urry. Through these transitions, there developed an acute awareness across fields of the power dynamics of space, place, and movement. Accordingly, focus shifted from traditionally defined modes of mapping and discussions of space as a static reality to those in which all space is understood as being shot through with meaning that depends on, and generates, power differentials. It is this negotiated quality of space that necessitates an explanation of the differences between the terms – movement, mobility, motility, and migration. Movement is the most expansive term for expressing transitions in material and locational statuses over time. People, things, and ideas move. Movement is a fundamental aspect of social life. Competition and cooperation are foundational to the social experience of many animals as groups capitalize on limited material (food, water, and land) and immaterial (power and status) resources through effective strategies of movement. Movement occurs within the body and by means of the body. It may take place in a small area or result in the crossing of large distances. It can be lineal or cyclical, rapid or slow, undertaken as an unassisted body or with the aid of bodily extensions, prosthetics, animals, or machines. Regardless of the combination of these variables, movement is shaped by social networks and varying degrees of agency. In a broad sense, the adjective mobile characterizes someone already on the move in one way or another. For example, mobile pastoralists are mobile in this most basic sense since they participate in a variety of geographically, DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-2

Conceptual Frameworks

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climatically, and socially informed physical movements in particular regions. The term can also refer to the latent capacity or suitability that a person or object has for movement. In this regard, a mobile phone is not always on the move, nor is it capable of movement by its own volition but can be taken along when necessary.2 By themselves, the statuses of being mobile or immobile are neither intrinsically positive or negative, but always tied to larger contexts of agency and access.3 Tensions between potential and actualized mobility are apparent in experiences of contrasting physical and social mobility. It is possible to be socially mobile but physically sedentary or, highly physically mobile, but socially immobile. The same nomads who are physically mobile may experience fluctuations in social or economic mobility given their context. Mobility is to movement as place is to location; social construction lies at the core.4 Societies cultivate and perpetuate cultures of mobility that set the acceptable physical and social boundaries of movement. Different bodies are expected to have and are granted different spectrums of movement. Certain modes of movement are privileged while others are stigmatized or labeled deviant. Complex explicit and implicit pressures govern personal and corporate choices for when, how, and how far one can move. To study mobility is to study the experience of movement as it is defined according to power relationships; it is to study meanings. Mobilities is the term used to specify collective phenomena of movement, as well as their attendant structures and infrastructures that enable flows of people, things, and ideas. It is in cataloguing such patterns and means of movement that one can elucidate cultures of mobility. Tensions between mobility and social control are an ever-present reality.5 If determined to be imbued with legitimate purpose and taking place within socially acceptable chronological, geographical, or economic limits, mobility can be prized by a social group or institution, but boundless or meaningless transience is subject to suspicion, or even impediment. In the case of modern nation states, the ultra-transient person, whether labeled a gypsy, nomad, vagabond, pastoralist, over-lander, hobo, vagrant, or elsewise, can raise serious concerns by straining state structures of observation, accountability, and control.6 Such individuals are often negatively viewed in terms of their lack of contributions to “established” society, an assumption rooted in the worldview that, while movement and migration are undertakings that aid in society’s flourishment, the essence of society is sedentariness.7 Often in a modern Western perspective, a mobile person (typically white and male) is considered to enjoy a particular kind of freedom or empowerment derived from the unboundedness of their range of movement. In this sense, mobility is a marker of privilege and an indicator of opportunities unrealized by the immobile.8 Such associations appear through the inherent promise of success, adventure, and freedom embedded in a phrase like “Go West, young man!” or, in the growing openness toward the ultra-mobile remote work, overlanding, and vagabond cultures of the 21st century.

16 Conceptual Frameworks

The power dynamics that govern mobility can be more adequately understood through the adjacent concept of motility. Motility was originally applied in anatomical and biological sciences to refer to an organism’s capacity for movement.9 The greater range of options that an organism or limb has for movement, the greater its degree of motility. In geography, the term allows for distinctions between potential and actualized movement and provides a means to speak of one’s capacity for movement as a form of social capital that changes across geographic and social contexts.10 Beyond biological capabilities or physical intentions, environment, culture, and social location also determine one’s ability to move. Each person draws differently on a unique repertoire of resources when calculating opportunities for movement. In doing so, they assess not only causational phenomena but also their limits of access and the skills required to enact latent capacities to move. Motility should not, however, be reduced to access or agency. Both access and agency are constituent elements of mobilization, but other social and physical frameworks are required to actualize movement.11 Furthermore, motility is not simply synonymous with aspiration or freedom. Self-determination and a lack of constraints each play a part in catalyzing movement, but movement can be encouraged or limited by contingencies beyond personal desire or independence. Migration is a category of movement that can be differentiated by its forces of causation, chronological scope, and geographical scale. It is recognizable by elements of long-term re-locative intention that can be linear or cyclical. As a culturally patterned practice, migration is a “rational and rationalizing act,” but it is not only or primarily the outcome of macro-level pull factors or even of personal choice.12 Migration is a strategic choice that is operationalized as one of many responsive functions to life challenges.13 Migration is undertaken in relationship to social units and systems of meaning that are themselves informed and limited by other environments, systems, and agents. As planned, patterned, and socially contextualized movement, migration takes place within larger matrices of migratory culture and cultures of mobility.14 For this reason, migration is best understood using processual terminology. The complexities of movement rarely follow a single line of relocation from point A to point B. Even when movers follow patterned transit routes, individual experience leads to variations in where one decides to stop, where one stays, when one keeps moving, and whether one intends to return to previous sites. Thus, migration is shaped by movers’ varying personal and corporate capacities but also by external limits. The power differentials that catalyze, perpetuate, or constrain migration are expressible using the frameworks of mobility and motility.

Past and Present Terminology for Movement and Migration As it does today, human movement in the world of ancient Israel took on many different forms, including various modes of travel, work, pilgrimage,

Conceptual Frameworks

17

migration/resettlement, and pastoral/subsistence nomadism. Yet, translating ancient terms for movement or types of movers and correlating those terms with modern categories presents several difficulties. The root of the English term migration can be traced to the Latin migrare, which initially implied simple movement and only later took on the additional meaning of more indefinite relocation. The semantic trail is, however, more complicated to follow across Semitic languages. Like the Akkadian alāku, the Hebrew hlḵ (‫ )הלך‬functions as a common verb for movement and includes the meanings of walking, following, and dispersion. Hlḵ also maintains a secondary aspect of ethical disposition or religious orientation, as when Israel is chided for following foreign deities (1 Kgs 18:21; Jer 2:2; Hos 2:7) and celebrated for walking after Yahweh (Mic 4:5). The Akkadian ebēru/ebāru denotes the act of crossing over a land feature or boundary. In Hebrew, we find the cognate, ʿḇr/‫ עבר‬denotes human transience (Jdgs 11:29) and border crossing (Num 32:7). The term yrḏ (‫ )ירד‬broadly means “to go down,” either from an elevated place (Exod 19:14) or to move geographically southward (Gen. 12:10). When humans die, they travel down to Sheol (Gen 37:35). The same word is sometimes used to describe theophanic descent from the heavens (Gen 11:5; Exod 3:8). The verb ḇwʾ (‫)בוא‬ signals arrival or entry (Jdgs 6:11), but occasionally also means to depart (Josh 2:22). In the Hiphil, ḇwʾ captures the activity of bringing something or someone to be in a specific time or place (Gen 4:4). Movement away from a place is typically described using yṣʾ (‫)יצא‬. In the Hiphil, yṣʾ is one of the primary terms employed to describe Yahweh’s salvific activity, particularly as he leads Israel out of slavery in Egypt (Exod 6:6; Deut 5:15, 26:8; Ps 136:11; Jer 32:21). An additional term of departure, nsʿ (‫ )נסע‬is used to denote the repetitious movement of starting again after one has stopped. The term’s underlying connotation of “tearing/pulling out” relates to the act of removing tent stakes from the ground before journeying onward (Gen 33:12). Beyond these general terms for movement, others describe more qualitatively intensive forms of movement. The Hebrew nwd (‫ )נוד‬and nwʿ (‫)נוע‬ denote the act of wandering characterized by great insecurity as transient movement is often associated with brevity of existence. Thus, after murdering his brother, Cain’s fear of banishment is predicated on the fact that his ceaseless wandering as a nāʿ (‫)נע‬, or fugitive, will make him a target of violence (Gen 4:14); although, he eventually comes to dwell under divine protection in the “land of wandering” (‫( )בארץ־נוד‬Gen 4:16). Similarly, the claim, ‫ארמי אבד אבי‬, commonly translated, “My father was a wandering Aramean,” (Deut 26:5) captures the ephemeral nature of endlessly mobile existence. Unfortunately, enraptured with romanticized ideals of nomadism, many Western interpreters have understood this claim as a statement of ancestral wanderlust. However, the term, ovēd (‫)אבד‬, which typically means “to perish” or “be destroyed,” should be more accurately translated to demonstrate the perilous register of movement. Another verb of flight, ḇrḥ (‫)ברח‬, indicates sudden movement in the face of danger or escape from

18 Conceptual Frameworks

punishment. Thus, Jacob is told by Rebekkah to flee (ḇrḥ) to Haran to avoid Esau’s retribution (Gen 27:43). Like the nominal form of (‫)נוד נע‬, the substantive bāriaḥ (‫ )בריח‬typically denotes a fugitive. The terms galah (‫)גלה‬, galut (‫)גלות‬, and golah (‫ )גולה‬have been translated as captivity, exile, deportation, and more recently, as forced or involuntary migration. Each of these glosses is an attempt to indicate the coercive nature of the experience. Although Akkadian, Aramaic, Arabic, and modern Hebrew cognates of galah are associated with acts of migration or wandering, some of which may have been understood as uncoerced, the semantic domain of the biblical Hebrew lexeme does not contain a great deal of room for experiences of personally instigated movement. Using the verb galah reflexively as an expression of bodily exposure, self-revelation, or disclosure is possible (Gen 35:7; Lev 18:6). Likewise, one can, in effect, galah another as an act of removing them or causing them to move, although this use is typically reserved to describe divinely initiated movement or that inspired by an agent acting on behalf of the divine (2 Kgs 18:11, 25:11; Jer 29:7). The verb can also be used in a stative sense to describe something or someone that has been removed from a particular location (Jer 29:4). Occasionally, in infinitive construct form with verbs such as hlk (‫ )הלך‬or yṣʾ (‫)יצא‬, galah denotes the active sense of one being taken into exile. In all of this, however, one does not galah themselves as a means of personal movement (cf. Lev 18:6-19; 1 Sam 2:27, 14:8). The same can be said of the coerced movement implied by šḇh (‫)שׁבה‬, to take or be taken captive, of ʿqr (‫)עקר‬, to uproot, and of gerash (‫)גרשׁ‬, which generally indicates the experience of a person or people being driven out of a particular place (Gen 3:25, 12:39; Exod 34:11; Lev 21:7; Job 30:5). Similar verbs of translocation, removal, banishment, or scattering include ḇzr (‫)בזר‬, ḏḥh (‫)דחה‬, zrh (‫)זרה‬, np̱ ṣ (‫)נפץ‬, and p̱ wṣ (‫)פוץ‬. The Akkadian ubāru(m)/ubārtu(m) (ubru/wabru) signals a person’s identity as a foreigner or resident alien and is frequently used to describe travelers or those seeking to establish themselves as foreign workers. Someone whose movement is characterized by flight, whether as a fugitive or a refugee, is commonly described in Akkadian as munabtu. The Akkadian tamkārum is more commonly used to specify merchants and traders, movers who bring with them goods or who facilitate the exchange of goods rather than providing labor.15 Hebrew terms for persons residing for an indefinite time in a land that is not their homeland include gēr (‫)גר‬, the nominal form of gwr (‫)גור‬ “to dwell/take up residence” and ṯôšāḇ (‫)תושׁב‬, the nominal form of the verb yašaḇ (‫)ישׁב‬, which generally means, “to sit/dwell,” but can also include the domains of inhabiting or passing through a particular place. Gwr is not itself a verb of movement, but instead captures the activity of settling down as a resident in a foreign land. Traditional glosses for gēr include sojourner, stranger, resident alien, and even refugee. Status as a gēr might entail geographic movement but the term conveys social marginalization more than the explicit experience of translocation, though movement and marginalization are certainly interconnected. The Hebrew neḵār (‫)נכר‬/noḵri (‫)נכרי‬

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denotes an additional category of person – sometimes a mover – who is recognizable as a foreigner, sometimes specifically as a foreign enemy (Gen 17:12; Lev 22:25; Deut 14:21; Judg 19:12).16 In certain instances, one who is identified as a neḵār appears to have comparatively greater economic means and social mobility than a gēr (Gen 17:12, 27). Employing the terminology of mobility studies, we might say that these types of movers are distinguished according to their relative levels of motility. The term zār (‫ )זר‬is used frequently to describe another class of person who lies beyond the bounds of immediate kinship (Num 1:51; 3:38; Deut 25:5). At other times, the term connotes any non-Levitical person (Lev 22:10, 12; Num 16:40). Having outlined these various expressions for movement and movers, the warning that follows is that we must tread carefully when applying modern terms for migrational phenomena to those we seek to illuminate in the ancient world. Performing social science informed readings requires more than appropriating terminology from fields beyond biblical or ancient Near Eastern studies. At the least, it requires conveying to readers how specific terms function in their original disciplinary contexts. But more than this, it requires bringing specific evidence from social science research to the text while at the same time articulating the limits of the terms and theories to describe or interpret phenomena beyond the original fields of study. Modern classifications of movement and movers employed by the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Population Division, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees are based on post-Westphalian nation-state systems of citizenship.17 These terms are tailored to address specific situations of movement within the legislative frameworks of global diplomatic protocol and international human rights. Biblical scholars should avoid using them as heuristic categories because, more often than not, doing so skews readings of material culture and textual data. Migration scholars themselves have even raised warnings against limiting descriptions of movement to the terms set forth by modern nation-state bodies.18 Such terms interpret migration primarily from the purview of the state, not from that of migrants themselves. Likewise, the terms artificially demarcate, and even erase, modes of human movement that states cannot or do not want to account for. The pervasive tendency among some scholars to over-articulate biblical scenes of movement using modern terminology is readily apparent in readings that describe Adam and Eve as being “evicted by their landlord,” that “Noah and his family flee climate change,” or that the Hebrews “leave Egypt in search of religious freedom.”19 Such readings ultimately do violence to the biblical text and mislead non-specialist readers. There is no term in Hebrew to denote a native inhabitant who relocates within the borders of their own state, as is the case with the modern category of internally displaced persons. Nor is there a specific category of stateless persons in the ancient world. Even employing terms such as asylum seeker or refugee must be done with consideration for the ways their official definitions depend on governmental conventions of classification

20 Conceptual Frameworks

and an honest concession to readers that these terms have no direct correspondence to ancient categories.20 Likewise, using terms like transnational(ism) or fabricating others such as “externally displaced person” to discuss the ancestral narratives and prophetic texts risks reducing mobility-informed readings to nonsense.21 Even when the stated objective of such scholarship is to clarify the use of social science models and apply them appropriately to studies of ancient texts and context, such readings do not offer the intended interdisciplinary migration-informed analyses but rather, superficial exegesis of migrational moments in the text. In a similar way, selectively mining biblical or ancient Near Eastern content to argue for or against modern mobility regimes is hugely problematic.22 Just as scholars of the ancient world should demonstrate responsibility in their usage of modern terms for movers, we must also approach discussions of means and processes of movement using proper terminology. Terms such as human trafficking and smuggling are increasingly present among biblical scholars generating migration-informed readings. Smuggling and trafficking are also often wrongly used as synonyms by biblical scholars even though they are distinct forms of movement, with trafficking referring to coerced forms of movement and smuggling referring to various forms of assisted movement – often entered into willingly by migrants themselves. While the use of these terms is not altogether unsatisfactory, scholars who employ them should be aware of their distinct applications in the realms of international migration law. The term forced migration has also gained significant traction among biblical scholars looking to better understand and explain the complex realities of Israel and Judah’s various experiences of exile.23 Part of the difficulty in applying the concept to studies of the biblical text or the ancient Near East is that migration scholars have not resolved among themselves whether forced migration is even a legitimate descriptive category.24 In lieu of its use, some have opted for the category of involuntary migration, although this solution does not sufficiently address the underlying questions of agency that attend all movement, even that which is characterized by coercion.25 In general, the categories of forced or involuntary migration fail to capture the discursive and processual nature of migration by making it appear that movement takes place as a single externally catalyzed and often permanent act of relocation.26 Richmond, and others following him, have opted to describe migrant agency along a continuum, a reality I deal with using the concept of motility. Richmond’s work, which emerges from studies specific to populations officially classified as refugees, identifies how migrants’ decision-making unfolds across a spectrum delimited by proactive and reactive movements.27 Targeted application of the terminology of forced/involuntary migration can be helpful, but it should not be wielded as a catch-all. Nor should the term be used in a way that promotes the idea that forced/involuntary migration is the only or even the dominant form of migration in the ancient world. Likewise, the use of contemporary categories such as development induced forced migration, derivative forced migration, responsive forced migration, and purposive forced migration does little to bring clarity to the

Conceptual Frameworks 28

21

reconstructions of mobility and migration in the ancient world. Having used the term forced migration before in my own work, I have opted to largely avoid it in this volume, employing it sparingly with judicious attention to the agencies of persons or parties described. One final term deserves redress. For more than 40 years, biblical scholars and scholars of the ancient Near East have referred to the resettlement of war captives, exiled elites, and more ambiguously defined movers in the wake of imperial incursions collectively as “deportations.” However, the term, as it is understood and used in modern migrational parlance, does not encompass the activities of bringing war captives back as booty, nor does it entail the action of sending residents of the winning side’s territory to newly conquered lands.29 In terms of contemporary study of movement, deportation is the removal of both citizens and non-citizens to a place beyond the boundaries of a state where the person is separated from that state’s responsibility and typically from its authority.30 By this definition, we can see that current uses of the term in biblical studies and its attendant fields do not accurately describe the activities or events under consideration. Rather than deportation, we witness the resettlement of populations to places that remain within the political jurisdiction of a central power enacting the movement. Likewise, relocated peoples are generally integrated with native populations and social structures. In the specific cases of Israel and Judah experiences of invasion, the hegemonic powers of Assyria and Babylonia strategically resettled persons within their expanding spheres of domination. No Israelites or Judahites are “sent home” in this process. Likewise, those Assyrians or Babylonians who were selected to live in newly conquered lands remained under the political auspices of the sending powers. In sum, many migration-informed readings proceed from a good-faith initiative to demonstrate the relevance of biblical texts for historical and theological reflection in the present global moment of migration awareness. Likewise, modern migration theory and terminology have been employed by well-intending scholars hoping to deepen insight to the often-opaque category of “exile,” as well as to counter flat presentations of human movement in the exilic period with textured accounts of varying agency.31 Nevertheless, the uncritical application of modern migration theory and terminology often fosters more harm than good. Employing these terms uncarefully or for sake of generating “cutting-edge” scholarship ultimately undermines the historical enterprise and, more importantly, trivializes the categories according to which migrants literally live and die. Whether the hope is to bridge ancient and modern worlds or to draw on scriptural traditions as resources of faith for theological or ethical insight, the endeavor must be undertaken with greater care. I will rely on general geographic terms such as movement, mover, nonmover, mobility, motility, migration, and migrant throughout this book rather than relying on the classificatory systems of modern states or international agencies.

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Insecurity and the Household: Agency and Decision-Making Among other things, the goals of migration researchers include clarifying the causes of movement, understanding personal agency and social networks that make mobility possible, and gaining a better picture of factors that shape migrants’ experiences during their journeys. Since the early days of migration studies’ existence as a field, scholars have tended to privilege explanations of movement that accord with “destination models,” which presuppose the majority of migrational activity is spurred by migrants’ knowledge of better living conditions elsewhere.32 Movement was understood as having distinct starting and ending points and was modeled after rubrics of progress that were formed around capitalist paradigms of growth/ development. Researchers articulated explanations of migrants’ behaviors primarily using economic categories such as risk/reward or cost/benefit. As a result, migrants’ adaptive behaviors were often discussed in broad strokes that gave whimsically simplistic explanations of the complex discursive processes of assimilation and acculturation. The influence of structuralism across the social sciences also ensured that explanations of acculturative behaviors fit within systematic molds of developmental theories that were tinged with leanings toward cultural progressivism and colonialism. Population movements were seen as rigidly patterned and predictably measurable events. Persons were conceived of as utility-maximizing consequentialists operating according to intrinsic economic and social laws of rational choice. They moved in predictable ways as rational economically driven actors motivated primarily by material success and self-preservation. Micro-level factors such as family dynamics, personal health, experiences of trauma, social location, gender, and education were not considered to be influential variables in migration decision-making equations. Furthermore, religion was not considered an informative factor since religion was not considered in and of itself to be a rational undertaking. Fortunately, these previous approaches have given way to theoretical models more quantum in nature.33 One such class of modalities is derived from decision-making sciences and is commonly referred to as agent-based models.34 Most migratory situations contain elements of autonomous input from migrants. Agent-based approaches begin with two fundamental aspects of human experience when approaching migrant behavior, (in)security and the household. Investigating causes and outcomes of human movement through these categories allows us to see migration as socially patterned practice that is responsive to an ever-evolving matrix of socio-cultural, political, and economic contingencies. Discussion of push and pull factors remains central to understanding the migration undertaking; the challenge is to engage the conversation without acquiescing to deterministic explanations of movement that present migrants being “pushed” or “pulled” indiscriminately by forces largely beyond their control.

Conceptual Frameworks

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An expansive range of causal mechanisms catalyze migration but, the bulk of these are associated with disruptions and insecurities at sites of origin rather than with premonitions of fortune in a new location.35 Personal aspirations and promises of success rarely play as vital a role in human movement as does the impetus to escape present social, economic, or environmental insecurities. Variabilities in decision-making among potential migrant depend on whether they have the capacity to respond to insecurity with movement. While insecurities can push migrants to move, insecurity is itself variously defined by potential migrants – as well as by their sending and receiving communities – according to their capacities for resilience in the face of a disruptive situations.36 Furthermore, insecurity not only instigates movement but can also result from movement. In this regard, migration, which functions to alleviate certain insecurities among senders and movers, can generate other insecurities for them, as well as for those communities where migrants pass through or settle. Therefore, neither disruption nor insecurity – as catalytic categories – are synonymous with causation.37 Even though migration is a response to insecurity, it is typically not uncalculated or unplanned. Rather, it is defined by socio-cultural dispositions toward mobility that persist among a given group.38 In general, barriers for relocation are high. Therefore, persons tend to move only when the insecurity of their present situation becomes intolerable, when they have the appropriate resources to do so, and when the socio-cultural contexts of movement are favorable toward migration.39 Timing and self-evaluations of agency are integral aspects of the (in)security-migration nexus. Human beings constantly evaluate their abilities to survive and thrive in specific environments based on their socio-cultural, environmental, and economic pressures. Geographers refer to the product of this ongoing evaluative process as one’s sense of place utility.40 A person’s sense of place utility fluctuates over time. Those who experience a sudden decrease in place utility along with a perceived increased utility of another location are generally more willing to relocate. In deciding whether and when to relocate, potential migrants gather information about relocative options while also evaluating possible responses to threats impacting resource access, economic well-being, and personal or familial safety. The discernment of place utility at the communal level is decidedly more complex as the concerns and motility levels of group members can conflict. In such situations, place utility may be dictated by the majority needs of the group while also being influenced by the needs and resource reservoirs of the group’s leaders. Duration dependence is a term used within the field of migration studies to explain the timing of one’s choice to depart. It is intrinsically linked to personal and communal perceptions of place utility.41 Understanding anyone’s decision to move, be it from their home country or from a location along their route, requires a reevaluation of the categories of place utility and duration dependence in light of data on religion and religiosity.42 The most influential factors motivating movement are threats of physical endangerment; however, other variables unassociated with immediate

24 Conceptual Frameworks

impingements on personal safety also influence the decision-making process.43 A migrant’s religious worldview, including their perceptions of the capacities of superhuman powers or of the ability of particular rituals to affect meaningful outcomes, offers both individual and socially located criteria according to which many migrants determine if and when departure is necessary. The insecurities that instigate much human movement also inform religious praxis. While religiosity is not simply a product of human insecurity, insecurity may heighten reliance on religious frameworks as a source of coping and through attempts to influence circumstances or outcomes.44 For some would-be movers, strong religious affiliation with a place of origin can override desires to leave, even in situations where departure is a reasonable expectation.45 For others, religiously associated sending structures can instigate and accommodate movement while providing social support, systems of meaning-making, and avenues to attain desired spiritual and physical goods. In addition to being guided by prevailing cultures of mobility, movement is a calculated social strategy that relies on the networks of biologically and socially constituted kinship structures identified as the household. The household is the fundamental locus of socialization for cultures of mobility and religiosity.46 It is in the context of a household where one first acquires language, notions of kinship, and other elements of identity. It is also the principal site in which religious perceptions are enacted and mobility is experienced. Households maintain kinship structures across distance and time, and function as distributive units for communally-held resources – including persons – that flow multi-directionally into, within, and out of the household. Households function as adaptive sending and receiving units by making strategic choices regarding the temporary and permanent relocation of members based on their collective needs, their banks of tangible and intangible resources, and the present situations in which they are enmeshed.47 Cultures of mobility are formulated in the contexts of the household as kin structures promote and discourage particular forms of movement among its members as strategic responses to the needs of the social unit. Communities and their individual members maintain varying levels of resiliency to insecurity inducing events. The household may determine on either economic or social grounds that it cannot support the people it currently maintains and therefore send members away, sometimes with the hope that they will remit resources to the home community. It is also possible that households will send members out to contribute to collective efforts to realize security for the social or geographical context in which the household operates. This can be seen when households send persons into military service in the face of a common enemy. It is even possible for households to send away members that might endanger its well-being, status, or saliency (cf. Gen 21:8-21, 27:43-28:9). The decision to send members out as migrants is always laden with risk and undertaken with careful calculation. Who moves depends on the ages and life cycle stage of its members.48 It is important to acknowledge that not all members of a household will move. Those who stay behind – commonly

Conceptual Frameworks

25

referred to as nonmovers – often play integral roles in the sending apparatus. Whenever one of its members leaves, even if only temporarily, the household must reconfigure its distribution of tasks and burdens. Despite the common image of the lone migrant who has left family and home, the data reveals unilateral decisions to move are rare. When they do occur, they can drastically destabilize a household’s homeostasis and place new burdens upon it. Even those migrants who leave their families of origin altogether behind typically enmesh themselves in another social network that functions in similar ways as a supportive decision-making framework that facilitates security and mobility.49 For members of the household who migrate or engage in highly mobile lifestyles, maintaining or reconstituting the norms of the household in new locations is paramount for personal wellbeing and for maintaining collective identity.50 Homebuilding, as a type of placemaking, can take the form of actual buildings filled with décor that constitutes the symbolic worlds of its members. The process can also take place in the absence of any physical structures, whereby the group and its interlinked networks comprise a habitable space of shared identity defined by interactive norms and similar attire, adornments, hairstyles, language, foodways, and other internally and externally intelligible markers. Homebuilding reflects both personal and corporate claims about the self, about the groups of which a person is a part, and about the interactions of the individual and the group within their surrounding contexts. Migration exposes persons to novel cultural elements and worldviews. While these new ways of being are sometimes adopted or adapted through the homebuilding process, the identities persons maintain in the broader social world may come into conflict with those maintained in the household and require negotiation between multiple senses of family and self. Beyond the household, maintaining contestant identities across social and geographic contexts can lead to tensions between sending and receiving populations, leaving migrants in a liminal social landscape.51 Households are the first place one experiences the boundaries of sociocultural elasticity.52 The spectrum of practice maintained by the older members of the household is a model of the acceptable limits of internal variability in cultural norms for younger members. The household is also the physical and fictive space from which individual and collective engagements with the larger religious worlds emanate.53 Experiences of shared family practices are often accompanied or augmented by personal preferences for elements of shared praxis and deviations from the group’s norms. Moreover, while collective behavioral patterns are operational when the household is gathered, those same practices need not be of import to individual family members in their personal religious praxis. Later movements, interactions, and affiliations can redefine foundational dispositions toward religious life, but those initial exposures to religion and religiosity are, by all accounts, deeply embedded. Households that deny any explicit interest in or connection to religious activities still set expectations for an appropriate spectrum of socio-cultural

26 Conceptual Frameworks

participation and value-laden praxis. Likewise, even when religion is not overtly a part of the group’s collective life, members may maintain their own personal religious practices.

Defining Religion and Religiosities Discussing the role of religion in the lives of persons past and present requires an explanation of what is meant when terms such as religion and religiosity are used. Early on in the study of religion in the ancient world, scholars made a distinction between ritual, as the remains of religious practice, and religion, as a systematic collection of beliefs, doctrines, and myths.54 The problem with this construal is that it offers a false dichotomization of what religion is and what religious people do. In working to rectify this artificial demarcation, I approach the study of religion with the understanding that the practices persons perform and the assumptions they maintain regarding those practices are inseparable. Likewise, I assume that all religious practice, even that which takes place in the contexts of private life, is dialogically related to broader social worlds of the practitioners. I do not consider religion to be a scholarly construction of the Academy or endorse the concept of it as wholly modern or “second-order generic concept.”55 Both elites and non-elites have long been participants in the process of creating and defining religion through their acts of religiosity. Accordingly, I explore religion as both a universal analytical category and as particular sets of praxis. Beyond defining terminology, we must also clarify the methods researchers operationalize to gather data on religious life. Doing so requires engaging the methodological quandary in the field of religious studies referred to as the emicetic distinction, which emerges from differences among scholars over the purpose of religious studies as a field and over the most appropriate sources of data used by religionists in their research. Traditionally understood, etic (or functionalist) approaches seek to define religion by collocating externally observable features to create a picture of religion writ large. On the contrary, emic (or substantive) approaches, privilege accounts of religion that emanate from the spheres of personal experience, belief, and praxis. While etic definitions provide helpful depictions of what religion looks like at the macro level, they generally lack the benefit of insider perspectives on what passes as religion in the lives of particular practitioners. Likewise, while emic approaches provide textured descriptions of personal belief and praxis, they generally fail to account for the ways those religiosities are part of larger corporate or institutional structures. The most robust accounts combine findings from these two vantage points by analyzing personal reporting alongside externally observed corporate and institutional religiosities. It is for want of an approach that allows us to grapple with the tensions between the ontological categories of the particular and the universal along with the evidential categories of direct and indirect data, that I define religion as a dynamic set of practices that are socially-regulated and culturally-limited behaviors, undergirded by assumptions of superhuman power(s) and ultimately

Conceptual Frameworks

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oriented toward access of and efficacious engagement with those powers in order to accomplish beneficial outcomes and avoid negative ones.56 This definitional framework follows a turning tide in religious studies to see the problematic nature of overfocusing analytical energy on religion as belief and instead, approaches religion as a complex of human behaviors organized around socially-derived and environmentally-conditioned presuppositions that have been institutionalized and transmitted over time.57 At first glance, an account of religion as praxis-based may appear to undermine its significance as a human endeavor by reducing it to a series of formulaic undertakings intended only to remedy mundane problems of existence.58 However, while religious behavior may indeed include activities intended to rectify problems, religion cannot be reduced to obtaining material outcomes. There are other equally important social elements and outcomes of religious behavior.59 Religiosities are also oriented toward promises of or access to blessings, which need not be construed as the anodynes of mundane problems or crises and can be immaterial.60 Aspects of religion may indeed arise from deep-seated needs to “fix things,” but to make a totalizing claim that such resolution of problems or concerns is the essence or totality of religion is reductionist.61 Furthermore, although socially-regulated and defined, religion is more than collective concern or shared experience. Religion may indeed fulfill sense-making and coping needs, but the telos of religious practice is not merely cultural meaning-making or cognitive existentialism.62 Beyond participating in systems of cultural meaning-making, religious practitioners seek to cause something to happen.63 Religion, then, is not only what people do, but also what they intend to accomplish through their doing. Similar claims can be made about the relationship between intention and actualization of human movement. Religiosity is the term employed throughout this book to describe the mix of assumptions, intentions, and enactments associated with the larger frameworks of socially patterned praxis that constitute the lived experience of practitioners. As a category, religiosity provides a terminological framework to understand the creativity of interpretation and application of both culturally-prescribed and individually tailored practices that take place at the personal and smallgroup levels. Traditional modes of measuring religiosity have focused on survey data primarily oriented toward religion as belief. Such tools have a high margin of error, though, since individuals do not commonly offer systematically robust articulations of personal belief and are also generally not very accurate representatives of their own religious behaviors.64 Most people do not conceptualize their own religious belief or practices according to categories of “orthodox” or “unorthodox”, “official” or “popular,” or even “household or “communal.” Instead, religious identities often bend or exceed the boundaries of such categories, being more fluid and contextually responsive. Rather than drawing solely on written confessions of belief or the contents of religious texts, observational focus must be expanded to include the “study of how particular people, in particular places and times, live in, with, through,

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and against the religious idioms available to them in culture – all the idioms, including (often enough) those not explicitly their ‘own.’”65 Yet, situating practitioners properly in the midst of the matrix of religious idioms is challenging, to say the least. In order to constructively contextualize religious practice, scholars must begin with the acknowledgment that different cultural fabrics have varying elasticities of practice and idiomatic boundaries. Second, they must identify as thoroughly as possible, an understanding of the culture’s perception of the body and self in order to accurately interpret the actions they observe through the lens of the given culture’s corporeal understandings. Third, scholars must account for what Robert Orsi calls “the structures of human experience,” which are the patterns of social relationships, conceptions of justice, and expectations for public and private life, including the acquisition and allocation of material goods and resources. Fourth, scholars must clarify the linguistic and symbolic frameworks through which persons in the given cultural context relate to one another and describe elements of religious life. Finally, scholars must clarify the inter-relationships between these constituent idiomatic structures which, when employed across various social and spatial contexts, generate different registers of corporate and personal religiosities.66 One of the goals of this book is to address the place of mobility within these different idiomatic matrices.

Households and Religiosity in the Ancient Near East Patrimonial households were the social core around which Late Bronze and Early Iron Age polities were formed.67 As the primary economic framework in all regions, the household undergirded the larger economic structures across the ancient Near East.68 In this volume, I consider the family to be those living directly within the spatial and supportive confines of a kin group that shared a dwelling or residential area. The family is, therefore, a smaller social unit than the household, which was composed of multiple biologically and nonbiologically related persons who lived in different dwellings but also may have lived in different regions. Daily religious praxis took place mainly in the contexts of one’s direct domestic domain. The immediate domestic unit of the family was, therefore, the fundamental site of exposure to forms of religiosity. Yet, the locus of the household is not a pure or uninfluenced social space. As with many elements of human identity, the household comes to understand itself in relationship with, and often opposition to, other structures in the social world. The household’s collective identity was thus shaped by the interrelationship of the families that comprised it, by its participation with other households in its kin network, and through interactions with larger regional or supra-regional hierarchical structures. Religious structures in the ancient Near East mirrored contemporary political structures, being formed around the actual and fictive worlds of the household or bêt’āb (Akk. bīt abim).69 Practitioners were embedded in

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overlapping socio-religious spheres that were also structured according to familial associations. Humans were not the only ones in the ancient world who related to one another in public and private spaces on familial terms. Deities also associated with one another via filial language as fathers, mothers, wives, and husbands.70 In many instances, their interactions not only mirror the contours of family life but exaggerate them. There was spousal infighting, contemptuous children, and all forms of scheming from members of the divine household seeking to gain a leg up on other deities and humans. In line with these understandings of divinity, temples were known as the “House of the God(s),” and humanity – both broadly construed and in relation to specific devotees – were identified as the gods’ children.71 Just as the household is characterized patrimonially as the house of the father, so too the primary religious identity of the family is defined by the god of the father. This deity is both the personal god of the father and of the family members. The framework of personal gods is not an aspect of ancient Near Eastern religions during all time periods but appears with increasing frequency in the Middle and Late Bronze Ages.72 By the time of Israel’s emergence, it is a familiar, if not the primary, model for conceptualizing divine-human relationships (Gen 31; Judg 17–18; 1 Sam 19; 2 Kgs 23). Evidence of personal deities is found primarily in the material remains of cylinder seals and greeting formulae in epistolary content whereby the owners of the seal or the senders of the letters were introduced via their association with a particular deity or pair of deities.73 Family and personal gods were typically deities from the lower strata of ancient Near Eastern pantheons.74 One’s family deity need not be the only deity a person venerated but it was generally understood to maintain a close relationship to each family member and could be called on to perform intercessory roles, especially those that might require access to a god of greater power or standing.75 Part of Israel and Judah’s unique religious identities is their shared identification of Yahweh as both a personal and national deity.76 In addition to the worship of personal and familial gods, the veneration of ancestors was a core element of religiosities across the ancient Near East.77 The household was constituted, in part, by its members’ shared actions of naming, invoking, and feeding ancestors. One goal of ancestral veneration was to ensure success for the next generation of offspring.78 Another was to settle disputes among living family members.79 Egyptian sources bear witness to living relatives composing letters to their dead to petition them for assistance in such matters.80 Chthonic feeding and watering are described in the Egyptian Instructions of Any, which contains admonitions for its readers to “Libate for your father and mother, who are resting in the valley.”81 In this text and others that come from Mesopotamia, the use of parental terminology is not limited to one’s most immediate ancestors but is likely merism for all ancestors in the family line. Similarly, frequent use of the Akkadian term mala, meaning “much” or “many” is a formulaic means to

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prevent unintentional exclusion of any kin members during veneration.82 In texts describing the various rites associated with the general act of kispum (Akk.), or provision for the ancestors through ritual feeding, the main location of access to one’s ancestors was considered to be the physical structure of one’s house. Yet, the Old Babylonian text of Gilgamesh shows such rites could also be performed on the move and were in fact expected to be performed even if one was beyond the boundaries of their home.83 As he sets out on his journey, Gilgamesh is told by the elders of Uruk to be sure to continue the rightful practices of ancestral veneration along the way. He is therefore counseled to dig a well each evening to offer water to Shamash who will deliver it to his father Lugalbanda.84 Identifying the family and household as the loci of religious praxis requires further elaboration on the contents of praxis. Lived religion in the bêt’āb was likely far less static than previous scholars have assumed. Although the bêt’āb/bīt abim was the fundamental model of organization for the religious structures of the time, it is possible to overstate the rigidity of these structures and therefore imply a lack of individual religious agency among household members. Because we have letters addressed to female recipients wherein the women are addressed using the formula, “the god of your husband,” scholars have assumed that women acquiesced to the religious sensibilities of the dominant male in their social group.85 However, this phrase may simply represent a literary convention or elite social prescription with the reality that women’s personal religious experiences were not likely identical to their spouses or their family of origin. Much research has been conducted on the religious fluidity in family systems. While the family is recognized as the primary site of the religious socialization, there is no guaranteed formula for ensuring subsequent generations will follow the same religious practices, or that they will be equally fervent in belief as the previous generation.86 Concerns for proper religious socialization often take primacy of place in migrational contexts.87 Nevertheless, intergenerational maintenance of shared religious praxis and belief is highly variable, even in contexts of strong familial religious guidance.88 Driven by tradition as well as pragmatism, religiosities are internally pluriform and in constant negotiation and (re) formulation. The introduction of new practices, and their assimilation to previous beliefs, remains the norm. Thus, while the domestic domain was the most common sphere of religious interaction, the authority of a parent’s or spouse’s religiosities did not always reign supreme. Members of the bêt’āb adhered to the necessary elements which most tied their identities to other members in the kinship unit, but we should expect individualized expression to be the norm in private (and maybe even some public) contexts. The evidence attests to the fact that families worshipped personal gods together.89 Nevertheless, it is possible to discern from textual and archaeological evidence that a greater level of individual agency existed in the selection of a personal god, and therefore an overlap of personal preferences with corporate expectations.90

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Migrants’ Religiosities There has been great debate within the fields of migration and religious studies regarding the salience of religion among migrants.91 Until the first decade of the 21st century, religion was largely treated as another element of a mover’s cultural repertoire that was transportable but had little to do with the intentions or outcomes of their journey. Because of this, migration scholars often focused their attention on the changes to one’s religion after arrival, largely ignoring the roles religion played at other points of the migration undertaking.92 The more recent methodological turn-to-the-migrant has illuminated places where primarily economic or politically oriented theories of migrants’ behaviors fall short. Timothy L. Smith was the first to argue that migration was a “theologizing” experience.93 Since then, others have followed in affirming Smith’s claims by providing qualitative evidence from ethnographic research.94 Such scholars have investigated migrants’ religiosities before, during, and after their processes of relocation by examining traditional and non-traditional forms of participation and praxis. Even though religion functions differently for different migrants, the consensus among these researchers is that the disruptive nature of migration spurs further reliance on the superhuman and a heightened religious consciousness among migrants that frequently results in increased religiosity. Others have challenged this perspective and argued that the nature of migration as a disruptive experience leads to decreased religiosity.95 Internal disagreement persists among researchers in this camp regarding the scope and duration of the decline. Here the question is whether the deviation in religiosity is a short-term response to the immediate demands of building networks, finding a home and job, and learning a new language or, whether it is a signal of long-term acculturation to a new context whereby previous religious identity is increasingly diminished.96 There is, however, consensus that the demands of the migrational experience can lead to disconnection from known religious contexts and social systems, and therefore reduce participatory accountability among adherents. One notable issue of concern is that many studies pointing to declines in religiosity have assessed migrants’ religiosities only after their arrival in new locations. Likewise, such studies tend to focus on traditionally measurable forms of religiosity like weekly attendance at religious services or group gatherings, as well as on data collected from questionnaires about personal religious belief.97 Modes of measuring religiosity that are limited to self-reporting of institutional affiliation are not always adequate tools for determining migrants’ religiosities. Migration may well be a theologizing experience, but a migrant’s continued theologizing of their experience need not result in traditionally recognized forms of religious participation or self-identification. While there may be declines in traditionally measurable modes of religious behavior, like weekly religious service attendance or participation in officially sanctioned religious events, such changes do not necessarily equate with declines in religiosity. On the contrary,

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it reveals that the common benchmarks by which religiosities are measured are limited. Thus, what is often wrongly described as a decline in religiosity among migrants is actually the result of the shortcomings of our analytical frameworks. Considering the role of religion only after one’s arrival suggests that migrants somehow place their religious identities on hold while moving, only to resume them later in presumably less chaotic contexts. Such assumptions about migrants’ religious behaviors do not account for the ways people on the move maintain practices from sedentary life or generate new ones to meet the needs or limits of mobile contexts.98 Rather than view the different bodies of evidence regarding migrants’ religiosities as contestant datasets, it is more fruitful to focus on what they tell us when held together; religious practice and belief in pre-migrational, migrational, and post-migrational contexts have profound influence over migrants’ conceptions of movement, responses to place, and overall decision-making throughout the migration process. While many migrants display a marked level of reliance on the superhuman powers and on institutional and informal religious structures before and during their journeys, this is no indication that heightened levels of dependence will continue after their arrival. There are many micro-level factors at work influencing migrant religious participation. These include personal safety, gender, familial ties, educational level, employment, and the status of one’s religious affiliation as a minority or majority religion in the various contexts of encounter.99 It is almost guaranteed that religiosity will fluctuate over time among different individuals and groups as subsequent generations become variously integrated. More factors influence long-term religiosity than age or time spent in a specific location. Each generation exists in a unique social context with its own variabilities. Despite these contextual differences, some broad trends can be seen among different generations.100 Recognizing these trends is not the same thing as working to prove the existence of some kind of “nomad” or “mobile” religion that is a unique religious type. It is instead about recognizing how mobility shapes religious assumptions and praxis that remain dynamically connected to sedentary contexts. Throughout the migration experience, religious practices maintain a central role in actualizing the achievement of goods, obtaining necessary information for decision-making, and providing psycho-social support.101 In a world where much can change from day to day, religious identity, as enunciated in practice and presentation, can give migrants a sense of direction and rootedness unavailable elsewhere.102 In cases of migratory decision-making and travel, religion includes ritual or petitionary behaviors enacted to access and marshal superhuman powers or entities – as well as engagements with religious professionals or humans who have achieved a level of deified status, such as venerated ancestors – for purposes that include, but are not limited to, acquiring superhuman indications or affirmations of action, obtaining safety or health benefits, engaging religiously affiliated social networks and sacred spaces, regulating emotion, and providing

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psycho-social support through cognitive frameworks that express and interpret the spectrum of experiences encountered along the way. Across physical and chronological boundaries, one can recognize religion as a source of emotional resiliency, individual and corporate support, a medium of identity negotiation and expression, and a means by which movers meet physical and spiritual needs.103 Even though religion is not primarily a set of meaning-making structures, it does offer a means for migrants to derive meaning from, and make sense of, their experience.104 Beliefs and praxis provide religious and social institutions with cultural foundations for grappling with the challenges incurred through human movement.105 Migrants often characterize their experience of relocation as a spiritual journey with the perils encountered along the way accounted for in spiritual terms, and moments of rescue often identified as miraculous occurrences.106 Across geographic and temporal boundaries, one can recognize “religion and spirituality as a source of emotional and cognitive support, a form of political expression and mobilization, and a vehicle for community building and group identity” in the lives of migrants.107 The turn to religious intervention for achieving migratory goals is frequently related to the fact that social and economic networks alone cannot provide access to all that is necessary to make a successful journey. Individuals need to draw on assistive agents beyond their networks, such as state actors who issue visas, smugglers who provide clandestine transit, and part-time employers who hire migrants along their journeys.108 To do this, many rely on direct divine intervention and engagement with local religious resources by reaching out to religious leaders as conduits of divine affirmation and assistance, or through further petitionary activities aimed at gathering information regarding the many unknown variables of the migration experience.109 Migrants frequent houses of worship as places of refuge, sustenance and continued spiritual guidance.110 Many wayside locations have shrines which have been constructed by migrants to honor patron saints and those who have been of help along the way.111 In the midst of the turmoil of constant movement and directionless-ness, these spaces are for many migrants, places of hope, rejuvenation, and divine affirmation that they will make it to the end of the journey. Migrants often engage in ritualized promise-making rites at such sites, making commitments to God and saints in exchange for safe passage.112 Local religious networks also provide an important function for those who remain behind. Not only do non-movers commonly partake in religious activities to ensure the safe journey and arrival of migrants to their new destinations, but they also provide a means of financial support as community resources are pooled through the work of various religious organizations that promote the care of migrants as morally just.113 Likewise, nonmovers make use of local religious officials to ascertain information regarding the whereabouts and safety of their loved ones who are on the move.114 Place-making is a ubiquitous human activity accomplished through varying modes of spatial engagement.115 Movers must actively negotiate new spaces

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and construct their own identities in environments that might lack stable social networks or familiar cultural elements.116 The spatial management of difference includes the many extensions of the person and group into the larger social spheres where migrants affirm difference and belonging. Inter alia, activities include prayer and fasting, the channeling of spiritual beings, the use of physical objects and organic elements from places of origin.117 While this can include purposeful juxtapositions of one’s religious identity with others through various modes of self-presentation, it is not limited to bodily displays. Movers do not simply carry a piece of home with them but are capable of being “at home” in each new space as they perform religious acts. Religious enactment through embodied performance can also transform public or profane spaces into sacred sites.118 This is most evident in recognizably “religious” practices like public gatherings and rituals that might involve prayer, processions, offerings, sacrifices, cleansings, preaching, or wearing religious adornments.119 Even though observers may not fully understand the meanings of practices performed in the public sphere, those actions can still influence non-participant perceptions and use of space. In the absence of available traditional or publicly defined religious spaces, it is common for migrants to transform other locations into religious space.120 Juxtapositions and transformations of space can also be achieved through indirect means only recognizable to religious insiders. Covert religious behaviors and presentations of the self or private ritual activities can sacralize a particular space without the knowledge of out-group members who are active in the same space. Embodied performance can also serve to connect previous sites of worship or religious enactment with present sites. The process of creating or replicating religious topographies, which includes transference and overlap of religious sites, is a well-documented behavior among migrants. Enacting a ritual or set of religious behaviors can actualize a previous, and often geographically distant, site. Robert Orsi’s now famous account of the Bronx Lourdes, captures such an instance of spatial transference. According to the knowledge of the Catholic practitioners who visited the grotto at St. Lucy’s church, the holy water that poured forth from the rocks was, by all accounts, New York City public water. Yet, these same religious participants simultaneously understood the water as holy water, and as having a sanctified continuity with the water that came from the rocks in Lourdes, France.121 One’s identity as a mover can also be informed, inspired, or supported by their perceived social location within the historical narrative(s) of movement found in their respective faith.122 Drawn from the deep wells of ancient religious traditions, these narratives are resources of imaginative reasoning that give migrants means to envision and act for their own successes. The influence of religious history and shared memories of religiously associated or religiously oriented events that took place in the past on the landscapes that migrants presently traverse also require account. The symbolic freight of these locations is interpreted by migrants in varying ways.123 Therefore, we must remain

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cognizant of ways migrants might envision their journey as part of a larger historical dispensation or as a symbolically repetitive act associated with an event in their religious tradition.

Cultural Mutability and Internal Religious Pluralism in Contexts of Mobility Migration and religion are interconnected as social processes. As a catalyst of genetic and cultural transmission, migration plays fundamental roles in both biological evolution and cultural change. Throughout their lives, people adopt, blend, and preserve cultural practices while discarding others. Movement necessitates the maintenance, translation, and transference of religious identities across space and time, often with the outcomes of cultural mutability and blending.124 When moving, persons carry their sites of origin and previous movements with them in both their bodies and their cultural repertoires. The task in this section is to present the observed trends of religion on the move and the contents of migrants’ religiosities. In doing so, I explore migrants’ propensities toward practical religious elasticity and internal religious pluralism. Diversity is a core attribute of humanity, in both our biological composition and cultural assemblages; the diversity of both is largely due to our species’ transient past.125 Religious behavior is marked by the same pluriformity that attends other developments and extensions of the self. Religious production and transmission emerge from our embodied experiences as persons. The various ways humans generate and enact religion are enabled and constrained by cognitive and physical characteristics shared across our species.126 Yet, within the physical constraints of humanness, the outcomes of religious creation and expression are remarkably diverse, and the collective repertoire of human religiosities expansive. One of the claims I make in this project is that human religiosity tends toward comprehensiveness, even at the cost of appearing incoherent to external observers. This characteristic can be fodder for the argument that religion is an inherently irrational pursuit, a claim with which I deeply disagree. Starting from the assumption that religion is indeed a rational enterprise, and that human existence is responsive to seen and unseen causal mechanisms marked by contingency, I venture an explanation of cultural diversity and mutability in light of the biological frameworks of human evolution. In almost all non-human ecological systems, the presence of biodiversity generally indicates adaptability of species and systemic resilience. The most diverse biomes are commonly the healthiest and the most capable of withstanding shifts in climates, of mitigating influxes of non-native species, and of keeping disease at bay. Diverse systems generally do not experience unsustainable levels of inter-species competition for resources. Rather, a lack of diversity is more likely to cause dangerous forms of competition as different organisms vie for the same resources when their available means of sustenance are taken away.

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The merits of such functional diversity are borne out in a number of ways among Homo sapiens sapiens. One such example is in the building of somatic capital. Humans have “evolved a generalized biology, capable of responding to environmental variability across varying timescales.”127 The markers of this plasticity can be seen in phenotypes of height and the locations of body fat.128 Moreover, the body retains genetic codes, even ones that are presently unusable and referred to sometimes as “junk DNA,” which might become usable in new contexts.129 Movement increases exposure to new genes through changes in environment and food availability, introduction of new predators and disease, and the addition of genetic material from other members of the species. Adaptations that can survive greater spectrums of change have more staying power which promotes genetic comprehensiveness that can endure myriad generations of mutation and adaptation. This occurs not only through procreative exchange but also via the transmission of epigenetic predispositions that are informed by external circumstances including diet, environmental changes, the spread of disease, and even experiences of trauma.130 This phenomenon is observable in the way that rapidly adaptive genes generally tend to have limited ranges of usability and thus fall out of preference in a highly migratory species like humans. Thus, the biological capacities for determining human height and fat stores do not respond willy-nilly to new environmental stimuli, but rather are tempered by past mutations so that they possess enduring adaptability across a wider range of potential environments and thus maintain long-term staying power in the genetic market.131 In this regard, humans appear to be “the ape that won’t commit,” to any particular biome, but who have, through broad genetic and cultural repertoires, adapted to live in a remarkably wide range of environments.132 One way that humans differ from other species is that they augment these genetic propensities through their own cultural creations. This combination of culturally and biologically adaptive behaviors is commonly referred to as niche construction. The diversity of human cultural construction is correlative to the spectrum of ecological conditions in which humans have found themselves. We can witness the same modes of plasticity and hybridity in the cultural accumulation and adaptation that humans undertake in response to specific environments. Likewise, there is solid evidence that niche construction reflects similar patterns of maintaining a diverse spectrum of past potentialities in the forms of latent traditions, technologies, customs, and language that might prove to be efficacious in new environments. That is to say, no niche that humans create is de novo in character, but selectively borrows from previous forms. Transference of niche characteristics takes place through movement and social exchange, with the processes of cultural transmission mirroring some aspects of genomic transfer. As Wells and Stock show, humans knowingly and unknowingly transport elements of their niches as they move about. Transfer can take the form of domesticated animals and seeds that they bring along the way, or with less intentional inter-niche transfers like gut bacteria or disease.133

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The social element of niche construction takes the form of already-mentioned transfers of technology, tradition, language, and more. Discussions of environmental influence on cultural creation and transmission have sometimes been underpinned by assumptions of environmental determinism and cultural progressivism. This has been particularly true in earlier explorations of relationships between religion and the environment. Early investigations like those of Montesquieu or Voltaire were driven by a belief that religious practice and belief were instigated and limited by the geographies of praxis. Accordingly, local environmental characteristics were thought to have unquestionably determined the natures of deities, their actions, important calendrical rites, and the imagery of accompanying mythologies. This approach maintained saliency well into the 20th century and is prominent in the work of geographers like Ellen Semple and Ellsworth Huntington.134 Challenges to this theoretical framework arose from the corners of cultural geography and sociology when Max Weber, and those following his lead, attempted to turn the tables by suggesting that human socio-cultural innovation wields overwhelming formative power over landscape, and thus focused on the means by which humans shape their landscapes in response to their religious beliefs and other cultural activities. In recent decades, the pendulum has returned to a medial position that tempers both of these earlier explanations. This third way follows the lead of geographers, like Lily Kong, who champions a critical geographic perspective from which religions and environments are understood as emergent realities with their own causational capacities.135 Connections between religion and environment can be appreciated for their reciprocal influences. Religious innovations inform cognitive frameworks and thus change interactions with other physical and social landscapes. As cultural innovation changes environmental contexts, it generates new selective pressures that can influence subsequent culturally innovative and biologically adaptive behaviors.136 Even though many early comparative forays exploring genetic/biological and cultural evolution treated them as one and the same, important differences are present between the two phenomena. The main difference is that unlike its genetic counterpart, cultural evolution relies primarily on social learning for the transmission of traits to occur. Such learning is not dependent on horizontal biological relationships (parent-child), as genetic transmission is. It may take the form of horizontal non-biological transmission (unrelated individuals in the same generation) or oblique non-biological transmission (unrelated individuals in different generations). Likewise, it is unlikely that cultural evolution and transmission will always follow the Mendelian principles of segregation, independent assortment, or dominance. Innovation distinguishes cultural evolution in an important way from genetic mutation.137 It is indeed the case that superhuman entities are often described as having characteristics that match the surrounding landscapes. In a similar way, many are imbued with powers unique to the environments of their worshippers and

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create or destroy using the natural resources particular to their domains such as water, ice, rock, lava, or mud. Furthermore, particular ecological circumstances dictate the needs of individuals and thus the practices initiated in order to gain efficacious resolution of goods. Peoples who are dependent on seasonal rains unsurprisingly revere and seek to propitiate entities that can control such natural events. Furthermore, many superhuman powers are anthropomorphized and commonly move about in ways intelligible within the environmental contexts of their adherents. Nevertheless, while we can admit that environments have real influence over the shape and contents of religious practice and belief, the relationship is not deterministic. Evolving sociocultural norms and novel epistemologies place creative stresses on previous responses and representations. These processes of environmental adaptation and socio-spatial production result in cultural innovation, but also tension between old and new forms. While the shape and contents of the practice may be informed by the environment, its continued employment is only possible if it “survives” the demands of its users. Diversity of religious practice is driven by both need and preference. Religious practitioners gravitate toward and retain those practices that most effectively achieve the desired outcomes. However, in circumstances where a practice proves ineffective, many persons are willing to try novel religious formulations. By these means, new modes of religiosity are introduced to the group. In working to demonstrate cultural mutability in the contexts of migration and its contribution to differing registers of lived religiosity in the ancient Near East, I rely on the heuristic category of internal religious pluralism.138 Internal religious pluralism describes the elasticity of religious praxis and belief among members of a given group that emerges as individuals, families, extended families, and broader social spheres each maintain simultaneously variant and shared religious concerns, needs, and wants. The framework of internal religious pluralism provides a means to constructively engage the reality that while institutionalized religion cannot exist without practitioners, many religious adherents do not ascent wholesale to a uniform collection of practices or beliefs.139 In fact, most maintain practical toolkits that, when viewed collectively, represent remarkably broad spectrum of religiosities. Even after recognizing that internal pluralism is a marker of many migrants’ religious experiences, the question remains of which terms best represent the multivalent and dynamic nature of religiosities on the move? Should we rely on Tweed’s fluid-based vocabulary? Is Homi Bhabha’s hybridity an appropriate metric?140 Is Orsi’s “lived religion” a valid conceptual container? The answer to each of these methodological questions is “yes,” but a framework is still needed that captures the processual aspects of migrants’ constructions and employments of their religious repertoires over time. I employ a term that comes with no less baggage: bricolage. The term bricolage was first used to describe cultural production by Claude Levi-Strauss in his book The Savage Mind.141 In French, the term refers to the practice of making something with what one has at hand. A bricoleur is a

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“handyman.” As a verb, bricoler can mean to tinker or cobble, which captures the action of construction, and can contain meanings of either repairing something old or creating something new from the materials that one has at their disposal. In common usage, the term has come to have a sense of unprofessionalism to it, not pejoratively, but rather to describe a “do-it-yourself” class of activity.142 Therefore, while hybrid describes the products of encounter and socio-cultural negotiation – particularly in contexts of unequal power – and the terminology of fluidity describes the nature of the processes resulting in hybridity – as constantly in flux –bricolage describes the agglomerative and adaptive activities directly undertaken by persons as cultural practitioners. It is the term that best captures the process by which humans augment genetic adaptation through niche construction. It is, therefore, also an appropriate term to capture the essential elements of creative, dynamic building that constitute personal religiosities. Unfortunately, bricolage has come to be associated with a process of à la carte identity construction.143 This is due in part to the influences of consumerist capitalist paradigms of agency and choice. Yet, in Levi-Strauss’ coinage, the term did not imply total freedom of selection. Véronique Altglas reestablishes this earlier usage as a socially limited process rather than as “absolute eclecticism.”144 She contends that each instance of bricolage maintains its own culturally bound internal logic, and thus, is “a process of tensions, negotiations, and compromises leading to the elaboration of synthetic synthesis … bricolage is not free in the traditional societies to which it was originally applied.”145 Even when individual variance exists in religious practice, it is informed by the larger religious contexts in which the practitioner is situated. This is true whether a practitioner accepts or rejects socially normative or prescribed meanings of those practices. Furthermore, Altglas recognizes the dynamics of colonial religious influences on the religious choices of individuals and groups.146 This is especially apropos for explanations of Israelite religion not only because the influence of much larger imperial powers informed and altered the range of available religious symbols and practices but also because the contents of Yahwism evolved in responsive interaction and competition with those realities. Plasticity and comprehensiveness are hallmarks of many migrant religiosities. Internal religious pluralism among mobile populations develops through responsive interplay between corporate/institutional expectations for the contents of praxis and individual needs as dislocation from familiar social contexts and geographies often eventuates in migrants’ innovative religious behaviors.147 This same dialectic occurs in sedentary populations, but the demands resulting from insecurity in contexts of mobility typically stretch boundaries further as practitioners are generally more willing to try additional forms of praxis that draw from repertoires beyond their primary religious framework. While migrants employ elements that represent traditional forms of religiosity, it is not uncommon for them to make use of known religious symbols and idioms in new ways that confront or subvert established

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structures. Furthermore, even though migrants often retain strong ties to the religious practices and beliefs they maintained in their sites of origin, many exhibit a sense of openness to complementary and alternative religious symbols and practices. The resources that religion provides movers are often changed through the processes of migration.148 On one hand, discrepancies of praxis and belief can cause integrative hiccups when migrants attempt to join established religious networks in their destinations. It is not unusual for tension to arise at the nexuses of change and continuity, renewal and conservation, agency and control, or creativity and conformity.149 On the other hand, migrants who have broadened their own spectrums of practice can influence the compositional diversity of religious groups in sending and receiving communities.150 Practices that prove to be efficacious at the individual level may not cohere with those maintained at the group level. Behavior can only progress so far within a particular set of boundaries before it becomes unintelligible to members of the group. Thus, through its processes of identity negotiation, the group discerns and regulates which modes of religiosity fall within the bounds of acceptability. These intrinsic boundaries guide the responsive adaptation of practices by their practitioners. In sum, the elasticity of religious practice, while shaded by mutually influential and competing dynamics of power, is defined by the outermost parameters of a particular individual’s group exposure. Even for migrants who practice more conservative modes of religiosity, the boundaries of orthodoxy and tradition are easily blurred in moments when life-altering decisions need to be made. Adoptive and adaptive tendencies are common when attempting to gain access to superhuman powers for the purpose of safety or for insight at a moment of decision-making. Ultimately, much of the research affirms Obadare and Adebanwi’s findings that among those on the move, “the primary concern is what “works,” meaning that there is a greater concern with which religious authority is putatively acclaimed to guarantee success … rather than his or her denominational identity.”151 Even among individuals hoping to maintain a sense of religious purity, there is a propensity to rely on the religious structures and practices that they experience as most efficacious along their journey. Occasionally, this leads to conversion along the migration route.152 More often than not, however, increasingly internally diverse religiosities are the outcome, not conversion. While it might be assumed that the diversification of praxis would lead to the eventual dissolution of religious particularity, Yang and Ebaugh argue, “Internal and external religious pluralism, instead of leading to the decline of religion, encourages institutional and theological transformations that energize and revitalize religions.”153 In line with model of biodiversity briefly discussed earlier, the functional diversity of internally plural religiosities leads to greater stability for those migrants who possess such adaptive repertoires. A few final theoretical and terminological clarifications are in order. First, even though individuals tend to maintain pragmatic assemblages of religious

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practices, this does not mean that each personal religious repertoire constitutes a religion unto itself.154 This is precisely where the concept of internal religious pluralism and the tendency toward comprehensiveness rather than coherence enters the frame as means to explain the relational elasticity of belief and praxis across registers of religiosity. Among most religious persons, the tendency is to cultivate increasingly comprehensive repertoires of practices. Still, intrinsic boundaries guide the responsive adoption and adaptation of practices by their practitioners. Even when personal variance exists in religious practice, it is informed by the larger contexts in which the practitioner is situated.155 This is true whether a practitioner accepts or rejects socially normative or prescribed meanings of practices. It should also be said that the study of internal religious pluralism within the contexts of lived religion is not the same as explorations of multiple religious belonging.156 While individuals may adopt and adapt religious elements from a variety of contexts, including other religions, few claim official associations with more than one religion at the institutional level.157 Additionally, the notions of religious belonging and group acceptance are constituted and controlled by more than an individual’s desire to belong.158 Still, the question of religious belonging remains an important one in the study of internal religious pluralism: How much deviation from socially accepted praxis is tolerated before an person is considered to have lost their in-group status? The answer will vary according to each group, but for the moment, the data suggests that most groups experience a fairly broad range of expression. Occurrences of overt association with multiple forms of institutionalized religion are not as common as scholars promoting the notion of multiple religious belonging would have us believe. Moreover, if scholars like Steve Bruce are correct, the notion of multiple religious belonging is a modern phenomenon of largely secular societies and thus not an appropriate conceptual category for understanding religion in the ancient world.159 It is imperative to state that there is no such thing as “migrant religion” that can be construed as an analytical category. There are only migrants’ religiosities, which are part of larger institutionalized structures of religion, as well as formative for those structures. There are no guaranteed religious outcomes of migration. However, across the many instances of observing migrants’ religiosities, we find that persons on the move tend to be more religiously flexible and open to new or alternative formulations of practices that might aid them in achieving their goals. As a result, migrants frequently display a tendency toward establishing personal repertoires of religious praxis that are comprehensive in character. Such agglomerations of practice can appear to be systematically incoherent when compared to the frameworks of institutionalized religion. While similar patterns can be observed among sedentary populations, movement instigates the tendency toward comprehensiveness in more overt and broader ways than among sedentary populations.

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The dynamics of environmental and cultural feedback systems outlined above should inform how we understand the relationship between migration and religion generally, as well as in ancient Israel and Judah. Rather than seeing cultural developments like religiosity and religion as cultural products distinct from the human experience of movement, we ought to view religious praxis and orientation as growing out of the formative nature of mobility itself. Relating these learnings to our interpretations of Israel’s history and literature, we do well to remember that movement and religious revelation are inseparable throughout the biblical corpus. In fact, the very means by which the comprehensive explanation of Yahweh’s personhood is explained in the biblical record is partially accomplished through telling migration stories of Israel’s ancestors and of the revelation of the divine self to them in contexts of movement. What we witness among textual and archaeological evidence from Israel and Judah is that a commonly shared core of religious assumptions comes to be expressed in a variety of ways. As is the case among other religious enactments, the spectrum of acceptable elasticity of Yahwistic practice was envisioned differently by various groups and persons. The personhood of Yahweh can be taken as an example. Israelites and Judahites recognized one Yahweh, but disagreed over his various forms, his primary sites of access, and his relationship to or dominance over other gods.160 The cohesiveness of Yahwism in Israel and Judah was maintained in part by Yahweh’s character as a mobile deity, a claim I will clarify later in this volume. The present study illuminates patterns of religious fluidity and hybridity that occur in contexts of mobility. The project also bears witness to the preservation and delineation of religious particularity in these contexts of exchange. Internal religious pluralism exists in a variety of settings, including those that are sedentary. Yet, mobility is a catalyst for intensified internal religious pluralism because being on the move typically increases demands for efficacious resolution of physical and social-emotional needs. The evidence presented in this book indicates that internal religious pluralism can be seen in settings of mobility associated with Israel’s emergence and settlement as well as in in later periods when a more centralized religious apparatus exists. The religious demands of a highly mobile people necessitate the intervention of a highly mobile god. Thus, Israel’s preference for a highly mobile deity who is non-autochthonous – like some its own members – is noteworthy. Additionally, we will come to see that the pluriformity of lived religious experience is preserved in the contours and contents of the biblical corpus. The texts’ compilers and editors, many of whom experienced migration themselves, sought not simply to excise previous religious sensibilities that no longer fit within the dominant theological paradigm. Instead, they kept seemingly disjunctive elements of the religious past, reformed other parts of it, and added their own content. In what followers, I apply the model presented in this chapter to illuminate cultures of mobility and mobility-informed religiosities in ancient Israel and its world.

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Notes 1 Paula Couper, A Student’s Introduction to Geographical Thought: Theories, Philosophies, Methodologies (London: Sage, 2015), 70–77. 2 John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2000), 45. 3 Tim Cresswell, On the Move: Mobility in the Modern Western World (New York: Routledge, 2006), 9, 38–42. 4 Cresswell, On the Move, 1–8. 5 Mimi Sheller and John Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” Environment and Planning 38 (2006): 207–26, 211. 6 Cf. Robert Pallito and Josiah Heyman, “Theorizing Cross-Border Mobility: Surveillance, Security, and Identity,” Surveillance and Society 5 (2008): 315–33; Elin Palm, “Rights That Trump Surveillance-Based Migration Governance and a Substantial Right to Mobility,” Journal of Information, Communication, and Ethics in Society 4 (2013): 196–209. 7 Thomas Nail, The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 3–5; Urry, Sociology beyond Societies, 1–3. 8 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2004), 152. 9 Michael Flamm and Vincent Kaufmann, “Operationalising the Concept of Motility: A Qualitative Study,” Mobilities 1 (2006): 167–89; Urry, Mobilities, 38–39. 10 Flamm and Kaufmann, “Concept of Motility,” 168. 11 Flamm and Kaufmann, “Concept of Motility,” 169. 12 Jeffery H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 14. 13 Jeffery H. Cohen, The Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2004), 39. 14 Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 14. 15 For a survey of the origins of this term, and its relationship to earlier Sumerian IBIRA, TIBIRA, GARAŠ, and GAEŠ, see William W. Hallo, “Trade and Traders in the Ancient Near East: Some New Perspectives,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 351–56. 16 Hector Avalos, “Diasporas ‘R’ Us: Attitudes towards Immigrants in the Bible,” in The Bible in Political Debate: What Does It Really Say? eds. Frances Flannery and Rodney A. Werline (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 33–46. 17 The International Organization for Migration, “Glossary of Migration Terms” (2019): https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/iml_34_glossary.pdf; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “Glossary” (2021): https://www.unhcr.org/449267670.pdf 18 Hein De Hass, Stephen Castles, and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 6th ed. (New York: Guilford, 2020), 21. 19 Each of these quotes comes from Carly L. Crouch, “Response: Migration and the Old Testament,” Presentation for “Migration, Transnationalism, and Faith in Missiological Perspective: Los Angeles as a Global Crossroads,” an online conference hosted by Fuller Theological Seminary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJ_foJ7gVs& t=163s 20 Casey A. Strine, “The Study of Involuntary Migration as a Hermeneutical Guide for Reading the Jacob Narrative,” Biblical Interpretation 26 (2018): 485–98. The subfield of refugee studies can certainly offer several helpful tools for understanding ancient migrations/migrants, when appropriately applied. 21 Safwat Marzouk, “Migration in the Joseph Narrative: Integration, Separation, and Transnationalism,” Hebrew Studies 60 (2019): 71–90; Casey A. Strine, “The Famine in the Land Was Severe: Environmentally Induced Involuntary Migration and the Joseph

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22 23

24

25

26

27 28 29 30

31 32 33

Narrative,” Hebrew Studies 60 (2019): 55–69; “Is ‘Exile’ Enough? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Need for a Taxonomy of Involuntary Migration,” HeBAI 7 (2019) 289–315. James K. Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009). John J. Ahn, Exile as Forced Migrations: A Sociological, Literary, and Theological Approach on the Displacement and Resettlement of the Southern Kingdom of Judah (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2011); Mark J. Boda et al., eds. The Prophets Speak on Forced Migration (Atlanta: SBL, 2015). For a collection of essays on attempts to distinguish coerced and non-coerced forms of movement in the archaeological record, see Jan Driessen, ed., Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean (Leuven: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2018). Carly L. Crouch, “Before and after Exile: Involuntary Migration and Ideas of Israel,” HeBAI 7 (2018): 334–58; “Introduction: Migration, Political Power and the Book of Jeremiah,” Political Theology 19 (2018): 457–59; Strine, “Involuntary Migration as a Hermeneutical Guide”; “The Famine in the Land Was Severe”; “Is ‘Exile’ Enough?” Marta Bivand Erdal and Ceri Oeppen, “Forced to Leave? The Discursive and Analytical Significance of Describing Migration as Forced and Voluntary,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (2018): 981–98; Anna Klabunde and Frans Willekens, “Decision-Making in Agent-Based Models of Migration: State of the Art and Challenges,” European Journal of Population 32 (2016): 73–97; Delf Rothe and Mariam Salehi, “Autonomy in Times of War? The Impact of the Libyan Crisis on Migratory Decisions,” in Understanding Migrant Decisions (ed. Gebrewold and Bloom), 80–98. Anthony H. Richmond, “Reactive Migration: Sociological Perspectives on Refugee Movements,” Journal of Refugee Studies 6 (1993): 7–24. Ahn, Exile as Forced Migration. Cf. Bustenay Oded, Mass Deportation and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979). There are instances when deportation takes place within the boundaries of a state. In such cases, persons are relocated to detention centers or other liminal sites that remain under state control but are for all purposes separated from normal existence. Cf. Bridgett Anderson, Matthew J. Gibney, and Emmanuela Paoletti, “Introduction,” in The Social, Political, and Historical Contours of Deportation, eds. Bridgett Anderson, Matthew J. Gibney, and Emmanuela Paoletti (Oxford: Springer, 2014), 1–7, 1. Strine, “Is ‘Exile’ Enough?” 289–315. For example, see John R. Harris and Michael P. Todaro, “Migration, Unemployment, & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis,” American Economic Review 60 (1970): 126–42. Cf. Sirkeci et al., “Introduction,” 1–7. Several scholars have recognized the shortcomings of economic models of migrational explanation. Rather than discard them altogether, they have demonstrated that economic data, when carefully integrated with other socio-theoretical models of human behavior, can indeed provide a more holistic picture of human experiences of movement. See Christina Boswell and Peter R. Mueser, “Introduction: Economics and Interdisciplinary Approaches in Migration Research,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (2008): 519–29; Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 20–37; Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom, “Introduction,” in Understanding Migrant Decision: From Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region, eds. Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom (London: Routledge, 2016), 1–17; Philip Martin, “Economic Aspects of Migration,” in Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines, 3rd ed., eds. Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield (London: Routledge, 2015), 90–114; Manashi Ray, “Crossing Borders: Family Migration Strategies and Routes from Burma to the US,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (2018): 773–91.

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34 Cf. Sonja Haug, “Migration Networks and Migration Decision-Making,” Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies 34 (2008): 585–605. 35 Ibrahim Sirkeci et al., “Introduction,” in Conflict, Insecurity and Mobility, eds. Ibrahim Sirkeci, Jeffrey H. Cohen, and Pinar Yazgan (London: Transnational, 2016), 1–7. 36 Takeyuki Tsuda et al., “Unifying Themes in Studies of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations,” in Migrations and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, eds. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015), 14–30, 17. 37 James Morrissey, “Rethinking ‘Causation’ and ‘Disruption’: The EnvironmentMigration Nexus in Northern Ethiopia,” in Migrations and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, eds. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2015), 196–222, 196–97. 38 Tsuda et al. “Unifying Themes,” 22. 39 Cohen, Migration in Southern Mexico, 30–48; Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 1–19; Ton van Naerssen and Martin van der Velde, “The Thresholds to Mobility Disentangled,” in Mobility and Migration Choices: Thresholds to Crossing Borders, eds. Ton van Naerssen and Martin van der Velde (London: Routledge, 2016), 3–14. 40 Jerome D. Fellmann, Arthur Getis, and Judith Getis, eds., Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities, 8th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 88. 41 Erik Melander and Magnus Öberg, “Time to Go? Duration Dependence in Forced Migration,” International Interactions 32 (2006): 129–52; Aristide R. Zolberg et al., Escape from Violence: Conflict and Refugee Crisis in the Developing World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 30. See also Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda, “Introduction,” in Migration and Disruptions: Toward a Unifying Theory of Ancient and Contemporary Migrations, eds. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2015), 1–13. 42 Fellmann et al., Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities, 88–95. 43 George Groenewold et al., “Psychosocial Factors of Migration: Adaptation and Application of the Health Belief Model,” International Migration 50 (2012): 211–31. Delf Rothe and Miriam Salehi, “Autonomy in Times of War? The Impact of the Libyan Crisis on Migratory Decisions,” in Understanding Migrant Decisions, From SubSaharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region, eds. Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom (New York: Routledge, 2016), 80–98, 82–83. See also Dimitris Papadopoulos and Vassilis Tsianos, “After Citizenship: Autonomy of Migration, Organizational Ontology and Mobile Commons,” Citizenship Studies 17 (2013): 178–96; Stephan Scheel, “Autonomy of Migration despite Its Securitization? Facing the Terms and Conditions of Biometric Rebordering,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (2013): 575–600. 44 Kenneth Pargament, The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research and Practice (New York: Guilford, 1997). 45 Pablo Neudörfer and Jorge Dresdner, “Does Religious Affiliation Affect Migration?” Papers in Regional Science 93 (2014): 577–94. 46 Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012); John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan, eds., Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012); Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1996). 47 Janet E. Benson, “Households, Migration, and Community Context,” Urban Anthropology 19 (1990): 9–29; Kati Coe, The Scattered Family: Parenting, African Migrants, and Global Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 1–36; Jeffery H. Cohen, “Migration, Remittances and Household Strategies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 40 (2011): 103–14; Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 2; Ray, “Crossing borders,” 773–91.

46 Conceptual Frameworks 48 Cohen, Migration in Southern Mexico, 34. 49 Cohen, Migration in Southern Mexico, 32–33; Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 2. See also Helen Rose Ebaugh and Mary Curry, “Fictive Kin as Social Capital in New Immigrant Communities,” Sociological Perspectives 43 (2000): 189–209; Sara Greco, “The Role of Family Relationships in Migration Decisions: A Reconstruction Based on Implicit Starting Points in Migrants’ Justifications,” Migration Letters 15 (2018): 33–44. 50 Manuel A. Vásquez and Kim Knott, “Three Dimensions of Religious Place Making in Diaspora,” Global Networks 14 (2014): 326–47; Mark Graham and Shahram Shosravi, “Home Is Where You Make It: Repatriation and Diaspora Culture among Iranians in Sweden,” Journal of Refugee Studies 10 (1997): 115–33. 51 John W. Berry, Acculturation: A Personal Journey across Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 52 David C. Dollahite et al., “Beyond Religious Rigidities: Religious Firmness and Religious Flexibility as Complementary Loyalties in Faith Transmission,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020111. 53 Cf. Brian L. McPhail, “Religious Heterogamy and the International Transmission of Religion: A Cross-National Analysis,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020109; Mieke Malipaard and Marcel Lubbers, “Parental Religious Transmission after Migration: The Case of Dutch Muslims,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39 (2013): 425–42. 54 Nicola Laneri, “Introduction: Investigating Archaeological Approaches to the Study of Religious Practices and Beliefs,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 3–4; Cf. Lars Fogelin, “The Archaeology of Religious Ritual,” Annual Review of Anthropology 36 (2007): 55–71. 55 Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269–84, 282. 56 My definition of religion builds on that of Christian Smith, Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 22. This aligns with Roger Stump’s definition of religion as “a compelling set of beliefs and practices whose truth is presupposed by faith and that ultimately relate to superhuman entities postulated by adherents to possess transcendent attributes or powers superior to those of ordinary mortals … Whatever form they take, these entities are considered by adherents to exert crucial influences, directly or indirectly, for good or for ill, within and beyond the realm of human affairs.” Roger Stump, The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place, and Space (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 7. 57 John R. Bowen, Religions in Practice: An Approach to the Anthropology of Religion, 7th ed. (London: Routledge, 2018), 3–8; Sean McCloud, “‘Religions are Belief Systems,’” in Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, eds. Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 11–21. 58 Regarding matters of efficacious resolution of ills and obtainment of goods, Smith sees no need to differentiate between religion and magic. Both, he argues, operate on the assumption of superhuman powers that are accessible by humans. Smith, Religion, 23. 59 Smith, Religion, 77, Religion134. 60 Smith, Religion, 32, 72–75. 61 Ian Hodder, Studies in Human-Thing Entanglement (Stanford: Open-Access, 2016), 94. Hodder’s explorations of the concept of entanglement are certainly germane to the present study which is rooted in critical realism. The critique leveled here, however, is that all the gains made through the process of placing entanglement theory in conversation with religion, Hodder does little more than to present the religion as “ultimate concern.”

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62 For an example of a helpful approach that integrates sense-making and praxis in the contexts of migrants’ lives, see Holly Straut Eppsteiner, “Struggle as Opportunity: Making Sense of U.S. Migration Experiences through Buddhist Practice,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (2017): 1222–39. See also Smith, Religion, 41. 63 Smith, Religion, 23; Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 62. 64 Peter Berger, “Foreword,” in Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, ed. Nancy T. Ammerman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), v–viii; Meredith B. McGuire, Religion: The Social Context, 5th ed. (Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2002), 70–71. 65 David D. Hall, “Introduction,” in Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), vii–xiii; Robert Orsi, “Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion,” in Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3–21. 66 Orsi, “Everyday Miracles,” 7. 67 Cf. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 13–41. Van der Toorn shows that these patrimonial structures are named in the Akkadian source material using terms like hibrum “lineage group,” bītum “house,” and even mātum “land”. 68 John David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Leiden: Brill, 2001). This claim is borne out in the context of the present study by investigations like Benjamin Porter’s, who analyses a range of archaeological data from Iron Age Transjordanian households and shows they banded together to establish new communities by strategically contributing their varying resources. Benjamin W. Porter, Complex Communities: The Archaeology of Early Iron Age West-Central Jordan (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013). 69 Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 54–66. 70 Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 93; John David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 63–89; Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 54–66. Smith has shown that conceptualization of divinity in familial terms lends itself to adoptive function whereby it is possible to add deities that are not original members to the expandable kinship structure; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 13–41. 71 Michael Seymour, “Mesopotamia,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 775–94. 72 van der Toorn, Family Religion, 66–93. 73 Karel van der Toorn, “Religious Practices of the Individual and Family: Mesopotamia,” in Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 423–27. 74 Karel van der Toorn, “Family Religion in Second Millennium West Asia (Mesopotamia, Emar, Nuzi),” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, eds. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 20–36. 75 Tammi Schneider, An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 63–65; Snell, Religions of the Ancient Near East, 27–28. Van der Toorn also shows that the common epistolary formulas of Mesopotamian letters almost always include an invocation of the sender’s personal deity and that of the letter’s recipient. Both are typically called upon to bless the letter’s sender, its recipient, or both; van der Toorn, Family Religion, 69–71. 76 Seth L. Sanders “‘The Mutation Peculiar to Hebrew Religion’: Monotheism, Pantheon Reduction, or Royal Adoption of Family Religion?” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 14 (2014): 217–27.

48 Conceptual Frameworks 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85

86

87

88 89

van der Toorn, “Religious Practices,” 423. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 62–63. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 64. Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 45. “Instructions of Any,” COS 1.46: 110–15, 111. Cf. Maria Michela Luiselli, “Religion und Literatur. Uberlegungen zur Funktion der persönlichen Frömmigkeit in der Literatur des Mittleren und Neuen Reiches,” Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 36 (2007): 157–82; Cf. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 55–62. Alan Lenzi, “An Incantation Prayer: Ghosts of My Family 1,” in Reading Akkadian Hymns & Prayers: An Introduction, ed. Alan Lenzi (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 137–44. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 55–62. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 48. van der Toorn, “Religious Practices,” 426. The religious protocol (as evidenced in Mesopotamian letters and legal documents, as well as in the biblical book of Ruth, and interestingly in the story of Rachel/Laban) is that a woman worships the god of her father until she is married, when she adopts the worship of her husband’s god, who is the god of his father. This raises interesting questions about the transference of deities or transition between deities in contexts of mobility that surrounded moving households. Cf. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 75 for an example of a woman who moves far away for marriage but still wants to worship the gods of her father. For commentary on women’s religious praxis in ancient Egypt, see Maria Michela Luiselli, Die Suche nach Gottesnähe: Unterschungen zur Persönlichen Frömmigkeit in Ägypten von der Ersten Zwischenzeit bis zum Ende des Neuen Reiches (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 122–43. Cf. Dollahite et al., “Beyond Religious Rigidities,” doi:10.3390/rel10020111; Karen Phalet, Fenella Fleischmann, and Snežana Stojčić, “Ways of ‘being Muslim’: Religious Identities of 2nd Generation Turks,” in The European Second Generation Compared: Does Integration Context Matter? eds. Maurice Crul, Jens Schneider, and Frans Lelie (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 341–74; Anthony B. Walker, “An Exploration of Family Factors Related to Emerging Adults’ Religious SelfIdentification,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10030172. See the discussion of perceived fluctuations in migrants’ religiosities over the course of several generations in Chapter 3. Cf. “Second Generation Immigrants,” The Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/immigrantstatus/second-generation/; “Second Generation Immigrants Who Are Unaffiliated,” The Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ religious-tradition/unaffiliated-religious-nones/immigrant-status/second-generation/; Frank van Tubergen and Jórunn Í. Sindradóttir, “The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: A Cross-National Study,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50 (2001): 272–88. Phillip Connor, Immigrant Faith: Patterns of Immigrant Religion in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 73. Dollahite et al. “Beyond Religious Rigidities,” doi:10.3390/rel10020111; McPhail, “Religious Heterogamy,” doi:10.3390/rel10020109. Stephan Joahannes Seidlmayer, “Frohe—und andere—Botschaften. Kult und Kommunikation im alten Ägypten,” in Mediengesellschaft Antike? Information und Kommunikation vom Alten Ägypten bis Byzanz, eds. Ulrich Peter and S.J Seidlmayer (Berlin: Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 97–109. The Egyptian Instruction of Any/i contains admonitions for proper religious protocols regarding the worship of one’s personal god within the context of broader family religion: “Observe the feast of your god, and repeat its season … song, dance, incense are his foods, receiving prostration is his wealth …” (lines 3.4–10). Later in the same text, the recipient is counseled, “Offer to your god, beware of offending him. Do not question his images, do not accost him when he appears” (lines 7.12–14), “Instructions of Any,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim, COS 1.46: 110–15.

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90 Luiselli, Die Suche nach Gottesnähe, 35–81. 91 For comprehensive overview of the debate, see Douglas S. Massey and Monica Espinoza Higgins, “The Effect of Immigration on Religious Belief and Practice: A Theologizing or Alienating Experience?” Social Science Research 40 (2011): 1371–89; Phillip Connor, “Increase or Decrease? The Impact of the International Migratory Event on Immigrant Religious Participation,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 47 (2008): 243–57. 92 Cf. Fawaz Alanezi, Theoretical Explanations for Variations in Religious Participation among U.S. Immigrants: The Impact of Nativity, Ethnic Community, Family Structure, and Religious Markets (PhD diss., Southern Illinois University, 2005); Helen R. Ebaugh and Janet Chafetz, eds., Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2000). 93 Timothy L. Smith, “Religion and Ethnicity in America,” American Historical Review 83 (1978): 1115–85. 94 S.R. Warner, “Religion and Migration in the United States,” Social Compass 50 (1998): 59–69; Ebaugh and Chafetz, Religion and the New Immigrants; Jennifer B. Saunders et al., eds., Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 95 Connor, “Increase or Decrease?”; Claudia Diehl and Matthias Koenig, “God Can Wait—New Migrants in Germany between Early Adaptation and Religious Reorganization,” International Migration 51 (2013): 8–22; Valerie A. Lewis and Ridhi Kashyap, “Piety in a Secular Society: Migration, Religiosity, and Islam in Britain,” International Migration 51 (2013): 57–66; F. Van Tubergen and J.I. Sindradottir, “The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: A Cross-National Study,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50 (2011): 272–88; D. Voas and F. Fleischmann, “Islam Moves West: Religious Change in the First and Second Generations,” Annual Review of Sociology 38 (2012): 525–45. 96 Diehl and Koenig, “God Can Wait,” 9–11. 97 For example, see Ilana Redstone Akresh, “Immigrants’ Religious Participation in the United States,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (2011): 643–61; Wendy Cadge and Elaine Howard Eckland, “Religious Service Attendance among Immigrants: Evidence from the New Immigrant Survey-Pilot,” American Behavioral Scientist 49 (2006): 1574–95; Phillip Connor, “International Migration and Religious Participation: The Mediating Impact of Individual and Contextual Effects,” Sociological Forum 24 (2009): 779–803. Even studies that focus on “practice” do so through the primary rubric of traditionally measurable forms of practice. This does not account for the new modalities that migrants adopt, adapt, and operationalize throughout their experiences. See also Matthias Koenig, “Incorporating Muslim Migrants in Western Nation States – A Comparison of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany,” Journal of International Migration and Integration 6 (2005): 219–34; Claudia Smith Kelly and Blen Solomon, “The Influence of Religion on Remittances Set to Relatives and Friends Back Home,” Journal of Business & Economics Research 7 (2009): 91–102. 98 Sheller and Urry, “New Mobilities Paradigm,” 213–14. 99 Douglas Massey et al., Worlds in Motion: Understanding International Migration at the end of the Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 100 The Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study indicates that across age groups of first, second, and third generations, second generation immigrants show consistent declines in certainty of belief in God, church attendance, prayer, and scriptural reading. Yet, all of these trends toward decreased religiosity and non-affiliation rebound among third generation migrants. “Second Generation Immigrants,” The Pew Research Center, https:// www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/immigrant-status/second-generation/; “Second Generation Immigrants Who Are Unaffiliated,” The Pew Research Center, https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/unaffiliated-

50 Conceptual Frameworks

101

102

103

104 105

106

107 108

religious-nones/immigrant-status/second-generation/. Moreover, even though we see decreases in these categories, others such as feeling spiritual peace and well-being, experiencing a sense of wonder about the universe, and belief in positive and negative afterlife(s) are remarkably continuous across all three generations. The impetuses of these patterns likely vary from person to person, but some general reflections on their cause and nature are in order. First, it should be noted that these trends may be unique to the United States. In Europe, research on second generation Muslim populations indicates that the decrease of religious participation between newcomers and their children is selective. Cf. Phalet, Fleischmann, and Stojčić, “Ways of ‘being Muslim,’” 341–74. Second generation declines occur, but not at the same rates, and are dependent on many factors such as country of origin, education, and employment. The religiosity of migrants across Europe varies in correlation to the religiosity of the population in the places they settle. See Frank van Tubergen and Jórunn Í. Sindradóttir, “The Religiosity of Immigrants in Europe: A Cross-National Study,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 50 (2001): 272–88. One potential explanation for these trends is that the comparatively open social atmosphere of personal religious choice and public religious expression in the United States has the effect of increasing religious laxity for one generation before being reclaimed by a later one. See Connor, Immigrant Faith, 73. On the other hand, social pressures of cultural difference and stronger social forces against religiosity in Europe may result in the intensification of preservationist responses. Thus, minority religious groups, though still open to processes of internal adaptation and change, tend to reify public markers of religiosity to accentuate identity. It is, however, important to note that, though typically waning among the second generation, religiosity does not totally dissolve in any of these studies. It remains present as an element of immigrants’ social worlds and in most cases experiences a revivification in later generations. Holly Straut Eppsteiner and Jacqueline Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support in the Migration Undertaking,” in Intersections of Migration and Religion: Issues as the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer B. Saunders et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 49–70, 50. Paolo Boccagni, “What’s in a (Migrant) House? Changing Domestic Spaces, the Negotiation of Belonging and Home-making in Ecuadorian Migration,” Housing, Theory and Society 31 (2014): 277–93; Migration and the Search for Home (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 1–28. Elźbieta M. Goździak and Dianna J. Shandy, “Editorial Introduction: Religion and Spirituality in Forced Migration,” Journal of Refugee Studies 15 (2002): 129–35; Kim Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” in Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer B. Saunders et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 71–90. Cohen and Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration, 13. Inevitably, the content of this meaning varies from person to person and institution to institution. Jacqueline Hagan, “Making Theological Sense of the Migration Journey from Latin America: Catholic, Protestant, and Interfaith Perspectives,” American Behavioral Scientist 49 (2006): 1554–73. Ebenezer Obadare and Wale Adebanwi, “‘The Visa God’: Would-Be Migrants and the Instrumentalization of Religion,” in Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora, eds. Afe Adogame and James Spickard (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 31–48, 32: Jacqueline Maria Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 114–32. Goździak and Shandy, “Religion and Spirituality in Forced Migration,” 129–35. Joris Schapendonk, “The Dynamics of Transit Migration: Insights into the Migration Process of Sub- Saharan African Migrants Heading for Europe,” Scandinavian Journal for Development Alternatives and Area Studies 28 (2009): 171–203.

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109 Usha Adjamah, “Les motivations sociocultureelees de departs en pirogue artisanale du Sénégal vers les îles Canaries (Espagne),” in Les migrations africaines vers l’Europe: Entre mutations et adaptation des acteurs sénégalais, eds. Papa Demba Fall and Jordi Garreta i Bochacha (Lleida: Remigraf-ifan, 2012), 103–18; Eppsteiner and Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support,” 49–70; Jacqueline Maria Hagan, “Faith for the Journey: Religion as a Resource for Migrants,” in A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration, eds. Daniel G. Groody and Gioacchino Campese (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 3–19. Jacqueline Hagan and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process,” The International Migration Review 37 (2003): 1145–1162; O.M. Kalu, “The Andrew Syndrome: Modes of Understanding Nigerian Diaspora,” in African Immigrant Religions in America, eds. J.K Olupona and R. Gemignani (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 61–85. 110 Hagan, Migration Miracle, 127–34; Saunders et al., “Introduction,” 1–4. 111 Eppsteiner, and Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support,” 51, 57. 112 Eppsteiner, and Hagan, 51–54. Cf. Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey, Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995). 113 For a helpful introduction to different ways members of faith communities have functioned in such capacities, see David Hollenbach, SJ, “Religion and Forced Migration,” in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee & Forced Migration Studies, eds. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 447–59. 114 Hagan, Migration Miracle, 33–38. 115 Vásquez and Knott delineate (1) embodied performance, (2) spatial management of difference and belonging, (3) multiple embedding across networked spacesm as three dimensions of place-making undertaken by many migrants. Vásquez and Knott, “Three Dimensions of Religious Place Making,” 326–47. 116 Boccagni, Migration and the Search for Home, 49–64; Celia McMichael, “Everywhere Is Allah’s Place: Islam and the Everyday Life of Somali Women in Melbourne, Australia,” Refugee Studies 15 (2002): 171–88. 117 David Garbin, “A Diasporic Sense of Place: Dynamics of Spatialization and Transnational Political Fields among Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain,” in Transnational Ties: Cities, Identities, and Migrations, eds. Michael Smith and John Eade (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008), 147–62; David Garbin, “Embodied Spirit(s) and Charismatic Power among Congolese Migrants in London,” in Summoning the Spirits: Possession and Invocation in Contemporary Religion, ed. Andrew Dawson (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 42; Gertrud Hüwelmeier and Kristine Krause, “Introduction,” in Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, eds. Gertrud Hüwelmeier and Kristine Krause (New York: Routledge, 2010), 1–16; Vásquez and Knott, “Three Dimensions of Place-Making,” 332. 118 David Garbin, “Marching for God in the Global City: Public Space, Religion, and Diasporic Identities in a Transnational African Church,” Culture and Religion 13 (2012): 425–47. See also David V. Mason, The Performative Ground of Religion and Theatre (New York: Routledge, 2019), 1–10. 119 David Garbin, “Regrounding the Sacred: Transnational Religion, Place Making and the Politics of Diaspora among the Congolese in London and Atlanta,” Global Networks 14 (2014): 363–82; Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” 78. 120 Kristine Krause, “Spiritual Spaces in Post-Industrial Places: Transnational Churches in North East London,” in Transnational Ties: Cities, Migrations, and Identities, eds. Michael Peter Smith and John Eade (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008), 109–30; David Garbin, “From House Cells to Warehouse Churches? Christ Church Outreach Mission International in Translocal Contexts,” in Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets

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121 122

123 124 125 126

127 128 129 130

131

132 133 134 135

136 137

and Mobilities, eds. Gertrud Hüwelmeier and Kristine Krause (New York: Routledge, 2010), 145–64; Tuomas Martikainen, “Muslims in Finland: Facts and Reflections,” in Islam and Christianity in School Religious Education, ed. Nils G. Holm, (Abo: Abo Akademi University Press, 2000): 203–27. See also Barbara Daly Metcalf, “Introduction: Sacred Words, Sanctioned Practice, New Communities,” in Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe, ed. Barbara Daly Metcalf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1–27. Orsi, “Everyday Miracles,” 9–10. Peggy Levitt, “‘You Know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant’: Religion and Transnational Migration,” International Migration Review 37 (2003): 847–73; Diana Wong, “Time, Generation and Context in Narratives of Migrant and Religious Journeys,” Global Networks 14 (2014): 306–25. Levitt, “’You know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant,’” 861. Ebaugh and Chafetz, “Introduction,” 13–28; Stump, Geography of Religion, 10. David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (New York: Pantheon, 2018), 25–50. Smith, Religion, 190–228. Smith writes, “[R]eligion is natural to how human perception, cognition, and explanation ordinarily work.” Smith, Religion, 213. Cf. Tweed who writes, “[A]s embodied beings produced by organic processes as much as by cultural practices, humans have certain neurological and physiological constraints on how they interact and how they transform the environment.” Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, 66. Wells and Stock, “The Biology of Human Migration,” 22. Wells and Stock, “The Biology of Human Migration,” 28. Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here, 3–4. Wells and Stock, “Biology of Human Migration,” 21–44; M.J. Mosher, “The Role of Diet and Epigenetics in Migration: Molecular Mechanisms Underlying the Consequences of Change,” in Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective, eds. Michael H. Crawford and Benjamin C. Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 101–34. Jonathan C. K. Wells, “Maternal Capital and the Metabolic Ghetto: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Transgenerational Basis of Health Inequalities,” American Journal of Human Biology 22 (2010): 1–17; “The Capital Economy in Hominin Evolution: How Adipose Tissue and Social Relationships Confer Phenotypic Flexibility and Resilience in Stochastic Environments,” Current Anthropology 53 (2012): S466–78. Wells and Stock, “Biology of Human Migration,” 22. Wells and Stock, “Biology of Human Migration,” 30. Ellsworth Huntington, Mainsprings of Civilization (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1945); Ellen Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthropo-Geography (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911). Cf. Lily Kong, “Geography and Religion: Trends and Prospects,” Progress in Human Geography 14 (1990): 355–71; “Mapping ‘New’ Geographies of Religion: Politics and Poetics in Modernity,” Progress in Human Geography 25 (2001): 211–33; “Global Shifts, Theoretical Shifts: Changing Geographies of Religion,” Progress in Human Geography 34 (2010): 755–76. Kong’s work provides an excellent overview of the study of geography and religion for that last several centuries. Arnon Lotem et al., “The Evolution of Cognitive Mechanisms in Response to Cultural Innovations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences 114 (2017), 7915–22. Nicole Creanza, Oren Kolodny, and Marcus W. Feldman, “Cultural Evolutionary Theory: How Culture Evolves and Why It Matters,” Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences 114 (2017): 7782–89; Emilio F. Moran, Human Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Boulder: Westview, 2008), 27–41.

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138 This framework is also derived from Rainer Albertz’s body of work exploring religious diversity in ancient Israel which dramatically informed approaches to the study of religion in ancient Israel and Canaan by troubling the dichotomies of popular/state religion. Rainer Albertz, Persönlich Frömmigkeit und Offizielle Religion: Religionsinterner Pluralismus in Israel und Babylon (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1978); A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vols. 1–2; Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 21–26, 41–46. Albertz, who first employed the terminology over and against “Volksfrömmigkeit,” has himself deviated from its usage in his most recent publications in favor of the term “family and household religion.” See Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 54. Cf. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion, 33–34; Persönliche Frömmigkeit und offizielle Religion: Religionsinterner Pluralismus in Israel und Babylon (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1978), 18. 139 Meredith B. McGuire, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 11. 140 For an introduction to why Bhabha’s terminology is not always appropriate for discussing religion in all migrational contexts, see Per Bauhn and Fatma Fulya Tepe, “Hybridity and Agency: Some Theoretical and Empirical Observations,” Migration Letters 13 (2016): 350–58. This conversation has taken place among archaeologists and historians of the ancient world for at least a decade. For example, “Homi K. Bhabha applied the originally biological concept of ‘hybridity,’ which today is now frequently applied or at least cited, to describe intercultural dynamics between migrants and local populations in intercultural contexts. In archaeological studies, however, it is often radically reduced to a mere description of phenomena of ‘mixed culture’ inferred from the material record. ‘Hybridity’ should properly be understood as the construction of ambivalent identities in colonial contexts that depart from both their sources.” AnneMaria Wittke, ed., “3.1 Settlement and Mobility,” The Early Mediterranean World, 1200-600 BC, Brill’s New Pauly Supplements 9, trans. Duncan Alexander Smart (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 400. See also Steven W. Silliman, “A Requiem for Hybridity? The Problem with Frankensteins, Purées, and Mules,” Journal of Social Archaeology (2015): 277–98. 141 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). 142 Véronique Altglas, From Yoga to Kabbalah: Religious Exoticism and the Logics of Bricolage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 1–7. 143 A particularly well-known instance is Thomas Luckmann, The Invisible Religion: The Problem of Religion in Modern Society (New York: MacMillan, 1967). 144 Altglas, Yoga to Kabbalah, 3–6. 145 Altglas, Yoga to Kabbalah, 6. 146 Altglas, Yoga to Kabbalah, 6. 147 Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” 72. 148 Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” 71; Stump, Geography of Religion, 77. 149 Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” 71. 150 Rima Berns McGown, Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Stump, Geography of Religion, 77; Tiilikainen, “Somali Women and Daily Islam in Diaspora,” 59–69. 151 Obadare and Adebanwi, “‘The Visa God,’” 33–34; Julie Picard, “Religious Mobilities in the City: African Migrants and New Christendom in Cairo,” in Religious Conversions in the Mediterranean World, eds. Nadia Marzouki and Oliver Roy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 43–59. 152 Sebnem Koser Akcapar, “Conversion as a Migration Strategy in a Transit Country: Iranian Shiites Becoming Christians in Turkey,” International Migration Review 40 (2006): 817–53; Laurent Fouchard, André Mary, and René, eds., Entreprises Religieuses et Réseaux Transationaux en Afrique de l’Ouest (Ibadan and Paris: IFRA/Karthala, 2005).

54 Conceptual Frameworks 153 Fengang Yang and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001): 269–88. 154 Contra Luckman, Invisible Religion. A widely cited example of this phenomenon is that of Sheila Larson who, when interviewed by Robert Bella et al. for their book Habits of the Heart, responded that her personal religion was called “Sheilaism.” Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart, 219–49. 155 Smith, Religion, 42–49, 84–87. 156 For two brief introductions to the concept of multiple religious belonging, see Steven W. Ramey, “‘Religions Are Mutually Exclusive,’” in Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés, eds. Brad Stoddard and Craig Martin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 83–96; Ann Taves, “Can People Belong to More than One Religion?” in Religion in 5 Minutes, eds. Aaron W. Hughes and Russell T. McCutcheon (Sheffield: Equinox, 2017), 92–95. 157 Joantine Bourguis, “Multiple Religious Belonging in the Netherlands: An Empirical Approach to Hybrid Religiosity,” Open Theology 3 (2017): 19–37. 158 Jonathan Weidenbaum, “The Holy Versus the Sacred: Offering a Little Trouble for a Multiple Religious Belonging,” Open Theology 3 (2017): 134–43. 159 Steve Bruce, “Multiple Religious Belonging: Conceptual Advance or Secularization Denial?” Open Theology 3 (2017): 603–12. 160 Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015).

3

Cultures of Mobility in the Lands around Canaan

Recognition of the extensive inter- and intra-regional mobility of ancient Near Eastern society during the Bronze and Iron Ages is the basis of this project.1 Scholars have explored the movement of persons, ideologies, technologies, languages, and religions across an area that stretches east to west from Elam to Mycenae and north to south from Anatolia to Egypt. Like today, human movement took on many different forms, including various modes of travel, work, pilgrimage, migration/relocation, and pastoral/subsistence nomadism. For most people in the ancient Near East, life was lived at the margins, and then as now, movement was most frequently an adaptive strategy to mitigate the difficulties of daily life and facilitate long-term survival. While a large portion of the population was on the move, most movement was still the result of necessity rather than pleasure.2 The primary sources for Egyptian cultures of mobility during the time periods under consideration in this book are the Amarna letters, narrative travel accounts, and iconographic data. Imperial archives are a key source of data for Mesopotamian cultures of mobility, but less helpful when discerning the cultures of mobility in Egypt. For example, although the Egyptian accounts inscribed at Memphis and Karnak record the extensive military campaigns of Amenhotep II with thorough descriptions of the particulars of battle and booty, they say little regarding the means of travel along the way.3 Source material for cultures of mobility across Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan primarily takes the form of administrative texts. Thousands of mundane business, temple, and palace records catalogue the movement of goods, animals, and people. Treaties, another form of administrative document, reveal the concerns of respective kingdoms for the particulars of human movement, be they for trade, military, or travel purposes. Likewise, correspondences between the king and royal officials regarding departures, arrivals, and the contents of journeys are abundant. Examination of these various source materials allows readers to see different cultures of mobility in conversation with one another. Administrative documents and canonized literary productions that contain elements of mobility or migration give us a sense for the ways particular cultures of mobility endured across time and exerted influence over a broad populace. Even if the mobility DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-3

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regimes presented in the texts no longer governed interactions in later epochs, they remained part of the cognitive fabric of later generations. Basic cognitive underpinnings of human choices to move, the resulting needs that arise from movement, and the demands for intercultural competency and navigation are analogous across space and time.

Overland Movement The speed of land travel depended on many variables including the means of travel, terrain, weather conditions, cargo, and the personal fitness of the traveler. Walking was the primary mode of transport, with litters and carrying chairs reserved for elites. Pack animals accompanied walkers throughout the region from early times; the most popular being donkeys and oxen, which were either loaded with panniers or harnessed to carts and sledges. Horses came into use in Canaan sometime around the beginning of the second millennium BCE.4 Across the Levant and Mesopotamia, horses were given primacy as military tools, and were not used for agricultural or merchant activities. Although different species of camel were domesticated as early as 3000 BCE in central Asia, it was only after 2000 BCE that the dromedary (one-hump) “ship of the desert” came to be a common means of carrying goods and people across the drier stretches of the region.5 The invention of the North Arabian saddle sometime around 500 BCE expanded the usability of the camel and increased the power of those who controlled the desert regions they plied as herders and traders.6 Early two- and four-wheeled carts have been found in both Egypt and Mesopotamia.7 Narrow in form and constructed of wood with solid wooden wheels, their dimensions and weight limited their carrying capacity. Early carts were drawn by oxen and onagers, but the introduction of the horse as a military draft animal around 2300 BCE spurred the creation of lighter carts.8 Another wheeled invention, the chariot, appears among the repertoire of ancient Near Eastern transit options around 1600 BCE.9 Likely originating north of the region in the Urals, these nimble vehicles were mainly for military use and only intended to carry human cargo and their weaponry.10 Use of cavalry technology in Canaan occurred later and was typically confined to the regions where transit by such means was feasible. Some of Israel and Judah’s neighbors, such as the Egyptians and Philistines, made use of the chariot, though Biblical authors are ambivalent about chariots. In some instances, they are the symbols of external domination or ill-sought assistance (Exod 15:1; Deut 11:4, 20:11; Judg 1:19, 5:4; Isa 31:1). In others, they are a means of transit fitting for Israel’s leaders (2 Sam 8:4; 2 Chr 1:14; Jer 17:25). In most cases they are implements of war and markers of military strength. The highly debated remains of what some have discerned as stables at Megiddo may indicate the presence of cavalry units in Israel during the Iron Age.11 The road systems of the ancient Near East grew in scale and scope beginning in the Middle Bronze Age. Several travel itineraries gleaned from

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Old Assyrian traders’ documents indicate a vast network of roads connecting Assyria to Cappadocia.12 These east-west roads connected with the primary transit route in the Syro-Phoenician region and there continued down the coast into Egypt, with several transversal routes branching east through valley passes to inland regions.13 Documentation from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages provides rich evidence of the connective roles these transit systems played among the polities of the region. Mentions of major roadways in the Old Testament include that of the aforementioned coastal road, known by biblical authors as the “Way of the Sea” (Isa 8:23) and the “Way of the Philistines” (Exod 13:17). Egyptian scribes knew the same route as the “Way of Horus.” Numbers 20:17 mentions the Transjordanian “Kings Highway,” which stretches from Aqaba to Damascus and is connected to the coastal route by way of several east-west routes. Biblical texts indicate that both the coastal plain and the mountainous regions of the land of Canaan were dotted with footpaths on which local human and animal traffic traveled. Roads were clearly abundant yet, ones capable of handling loaded wagons were only found connecting major centers of commerce.14 Since the elevated position of cities and their accompanying fortifications prohibited direct transit, most major roads in the ancient world did not pass directly through cities but circumvented them. Cities were then connected to these highways by means of secondary access roads.15 Insecurity is a driver of movement, but it also attends the processes of moving from one place to another.16 It may be tempting for modern readers to forget just how dangerous short and long-range movement was in these eras.17 Exposure to the elements was a serious concern throughout the year. A fragmentary letter in the Assyrian archives addresses the safety of travel during a time that threatens rain and ice.18 Likewise, access to dependable water supplies, reliable food sources, and maintaining the health of any animals one used to travel were constant needs. Those on the move contended with others who used the infrastructures of mobility for their own, sometimes nefarious, ends.19 Non-standardized transit costs meant that locals who controlled important points of access like river crossings, mountain passes, and drinking water sources could charge exorbitant fees. Travelers and merchants could expect to find lodging along the routes with major cities providing accommodations for larger commercial caravans. Still, local polities could also arrange their own raids on passing caravans as a way to secure goods, animals, and even people.20 Even if one avoided the difficulties of marauders or extortionists, they still had faced the struggles of illness, injury, and sometimes attacks by wild animals along the way. By the Iron Age, road building and maintenance was mostly centralized under the auspices of local governments, but still supported by imperial funds and personnel.21 Mention of road conditions, often in concert with reports of military activity, is a common feature of interregional correspondence.22 Growing centralization of transit in the Iron Age took place in concert with the consolidation of economic activities.23 Trade in the Iron Age slowly

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moved from localized surplus-based modes of exchange to large-scale centrally-controlled production and distribution.24 In the Levant, products like olive oil and wine became mainstays of the burgeoning economic order. Securing revenue from the sale of local and foreign goods, exchanging gifts between neighboring rulers, and increasing demands to secure hinterland regions characterized the pursuits of emergent powers hoping to extend their reach throughout the region.25 An extensive road system was the foundational element in achieving these objectives. Protecting not only their residents, but the goods they carried with them became a prerogative. Thus, the incidence of military garrisons and forts along the routes, especially in remote regions, became more common as time passed.26 Even though boasts of road widening and straightening are commonly found in imperial inscriptions, reliefs, and documents, the maintenance of the road system was largely the work of local communities through which the roads passed. This generally led to a lack of standardization in form and functionality. While it was common to find paved streets in cities, the open roads of the ancient Near East were mostly unpaved.27 This changed only slightly in the last stretches of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, when the demands of centralized governance instigated the national incorporation of the road system. Even as road-building techniques improved, building adequate bridges remained a serious challenge. Innovative engineers could certainly be found, but structural designs that could withstand the burdens of heavy loads and repeat traffic took centuries to perfect. Early on, the Assyrians piloted a mixedmethods approach by building pontoon-style bridges made of planks stretched across inflated coracles.28 Later the Babylonians would improve upon the mixed-medium solution to build Nebuchadnezzar II’s infamous stone and wood bridge across the Euphrates, which measured 123 m and was recalled with awe even during the Hellenistic period.29 Given the limited instances of such structures, most water crossings were accomplished by fording rivers at navigable points or floating goods across using inflated animal skins.30 This was, more often than not, also dangerous business since the ability to swim was not a guaranteed skill of the common person.

River Travel and Seafaring River travel along the main watercourses of Mesopotamia and Egypt predates the use of open-water vessels. In the Levant, the lack of navigable waterways generally precluded river travel. Egypt was agriculturally dependent on the fixed geography of the Nile, but the river also facilitated remarkable levels of mobility over large distances. Egypt’s use of the Nile was helped by the constancy of flooding seasons and the prevailing south-bound winds that allowed sailors to travel upstream.31 While most agricultural workers would not have wandered far from their villages or immediately neighboring regions, travel by royal functionaries, military personnel, and merchants could include regional jaunts as well as multi-stage journeys between major cities like

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Memphis and Aswan. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, canals harnessed river water for irrigation and trade. The invention of the paddle, and then the oar, further facilitated moving against the current and in smaller land-locked open bodies of water.33 In Mesopotamia, water travel typically took place by means of inflated animal skins attached to rafts (Akk. kalakku) or by means of circular bitumensealed coracles (Akk. maskaru, elep dušê) made from willow or palm.34 The Tigris and Euphrates provided less consistent flooding than the Nile but, correspondence between Hammurapi and the king of Mari indicates that the economies of their societies were nonetheless dependent on river boat trade. In one exchange, Hammurapi clarifies his desire to control the land of Id, a source of bitumen used for boat-making throughout the region. He writes, “Why do I desire Id? The strength of your country consists of donkeys and wagons, but the strength of this country consists of boats.”35 Royal annals attest that log-driving for imperial building projects is among the most documented riverine activities.36 Timber acquisition was also a main driver of Egyptian interests and trade in the coastal Levant. The Egyptians may well take the credit for the creation of the Near East’s first plank-built vessels sometime in the fourth millennium, but at that time, widespread use of such craft in sea-going ventures was uncommon.37 The earliest seafaring was land-bound cabatoge, in which the shoreline was kept in view as a means of navigation. A key feature of ancient sailing reports are their lists of sites at which ships would anchor. These itineraries are witnesses to the unpredictable nature of sailing in these times, due in part to the lack of reliable harbors along much of the southern Levantine coast.38 Ships of this era were usually small, although examples of larger freighters are known. A marked increase in open-water transit occurred after ship builders mastered construction methods that equipped ships for the rigors of the Mediterranean. The pinnacle of this process was the invention of the sail. An early Egyptian painted vase dated to approximately 3200 BCE depicts a ship with middle and forward masts and the square sail that was to become ubiquitous throughout the region for millennia.39 These innovations made long-distance water travel possible and opened new trade ways between the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and India.40 The first written evidence of large-scale international maritime trade in the eastern Mediterranean is found on the Palermo Stone, which records Pharaoh Snefru’s achievements and includes the recollection that forty ships delivered a cargo of cedar logs to Egypt from the northern Levant.41 Material culture found in Crete and Egypt shows trade links between the two close to the time of Snefru’s reign, though it is not certain if the connections are via direct sea routes, through maritime middlemen like the Phoenicians, or by more circumambulatory land routes.42 Other reports show that trade in copper between Cyprus and the Levantine coast was brokered by Phoenician maritime merchants.43 The Amarna letters also record the presence of Egyptian

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ships in Phoenician lands and likewise contain requests from northern allies for provisions from imperial ships.44 The eastern Mediterranean was not the only place where seafaring had changed the nature and scale of trade. Mesopotamian reports from the third millennium BCE speak of extensive trade around the Persian Gulf. The land of Magan – which may be modern Oman or the Gulf shore of present-day Iran – built ships, sourced timber, and traded increasingly valuable copper. Other records indicate the land of Dilmun, perhaps present-day Bahrain, as a site that received inland goods such as olive oil, wool, leather, and other textiles via ship. Even more exotic are the artifacts of ivory, seashells, carnelian and lapis lazuli, some of which likely came to the region via sea trade from India or land trade from Afghanistan.45 The dangers of sailing in this period are numerous. Not knowing where each day on the sea might end, sailors operating these crafts likely balanced adventure and caution. Likewise, those who traveled as passengers had to remain flexible since itineraries were malleable. A glimpse of the travails of waterborne travel can be seen in the words of a father to his runaway son whom he fears has fled via the sea, Should you capsize when you take ship defying me – should you drift downward to a watery grave – Should you stride wide upon the waves to flee to the deep – still were you lost through your own piloting. And who should speak the word to my small boat, ‘Go to him swiftly over the white-capped waves?’ I see you sinking in the chambers of the sea, and my arm does not know how to save you!46 Remains of shipwrecks found along the sea routes and coastlines of the region are abundant. Weather played a primary role in a voyage’s success. Struggles against the elements and even mythological creatures are common among expositions of seafaring adventures. The Middle Kingdom Egyptian text The Shipwrecked Sailor is a prime example of literary depictions of such accounts.47 The most remarkable shipwreck from the Late Bronze Age, and a testament to the scale and nature of interregional trade in the period, is the Uluburun shipwreck. Its cargo included copper and tin ingots, ebony logs, multiple types of glass and beads, ivory, and a variety of foodstuffs.48 The shallower waters of the coastal Mediterranean are littered with the remains of smaller ships that suffered similar fates closer to shore. Their cargos, although not as robust as that of the Uluburon wreck, indicate that trade was not limited as an enterprise to large-scale merchants.49 The Old Testament includes few references to shipbuilding and seafaring. The book of 1 Kings mentions the ships of Solomon and Hiram, and their exploits (1 Kgs 9:26–28; 10:11; 10:22).50 Later in the same book, King Jehoshaphat is identified as a builder of ships that unfortunately never sail as they are wrecked in port (10:48–50). A parallel account of this shipbuilding venture receives a theologizing treatment in 2 Chr 20:35–37, where the

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destruction of Jehoshaphat’s ships is attributed to Yahweh as a response to Jehoshaphat’s alliance-making activities with Ahaziah, king of Israel. Other references to boats, ships, and those who make use of them are found in Jdgs 5:17, 2 Sam 19:19, 2 Chr 2:15, Isa 18:1–2; 33:21, Ps 107:23–32, and Job 9:26. The book of Jonah provides one of the few references to maritime travel in the Old Testament and describes with accuracy the practice of sailors tossing cargo overboard as a means to lighten a ship in danger of taking on water from rising seas.51 One biblical passage that surpasses all others in its presentation of seafaring knowledge is found in Ezekiel 27, which contains the prophet’s proclamations against the great seafaring power Tyre and a prediction of its demise. The extensive nautical and maritime vocabulary of this pericope indicates that its author(s) possessed a deep knowledge of the constituent parts of ships, the processes of shipbuilding, and the requirements of sailing.52

Interregional Competition and Exchange The dominant cultures of mobility in the ancient Near East emerged around the exchange of goods, animals, and people. Networks of agricultural production and distribution, as well as interdependent chains of production and consumption between pastoralists and subsistence agriculturalists formed the backbone of daily life. Even the trade in exotic animals comprised a part of the overall interregional economy.53 The movement of bodies and of the information or skills they possessed was primarily the domain of hegemonic polities. Militaries were positioned and repositioned to expand territory, control trade, and move populations. Likewise, elites negotiated interregional politics through gift economies bolstered by inter-dynastic marriages. Skilled workers and merchants with higher levels of motility plied their talents and wares as agents of royal regimes and as independent movers. It was not unusual to find craftsmen who were also on the move in search of better returns on their specialized labor or less onerous work environments. Unskilled workers who represented the lowest classes of society and greatest portion of the population often lacked the motility of their skilled neighbors and may have attempted to improve their situation by conscripting themselves as common laborers or mercenaries. Early in the Middle Kingdom period, royally-sponsored travel beyond Egypt’s boundaries appears to have been limited to frequent but brief trading expeditions to Punt and military forays to the immediately neighboring territories of Canaan and Nubia.54 Toward the end of the Middle Kingdom, Egypt’s national culture of mobility was balanced between expansion and protectionism, with persons participating in enlarging domains of interregional movement and trade. Evidence of these burgeoning spheres of mobility can be seen in the small amounts of Minoan pottery at Lahun, as well as other pottery that appears to be locally emulative work of Minoan styles in this period.55 It is also at this time when other Egyptian-made artifacts such as scarabs, ceramic

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vessels, statues, jewelry, and even the occasional sphinx begin to appear in Cyprus and Levantine ports of call like Byblos and Ras Shamra.56 By the Second Intermediate period, Egypt was divided in two and ruled separately by different non-Egyptian leaders in the north and south for almost 150 years. While a sequestered Egyptian court (the 17th Dynasty) maintained itself in Thebes, a series of six Hyksos rulers pursued their own expansionist policy in the north, incorporating territories from their ancestral homelands. In the south, the rulers of Kush (Kerma) maintained the kingdom’s important role as an intermediary of African goods desired by their Egyptian neighbors. Kush’s power was bolstered through its control over the Nubian gold trade. By 1600 BCE, Kush’s control of Nubia was unmatched and expanding both north and south. Egyptian sources even recount Kushite raids into the region south of Thebes with the help of the Medjay people and others from Punt.57 Though commonly marked off as foreigners by Egyptian propaganda, overlap in cultural assemblages and lifeways demonstrates that interaction and intermarriage between Egyptians and their southern neighbors took place. Egypt faced internal turmoil toward the end of the 14th century BCE. The pervasiveness of Hurrian names among Canaanite leaders indicates migrations of northern populations into Canaan during this same time, though the material cultural influence of these groups is less attested than that of Egypt.58 By the beginning of the 13th century BCE, Pharaoh Seti I was again leading Egyptian efforts to suppress rebellious cities in Canaan and consolidating power in the north by controlling the lingering mountain dwelling Amurru while also subduing Shasu in the northern Sinai.59 Soon afterward, the Egyptians and the Hittites would come to a stalemate at Kadesh when Rameses II and Hatushilli III met there in battle in 1274 BCE. The reign of Ramesses II’s successor, Merneptah, was marked by renewed attempts to subjugate Canaanite cities. Following Merneptah’s reign, Egypt faced renewed internal political tumult. The subsequent 20th Dynasty began with the stabilizing rule of Setnakhte but is often most associated with the efforts of his son, Ramesses III who repelled influxes of Sea-Peoples and Libyans that are described in imperial records as invaders.60 Much of the New Kingdom was a period of increased cultural contact marked by expansive trade. Several sources document Egyptian interests in traveling to and through northern Canaan. In addition to the Amarna letters, Egyptian topographical lists dated to the reign of Thutmosis III indicate Egyptian interests in the northern Transjordan. Egypt’s overarching concerns were maintaining local alliances and military control over valuable assets. The desire to control trade and resources further south in the Transjordan increased as time went on.61 Throughout the period, Egypt strengthened its borders and increased its domestic wealth. Egypt’s increasing success, particularly its comparatively stable domestic agricultural situation, encouraged immigration.62 During Thutmosis III’s rule, we see documentation of Egypt’s relocation of the children of northern Levantine elites for the purposes of

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imperial arranged marriage and cultural (re)education. Likewise, migrations of Levantine populations for labor purposes increased.64 As in the period leading up to Hyksos rule, Egypt again faced a growing tension between its demand for migrant laborers – who undoubtedly influenced its cultural composition – and its own desires to maintain cultural uniformity and hegemony. The social distance between sedentary and non-sedentary persons increased throughout the New Kingdom in concert with the expansion strategies of Thutmosis I and his successors. In the New Kingdom journey narrative, the Report of Wenamun, the Egyptian courtier Wenamun, who is identified as “the Elder of the Portal of the Temple of Amun,”65 is dispatched to secure a shipment of lumber for the processional bark of Amun of Thebes. His journey is beset by repeated difficulties during a series of voyages in the coastal regions north of Egypt. The trials begin when Wenamun is robbed by one of the crewmen on the first ship on which he makes passage. The incident occurs in the port of Tel Dor, and in the ensuing 9-day period, he searches for the stolen goods and demands the help of the region’s ruler who is unwilling to compensate Wenamun for his losses. Giving up, Wenamun leaves. While sailing he meets a passing Tjeker ship and takes as ransom a large sum of silver, which brings him into disfavor with the Tjeker. Nevertheless, Wenamun escapes unscathed and comes to safe harbor in Byblos, his intended destination. Much to his surprise, Wenamun’s struggles continue when the prince of Byblos orders him to depart immediately. Wenamun ignores the demand even though it is repeated for 29 days. There is more to tale of Wenamun than the story of an unscrupulous courtier’s misadventures. The backdrop of the story is a new Mediterranean world coming to grips with the disruption in Egyptian power. What once would have been an easier journey has become difficult in a new era. Wenamun hopes to live in a world that no longer exists. The difficulties that he faces in each port and the lightness with which each of the local rulers he encounters takes his claims indicate Wenamun’s depreciating social capital as an Egyptian official. His demands for Beder, ruler of Dor, to atone for the theft of his goods likely stems from his assumption that all the financial resources of the region belong to Egypt, and that the local rulers are simply regents for the true king. This likely informs his ransom-theft from the Tjeker sailors as well; after all, he is only taking what rightfully belongs to Egypt. Yet, the fact that all parties responds negatively to Wenamun indicates that Egypt’s power has waned and the hegemony that Wenamun expects to operate under has passed. The reality of this new world is reaffirmed by the fact that the very ship on which Wenamun travels is a foreign ship hired by Egypt on his behalf. Egypt no longer has its own fleets for important royal errands. A later argument between Wenamun and the prince of Byblos shows that the ownership of these fleets and their crews is contested, with Egyptians recognizing that the ships and their sailors are Syrian in origin but under the employ of Egypt. When the Prince of Byblos interrogates Wenamun on the purpose of his

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journey and Wenamun replies that he has come for timber for the processional bark of Amun of Thebes, the sentiment which attends Wenamun’s words is that the Prince ought to fulfill his request because of Egypt’s power over Byblos and its longstanding trade relationship. Wenamun cites the ways former generations of rulers from Byblos had provided lumber to Egypt, assuming this was their duty as vassals to Egypt. Thus, Wenamun proclaims that “There is no ship on the river that does not belong to Amun.”66 Nevertheless, the prince of Byblos holds that such transactions only took place in the past because the Egyptian courtiers came bearing appropriate payment as customers, not as overlords.67 This tale, be it a factual account or not, captures shifting paradigms of interregional power and mobility. New Kingdom Egyptian merchants, courtiers, or general travelers could no longer expect the kinds of receptions throughout the eastern Mediterranean that obtained in the Middle Kingdom period. Patterns of mobility in Mesopotamia, Syria, and northern Canaan also coincided with undulations of political power across the Bronze and Iron Ages. From the middle of the second millennium BCE, the existence of Mesopotamian empires such as Assyria and Babylon became more intricately bound to those of their western neighbors Hatti, Mitanni, and Egypt.68 It was amid balancing power relations among each of these political actors, and attempting its own territorial expansion, that the Assyrian cultures of mobility known most prominently to us today took shape. Even though rulers of the Old Akkadian period, like Sargon and Naram-Sin, had worked to expand their territorial boundaries and established far-reaching trade networks vis-àvis the construction of roadways, Assyria remained beyond the purview of Egypt who had not yet recognized it as a contender for power.69 After the death of Assur-ubalit, Assyria would step into place as a true equal in the “great club of powers.”70 During the Old Assyrian period (Middle Bronze Age), we find an expansive system of trade outposts (Akk. kāru) founded by merchants from Assur located at strategic points of exchange along various bodies of water and overland routes throughout eastern and central Anatolia.71 These networked hubs of exchange benefited both Assyrians and the local Hittite populations, who interacted and integrated with one another through business and marriage. They also echo back to the much earlier Late Uruk period when Sumer maintained established trade connections with Anatolia.72 By account of the evidence from the central outpost of Kanesh, kārum were not independent establishments, but were integrated into local urban networks, even at sites that fell beyond the official designation of Assyrian territory.73 The most striking attribute of such kārum is that they were often made possible by families that strategically decided to send one or more members to far-away regions in order to establish a trade outpost. Once settled, the members would contract trade agreements with locals and function as intermediaries of goods and profits which they would remit to their home communities. As we have seen, mobility requires a reasonably robust motility tool

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kit, which includes enough economic and social capital to engage in longerterm and longer-distance movement. Therefore, more important than the economic drive to create such outposts is the fact that these strategic long-term relocations were household endeavors. In this way, kārum are reminders of the household decision making that characterizes mobility and migration, by which a household seeks to increase the security of its members in both origin and destination locations. Occupying an outpost was not always a free choice. In one letter, we find a local leader calling for the king to resettle 30 families to the town of Hēsa, a road station village where the postmaster and the chief military officer are in need of assistance keeping up with daily affairs.74 Mobility-supporting infrastructures such as caravanserai/guest houses (Akk. ubartum) dotted the main roads between Assur and Kanesh, assisting travelers with a range of transit needs.75 Some wayside establishments were large enough to feed entire caravans.76 Waystations intended primarily for imperial couriers were spaced at approximately 30-km intervals on the royal highways of Mesopotamia and Egypt to provide lodging, supplies, and fresh draft animals for functionaries on official business.77 Throughout the Middle Assyrian period, imperial reach expanded as officials and accompanying military units were placed at such outposts to monitor activities.78 Fire signal towers were another type of installation that allowed not only for communication between disparate points but also increased imperial monitoring of movement.79 A period of changing mobility paradigms is observable between the Middle Assyrian and New Assyrian eras as the regional system experienced deep disruptions in line with those across the broader Mediterranean world. With the untimely death of Tukulti-Ninurta I in 1207, Assyria faced threats from both internal and external challengers, among whom were Aramean groups to the west, Kassite Babylonian actors to the south, and the kingdom of Elam to the East.80 It was the Arameans, with their highly mobile lifestyle, who posed the most significant difficulties for Assyrian regional hegemony in this period of transition.81 The decline of the Late Bronze exchange economy and its bureaucratic structures may have meant that specialists formerly employed by the palatial networks of the earlier period were forced into migration in search of new livelihoods.82 As people of various classes set out in search of livelihoods elsewhere, new trade networks also needed to be established. In each manifestation of the Assyrian regime, a large-scale tribute economy was the engine of imperial existence.83 This tributary system required a robust mobility infrastructure for the movement of people and goods. Variations of this tribute economy continued as the foundation of Neo-Assyrian regimes. Elites subjugated much of the population to turn the gears of the (unequally) redistributive economic engine. While land ownership was not limited to elites, the pressure of production placed on economically less-advantaged landholders was severe and some bowed to opportunities to sell their land while others forfeited it to avoid debt imprisonment.84 The result, also visible in Israel in the 8th century, is the mass consolidation of land under the hands of a few ultra-wealthy landholders. Such practices would certainly have

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generated the kind of insecurity that would have driven some rural inhabitants to find work and new lives in the city, and others to turn to mobile pastoralist lifeways. This transition did not, however, always bring relief, as mobile pastoralists in 8th-century Assyrian territory were suspect for their unpredictable transience and the subjects of many attempts to limit their movements and to force their participation in the tribute economy.85

Mobile Functionaries Some of the most extensively mobile persons in the ancient Near East were scribes.86 Scribal mobility was a function of the polities themselves during the Late Bronze Age and a result of the later dissolution of those polities. Once scribes were dislocated, they moved to new places and integrated their knowledge. Migrating scribes were, therefore, fundamental actors in the reorganization of Mesopotamian society in the Iron Age.87 Throughout Egypt, it was common for scribes to travel to receive training or to relocate for their placements. The New Kingdom Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School, also known as The Satire on the Trades, is a popular training text in which a father and son journey from their home to a scribal boarding school where Pepi, the young scribe, will enter into training. On the way, his father implores Pepi to take his education seriously and recounts how difficult, dangerous, or unfulfilling other modes of work are. His father’s words on highly mobile occupations illuminate elite cultures of mobility in this period, XV – The arrow-maker is already spent as he goes into the desert uplands. What he must pay for donkeys is more costly than their toil will profit in return; and costly too his pay to country people to point him on his way. When he reaches home at evening, the walking has exhausted him.88 XVI – The porter who treks to foreign lands has assigned his meager assets to his children; fearful alike of lions and of nomads, he has his wits about him only in Egypt. He comes back home all woebegone; the journey has done him in. He dresses in loin-cloth for his clothing, and contentment never comes.89 Two more New Kingdom texts bring to life the woes of young scribes who wish for nothing more than to escape the demands of their labors in a remote locale and travel to the city of Memphis. In one, the scribe has already boarded a boat to Memphis. He extols, Oh, I’m bound downstream on the Memphis ferry, like a runaway snapping all ties, with my bundle of old clothes over my shoulder. I’m going down there where the living is, going down there to that big city, and there I’ll tell Ptah (Lord who loves justice): ‘Give me a girl tonight!’90

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The other text captures the sentiments of a scribe longing to free himself from the drudgeries of training to go on similar journey to Memphis, Farewell, my thoughts! Absconded, they race toward a place they know well, upriver bound to see Memphis, House of Lord Ptah. (And I wish I were with them!) But I idle here absent-minded, wanting my thoughts back to whisper me news of the City … Oh Lord of the City friendly to young scribes, be at peace with me! Grant me rise above this day’s infirmities!91 Once trained, scribes traveled throughout the region to perform their duties. The Craft of the Scribe is a New Kingdom epistolary compilation that relates aspects of mobile life for a royal functionary. It contains a collection the admonitions of an elder scribe who is passing on the knowledge gained as a mahir, or logistics officer, who was responsible for the particulars of journeys north of Egypt. Among other things, the letters display the scribe’s concern for his students’ knowledge of Syrian geography. The tone is one of sincere instruction, but in the manner of an elder who has earned his place through much trial and suffering, and who is keen to demonstrate to his students that extensive knowledge comes through hard work and self-denial. The text’s parts take the form of potential itineraries that a mahir might travel while on business for the kingdom. The student, perhaps either copying these tablets, or simply memorizing them, is rebuked for not having mastered the same breadth of geographical knowledge or real-world experience as their elder. The letters also provide instances of the danger faced on the road, such as attack by foreign thieving parties after camp has been made, rabblerousing by delinquents in foreign cities, as well as the loss of one’s proper Egyptian armor and resultant “sackcloth” tattered garb that becomes the norm for one on the road. The mahir writes of the struggles of seemingly common defection of the entourage’s members to join the Shasu and “Asiatics” (ʿ3mu). Moreover, the elder scribe speculates on the likelihood that the scribe in training could be wooed by a woman in a foreign locale who would end up becoming a liability for him. A good mahir will keep his mind to his business. The final lines of the text relay the elder’s desire, “[T]hat you be able to see [the lands and their towns] for us calmly, that you might be able to relate them and become with us an esteemed official of the treasury.”92 All in all, such letters give us a window to Egypt’s dependence on mobile functionaries and the importance of geographic training for such functionaries to perform their daily work. A similar genre of text found throughout Mesopotamia and Egypt are itineraries. In Egypt, such texts are often embedded in daybooks (hrwyt), which catalogue a variety of data concerning daily comings and goings, as well as longer journeys.93 Itineraries also come to us from different contexts including royal land travel, shipping, and military endeavors.94 Such texts would have been helpful for teaching geography, but also for training

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scribes in the kinds of record-keeping required for each of these types of journeys. Among Mesopotamian sources, several travel itineraries provide minimalist accounts of multi-day journeys. The provenance of these texts spans from the time of Mari all the way into the Neo-Assyrian periods. Contrary to Egyptian versions, Mesopotamian itineraries are often found as stand-alone texts though, they are sometimes contained in letters.95 Roskop suggests that the literacy rate among Mesopotamian merchants was likely fairly high, and thus, it is likely that the extant itineraries were produced by merchants cataloguing or reporting their own exploits.96 Furthermore, she demonstrates that the contents of these texts were probably intended to be helpful for other travelers, and therefore, more than just record keeping, since they contained the names of places that one could expect to find rest, replenishment, and even entertainment while en-route.97 An Old Babylonian itinerary from the 18th century BCE identified as The Road to Emar is one of the more famous exemplars of this genre. It exists in three copies.98 These texts capture a journey across lands that are now the modern states of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. More than seventy toponyms are given, though the correspondence of most of these to historical locations remains tenuous. Identification of the extent of the itinerary is made possible by correlating six of the sites listed with known locations.99 The duration of the trip is over 180 days, with several multi-day stops and a brief visit to Emar, which appears to be the primary purpose of the journey. Scholars are able to discern the pace of travel by calculating average distances between points and other evidence for the relative speeds of foot travel, travel by horse or donkey, and river boat travel. Such comparative calculations indicate that these itineraries likely portray travel by foot and by boat for stretches along the Euphrates.100 The original purpose of the The Road to Emar texts continues to evade scholars, as does its existence in multiple copies. It is possible that each is an administrative document of a kind, but their pluriformity may also indicate use as an educational text for learning genre and geography, as was the case in the Egyptian Craft of the Scribe. Whatever their original purpose, the texts make geographic sense and the brief explanations of key events along the journey or at overnight sites further illuminate the realities of mobility during the period described. Other noteworthy copies of similarly styled itineraries can be found in the Assyrian Annals from the reigns of Tukulti-Ninurta II and Assurnasirpal II.101 Whether biblical itinerary texts such as Num 33:1–49 served as training tools for scribes in Israel and Judah remains unknown. Highly skilled medical/religious specialists and patients seeking care were also participants in interregional exchange. In one instance, a 4th century BCE stela from Karnak describes a situation in which the sister of an Egyptian prince’s foreign wife falls gravely ill, and an Egyptian scribe is sent to ascertain the cause of her ailment. The scribe diagnoses her condition as demon possession by a Syrian deity and suggests an Egyptian deity be sent to heal her. The Pharaoh Ramses sends the god Khons in his hypostasize statue form.

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The deity stays for seventeen months to heal the woman and protect the household, only making a return journey when the princess’ father is told to send him on his way in a dream.102 According to another text, the ruler of Ugarit requested a physician from Egypt.103 Several other documents bear witness to Babylon’s robust tradition of sending religio-medical specialist to Hatti.104 Likewise, 2 Kgs 17:24–28 captures an instance when Shalmaneser repatriates a priest of Yahweh to Samaria to train the various peoples who had been resettled there by the Assyrians in the proper rites of Yahwism. In 2 Kings 5, the King of Aram sends Naaman, the commander of his forces, to the king of Israel for medical intervention from Elisha. One of the outcomes of interregional mobility was that occasionally visitors or relocated persons brought diseases with them. In a Hittite inscription, Mursili II implores the gods through a series of sacrifices and prayers to resolve the issue of a years-long epidemic among his people that he links with the arrival of Egyptian prisoners.105 Both his brother and his father had fallen victim to the disease, as well as countless vassals. In desperation, Mursili calls on the entire pantheon of Hatti to come to his aid. The spread of disease in the other direction is also evidenced in Egyptian incantations that refer to the foreign demons as the cause of illnesses.106

Mobile Pastoralism While many types of movement occurred in the ancient Near East, those that fall into the category of mobile pastoralism, or as it is sometimes called, subsistence pastoralism, have received the greatest attention.107 The body of literature on this topic is vast and growing. Here, I present a brief overview of the phenomenon as witnessed in the ancient Near East. In keeping with the overarching concerns for understanding migration and mobility in light of the household and (in)security, attention is focused on kinship structures and the adaptive responses to various types of insecurity that have catalyzed mobile pastoralist lifeways. Across the history of the ancient Near East, cycles of population growth, decline, and redistribution were, in part, the result of fluctuations in the life cycles of urban centered economies and shifts in climate that changed zones of agricultural productivity. From the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age, the Levant experienced periods of sedentarization and mobilization as part of these demographic transitions. LaBianca identifies three factors that are central to properly understanding occurrences of mobile/subsistence pastoralism in the ancient Near East. The first is a population’s proximity and accessibility to fresh water. The second is the population’s proximity to the Arabian desert, which though an arid and largely uninhabitable place in the rainless summers, was a vast area that could support the extensive grazing of animals in the wetter winter months. Lastly, the location of significant political powers along the Levantine coast promoted subsistence pastoralism in several ways. With its arable soils and

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more significant amounts of rain, the coastal region provided the necessary components for sedentary populations to grow up around the sedentary agriculturally-based centers. Likewise, the Levant functioned as a land bridge between regional powers that sought dominance over it for the purpose of controlling trade, taxes, and movement. As a result, frequent incursions from contestant regional powers displaced populations and compelled others to lives of permanent nomadism.108 Movements at the end of the Late Bronze Age and the beginning of the Early Iron Age mirror the patterns of adaptive change from those earlier historical moments, and when viewed in the longue durée, can be considered as indications of prevailing cultures of mobility in the broader ancient Near East.109 Earlier inquiry on the subject was often driven by scholarly and lay fascination with the romanticized nomadic life in the ancient Near East. Historically, scholars have pursued two distinctive explanations of relationships between mobile and sedentary elements in society. One perspective forwards the belief in discreet social differences between the two types that is marked by hostility. The other approach assumes a symbiotic relationship. Proponents of the later model have suggested various levels of conflict between the groups, but most ultimately agree that complementary interaction outweighed conflict. More recently, focus has shifted to discussions of the complex systems of mobility that facilitated relationships between pastoralist and settled elements of society.110 In doing so, the conversation has moved beyond dimorphic models to more sophisticated accounts of interrelationship and suggestions not only of potential cyclical mobilizations and sedentarizations but of the intrinsic embeddedness of mobile actors in sedentary society.111 Scholars continue to maintain a wide variety of perspectives on the causes and characterizations of these movements between lifeways in the period of disruptions between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. Nevertheless, no single explanation accounts comprehensively for all the data.112 The fluidity of oscillations between mobile and sedentary life makes pastoral lifeways somewhat difficult to differentiate from migration in the archaeological record. Nevertheless, both forms of movement are strategic. Both singular and cyclical movements of this kind should be discussed as migratory behavior since, whether unidirectional or cyclical, these movements are responsive to insecurity and rely on household-based decision making that characterize most migratory activity. While the ancient Near East did not possess a seamless socio-cultural similarity, mobile and sedentary portions of ancient Near Eastern populations commonly worked in tandem with one another as economically and socially related subsets of the same societies. These interdependent elements of society did not always accord well with one another.113 Even when we see patterns of economic and social interdependence among mobile and sedentary actors, it is naïve to assume a kind of cultural uniformity was ubiquitous at all levels of existence. As is true anywhere, cultural similarities

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at one level of association exist in tandem with differences at other levels. The attendant norms for those of elite status likely differed for those of lower social class. The same can be acknowledged regarding the mobile and sedentary spheres of society without arriving at the conclusion that they were separate societies. In essence, they capture a similar pattern of human behavior in which persons are linked as multiply embedded social agents. Interactions across multiple social spheres required code switching between cultural norms, linguistic patterns, and political frameworks.

Pilgrimage Pilgrimage is a category of ritualized mobility. Purposeful movement to sites of religious importance and the practice of movement as religious ritual are phenomena that have existed as far back as the prehistoric periods of human society. Patterned seasonal movements for subsistence were often linked with religious enactment at particular sites. In the ancient Near East, pilgrimage was an element of religious practice among elites in Uruk as far back as 3000 BCE, and perhaps included non-elites, though the archaeological evidence for this period is notoriously limited to higher social echelons.114 Pilgrimage activities continued throughout the Mediterranean and Near East in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, although the significant cross regional disruptions at the end of the Bronze Age brought about changes for the then dominant infrastructures of ritual travel.115 Changing trade networks and patterns of mobility also meant transitions in religious infrastructures of the day. A great deal of goods had flowed through the temples of the Bronze Age palace economies. In the absence of strong centralized governments, these temple-based economies would have had to adapt, though the temples themselves did not all disappear.116 Elites and non-elites continued visiting religious sites to venerate local deities, participate in calendrical rites, visit burial sites, engage in feasting or celebratory events, and undergo other rites of passage. Egyptian sources record similar instances of travel along the Nile by persons of different social classes to religious sites associated with family deities. During the first millennium, Egyptian temples increasingly became sites to which adherents would journey for an overnight stay.117 Later, the hopes of lodging at the temples included receiving visions from deities and the healing of ailments for which votives were left behind. The causes of such practices are likely attributable to Hellenistic influences.118 Biblical texts maintain that both Israelites and Judeans frequented pilgrimage (Heb. hāg) sites at Bethel, Dan, Shiloh (Josh 18:1; Judg 20:26–28, 21:19; 1 Sam 1–3; 1 Kgs 12:32–33; 2 Kgs 17: Amos 4:4, 5:5, 8:14).119 Jerusalem became a site of religious pilgrimage early in Israel’s history. Following the Josianic reforms, it was a requisite pilgrimage site (Deut 16:16), a reality borne out in later evidence from the Second Temple and Persian periods.120 In the Persian period, Elephantine would also become a prominent pilgrimage site for Judean and Egyptian Jews alike.121

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Controlling Mobility In addition to the geographically and occupationally specific forms of mobility discussed earlier, we must also delineate larger trends concerning general freedom of movement. Humans experience movement as moments of tension and easing in response to our physical and socially constructed environments, which constrain and encourage mobility.122 This is no less true for life in the ancient Near East. The ancient Near East was a place of intense mobility but one should rein in any over-idyllic images of persons freely wandering huge stretches of open space. Even as human and economic capital traveled fluidly, polities sought to monitor and control movement. In fact, control of human movement has been linked to the rise of highly organize polities there.123 Both royal personnel and common movers were under the strictest control by the palace economies of the time. Superiors frequently sent letters to learn the whereabouts of workers or messengers under their control and to ensure their timely return from missions. Beyond recording human movers, royal officials catalogued the movement of goods, the status of mobile infrastructure – such as bridges, rivers, and roads, animal stocks – and recorded concerns with collecting tolls along royal roads.124 Desired forms of movement and acceptable types of movers were supported by robust official and unofficial infrastructures such as caravanserai (Akk. bīt wabrī) that provided protection, lodging, foodstuffs, and pertinent information.125 Throughout the region, undesirable movement was quickly identified, and efforts were made to stem it. Even during the so-called Pax Assyrica, when borders between regions were largely open, sophisticated networks of actors monitored, reported on, and responded to human movement. Official correspondence documents royal responses to mobile threats like smugglers on the border, criminals on the run, the movements and relocations of displaced peoples. Even when administrative reports do not refer directly to instances of mobility, as is the case when one official voices a concern regarding a shepherd’s failure to maintain yearly tributes of animals for the crown/temple, such a text provides indirect evidence of prevalent cultures of mobility and implicit evidence for the lack of control the Assyrian government could claim over the semi-nomadic populations contained within its borders.126 Among the corpus of ancient correspondence between the king and his officials, the matter of runaway slaves, craftsmen, hired men, fugitives, and generally displaced persons ranks as a common concern.127 Work assignments frequently appear to be oppressive and, therefore, the flight of indentured workers or slaves was common.128 In Egypt, agricultural estates under royal control were surrounded by walls that were intended not primarily to keep thieves or marauders out, but to keep workers in.129 The number of escapees catalogued in the ancient record tells us more than the fact that slaves escaped. In addition to indicating the high frequency of conscripted workers, soldiers, or slaves fleeing, these accounts relay the more important indirect information that the mobility infrastructures of the period made such fugitive journeys possible.

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The trouble of locating runaways was ubiquitous enough that specialized trackers were employed to return high-value persons.130 One even finds an incantation intended to bring about the return of a runaway slave.131 The terms of all disputes over free travelers, wanderers, mobile pastoralists, refugee populations, escaped slaves, detained functionaries, or newly captured persons were grounded in the assertion of royal ownership and negotiation of that ownership between elite actors.132 The return of fugitives was also paramount to maintenance of political parity.133 As a Bronze Age treaty between Hatti and Egypt states, [And if] a single man flees from [Hatti, or] two men, [or three men, and they come to] Ramses, Beloved [of Amon, Great King, King] of Egypt, his brother, [then Ramses], Beloved of Amon, Great King, [King of Egypt, must seize them and send them] to Hattusili, his brother … – for they are brothers.134 Despite the idealized notion of fraternal parity, the corpus of treaties indicates that the requirement to return refugees and fugitives did not apply equally to all parties.135 Negotiations for the return of such persons often kindled tension between the region-wide protocols of hospitality and extradition.136 More powerful rulers maintained the right to hold persons and groups for an indeterminate period. The business of human movement was not only the interest of rulers. It ultimately fell under the domain of the divine. The primary witnesses listed in many extradition treaties are not other rulers, but the gods.137 When rulers did not follow the protocols of legitimate return, they opened themselves up to divine punishment. Yet, the sword of divine retribution could swing both ways as the religious concerns of those holding fugitives could override political protocol. In one case, the ruler of Aleppo refuses to return various fugitives and refugees to Zimrī-Līm, the ruler of Mari. He grounds his decision on the basis that the storm god, Addu, prohibited the return of refugees and fugitives because doing so broke with the protocols of hospitality. If he failed to heed Addu’s command, he would be punished by death.138 Borders and Boundaries

The concepts of territoriality and borders plays an important role in discussions of mobility. To understand population movements and perceptions of them, we must first understand how persons variously conceived of those permeable and impermeable spaces of transition that bounded their mobile worlds. On one hand, landscape features served as natural boundaries. Rivers, canyons, and mountain ranges were often natural points of termination between regions. Expansive harsh environments such as the Sinai or the Arabian Desert, while traversed, also served as buffer zones between polities. Biblical authors frequently describe tribal allotments using such

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landscape features as points of reference (Exod 23:31; Num 20:23; 1 Chr 5:9). On the other hand, humans establish themselves on the landscape by building homes, roads, city walls, fortifications, and other built environments that facilitate and limit movement by demarcating inter alia public and private as well as social and economic space.139 Natural and human-made boundaries and structures could also represent or partake in cosmic structures. Thus, in commemorating the inner defensive wall of Babylon, Nabopolassar claimed that it stood as “the solid border as ancient as time immemorial,” and as “the staircase to heaven, the ladder to the netherworld.”140 Lack of sophisticated mapping technology did not prohibit the drawing and maintenance of clear geographic boundaries in the ancient world. While notions of territoriality were not always shared between those ruling over the distinct polities, nor consistent across time, the notion of defining the limits of one’s ownership was widespread at personal and corporate levels. Thus, to say that these ancient actors did not share similar conceptualizations of territoriality is not to say that they did not operate according to similar ideals of sovereignty over their respective geographies, even when those geographies overlapped.141 At both the levels of territorial boundaries and personal property, land claims and borders were publicly known an enforced.142 As early as the third millennium BCE, we find record of land surveying as a central administrative task.143 Such practices continued into the Old and Middle Babylonian periods, when we find detailed cuneiform maps outlining land holdings. Later versions of this type of textual map also appear in Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian configurations, indicating that geography, topography, and the cataloguing of distances between places were all important, even though the ability to generate accurate cartographic representations was not yet achieved.144 Neo-Assyrian annals repeatedly enumerate the extent of royal territory using the terms miṣru and tahūmu as synonyms for tangible boundaries.145 Egyptians distinguished between different categories of borders. The term djer indicated a kind of universal boundary that did not change over time. It was used to refer to the ideal extent of a Pharaoh’s power in the world. The second term, tash (t ˒˒š), refers to the modern concept of a border, a physically delineated boundary that is ultimately moveable and expandable.146 Abundant texts regarding royal land grants, as well as distributions and protection of personal property, have been found across Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant.147 Property could be held by an individual or collectively by members of a household.148 Documentation of real estate transactions can be traced back to Sumerian times.149 A Hittite treaty between Tudhaliya II of Hatti and Sunashshura of Kizzuwatna specifies the extent of the two kings’ imperial landholdings and their points of contact.150 In Ugarit, records of landholdings show that property conveyances were maintained in official documentation across multiple generations.151 The use of “boundary stones” (Akk. kudurru) in Kassite Babylonia attests to the marking of royal and personal property. These inscribed stones were

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placed on land parcels to record their status as grants from royals to officials or others to whom the royal wished to bestow land. The stones contain the conditions of the land grant, the dimensions of the parcel, taxes due on the land, and the witnesses to the grant. Boundary stones also frequently contained curses leveled against those who might try to move the stone or take the land. Such markers are important evidence for the centralization of land control and distribution by imperial governments.152 In the Egyptian Wisdom of Amenemopet, a father who spent life as a royal servant tending to the agricultural affairs of the king, passes his learning on to his son, who is a scribe. Among the text’s ethical admonitions, we find the warning, “Do not move the markers at the edge of the fields … nor violate the boundaries of the widow … avoid unsettling the boundaries of the fields that the fear which you inspire may be ended.”153 For some biblical authors, land is considered not only a core component of personal property but marked off by leaders according to divine specification. Thus, Deut 19:14 and 27:17 record the prohibition against moving (‫ )סוג‬a neighbor’s boundary stone (‫)גבול‬. Across the Near East, it is likely that land demarcation practices impinged upon the mobility of some groups, specifically mobile pastoralists who might not have shared assumptions regarding the nature of “private” property. Boundary marking was accompanied by significant protection efforts. Control of vast stretches of land required centralized systems of governance with sustained presence in the most far-off regions. Across the ancient Near East, kings were expected to reify and expand their borders as signs that they were politically and religiously potent.154 Pharaohs were tasked with the roles of conquering chaos or injustice (isfet) and maintaining order (ma’at) in the earthly realms, a job which included population regulation and the subjugation of potential enemies. The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage/Admonitions of Ipuwer trades on the fear that chaos could prevail over order at any moment should the Egyptian systems of control falter. The markers of such times include increased danger in travel and the unregulated influx of foreigners who threaten to eliminate an idealized notion of Egyptian identity. We read, Verily the desert pervades the land, the nomes are annihilated, and foreign aliens have come to Egypt. Verily, [Asiatics] have arrived in the land, and in truth there are no Egyptians anywhere … Verily, the roads are avoided and the paths are ambushed, Men crouch in bushes until the arrival of the traveler at night … .155 Similarly, the ideal Babylonian and Assyrian king expanded the borders of their territory and protected all who fell under the purview of their rulership from invasion and outside threats. Expansionist efforts were viewed internally by Assyrian rulers not so much as conquest but as the re-establishment of world order that had been lost.156 Rulers maintained presence among their people through cyclical military and tribute campaigns. Occasionally, garrisons were left behind to secure the ruler’s ongoing control after his departure.

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More common, though, was the practice of erecting stelae inscribed with the ruler’s image and a description of the events that led to and substantiated his dominion over the land. Such stelae were placed throughout territories with the effect of establishing the symbolic boundaries of the world and the limits of human knowledge.157 In Neo-Assyrian times, a ruler’s rise to power included requisite journeys to sites where previous kings has established boundary stones and imperial monuments. Such visits demonstrated both continuity of rulership and the ongoing expansion of the territory.158 What polities in the ancient Near East lacked in geographic information systems and closed caption surveillance networks, they made up for with human presence and strategic uses of physical geography. Strategically placed fortifications in frontier zones controlled access to scarce freshwater resources and made use of “shatter zones” such as the expansive desert or marshes with quicksand, where natural topography and environmental dangers mark off impassable territory and allow for the scrutiny of anyone attempting to cross through more easily passable areas.159 Such areas were also the types of places that fugitives frequently fled to because their impenetrability also prevented thorough policing.160 As early as the Ur III period, sources record Shulgi and Shu-sin’s wallbuilding efforts to keep Amorite (Akk. Tidnum) mobile elements at bay.161 It is during the Middle Kingdom that we first find references to Egyptian attempts to bar the entry of outsiders via wall-building. The Prophecy of Neferty points to increasing Egyptian demands to secure its immediate borders through extensive fortification, Asiatics (ʿ3mu will fall to his sword, Libyans will fall to his flame, Rebels to his wrath, traitors to his might, As the serpent on his brow subdues the rebels for him. One will build the Walls-of-the-Ruler, To bar Asiatics from entering Egypt.…162 Although archaeological evidence of the Walls of the Ruler (inebu heḳa) has yet to materialize, they appear again in the Middle Kingdom tale of Sinuhe.163 At a subsequent point in the same period, victory stelae in Semna and Uronarti record Senusret III’s extensive campaigns to extend the Nubian frontier and secure trade goods.164 The names of Egyptian fortresses on the southern frontiers, such as “Curbing the Foreign Lands” and “Repelling the Medjay,” indicate that Egyptians made no attempt to disguise their desires to control movement in these regions.165 Structures were also in place between the first and second cataracts of the Nile to impede southern traffic, on Egypt’s border with Libya (Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham), along the Way of Horus, and to the east in the Sinai wilderness (Ras Budran).166 Egypt even augmented its border walls and military outposts with defensive canals, some of which were stocked with crocodiles.167

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Although there were concerted efforts to identify and protect boundaries, borders were apt to change quite frequently given the undulating nature of political control at the time. Polities often maintained idealized notions of territoriality that conflicted with the day-to-day maintenance of hegemony. Egypt is an excellent example of this later tension in the ways that it ideally claimed the reality of the Pharaoh’s rule over the entire world while needing to continually reclaim lands beyond its domestic purview. In the same way, the Babylonian “Map of the World” presents a quintessential model of hegemony from the 8th to 7th centuries that Assyria and Babylon held for themselves while still having to work out the particularities of existence among equally and unequally powerful neighbors.168 The Question of a Ubiquitous Code of Hospitality

We have seen the role of highly mobile court functionaries was invaluable for the success of the interregional political and economic systems that depended on continued contact between one another.169 Specialists were often sent to serve in far-off locations that lacked persons with their training.170 Messengers traveled non-stop in both small retinues and large caravans to transport pertinent information, gifts, and other diplomatic cargo between their respective courts. It is reasonable to assume that the high-value nature of the information, skills, and goods with which officials traveled required significant protection.171 Similarly, merchants with valuable cargo and sums of money also needed protection.172 Still, questions remain regarding how such persons were afforded the necessary safeguards along their route and how they were treated upon their arrival. It is a common trend among scholars to assert that an interregional code of hospitality governed the sending and receiving of functionaries as well as general movements of travelers, merchants, and disenfranchised movers. Proof of such a code is generally drawn from texts regarding the exchange of royal messengers during the Late Bronze Age. Whether these protocols were lived out in practice is difficult to discern. An interregional code governing how courts should receive or detain functionaries would protect messengers from maltreatment, regardless of the contents of their message. Movers often traveled with letters of intent that they could deposit with local officials along their route to guarantee security.173 Nehemiah recalls requesting such letters from King Artaxerxes before setting out for Judah (Neh. 2:7). The ability to honor any code of hospitality remained in the power of the one receiving the messenger, as guests were only granted release at the behest of their host. Thus, we find instances in which royal functionaries are detained for significant periods of time as pawns to be strategically played in larger political maneuverings.174 Although rulers did not overtly command every instance of long-distance travel or trade, evidence supports the understanding that they viewed their subjects in far-flung regions as falling under their protective purview. An Old

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Assyrian poem of Sargon recounts a rescue mission to Anatolia to save an endangered group of merchants.175 The poem specifies Sargon’s own participation in this venture. Though not historically verifiable, the poem is indicative of a notion that kings preserve the lives of their subjects regardless of the distance between them. This understanding does not emerge simply from an altruistic attitude of kingship but is substantiated in other ancient Near Eastern conceptualizations of persons as the property of their rulers and of rulers as capable of traversing any distance to establish their rule. Nevertheless, we must recognize that even the most powerful polities could not control every aspect of mobility. A letter from the El-Amarna archive, in which merchants detained in Canaan are murdered and robbed, illustrates how foreign travelers were truly at the mercy of those whose lands they passed through, and even there, were not guaranteed protection from other local threats.176 Bryce notes how certain polities, namely Ugarit and Carchemish, established reciprocal systems of retributive payment when merchants from each respective locality were killed in the other.177 Such a strategy for protecting the transfer of persons and goods placed the onus on the broader population through collective taxation. Migration often leads to the creation of new relational idioms, practices, myths, and means of defining limits of kinship and in-group/out-group identity. This entails expanding the boundaries of what counts as “family” by relying on hospitality, engaging in relational negotiations with others beyond one’s original kinship structures, and thus inviting others in while also being invited into relationship within new kinship structures.178 A text from Sippar records a time when a particular awīlum by the name of Sîn-abushu arrives to the city without knowing any immediate family members. The letter with which he travels bears a request from the one sending him that the members of his broader kin group, who reside in the city, welcome him as family.179 Although one can find many texts to support the claim that a biblical ideal of the care for the stranger existed in practice, questions of day-to-day hospitality for displaced persons, travelers, and foreigners in ancient Israel and Judah do not have straightforward answers. The Hebrew term gēr is often understood in contradistinction to that of ezraḥ (‫)אזרח‬, or “native” (Exod 12:19). Sometimes portrayed as persons on the move, and at others as those who were formerly on the move but are now resettled, the classification of the gēr as one in need of physical, social, and economic protection indicates their liminal status (Gen 15:13; Exod 12:39, 20:10, 22:21, 23:9,12; Lev 19:33–34; Deut 5:14, 10:18–19). The term ṯôšāḇ (‫ )תושׁב‬is frequently translated as “resident alien”, “sojourner,” or “transient” (cf. 1 Chr 29:15). The relationship between gēr and ṯôšāḇ is not always clear. There are several instances in which the use of ṯôšāḇ appears to identify someone as being a bound laborer of sorts (Exod 12:45; Lev 22:10, 25:6). It may, therefore, be a sense of indebtedness that Abraham’s self-deprecating words imply as he negotiates for a plot to inter Sarah’s body in Gen 23:4. There, he refers

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to himself as a gēr and ṯôšāḇ simultaneously (‫)גר־ותושׁב אנכי‬, as if they are two distinct but related statuses that amplify his liminal status when used together. Other glosses of the root gwr include demonstrations of hostility or the action of attacking someone, as well as of being afraid of someone or something. In these secondary and tertiary uses, we see elements of insecurity that can catalyze flight or attend the process of resettlement. Even though many texts prescribe care for gērim, they are not necessarily afforded full integration among the communities in which they reside. This is captured overtly in the narratives about Hagar (ha-gēr) and the etiology of the Ishmaelites, who are a nomadic group sometimes understood to be synonymous with Midianites. Other texts, arguably later in provenance like the ancestral texts, indicate the potential for gērim to be held as slaves by Israelites (Lev 25: 44–46; cf. 1 Chr. 5:10, 21). The ambiguous station of relocated individuals is similarly apparent at Ugarit, where the Akkadian term ubru (ubarum) is used to denote persons who have a unique social status as non-natives. Ubru at Ugarit were not afforded rights to purchase a house or land, and therefore were not granted the same rights or privileges as native Ugaritians.180 Instead, their options for residence appear to have been limited to the wabartum (bīt wābri), or caravansary/guest house, where travelers and traders of different stripes stayed. Limiting the number of possible places ubru could reside may have been associated with the practice of disallowing merchants to stay in Ugarit through the winter. Collectively, these initiatives demonstrate a culture of mobility where particular movers and their skills or contributions were welcomed for specific purposes within a strict framework of control. Concern for broken protocols for hospitality can found throughout the biblical corpus. Genesis 19, a tale of grievous inhospitality, sits juxtaposed to Genesis 18, a story of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality for divine visitors. In the subsequent chapter, Lot offers appropriate welcome to the divine messengers who visit the city of Sodom. The inhabitants of the city, however, seek to undermine Lot’s offer of quarter by demanding they be able to have sexual relations with the visitors. The expectations for protecting one’s guests drive Lot to the unconscionable response of offering his own daughters in the visitors’ stead. Fortunately, the divine visitors intervene before Lot’s daughters are thrown to the crowd. A similar series of events unfolds in Judges 19, which conveys the horrific account of the rape and mutilation of an unnamed woman from Bethlehem who travels north with a Levite as his concubine. While the treatment of the woman can be blamed in part on the unscrupulous Levite in this story whose behavior mirrors Lot’s in Gen 19, another reality that leads to her abuse and death is the lack of hospitality in the lands between Bethlehem and the hill country of Ephraim through which her and the Levite traveled. An excerpt from 2 Kgs 20:12–19 provides another example of royal hospitality gone awry. The text recounts how Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon, sent envoys bearing letters and a gift to Hezekiah, who had taken ill. Hezekiah

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extended a hearty welcome to these foreign messengers and took it upon himself to show them all the resources of the royal house of Judah. Concerned with Hezekiah’s actions, his court prophet, Isaiah, vehemently critiques his unrestrained hospitality and delivers the message that Judah’s relationship to Babylon will be one of vassalage in the days to come. The Chronicler records this incident as a moment when Yahweh left Hezekiah to act on his own accord, as a means of testing his intentions, but does not indicate the divine verdict of the events (2 Chr 32:31). In ways related to the aforementioned texts, Israel’s memory of the exodus is colored by accounts of dashed expectations for hospitality from the lands neighboring Canaan. Numbers and Judges both record incidents when Israel was prohibited from passing through Edom and Moab on the journey from Egypt to Canaan (Num 20:16–21; Judg 11:16–20). Likewise, Deuteronomy proscribes the participation of Moabites and Ammonites in the assembly of Yahweh because they failed to provide adequate hospitality and went so far as to hire the prophet Balaam to bring harm on Israel (Deut 23:3–6).181 Population Displacement and Relocation

Already during the time of the Hittites, population resettlement became a normal function of control, labor distribution, and economic stabilization.182 Such activities continued into the Neo-Assyrian period. Although military campaigns marked the activities of earlier renditions of the Assyrian empire, expansionist imperialist efforts were augmented in the Neo-Assyrian period by relocating significant populations of conquered peoples as a further means of dominance and economic restructuring.183 Evidence of these practices can be found in the biblical record, in Neo-Assyrian texts, royal inscriptions, and in reliefs throughout the empire.184 Some scholars have attempted to draw direct connections between non-textual material cultural finds and the presence of relocated populations.185 Assyrian endeavors began in earnest with the rise of Assur-dan II and reached its apex during the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II with each intervening ruler variously exerting their power to relocate persons.186 In addition to increasing the scale and intensity of population movements, Tiglath-pileser III is remembered for changing the primary composition of the Assyrian army from natives to captured peoples. The main pattern of relocation typically involved moving non-Assyrian persons from their lands and distributing them broadly among sites throughout the central lands of the empire.187 Other forms of movement included the purposeful relocation of Assyrians to conquered regions, and moving persons already under Assyrian control in one conquered region to another (2 Kgs 17:24–33).188 Assyrians and non-Assyrians were also sometimes moved to hinterland regions where population growth was slow and trade or industry was needed. Occasionally, such movements were carried out as punishment for rebellions.189

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The fate of relocated persons differed greatly. Across the board, such populations were of great value to the Assyrian rulers. In most cases, movers were treated with relative care so as to arrive to their destinations ready to work on behalf of the empire.190 As Hays and Machinist demonstrate, families were often maintained so as to be productive in the arenas of offspring and work.191 One prominent example that stands in contrast to this tendency is the collection of reliefs at Sennacherib’s palace cataloguing the destruction of Lachish. It is likely in this instance that the Judeans taken into exile were treated harshly since their leaders recalcitrantly evaded tribute and sought Egyptian alliances. Likewise, as Hays and Machinist note, it was probably more common for leaders to be abused during movement as a means of publicly shaming them in front of their former vassals.192 Examined together, the different relocation efforts were effective means of creating and maintaining homogeneity and hegemony, and of reformulating economic structures to benefit Assyria’s growing demand for resources.193 Elites and imperial functionaries benefited from the centralization of markets and support of international trade during this time. Evidence of the expanded trade infrastructure at sites like Ekron or the import of Cypriot luxury goods to Jerusalem in the 7th century are testaments to the increased scale of economic and cultural exposure made possible by region-wide mobility regimes.194 Yet, even as a more homogenous Assyrian identity was intentionally cultivated, the large number of non-Assyrians brought to the center of the empire increased the cultural diversity there. Thus, what was promoted as “Assyrian” was itself influenced by growing cultural heterogeneity. For example, Babylonians were relocated to Samerina by Assyrians in the 8th-century BCE. In the wake of such resettlements, processes of identity negotiation took place in ways now intelligible in the material record such as the maintenance of artistic styles and onomastic loyalty in giving their children names, among other things.195 Similar processes were likely at work at Tel Dan among pottery craftsmen who were moved there to produce Assyrian-style wares under the Neo-Assyrian regime.196 Such examples of the changes in population composition bear importance for larger discussions of cultural contact and change. Having been formerly governed by Assyria, and thus having participated in the Assyrian mobility infrastructure, the Neo-Babylonian regime shared many commonalities with its former occupier. Nevertheless, the reality of reemergent Egyptian pressures meant that Babylon’s energies were focused on the Levant in different ways than those of the unchallenged Neo-Assyrians.197 As Babylon subsumed the great extent of Assyrian territory and its related infrastructure, many of the paradigms of commercial mobility continued, as did the tracking of royal functionaries, palace personnel, and gift exchanges. A letter from the regional magnate Nabû-šumu-lišir to the king exemplifies these practices. To the king, my lord … I have prepared everything for the journey of Abu-eriba, the king’s relative, and his wife, and they have now arrived.

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Abu-eriba has been given a kusītu-gown, a woolen cover, a threaded work dress of Tukriš, bracelets worth 1/3 shekels gold, 2 silver dishes, 35 dependents, 2 female singers, 1 horse, 2 camels, 4 donkeys, 20 cows, 300 sheep and 1 wagon; and his wife was provided with jewelry worth 2/3 minas of gold. She [with] all [her lady staff …] was dressed in garments … .198 When viewed next to the Assyrians, Babylonians appear to have invested comparatively fewer resources in developing conquered regions.199 Instead, their relocation policy only followed the Assyrian models of imported governance and repopulation in a few instances. Typically, they removed portions of the population, particularly elites, while leaving most behind to continue the work of resource extraction under the leadership of Babylonian-appointed local leaders. This is clearly apparent in the Babylon installation of Gedaliah over the region of Mizpah in the book of Jeremiah (Jer 40: 5–6). It is worth mentioning that Babylon achieved durable gains in the Arabian Peninsula in ways that the Assyrians were unable. By the reckoning of Babylonian accounts, Nabonidus constructed a palace in Teima and claimed to have successfully decimated the livestock of herding groups there with the effect of forcing them to settle in other conquered sedentary regions.200 Neo-Assyrian regimes generally kept families together but seem to have intentionally divided larger social groups among many locales. Conversely, Babylonian officials preferred relocating larger social groups as coherent units. This is evidenced in the several names of Levantine town names transposed to new Babylonian locations.201 One of these, āl-Yahūda, was the location of a sizeable portion of Judean migrants. As far as current evidence indicates, these populations certainly suffered the absence of their homeland, but their lives in Babylon were not those of slavery. Our sources indicate that they were able to organize themselves with some autonomy and participate in the larger socioeconomic worlds through business and even inter-marriage.202 Other records from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar provide the names of persons from all the lands surrounding Babylon, including many from the coastal Levant, who received food rations after being relocated to the capital city.203 The successes of some community members and different opinions regarding the appropriate extent of assimilation to Babylonian culture likely caused tensions among community members, a reality borne out in various ways in biblical texts. Perceptions of Mobile Persons

Distinctions between the self and the other in the ancient world were often codified through reference to differing cultures of mobility produced through negotiations of space, power, and culture. Perceptions of mobile elements in society grow out of the roles and value that surrounding groups ascribe to them. Different types of movers are appreciated or unappreciated based on

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perceived contributions or strains they represent to established social structures.204 Conceptions of foreigners in the ancient Near East were inflected by geographic contexts, politics, and economics. Mobile actors such as merchants, ambassadors, religious specialists, and craftspeople were generally understood to be benevolent and even beneficial. Others, like invaders or persons in search of refuge were typically greeted with less affirmation. Some types of movers, such as mercenaries or foreign laborers, had more ambiguous existences given that their arrival may be welcomed by some but a threat to others.205 In Egypt, mobile types were tolerated, and in some instances appreciated for the role they played as buffer populations. In times of plenty, non-sedentary groups were often counted as resources; being considered sources of knowledge concerning unknown places, as possessing skills that might be valuable to those in power, and as bearers of enriching cultural repertoires. Mobile pastoralists benefited, albeit unequally, from Egyptian agricultural resources and the other protections afforded them through alliances.206 In times of want, however, the same populations were typically construed as unruly foreigners who placed pressure on local production systems, detracted from ethnic or imperial unity, were barbaric in the sense that their cultural influence undermined nativist sensibilities, and dangerous in that they represented threats to the social and geographic boundaries of the empire. The iconographic evidence from the Middle Kingdom demonstrates popular Egyptian perceptions of nomads, who in comparison with amply-fed and well-clothed Egyptians, are frightfully skinny and clearly lacking in the accoutrements of river valley life.207 Similar anti-pastoralist sentiments are likely at play in the biblical Joseph story when Joseph informs his brothers who have traveled to Egypt in a time of famine that “all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians” (Gen 36:34). Letters unearthed at El-Amarna catalogue struggles against semi-nomadic Habiru who are identified in part by the problematic nature of their uncontrollable movements.208 Some texts record encounters with the Shasu, who ranged from Edom to the Jezreel Valley, and maybe even as far north as Lebanon.209 Perhaps the most telling evidence of Egyptian understandings and engagements with outsiders are its Execration Texts. These accounts of foreigners as enemies, which come from Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods, are written on ceramic objects with the intention of symbolically smashing them to represent – and perhaps even cause – the destruction of that people. As in Egypt, similarly complex relationships between relatively settled populations and highly mobile social elements characterized daily life in ancient Mesopotamia. The difference between the two regions being that mobile pastoralists were more geographically and socially embedded throughout Mesopotamia than in Egypt. Non-sedentary actors were an important part of an economic system that relied on the interdependence of sedentary and mobile populations. Although the picture of symbiosis between sedentary and non-sedentary pastoralist elements of society remains

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true, we should not mistakenly assume that relationships were always mutually beneficial.210 Moments of insecurity for non-sedentary populations often created flashpoints for sedentary social elements.211 At other times, the mobile lifestyle of nomadic and pastoralist populations appears to rely in part on the cyclical pillaging of settled regions, particularly rural villages located closer to the hinterland frontiers where nomadic groups ambulated. This may have been the result of environmentally induced shortages or even a response to pressures placed on nomadic populations by sedentary society. Some such raids could realistically have been driven simply by a desire to pillage goods and persons. Mesopotamian sources broadly show a disdain for unsettled, and therefore characteristically uncivilized, groups.212 Typologically, non-sedentary persons are identified as bandits, thieves, violent marauders, and generally untrustworthy outsiders.213 They are even presented at times as animals with unmatched fierceness.214 As transient elements of society, their relationship with the more static power structures was often characterized by tension. Accounts from the Bronze and Iron Ages that contain references to nomadic and pastoral nomadic populations like the Habiru, Ahlamu (Arameans), Amorites, Hana, and Sutû (Shasu?) follow suit by representing these groups, which existed both within and beyond traditionally-defined borders, in overwhelmingly negative ways.215 Additionally, such texts intimate a widespread concern among leaders in different periods that sedentary rural peoples would withdraw from settled life to join nomadic tribes.216 These accounts indicate the level of permeability between the sedentary and non-sedentary spheres, and thus, indirectly relay elements of pertinent cultures of mobility in these eras. As in Egypt, royal texts show that it was common for organized political entities to hire members of non-sedentary populations as mercenaries. Thus, while they may be disdained, they are still useful for the purposes of powerful political entities seeking human capital for the purposes of military campaigns and border-land labor projects. Six mobile types that shaped the cultures of mobility in the broader region require further elaboration. They are the ʿ3mu, Shasu, Habiru, Sea-Peoples, Amorites/Amurru, and Arameans. The accounts that follow are each grouped under the section “Perceptions of Mobile Persons” for the simple reason that we generally lack emic sources regarding the cultures of mobility among these groups. The historical record is partial to the perspective of the outsider, who generally sought to control these various types of nonsedentary persons. ʿ3mu

The use of the term ʿ3mu [ʿamu], frequently translated as ‘Asiatics,’ extends far back into Egyptian history and generally refers to populations associated with the northeastern border regions of Egypt. The Hyksos are also remembered as ʿ3mu in several sources. On the eastern side of the Nile, another ʿ3mu-type,

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known to the Egyptians as the Medjay, pastured caprid herds. The Medjay were viewed as custodians of the borderlands and sources of knowledge for important resource troves in the eastern dessert. Egyptian authorities even drew from their numbers for troops to police the borders.217 Nevertheless, despite the benefits afforded to Egypt by the Medjay, any uncontrolled movements were generally considered to be problematic to Egyptian sensibilities.218 Beginning with Tutmosis I, intentional distinctions between Egyptians and ʿ3mu – who are often characterized as “sand-farers” – appear in iconographic and literary depictions. A tomb painting at Beni Hassan from the 12th Dynasty pictures ʿ3mu coming to Egypt with livestock and goods. An Egyptian official – likely the person for whom the tomb has been built – leads the cadre and submits a document to the Pharaoh giving account of their numbers and justifying their migration.219 Facing challenges of life in the more marginal non-Nile biomes meant that outsiders often relied on Egyptian resources in times of need. Thus, ʿ3mu are commonly portrayed as underfed, poorly clothed, animalistic, uncultured, and placing pressures on local production systems. Egyptian dispositions toward this category of persons are captured well in The Teachings for King Merikare, where we read, The vile Asiatic is miserable because of the place wherein he is; shortage of water, lack of many trees, and the paths thereof difficult because of the mountain. He has never settled in one place, but plagued by want, he wanders the deserts on foot. He has been fighting ever since the time of Horus. He neither conquers nor can he be conquered. He does not announce the day of fighting. But is like a thief whom society has expelled.220 The one giving counsel in this text goes on to explain his success in subduing ʿ3mu during his reign. He recounts, “These foreigners were like a sealed fortress which I had surrounded and besieged. I caused the Delta to strike them, I captured their people and seized their cattle to the point that the Asiatics detested Egypt.”221 In the end, he reassures the incoming ruler that although ʿ3mu may cause trouble, they are not a legitimate threat to his sovereignty because they will not breach the boundaries of sedentary society or challenge settled groups amassed in sizeable numbers. He counsels, “Do not distress your heart on his account, for the Asiatic is only a crocodile on its riverbank, which attacks on a lonely road but does not invade the area of a crowded town.”222 The tale of Sinuhe is an Egyptian Middle Kingdom narrative that was likely a tomb autobiography but could also have been used as a narrative scribal training text.223 It contains the account of a courtier’s hastily-made journey from Egypt, his experiences of troubles abroad and foreign hospitality, as well as account of his eventual return to Egypt at the end of his life. Sinuhe, who fears that upon the death of King Sehetepibre (Amenemhet I) that some kind

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of ill will befall him before the Pharaoh’s son (Senwosret I) assumes the throne, leaves no time for his suspicions to be confirmed. He makes his stealthy departure from Egypt and flees north to Levantine lands. His escape becomes a lifelong relocation and thus it is better to think of Sinuhe as a migrant rather than a traveler, as is so often the case. The story of Sinuhe’s journey is particularly useful for its characterizations of Egyptian-Asiatic (ʿ3mu) relationships. Throughout the narrative, Sinuhe has conflicted relationships with ʿ3mu and with his own increasingly ʿ3mu identity. On two distinct occasions, he is given much needed assistance by Asiatics who appear to control access or passage through interstitial geographies (lines 20–29; 246–58). Early on, as he leaves Egypt, Sinuhe must pass by the “the ‘Walls of the Ruler,’ which were made to repel the Asiatics and crush the Sandfarers” (lines 17–18).224 Sinuhe hides by day and is able to cross this international boundary by night unmolested by the guard standing watch on the wall. After crossing Egypt’s northeastern border, he continues his harrowing night journey and arrives in Peten parched and on the verge of death. To his grateful surprise, it is an ʿ3mu who provides him with water and boiled milk, and subsequently takes him to his tribe. Sinuhe recalls, “What they did for me was good” (line 28).225 This account may provide a glimpse of a regional code of hospitality broadly observed across the Near East which required care of movers in need, even of those who might be foes. Sinuhe eventually settles in the land of Upper Retenu and passes the majority of his life there fathering children and taking up a post as a local leader. Although he considers himself Egyptian until the end, time passed in Upper Retenu influences Sinuhe’s cultural dispositions. As years go on, he becomes more like his adoptive kin. His family operates according to a tribal structure that mirrors the local clans. Likewise, he is integrated into the social networks of tribal leaders. Toward the end of his days, ʿ3mu escort Sinuhe safely back to the northern border of Egypt. On this occasion, it is apparent that his means of self-presentation have changed enough to require comment from the Pharaoh who announces Sinuhe’s return by proclaiming, “Here is Sinuhe, come as an Asiatic, a product of nomads!” (lines 264–65).226 In between these accounts, Sinuhe’s interactions with ʿ3mu are generally negative. In one scene, Sinuhe is challenged by a local tribal leader. Conferring with his local leader Ammunenshi about the potential for battle with this new foe, Sinuhe reminds him that this leader’s challenge likely stems from the fact that Ammunenshi has placed an Egyptian foreigner in a position of prestige and power. Sinuhe says, “I am indeed like a stray bull in a strange herd, whom the bull of the herd charges, whom the longhorn attacks” (line 119).227 He reinforces this analogy by stating, “No Asiatic makes friends with a Delta man” (line 122).228 At other times, he speaks of the Pharaoh’s overwhelming and necessary power over Asiatics and Sandfarers. Given that Egypt did not maintain hegemonic influence over the Levant during the Middle Kingdom, perhaps Sinuhe’s claims are author’s wishful projections of Egypt’s power over the region and especially over its semi-nomadic populations. In a similar way,

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the Teaching of King Amenemhet I for His Son Senwosret demonstrates the sentiment that a good ruler will control the ‘amu types as the king tells his son, “For I ordered everything in its proper place. I subdued lions, I captured crocodiles, I enslaved the men of Nubia, took prisoner of the Medjay, and I forced the Asiatic tribes to cower away like dogs.”229 Shasu

Beginning in the 18th Dynasty, we find record of a type of mobile population identified with the gentilic Shasu (š3św) [šsw]. These actors, typically pitched as the enemies of order and therefore also of Egypt, are mainstays in sources well into the Ptolemaic period.230 They make their most numerous and conspicuous appearances in the texts from Rameses II’s reign. In general, depictions of the Shasu are negative in character. They are disruptive social elements, pitched as dangerous giants, thieves, and altogether uncivilized.231 The name Shasu is etymologically unclear. The term may be equivalent to the Akkadian designation sutû.232 It is also possible that the verbal root it is associated with the act of wandering.233 Territorially, the Shasu can be found covering a swath of lands east and north of Egypt. The fact that their domain appears to have crossed several boundaries may indicate either that the term is a category of mobile elements – like the Habiru, who will be discussed shortly – that are not ethnically defined. It may also indicate a cohesive ethnic entity that managed to negotiate mobile livelihoods across a variety of political and geographic contexts. Judging from the current bodies of evidence, the centers of Shasu life were the lands of the northern Sinai and Edom, however, Papyrus Anastasi 124 indicates that Lebanon may have also been a Shasu center.234 A limestone relief in the New Kingdom tomb of Horemheb depicts weary Shasu seeking asylum in Egypt.235 Documentation of Ramesses III campaigns in the Levant, in which he claims to have annihilated Shasu tribes there, suggests that Egypt vied with Shasu in Timna for access to lands with copper resources.236 Interestingly, other depictions of Shasu from Akhenaten and Ramesses III’s reigns also show them as mercenaries for the Pharaoh, sometimes even serving in protective roles.237 Even though more than one Egyptian Pharaoh claims to have decimated the Shasu, their continued presence was a reality in both the northern Sinai and the Transjordan at the start of the Iron Age. It is possible that members of Shasu clans were among re-sedenterizing populations who settled in Canaan.238 Habiru

The term Habiru (ʿapiru/ʿabiru) is found throughout Middle and Late Bronze Age texts, primarily among letters from Canaanite rulers found at El Amarna.239 The few sources of Egyptian origin that mention this category of persons do so in derogatory fashion, referring to them as foreign prisoners, slaves and enemies of Egypt.240 In the Middle Bronze Age, Habiru were

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mostly located throughout the northern Levantine lands living alongside a category of mobile pastoralists known as the Amurru where they appear to engage in similar patterns of long-distance pastoralism linked to settled centers. By the Late Bronze period, this social class was documented existing further south in Canaan.241 The military capabilities of these mobile types are well known, a fact that worked to both the advantage and disadvantage of local rulers seeking territory and power.242 Although, the Habiru were in some respects socially marginalized, evidence indicates that they maintained significant influence over local rulers and threatened to disrupt the interregional dynamics of power among Canaanite city-states which Egypt sought to maintain for its own benefit. Bands were able to raze Canaanite cities and withdraw to hinterland regions without significant difficulty.243 Local Canaanite rulers also had to deal with the threat of their own vassals defecting to join ranks with Habiru.244 Controlling the Habiru was, thus, an indirect concern for Egypt who sought to stem their marauding and banditry because it detracted from political stability and consequently threatened Egyptian resource acquisition in the region. Attempting to capitalize on regional instabilities to make power or land grabs, both local rulers and Egyptian officials hired Habiru as mercenaries to accomplish their divergent ends.245 Sea Peoples

The combination of pan-regional political, economic and climatic changes that culminated in the final centuries of the Bronze Age led to the redistribution of Aegean and Levantine populations. Among non-autochthonous groups that relocated to the Levant are the famed Sea Peoples. Despite an expansive body of literature on the topic, the precise origins and migratory intentions of the various Sea Peoples remain uncertain.246 Whether invaders, colonizers, explorers, or refugees, they represent cultural repertoires and social systems that are unique from those of Egypt and the southern Levant and most likely Aegean or Anatolian in origin. Comprised of various groups including the Tjeker, Danuna, Washash, Shardanu, and the Peleshet, the movements of these groups were likely catalyzed by large-scale changes in the northern Mediterranean region.247 It is worth noting that the cultures of mobility extant in the Aegean and western Anatolia already fostered fairly extensive land and sea travel, which had resulted in several technological innovations that made large-scale movements possible.248 Present evidence suggests that whatever the intention of their relocation, the Sea Peoples came in successive stages to the shores of the Levant, inhabiting the islands of Crete and Cyprus and regions of Anatolia for various durations along the way. Some portions of these new populations also made their way to the Levant via land routes. Several Egyptian sources recount attempts to repel or subdue these groups.249 Summarizing an eight year-long campaign against what is purported to be a coalition of these groups, Rameses III boasts,

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I extended the boundaries of Egypt on all sides, and I overthrew those who transgressed them, from their lands. I slew the Danuna from their isles, the Sikilu (‘Tjekkeru’) and Philistines (‘Pulasti’) (being reduced to ashes). The Sherdan and Washas of the Sea, they were reduced to what had never been, captured all together, and brought as captives to Egypt, like the sand of the seashore.250 Despite these claims of mass destruction and enslavement, such a text is more likely propagandistic in nature than historical fact. While the Egyptians almost certainly engaged these new groups with military force, their decimation is not substantiated by the material record. This is particularly apparent in Canaan where those peoples who came to be identified as the Philistines would eventually settle in the coastal plain between the Yarkon River and Wadi alArish, organized around five cities.251 The Egyptian disposition toward the Sea Peoples accords with their responses to other mobile groups. With the ability to move in large numbers and evade Egyptian military domination, they were perceived as a significant threat to economic and political control. In the changing world of Late Bronze Age Egypt, however, mobile populations would have to be dealt with in more ways than simply trying to destroy them. Although not a Sea People in the typical sense of Aegean/Anatolian migrants to the Levant, the northern Levantine and Syrian coastal polities later identified as the Phoenicians emerged in the aftermath of the Late Bronze Age regional disruptions.252 Later they would come to command control of much maritime and coastal trade around the Eastern Mediterranean, those stretches of water once under the domain of Egypt. Once embedded there, they would set off to establish further colonies in North Africa and Western Europe to support their resource extraction and trade endeavors.253 Amorites/Amurru

Among the difficulties of discussing the origins and spheres of existence for many of the populations in this chapter, the Amorites present a unique challenge since the term “Amorite” identifies persons across a larger timeframe and geographic space than any other under consideration here. The nomenclature appears in an array of sources including the Amarna letters and texts from Elam, Ur, Hatti, and Mari.254 In the biblical record, Amorites are mentioned as inhabitants of the land of Canaan and of areas bordering it to the east and north. Even after Israel’s entry into the land, Amorites remain on the scene. The scope of time within which these biblical and extra-biblical appearances of the Amorites covers more than two thousand years. Previous generations of scholars viewed the Amorites as a cohesive population of nomads with their earliest roots in western Syria. These accounts commonly presented Amorites as nomadic tribes foreign to Mesopotamia who remained distinct from local urban and agriculturalist populations.255 Such presentations typically revolved around the maintenance of theories

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concerning unresolved socio-cultural tensions between herders and agriculturalists or between mobile and settled populations. These bands of nomads were presumably united by a shared language called Amorite, which was Semitic in its origins but unique from any of its linguistic relatives.256 Prior theories posited that the development of Amorite society included waves of mass migrations to the east by which various groups overtook portions of Mesopotamia, settled down, uprooted the current order, and instituted new political rule throughout the region. This series of events is often relayed in conjunction with the retelling of Hammurapi’s rise to power. Since these earlier accounts, scholars have begun to engage the complexity of the data at hand. Archaeologists of Anatolia, Syria, and Mesopotamia acknowledge that population growth and shifts took place in the Early Bronze Age. The rapid urbanization of these regions in the Middle Bronze II period instigated a demand for resource inflow that led to growing centralization of polities throughout the region.257 Two results of this rebirth were reenergized trade relations and the expansion of populations into parts of the region less suitable for rainfall-dependent agriculture. These changes appear to have occurred at the same time that we witness a period of transition from village-based subsistence agriculture and herding practices in northern and western Syria to an increase in seasonal mobile pastoralism of specialized breeds of sheep and goats in the regions to the south and east. In the end, the translocation of populations from north and west to south and east is likely a reality of the period but cannot yet be explained as a concerted effort at invasion or conquest by pastoralists of those regions.258 The chronologically and geographically dispersed instantiations of the terms MAR-TU (Sum.), Amurrû (Akk.), and ʾemoriy (Heb.) have contributed to the difficulties of identifying their meanings and relationship to one another. Previously, scholars assumed that they were localized descriptors of the same people group. This is understandable given that overlap in the usage of MARTU and Amurrû occurs across expansive geographies. The conversation, however, has since progressed from reading these terms as descriptors of a single ethnic group to understandings them as etic identifiers for similar types of social phenomena extant at different times and places. While these terms indicate that these contingent segments of society differ in their primary modes of existence, they still shared in the production and consumption of goods generated by the society as a whole.259 Occurrences of the term Amorite in Syria and the Levant also indicate that the term had expanded at one point to designate a linguistic category. In these cases, the term doubly applies to the language and its speakers. “Amorite” is a category that stands distinct from but related to Akkadian and other Semitic languages.260 Amorite is not its own language, but a dialect or set of dialects that form a common parlance unused in written forms.261 Additionally, the deity Mar-tu (Amurru), the so-called god of pastoralists, is often associated with Amorites, but the question of which designation came first remains unclear.262

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In both Mesopotamian and Levantine texts, Amorite-types are associated with highland regions. Texts from Ebla and Mari mention the geographic indication spelled variously as mardumki, marduki, and martuki.263 The location of Ammurum in the Mari tablets, which is correlated with others from Ugarit, Hatti, and Canaan, is likely located somewhere in the mountainous regions between the Mediterranean coast and the Orontes river.264 Likewise, the earlier region of MAR-TU identified in Sumerian texts also refers to a mountainous region in what is likely Elam.265 The understanding that pastoralist populations would take their herds to higher elevations for periods of the year was common. Presentations of the Amorites in the biblical record affirm this association, as the Philistines and Canaanites are portrayed as lowland populations while the Amorites inhabit highland regions. Biblical authors also associate the mountaindwelling Amorites with giants (‫ )רפאים‬who were previously spread throughout the land (Deut 3:8–11). The book of Joshua catalogues their defeat upon Israel’s entry into the land (Josh 10:5–27; 11:3). In the Egyptian reliefs from Medinet Habu, Ammuru who have been badly beaten in a military encounter are recorded seeking protection in Egypt.266 Old Babylonian texts written in Sumerian appear to be satires of the Amorite populations in their midst. Caricatured presentations of Amorite society include mention of them not living in houses, not burying their dead, eating uncooked meat, and being generally barbaric.267 Naturally, these polemical writings were not an accurate depiction of the lives of mobile pastoralists. Through their hyperbole, they make known the kind of suspicion and uncertainty with which less-mobile segments of the population viewed those who were frequently on the move. An excerpt from the Sumerian text The Marriage of Martu captures well such sentiments, Now listen, their hands are destructive and their features are those of monkeys … They never stop roaming about … they are an abomination to the gods’ dwellings … [The Amorite] is clothed in sack-leather … lives in a tent, exposed to the wind and rain, and cannot properly recite prayers.268 It is interesting that the critiques of the Amorite’s abhorrent mobile lifestyle are linked to their religious malpractice. Apparently, at least in the author’s eyes, one’s capabilities as a religious practitioner are constrained by their association with the transient life of pastoralists.269 Other social designations relate to the Amorites cultures of mobility that stand in apparent contrast with the “civilized” Akkadian urban inhabitants. Zimrī-Līm, a king of Amorite origins, is reminded by one of his counselors that he is the king of both Amorites and Akkadians, and that his general modes of mobility must demonstrate his heritage. Rather than riding on horseback, as Amorites do, he must also occasionally travel in a mule-drawn chariot as Akkadian royalty do.270 In sum, regardless of its use as a linguistic type or social categorization, the term “Amorite” designates a subset of individuals within stratified societies

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that are associated primarily with a mobile pastoralist way of life. Even if the term MAR-TU began as an ethnic identifier, it no longer bore that connotation by the Middle Bronze Age. While members from this portion of the population may have come to exert more political power throughout northern Mesopotamia in the Middle Bronze Age, they arose to positions of prominence from within broader Mesopotamian society through their participation in a mixed pastoralist-agriculturalist economy, not as foreign invaders. This more recent understanding of internal social differentiation provides a more sophisticated explanation of broader ancient Near Eastern society in which cyclically long-distance mobile herding populations are an ever-present reality of settled life. Arameans

The history the people who came to be known as the Arameans is also complex and unresolved. It is, however, possible to say that Arameans are a collection of tribal groups that shared a linguistic heritage during the first millennium BCE. Their long history has been one characterized by nomadic existence similar to other pastoralist populations across the ancient Near East. Nevertheless, there is also an understanding that elements of these mobile populations became sedentary in the 11th-century BCE.271 Connected by biological and fictive kinship relations, Aramean tribes maintained both mobile and sedentary members. Yet, it is currently unknown whether the Arameans discerned among the Iron Age record are to be identified as descendants of mobile peoples living in Syria and Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age, like the Amorites.272 As with the history of the Amorites and Amurru, it can be tempting to see correlations and connections even in instances when evidence is lacking. As the presiding expert on Aramean origins, K. Lawson Younger pushes back against the current scholarly trend to envision all pastoralist groups as one and the same.273 He is also rightly wary of assuming a rote continuity between the Arameans and other previous mobile pastoralist populations in the region.274 Instead, he approaches the problems associated with generating a historical model of various Aramean political polities by employing what he deems a “regional approach” that distinguishes between Hittite/North Syrian, Assyrian, and Central/ Southern Levantine, and Southern Mesopotamian spheres where Arameans are found.275 Aram is attested as both a place and a people in biblical texts (Gen 10:22, 22:21; Num 23:7; Judg 3:10, 10:6; 2 Sam 10; 1 Kgs 10:29; Jer 35:11; Amos 1:5, 9:7; 1 Chr 1:17, 7:34). Israel’s namesake, Jacob, is remembered as an Aramean (Deut 26:5) along with other members of Israel’s ancestral line, like Rebekah and Laban (Gen 25:20, 31:20–24). The first extra-biblical mention of Aram is found on an Egyptian toponym list of Amenhotep III.276 Assyrian texts from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III identify Aramean peoples with another nomadic group known as the Ahlamû, who existed in the region from at

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277

least the Old Babylonian period. Other sources indicate that Arameans may have been associated with Sutû (Shasu?) tribes.278 Both biblical and extrabiblical evidence indicate that the presence of Arameans or of Aramean-related groups was widespread throughout Syria, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. Across regions, Aramean tribes appear to have distinct organizational strategies and to engage local political entities in different ways.279 Arameans also exhibit a general propensity toward cultural adoption and adaptation. As Younger points out, “[T]he various polities of the Jezireh and Levant have their own individual pantheons that are mixtures of indigenous Aramean, Luwian, and Assyrian deities.”280 The presence of Haddad, the storm god, as the chief deity of most of the Aramean pantheons indicates a level of continuity among the different tribes. Haddad’s various regionalized epithets bear further discussion in light of similar occurrences of epithets for Yahweh (another storm-god) and will be revisited in a later chapter. In the Iron Age, Aramaic became the lingua franca of the ancient Near East.281 This was accomplished in part by the relocation of Aramean populations by the Neo-Assyrians.282

Notes 1 Sabrina Favaro, Voyages et Voyageurs: À L’époque Néo-Assyrienne, SAA 18 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2007), 135. 2 Favaro, Voyages et Voyageurs, 5–30. 3 “The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II,” trans. James K. Hoffmeier (COS 2.3: 19–23). 4 Philip King and Lawrence Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 186–9. 5 Brian Hesse, “Animal Husbandry and Human Diet,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 203–22; Erich Isaac, Geography of Domestication (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 89–92, 95–96. For a presentation of the ways the bactrian (two-humped) and hybrid camels may have been used in Neo-Assyrian times, see Daniel T. Potts, “Camel Hybridization and the Role of Camelus Bactrianus in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 47 (2004): 143–65. 6 LaBianca, “Subsistence Pastoralism,” 120–21. 7 For an example of a request for new carts outfitted properly with linen, see Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola, eds., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, Vol. 5 of State Archives of Assyria (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1990), 115. For a magisterial treatment of the topic in Egyptian contexts, see Heidi Köpp-Junk, “Wagons and Carts and Their Significance in Ancient Egypt,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 9 (2016): 14–58. 8 Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 23–25. 9 Cesare Rossi et al. “Ancient Road Transport Devices: Developments from the Bronze Age to the Roman Empire,” Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering 11 (2016): 12–25. 10 Pavel F. Kuznetsov, “The Emergence of Bronze Age Chariots in Eastern Europe,” Antiquity 80 (2006): 638–45. Casson points to one instance in which a Mycenaean fresco depicts two women riding through the countryside in an ornate chariot, perhaps a representation that, at least at one time in this region of the Aegean, some elites used

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21

22 23

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chariots for more general travel. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, 23–25. See also Michael C. Astour, “Overland Trade Routes in Ancient Western Asia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 1401–20, 1402–3. For an extensive overview of texts referencing chariot use and vehicular culture, see Peter Raulwing, ed., Selected Writings on Chariots and Other Early Vehicles, Riding and Harness (Leiden: Brill, 2002). Deborah O’Daniel Cantrell, The Horsemen of Israel: Horses and Chariotry in Monarchic Israel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 87–113. Astour, “Overland Trade Routes,” 1409–10. Astour, “Overland Trade Routes,” 1414–19. Astour, “Overland Trade Routes,” 1401–20. Dorsey, “Roads and Highways,” 131–34, 132. Michael P. Streck, “Travels in the Ancient Near East,” KASKAL 3 (2006): 127–36, 131. Cf. Köpp-Junk, “Being on the Move in Ancient Egypt,” 25–26. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola, eds., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, SAA 5 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1990), 271. Cf. Seth Richardson, “By the Hand of a Robber: States, Mercenaries, and Bandits in Middle Bronze Age Mesopotamia,” in Piracy, Pillage, and Plunder in Antiquity, eds. Richard Evans and Martine De Marre (London: Routledge, 2019), 9–26. See EA 8 where a local polity in Canaan is described as having taken a passing caravan. The letter’s author, Burnaburiaš, king of Babylon, not only laments his losses but pins responsibility for their occurrence and the weight of his restitution on his fraternal peer, the Pharaoh of Egypt. William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Rocío Da Riva and Sebastian Fink, “Introduction,” in Routes and Travelers between East and West: Cultural Exchange in the Ancient World. 3rd Workshop of the Melammu Project, University of Barcelona, 22–23 March 2017, eds. Rocío Da Riva and Sebastian Fink (Münster: Zaphon, 2019), 107–11; Dorsey, “Roads and Highways,” 131–32. In one letter to Sargon II, a local ruler writes to the king requesting people be sent to populate his waystation and postal center. Simo Parpola, ed., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I: Letters from Assyria and the West, SAA 1 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1987), 117. For selected examples, see Parpola, Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I, 27, 97; Lanfranchi and Parpola, Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II, 146. Oded Borowski, Daily Life in Biblical Times (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 55; John S. Holladay, Jr., “The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the Iron IIA-B (ca. 1000-750 BCE),” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy (London: Leicester University Press, 1998), 368–98. Amelie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 BCE (London: Routledge, 1995), 535–36. Tel Miqne-Ekron is often pointed to as an example of the processes of increasingly centralized production and distribution. William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 581–87; Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqneh-Ekron in the 7th C. BC: City Plan, Development and the Oil Industry,” in Olive Oil in Antiquity: Israel and Neighboring Countries from the Neolithic to the Early Arab Period, eds. David Eitam and Michael Heltzer (Padova: Sargon, 1996), 198–219. It is worth recognizing that some scholars question the role that Assyrian domination played in the economic infrastructure of Ekron. For a contestant evaluation, see Avraham Faust, “The Assyrian Century in the Southern Levant: An Overview of the Reality on the Ground,” in The Southern

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27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35

36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

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Levant under Assyrian Domination, eds. Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 20–55. Faust makes the argument that while the profits of these economic activities, and some of the goods produced, made their way back to Assyria, the focus of distribution of goods was westward facing. See also Avraham Faust, “The Interests of the Assyrian Empire in the West: Olive Oil Production as a Test-Case,” Journal the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54 (2011): 62–86. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 443–49, 508–15, 572–76; David A. Dorsey, “Roads and Highways,” in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richard (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 132; Peter Zilberg, “The Assyrian Provinces of the Southern Levant: Sources, Administration, and Control,” in The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination, eds. Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 56–88. Wolfram von Soden, The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East, trans. Donald G. Schley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 119–20. Von Soden, The Ancient Orient, 119–20. Michael P. Streck, “Travels in the Ancient Near East,” KASKAL 3 (2006): 127–36, 128. Streck, “Travels in the Ancient Near East,” 129. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, 22. For an excellent overview of the extent of water transit in Egypt from the Predynastic through New Kingdom periods, see Heidi Köpp-Junk, “Pharaonic Prelude—Being on the Move in Ancient Egypt from Predynastic Times to the End of the New Kingdom,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 12 (2016): 21–40, 23. Köpp-Junk, “Being on the Move in Ancient Egypt,” 27. Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 3. Streck, “Travels in the Ancient Near East,” 129. Jean‐Marie Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari, I/2 (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), 468. For an account of a message to Sargon II regarding his receipt of a boat for his use, see Lanfranchi and Parpola, Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II, 167. Another text documents the impassability of the river due to drought. Lanfranchi and Parpola, 21. Lanfranchi and Parpola, 182, 183, 209. Casson, Ancient Mariners, 3. Carlson also points to evidence from later periods to show that other peoples perfected the plank joining technique through mortise-andtenon construction. Deborah N. Carlson, “Nautical Archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean,” in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richards (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 135–41, 136–37. Gil Gambash, “Between Mobility and Connectivity in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in The Impact of Mobility and Migration in the Roman Empire, eds. Elio-Lo Cascio and Laurens Ernst Tacoma (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 155–72. Henri Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East I (London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1924), pl. 13.1. George F. Bass, “Sea and River Craft in the Ancient Near East,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 1421–31; cf. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, 21. Peter Ian Kuniholm, “Wood,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, ed. Eric M. Meyers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 347–49. Casson, Ancient Mariners, 18–19. Casson, Ancient Mariners, 8. EA 143; EA 110. Casson, Ancient Mariners, 8–9.

96 Cultures of Mobility around Canaan 46 John L. Foster, trans., “Menna’s Lament/Letter to a Wayward Son,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 52–54. 47 “The Shipwrecked Sailor,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 1.39: 83–85). 48 George F. Bass, “Oldest Known Shipwreck Reveals Splendors of the Bronze Age,” National Geographic 172 (December 1987): 692–733. Remains from two Phoenician ships ca. 750–700 BCE were located and excavated by Robert Ballard and Lawrence Stager. These are indicative of the large single-cargo vessels commonly found plying Levantine shores in the Iron Age. King and Stager, Life in Biblical Israel, 185. 49 Amir Golani and Ehud Galili, “A Late Bronze Age Canaanite Merchant’s Hoard of Gold Artifacts and Hematite Weights from the Yavneh-Yam Anchorage, Israel,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 7 (2015): 16–29; Hodos, Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age, 116–22. 50 Cf. Raphael Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 12–13. 51 Isaac Alderman et al., Jonah, La Bible en ses Traditions (Leuven: Peeters, 2022). 52 Patai, Children of Noah, 14–16. 53 Brigitte Lion, “La Circulation des Animaux Exotiques au Proche-Orient Antique,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 357–65. 54 Gae Callender, “The Middle Kingdom Renaissance (c. 2055-1650 BC),” in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 148–83. Mentuhotep III was the first Egyptian ruler to send a trading expedition across the Red Sea. His quest for incense required the construction of sea-going ships. 55 Callender, “Middle Kingdom Renaissance,” 178. 56 Callender, “Middle Kingdom Renaissance,” 178. 57 Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of Ancient Egypt (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 115, 140–41, fig 6.5. Egypt’s reliance on Kush is clearly observable in a stele found in Buhen that records an Egyptian ruler as “the valiant servant of Kush.” 58 EA 280, 285, 286, 287, 288; Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 220; Edward Lipiński, “Hurrians and Their Gods in Canaan,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 49 (2016): 125-41; Nadav Na’aman, “Jerusalem in the Amarna Period,” in Jérusalem Antique et Médiévale: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Ernest-Marie Laperrousaz (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 31–48. See also Richard S. Hess, Amarna Personal Names (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 237–43. 59 Gregory D. Mumford, “Egypt and the Levant,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000-332 BCE, eds. Margreet Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 69–89, 74–78. 60 “The ‘Sea-Peoples’ Records of Ramesses III,” trans. Kenneth A. Kitchen (COS 4.2: 11–14). 61 Kenneth A. Kitchen, “The Egyptian Evidence on Ancient Jordan,” in Early Edom and Moab: The Beginning of the Iron Age in Southern Jordan, ed. Piotr Bienkowski (Sheffield: J.R. Collis, 1992), 21–23. See also Joel Burnett, “Transjordan: The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites,” in The World around the Old Testament, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 309–52, 312–13. 62 Van De Mieroop, History of Ancient Egypt, 225. 63 Alexander Ahrens, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? Northern Levantine Elites at the Margins of the Bronze Age Empires,” in Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East, eds. Sarah Mohr and Shane M. Thompson (University of Colorado Press, 2022), 139–66, 151. 64 Ahrens, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea?” 151. 65 “The Report of Wenamun,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 1.41: 89–93, 90). 66 “The Report of Wenamun,” COS 1.41: 91.

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67 “The Report of Wenamun,” 91. 68 Pekka Pitkänen, Migration and Colonialism in Late Second Millennium Levant and Its Environs: The Making of a New World (London: Routledge, 2020), 86–94. 69 Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: History, Society, and Economy, trans. by Soraia Tabatabai (London: Routledge, 2014), 349. 70 Van de Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 137–58, 190–95. 71 Cécile Michel, “The Kārum Period on the Plateau,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia: 10,000–323 B.C.E., eds. Sharon R. Steadman and Gregory McMahon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 313–36. A kāru is literally a port or quay, but in the context of overland travel becomes an outpost or mercantile district. The construct term bēt kāri is also attested for trading posts and custom houses. A rab kāri refers to a trade or customs officer. Cf. Simo Parpola, Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary (Helsinki, University of Helsinki Press, 2007), 46. 72 Guillermo Algaze, “The Uruk Expansion: Cross Cultural Exchange in Early Mesopotamian Civilization,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989): 571–608. 73 Christopher B. Hays and Peter Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” in The World Around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 31–106. See also Liverani, Ancient Near East, 213–17. 74 Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I, 117. 75 Hays and Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 42. See also Melanie Wasmuth, “Cross-Regional Mobility in ca 700 BCE: The Case of Ass. 8642a/IstM A 1924,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 12 (2016): 89–112. The Akkadian term ubru (guest, client) can be seen in the terminology of a guest house, bēt ubri. Likewise, the term ubārūtu, “residency,” refers to the status of movers and migrants seeking temporary or permanent quarters. Parpola, Assyrian-English-Assyrian Dictionary, 128. 76 Michel, “The Kārum Period,” 324. 77 Streck, “Travels in the Ancient Near East,” 129–30; Heidi Köpp-Junk, “Being on the Move in Ancient Egypt,” 25. 78 Hays and Machinst, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 42. 79 Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, “Landscapes of Warfare: Intervisibility Analysis of Early Iron and Urartian Fire Beacon Stations (Armenia),” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 3 (2015): 22–30. 80 Liverani, Ancient Near East, 458–72. 81 Liverani, Ancient Near East, 463. 82 Liverani, Ancient Near East, 388–89. Van de Mieroop, History of the Ancient Near East, 213–14. Cf. Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria, 31–36. 83 Elements of this economic structure are visible in the correspondence between various priestly administrators and the Kings of Assyria. In several letters from the priest NabûŠumu-Iddina, we find record of imperial monitoring of the movements of goods and people for this redistributive temple economy. In one letter, Nabû-Šumu-Iddina replies to the king’s inquiry regarding the Commander-in-Chief’s deputy that was sent but has yet to arrive. Steven William Cole and Peter Machinist, eds., Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, SAA 13 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1998), 81. Nabû-Šumu-Iddina also catalogues several shipments of horses from various parts of the empire to the Nabû temple. Cole and Machinist, 85–105. In one letter, Nabû-Šumu-Iddina relays concern that several village managers have skipped out on their imperial assessment and made off with several of the kings horses. Cole and Machinist, 107. In another letter, the deputy priest, Mutakkil-Assur, reports that the king’s agents stationed outside the city gates who have been stealing the proceeds of exit tolls, harassing traders, and confiscating their goods, have managed to escape and are now fugitives. Cole and Machinist, 33. Correspondence from another priest of Nabu, Nabû-mušeśi, calls the kings attention to the fact that a group of weavers

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87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

contributing their goods to the temple have not kept up with their quotas and have been punished with hard labor. Cole and Machinist, 145. John F. Robertson, “Social Tensions in the Ancient Near East,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, 2nd ed., ed. Daniel C. Snell (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020.), 201–24. Glenn M. Schwartz, “Pastoral Nomadism in Ancient Western Asia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000), 249–58. Cf. Paola Negri-Scafa, “Scribes Locaux et Scribes Itinérants dans le Royaume D’Arrapha,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 236–40; Clelia Mora, “Artistes, Artisans et Scribes entre Kargamiš et Hatti au XIIIe Siècle,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 241–49. Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 31. John L. Foster, trans., “Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School: The Satire on the Trades,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 38. Foster, “Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School,” 38. John L. Foster, trans., “Oh, I’m Bound Downstream on a Memphis Ferry,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology (Austin: University of Texas, 2001), 46–47. John L. Foster, trans., “Longing for Memphis,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology (Austin: University of Texas, 2001), 44–45. “The Craft of the Scribe,” COS 3.2: 9–14. Angela R. Roskop, The Wilderness Itineraries: Genre, Geography, and the Growth of Torah (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 51–52, 62–63. Donald B. Redford, Pharonic King-Lists, Annals, and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History (Mississauga: Benben, 1986), 101–3, 121. Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, 52. For an Old Akkadian example that catalogues what is likely a memorialized military endeavor, see Benjamin Foster, “A Sargonic Itinerary,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 73–76. Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, 58–59. Roskop, Wilderness Itineraries, 60. UIOM [University of Illinois Oriental Museum] 2134; UIOM 2370; YBC [Yale Babylonian Collection] 4499. William W. Hallo, “The Road to Emar,” in Journal of Cuneiform Studies 18 (1964): 57–88, 63. Hallo, “The Road to Emar,” 67. Kenton L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005), 377. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 44–45. EA 49: 22–26. Carlo Zaccagnini, “Patterns of Mobility among Ancient Near Eastern Craftsmen,” in Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Studies 42 (1983): 245–64. See Zaccagnini’s notes on texts K Bo 1 10+ rev. 34–41; K Bo 1 10+ rev. 42–48; KUB 3, 71. “The Hadad Inscription,” trans. K. Lawson Younger (COS 2.36: 156–58). Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 141. The “mobile pastoralism” of which Anne Porter writes is akin to the “subsistence pastoralism” of Øystein LaBianca who builds her analysis on the claim shared between the two that the specialization of animal production led to the establishment of symbiotic relationship between mobile and sedentary elements of society in the region

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110 111 112 113 114 115

116 117 118 119 120

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by the end of the Early Bronze Age. See LaBianca, “Subsistence Pastoralism,” 120; Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 8–64. LaBianca, “Subsistence Pastoralism,” 117–19. Israel Finkelstein, “The Emergence of Israel: A Phase in the Cyclical History of Canaan in the Third and Second Millennia BCE,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, eds. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1994), 150–78; Juval Portugali, “Theoretical Speculations on the Transition from Nomadism to Monarchy,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, eds. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1994), 203–17. Porter, “Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East,” 125–44; K. Lawson Younger Jr., A Political History of the Arameans: From Their Origins to the End of Their Polities (Atlanta: SBL, 2016), 63–80. For excellent historical overviews, see Younger, Political History of the Arameans, 63–80; Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 8–64; Steven A. Rosen, Revolutions in the Desert: The Rise of Mobile Pastoralism in the Southern Levant (New York: Routledge, 2017), 1–10. Esther J. Van Der Steen, “Survival and Adaptation: Life East of the Jordan in the Transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 131 (1999): 176–92. K. Lawson Younger, Jr., “Aram and the Arameans,” in The World Around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 230–34. McCorriston, Pilgrimage and Household, 58–163. Ian Rutherford, “Religious Networks and Cultural Exchange: Some Cases from the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean in the 3rd-1st Millennia BC,” in Routes and Travelers between East and West: Cultural Exchange in the Ancient World, 3rd Workshop of the Melammu Project, University of Barcelona, 22–23 March 2017, eds. Rocío Da Riva and Sebastian Fink (Münster: Zaphon, 2019), 229–40. Joy McCorriston, Pilgrimage and Household in the Ancient Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 145–46, 156–60. Maria Michela Luiselli, “Personal Piety in Ancient Egypt,” in Religion Compass 8 (2014): 105–16. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 136–37. Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Where to Worship? Religion in Iron II Israel and Judah,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 90–101. Susan Haber, “Going up to Jerusalem: Pilgrimage, Purity, and the Historical Jesus,” in Travel in Antiquity, ed. Philip A. Harland (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2011), 49–67. See also Melody D. Knowles, Centrality Practiced: Jerusalem in the Religious Practice of Yehud & the Diaspora in the Persian Period (Atlanta: SBL, 2006), 77–104. Wayne O. McCready, “Pilgrimage, Place, and Meaning Making by Jews in GrecoRoman Egypt,” in Travel in Antiquity, ed. Philip A. Harland (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2011), 69–81. See also Karel van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 95–100. Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 188–35. Lauren Ristvet, “Travel and the Making of North Mesopotamian Polities,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 361 (2011): 1–31. Parpola, Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I, 242. Melanie Wasmuth, “Cross-Regional Mobility,” 89–112. Two letters from the priest Dadî articulate concerns to the king that groups of shepherds are not providing the required sacrificial animals for cultic meals. Dadi writes, “[They re]

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129 130 131 132

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138 139

Cultures of Mobility around Canaan fuse to come in [for tax col]lection. They do not fear [the king]. They rove about like runaways.” Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 20. In another letter, Dadi asks, “(If) these people, who are Assyr[ians], refuse to fear the [king], my lord, how will foreign[ers] behave [towards] the king, my lord?” Cole and Machinist, 19. For a set of similar concerns, see L. Kataja and R. Whiting, eds., Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, SAA 12 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1995), 21. For example, see Lanfranchi and Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II, 41, 47, 48, 49, 64. See also Dominique Charpin, “Immigrés, réfugiés, et déportés en babylonie sous Hammu-rabi et ses successeurs,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 207–18; Wilfred G. Lambert, “Exiles and Deportees: A Third Category,” in Nomades et sédentaires dans le Proche-Orient ancient: Compte rendu de la XLVI Rencontre assyriologique international, ed. C. Nicolle (Paris: 10–13 July 2004), 213–16. Zaccagnini, “Patterns of Mobility,” 245–64. See also Nadav Na’aman, “The Brook of Egypt and the Assyrian Policy on the Border of Egypt,” Tel Aviv 6 (1979): 68–90; Ellen Morris, “On the Fringe Benefits of Life in the Shatter Zones of Egypt’s Empire,” in Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East, eds. Sarah Mohr and Shane M. Thompson (University of Colorado Press, 2022), 204–5. Morris, “On the Fringe Benefits,” 192. Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part I, 204; Mikko Luukko, ed., The Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud, SAA 19 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2012), 186. Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed. (Bethesda: CDL, 2005), 1013. Mario Liverani, International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 BC (New York: Palegrave, 2001), 66–70. This notion is not something that obtained only in the Late Bronze Age but also in the Iron Age. For examples in Neo-Assyrian contexts, see Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo Parpola, eds., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern Provinces, SAA 5 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1990), 31; Kataja and Whiting, Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, 83, 84. Liverani, International Relations, 66–70. Gary Beckman, trans., “Treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ramses II of Egypt,” in Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 96–99, 99 (HDT 15). Beckman, “Treaty between Hattusili III of Hatti and Ramses II of Egypt.” Dominique Charpin, Gods, Kings, and Merchants in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (Leuven: Peeters, 2015), 61–63. Cf. the Hittite “Treaty between Muwattalli II of Hatti and Alaksandu of Wilusa,” in which clarification about Alaksandu’s responsibilities as a vassal territory are outlined as such, “[I]f the enemy marches through your land, and you do not fight him … The oath gods shall pursue you unrelentingly.” Gary Beckman, trans., “Treaty between Muwattalli II of Hatti and Alaksandu of Wilusa,” in Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 87–92, 91 (HDT 13). Charpin, Gods, Kings, and Merchants, 65, 70–78. Cf. Heather D. Baker, “From Street Altar to Palace: Reading the Built Environment of Urban Babylonia,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, eds. Karen Radner and Eleanor Rabson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 533–52; Robert Parker, “Public and Private,” in A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, eds. Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 71–80.

Cultures of Mobility around Canaan 101 140 “Nabopolassar’s Restoration of Imgur-Enlil, the Inner Defensive Wall of Babylon,” trans. Paul-Alian Beaulieu (COS 2.121: 307–8). 141 Jesse Casana, “Settlement, Territory, and the Political Landscape of the Late Bronze Age Polities in the Northern Levant,” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Society 22 (2013): 107–25. 142 Monica L. Smith, “Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (2005): 832–49. 143 Franz A. M. Wiggermann, “Agriculture as Civilization: Sages, Farmers, and Barbarians,” in The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, eds. Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 663–89. 144 Hallo, “The Road to Emar,” 61–62. 145 Bradley J. Parker, “At the Edge of Empire: Conceptualizing Assyria’s Anatolian Frontier ca. 700 B.C.,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21 (2003): 371–95. 146 Ian Shaw, “Egypt and the Outside World,” in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, ed. Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 314–29. 147 For example of such laws in Mesopotamia, see Martha T. Roth, ed., Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 1997), 20 ¶ 30, 86 ¶ 27, 88–92 ¶s 36–58, 177 ¶6. For examples of private land and housing contracts in Egypt, see Nigel C. Studwick, Texts from the Pyramid Age (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 185–87. 148 Karel van der Toorn, Family Religion in Babylonia, Syria and Israel: Continuity and Change in the Forms of Religious Life (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 25–26. 149 “Slave Sale,” trans. Piotr Steinkeller (COS 3.133: 299). See also Liverani, Ancient Near East, 360. 150 Gary Beckman, trans., “Treaty between Tudhaliya II of Hatti and Sunashshura of Kizzuwatna,” in Hittite Diplomatic Texts (Atlanta: Scholars, 1999), 24–25 (HDT 2). 151 “Land Purchase Text,” trans. Michael Heltzer (COS 3.103: 254–55); “Land Purchase Text,” trans. Michael Heltzer (COS 3.104: 255). 152 Bill T. Arnold, Who Were the Babylonians? (Atlanta: SBL, 2004), 71–72. 153 John L. Foster, trans., “The Wisdom of Amenemopet,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: An Anthology (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), 206–25. 154 Liverani, International Relations, 46. 155 Vincent A. Tobin, trans., “Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 188–210. See also Kootz, “StateTerritories and Borders,” 33–51. 156 Hayim Tadmor, “The Expanding Horizon of the Assyrian Empire,” in Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, Papers Presented to the XLIV Rencontre Assyriologique International, Venezia, 7–11 July 1997, ed. Lucio Milano (Padua: Sargon, 1998), 55–62. 157 Liverani, International Relations, 34–37, 46–51. 158 Ann Shafer, “Assyrian Royal Monuments on the Periphery: Ritual and the Making of Material Space,” in Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by Her Students, eds., Jack Cheng and Marian H. Feldman (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 133–60. 159 Ellen Morris, “Prevention through Deterrence along Egypt’s Northeastern Border: Or the Politics of a Weaponized Desert,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Arcaheology & Heritage Studies 5 (2017): 133–47. László Török, “Egypt’s Southern Frontier Revisited,” in The Power of Walls: Fortifications in Northeastern Africa. Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the University of Cologne, 4–7 August 2011, eds. F. Jesse and Carola Vogel (Köln: Heinrich-Barth Institute, 2013), 53–70. 160 Morris, “On the Fringe Benefits,” 188–217, 194. 161 Aaron Burke, Walled Up to Heaven: The Evolution of Middle Bronze Age Fortifications (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 90–92.

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162 Callender, “Middle Kingdom Renaissance,” 158. While this text’s authorship is associated with the rise of Amenemhat I in the 12th Dynasty (ca. 1985–1956 BCE), it may be significantly later in origin. The association of this poem with Amenemhat I may be linked to his moving the capital from Thebes to Itjtawy, a site closer to the perceived Asiatic threat in the Delta. Amenemhat I is also associated with the building Hutwaret, the city that would later become the Hyksos capital Avaris, which was primarily inhabited by peoples with West Semitic migratory backgrounds. Cf. Van De Mieroop, History of Ancient Egypt, 128–29. 163 Carola Vogel, “Keeping the Enemy Out—Egyptian Fortifications of the Third and Second Millennium BC,” in The Power of Walls: Fortifications in Northeastern Africa, eds. F. Jesse and Carola Vogel, 73–100. Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the University of Cologne, 4–7 August 2011 (Köln: Heinrich-Barth Institute, 2013), 73–100, 86. 164 Anja Kootz, “State-Territory and Borders Versus Hegemony and Its Installations: Imaginations Expressed by the Ancient Egyptians during the Classical Periods,” in The Power of Walls: Fortifications in Northeastern Africa. Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the University of Cologne, 4–7 August 2011, eds. F. Jesse and Carola Vogel (Köln: Heinrich-Barth Institute, 2013), 33–51. 165 Van De Mieroop, History of Ancient Egypt, 113, 116. 166 Vogel, “Keeping the Enemy Out,” 75–87. See also Kvëta Smoláriková, “Egyptian Fortifications from the First Millennium BC,” in The Power of Walls: Fortifications in Northeastern Africa. Proceedings of the International Workshop Held at the University of Cologne, 4–7 August 2011, eds. F. Jesse and Carola Vogel (Köln: Heinrich-Barth Institute, 2013), 101–11. 167 Morris, “Prevention through Deterrence,” 135–38. 168 Cf. Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), 20–42. 169 Liverani, International Relations, 71–76. 170 Marc Van De Mieroop, The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Rameses II (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 209–11; Zaccagnini, “Patterns of Mobility,” 247–48. For a record of such activities that also captures the concern that skilled workers might also escape, see Fuchs Andreas and Simo Parpola, eds., The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part III: Letters from Babylonia and the Eastern Provinces, SAA 15 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2001), 151. 171 Cf. Luukko, Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II, 142. 172 Cf. EA 199, 255 173 EA 30. 174 Liverani, International Relations, 75–76; cf. EA 28. 175 Snell, Religions of the Ancient Near East, 36–37. 176 EA, 8 177 Trevor Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 89–90. 178 This adoptive disposition can also be found throughout the ancient Near East in the political intermingling of the periods under consideration here whereby rulers “adopt” vassals into their care as new members of the kin group. See also Porter, who writes, “[S]ocial relationships do not necessarily break under adverse circumstances but rather may stretch and adapt, shift and retreat – frequently in order to included unrelated groups rather than exclude them – and any number of structures, practices, and ideologies exist that may accomplish this.” Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 64. 179 van der Toorn, Family Religion, 22. 180 Peter Vargyas, “Immigration into Ugarit,” in Immigration and Emigration within the Ancient Near East, eds. Karel Van Lerberghe and Antoon Schoors (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 395–402.

Cultures of Mobility around Canaan 103 181 This same pericope does not recall Edom’s denial of Israel’s passage (Deut 23:7). 182 Trevor Bryce, The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 52–60. 183 Bustenay Oded, Mass Deportation and Deportees in the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1979). Bustenay records 157 distinct relocation efforts in the Neo-Assyrian period. According to his analysis of the textual and inscriptional evidence, Bagg identifies no less than 67 Assyrian campaigns in the Levant. Ariel Bagg, Die Assyrer und das Westland: Studien zur historischen Geographie und Herrschafts-praxis in der Levante im 1. Jt. V. u. Z. (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 418–29. See also Paul-Alain Beaulieu, “World Hegemony, 900-300 BCE,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel C. Snell (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2005), 48–61. 184 Cf. Leonard W. King and E. A. Wallis Budge, Bronze Reliefs from the Gates of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, B.C. 860-825 (London: The British Museum Press, 1915); David Ussishkin, The Conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1982). 185 Yifat Thareani, “From Expelled Refugee to Imperial Envoy: Assyria’s Deportation Policy in Light of the Archaeological Evidence from Tel Dan,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 54 (2019): 218–34; Nadav Na’aman, “Was Dor the Capital of an Assyrian Province?” Tel Aviv 36 (2009): 95–109. 186 Hays and Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 62–65. See also Nadav Na’aman, “Population Changes in Palestine Following Assyrian Deportation,” Tel Aviv 20 (1993): 104–24; K. Lawson Younger, “The Deportation of the Israelites,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 201–27. 187 Cf. F.M. Fales and J.N. Postgate, Imperial Administrative Records, Part II: Provincial and Military Administration, SAA 11 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1995), 105, 106, 107. See also Zaccagnini, “Patterns of Mobility,” 247. 188 Na’aman shows that conquered peoples in the Zagros region were relocated to the Egyptian border. Likewise, he presents a text from the Annals from Khorsabad that record the relocation of Arab tribes to Samaria. Na’aman, “Population Changes in Palestine,” 106–9. See also Thareani’s mention of Sargon II’s activities of replacing the residents of Samaria with “… far-off Arabs who are dwelling in the desert, concerning whom neither governor nor warden had any knowledge, who had not brought any king their tribute.” Thareani, “Assyria’s Deportation Policy,” 219–21. 189 Hays and Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 64–65. 190 Karen Radner, “Economy, Society and Daily Life in the Neo-Assyrian Period,” in A Companion to Assyria, ed. Eckhart Frahm (Cornwall: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 209–28. 191 Hays and Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 64. 192 Hays and Machinist, “Assyria and the Assyrians,” 62–65. 193 Beaulieu, “World Hegemony,” 50–51. 194 Steiner, 681; “Mesha Versus Solomon: Two Models of Economic Organization in Iron Age II,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 67 (2001): 37–45; See also David Ben-Shlomo, “Philistia during the Iron Age II Period,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant, c. 8000-323BCE, eds. Margreet L. Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 717–29. 195 Nadav Na’aman and Ran Zadok, “Assyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in the Light of Two Cuneiform Tablets from Tel Hadid,” Tel Aviv 27 (2000): 159–88. 196 Thareani, “Assyria’s Deportation Policy,” 218–34. 197 Schneider, “Mesopotamia (Assyrians and Babylonians) and the Levant,” 104–105. 198 Manfried Dietrich, ed., The Neo-Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib, SAA 17 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2003), 122. For an example of a text cataloguing the travels of a court messenger, see Frances. S. Reynolds, The Babylonian Correspondence of Esarhaddon and Letters to Assurbanipal and Sin-šarru-iškun from Northern and Central Babylonia, SAA 18 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 2003), 150.

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199 Nadav Na’aman, “Province System and Settlement Pattern in Southern Syria and Palestine in the Neo-Assyrian Period,” in Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors: Interaction and Counteraction (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 220–37. For discussion of the successive Assyrian regimes as a unified empire, and the reliance of such a claim on the level of investment in conquered regions, see Ariel M. Bagg, “Palestine under Assyrian Rule: A New Look at the Assyrian Imperial Policy in the West,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 133 (2013): 119–44. 200 Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus King of Babylon 556–539 BC (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 169–85. 201 Francis Joannès, “La localisation de urru á l’époque néo-babylonienne,” Semitica 32 (1982): 35–43. 202 David S. Vanderhooft, “Babylonia and the Babylonians,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 107–37. 203 Ernst F. Weidner, “Jojachin, König von Juda, in Babylonischen Keilschrifttexten,” in Mélanges syriens offerts à Monsieur René Dussaud (Geuthner: Paris, 1939), 923–35; cf. Beaulieu, “World Hegemony,” 57. 204 Jeffery H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobility (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 1–5. 205 Cf. Gary Beckman, “Foreigners in the Ancient Near East,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 133 (2013): 203–15. 206 Thomas Staubli, Das Imagen der Nomaden im Alten Israel und in der Ikonographie seiner sesshaften Nachbaren, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 107 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 20–21. 207 Staubli, 27, figs 8 and 9. 208 William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), EA 68, 71, 74, 75, 185, 243, 254, 271, 286, 288, 289, 299, 313, 366. 209 “The Craft of the Scribe,” trans. James P. Allen (COS 3.2: 9–14); “A Report of Escaped Laborers,” trans. James P. Allen (COS 3.5: 16–17); “The ‘Sea Peoples’ Records of Ramesses III,” trans. Kenneth A. Kitchen (COS 4.2: 11–14). Michael G. Hasel, Domination and Resistance: Egyptian Military Activity in the Southern Levant ca. 1300-1185 B.C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1998); K.A. Kitchen, “The Egyptian Evidence on Ancient Jordan,” in Early Edom and Moab: The Beginning of the Iron Age in Southern Jordan, ed. Piotr Bienkowski (Sheffield: J.R. Collis, 1992), 21–27; Edward Lipiński, On the Skirts of Canaan in the Iron Age: Historical and Topographical Researches (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 361–66. 210 Robertson, “Social Tensions,” 203. 211 Schwartz, “Pastoral Nomadism,” 249–58. 212 Van De Mieroop, The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Rameses II, 58–67. 213 Mu-Chu Poo, Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes towards Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 38–43, 49–54, 101–105. 214 Jerrold S. Cooper, The Curse of Agade (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 31 215 Van De Mieroop, Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Rameses II, 46–67; Beckman, “Foreigners in the Ancient Near East”; Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 251–53; Phyllis Saretta, Asiatics in Middle Kingdom Egypt: Perceptions and Reality (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 43–108. 216 Robertson, “Social Tensions,” 202. 217 Van De Mieroop, History of Ancient Egypt, 131. 218 Van De Mieroop, 116–17. See also Elizabeth Frood, trans., “The Stela of the Overseer of Works and Chief of Medjay,” in Biographical Texts from Ramessid Egypt, ed. Elizabeth Frood (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 192–95. It is not clear whether this Chief

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219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231

232 233

234 235 236

237 238 239 240 241 242 243

of the Medjay is Medjay himself or an Egyptian administrator tasked with overseeing their activities. Cf. James K. Hoffmeier, The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009), 39–41. Vincent A. Tobin, trans., “The Teachings for King Merikare,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 152–65, 161. Tobin, “The Teachings for King Merikare,” 161. Tobin, “The Teachings for King Merikare,” 161–62. Susan Tower Hollis, “Egyptian Literature,” in From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature, ed. Carl S. Ehrlich (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 113. “Sinuhe,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 1.38: 77–82), 77–78. “Sinuhe,” COS 1.38: 77–82, 78. “Sinuhe,” COS 1.38: 77–82, 81. “Sinuhe,” COS 1.38: 77–82, 79. “Sinuhe,” COS 1.38: 77–82, 79. Vincent A. Tobin, trans., “The Teaching of King Amenemhet I for His Son Senwosret,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 166–71. Raphael Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou des documents égyptiens (Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1971). On the contrary, Staubli argues that all post-Rameses III mentions of Shasu are anachronistic. Staubli, Der Nomaden, 35. Cf. “The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II,” trans. James K. Hoffmeier (COS 2.3: 19–23); “The Craft of the Scribe,” trans. James P. Allen (COS 3.2: 9–14). See also “The Battle of Qadesh—The Poem or Literary Record,” trans. Kenneth A. Kitchen (COS 2.5A: 32–38). Dever, Beyond the Texts, 102. Giveon argues that the term Shasu is related to the Semitic root for “plundering,” Raphael Giveon, Les bedouins Shosou, 262–63; Redford has suggested a correlation of the term with the Egyptian word for “wandering.” Donald B. Redford, Wars in Syria and Palestine of Thutmose III (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 91. For a comprehensive explanation of etymological origins, see Robert D. Miller II, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2021), 93–114. Staubli, Der Nomaden, 36. Staubli, Der Nomaden, 42–47. Staubli, Der Nomaden, 35. Staubli argues that the fortified camps found at Timna indicate that Egyptian workers lived at odds with local inhabitants who likely included the Shasu bands that may have participated in copper extraction or more likely trade to supplement their herding activities. Staubli, Der Nomaden, 41–42. Cf. Burnett, “Transjordan: The Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites,” 313. EA 68, 71, 74, 75, 185, 243, 254, 271, 286, 288, 289, 299, 313, 366. Eveline J. Van Der Steen, Tribes and Territories in Transition: The Central East Jordan Valley in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages: A Study of the Sources (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 16. Daniel E. Fleming, “The Amorites,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 1–30. Cf. EA 307, 345, 366. Cf. EA 111, 131.

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244 EA 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 88, 111, 117, 127; cf. Van Der Steen, Tribes and Territories in Transition, 17. 245 Van der Steen, 18. See also EA 73, 76, 79, 82. 246 Cf. Assaf Yasur-Landau, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Bronze Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Unfortunately, even though much of Yasur-Landau’s work is theoretically robust, he surprisingly relies on the basic assumption that common push-pull economic migration explanations are adequate for understanding migrational decision-making. 247 Ann E. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300-1100 B.C.E. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 37–42. 248 Hodos, Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age, 40–41; Yasur-Landau, Philistines and Aegean Migration, 97–121. 249 Among them are the large inscriptions from Medinet Habu, the Rhetorical Stela in Chapel at Deir el-Medineh, Papyrus Harris 1, and the Onomasticon of Amenope. Cf. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 202–5. 250 “The ‘Sea-Peoples’ Records of Ramesses III,” trans. Kenneth A. Kitchen (COS 4.2: 11–14). 251 Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 204–5. 252 Dever, Beyond the Texts, 99. 253 Hodos, Archaeology of the Mediterranean Iron Age, 75–80. 254 EA 73, 145. 255 For an example of such works, see Giorgio Buccellati, The Amorites of the Ur III Period (Naples: Istituto Orientale Di Napoli, 1966). 256 George Mendenhall, “Amorites,” ABD 1: 199–202. 257 Peter M.M. Akkermans and Glenn M. Schwartz, The Archaeology of Syria: From Complex Hunter-Gatherers to Early Urban Societies (ca 16,000–300 BC) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 297. 258 Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 251–52. 259 The term indicates a population related through social ties of kinship and economic connection to the kingdom of Mari. These groups participated in the exchange of wool, textiles, and animal products that, when paired with the metallurgic and agricultural exploits of the lands under Mari’s control, led to its immense wealth in the pre-Sargonic period. 260 It is at Mari that the usage of Amorite to designate a linguistic category supersedes its use as a descriptor of mobile pastoralism. This shift is substantiated by the appearance of the term hana for mobile populations in the Mari archives. Yet even here, the Hana are not considered social outsiders, but are integral members of society. Daniel Fleming “The Amorites,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 1–30. 261 The difficulty of establishing a clear understanding of the relationship between Akkadian and Amorite as linguistic categories is due primarily to the reality that there are no texts written in a language that could be called Amorite. Working to explain how this could happen, Porter explains the relationship between Amorite and Akkadian as similar to the relationship between Modern Standard Arabic, the language of learning, public discourse, and commerce, and its colloquial forms which are found written far less frequently. Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 268. 262 Fleming writes, “[T]here is no reason to imagine that the ’Pastoralist’ god had to be worshipped only or first of all by pastoralists. The deity represented this portion of the community and would have specialized in the needs of long-distance shepherds and their flocks. Amurru need not have been an Amorite god but rather a divine representative of the Amorite contribution to Mesopotamian life, taking his place in a

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263 264 265

266

267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282

pantheon shared by the general populace.” Fleming, “Amorites,” 19. See also Karel van der Toorn, “Mar-tu,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons, 2nd ed., eds. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 32–34. The inclusion of the determinative ki is what separates the term from its use to denote a type of people. The difference is between Amurrû, the type of person or language, and Ammurum, the place(s) they inhabit. Fleming, “Amorites,” 10. Fleming argues that it is most likely that these regions took their names from the mobile pastoralist populations that inhabited them rather than giving their names to the mobile pastoralism populations. Flemingg, “Amorites,” 9–10. Porter notes that there are over 30 references to these Mardu at Mari. Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 309. Cf. Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, “Egyptian Historiography on the Mobility of (Sea) People at the End of the Late Bronze Age,” in An Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13thc. BCE Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Jan Driessen (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2018), 219–28. Cooper, Curse of Agade, 32; Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 230–34. Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, “The Marriage of Martu,” Oxford University, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.1# Gutians receive a similar characterization in as those “who were never shown how to worship god, who did not know how to properly perform the rites and observances.” Poo, Enemies of Civilization, 50. Cf. Cooper, Curse of Agade, 31. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 37. Porter, “Assembling the Iron Age Levant,” 385. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 235–40. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 233–34. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 238. Younger, Political History of the Arameans, 111–15. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 235. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 237. Younger, Political History of the Arameans, 105–7. See also Porter, Mobile Pastoralism, 310–29. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 257–58. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 259. Younger, Political History of the Arameans, 31–34. Younger, “Aram and the Arameans,” 263.

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Religiosity(ies) on the Move around Canaan

Defining Divinity Most treatments of religion in the ancient Near East begin with discussion of common perceptions of the nature of divinity. Modern scholarly conversations on these matters have taken place for more than a century. Thus, the question “What is a god?” is well rehearsed.1 Power is a fundamental attribute of religion and religiosity that we can analyze across temporal, geographic, and cultural domains.2 As today, persons in the ancient world engaged religion for the purpose of accomplishing particular ends. They did so with the shared assumption that the superhuman entities they engaged possessed capacities/ capabilities to affect desired outcomes.3 In the contexts of the ancient Near Eastern, superhuman power is best captured using the terminology of divinity. While the terminology for divinity is clearly interrelated across Mesopotamia and the Levant – with Akkadian terms like ilum and ilū manifest in later Ugarititic ‘il and ‘ilm, in the Hebrew ‘el, elim, ‘elohim, eloah, in the Aramaic ‘elah, and in even later Arabic Allah, the definitional boundaries of these cognates morph dramatically across time and space.4 Even in their contemporary historical settings, the terms likely relayed different contrasting understandings of deity or divinity when used by different people.5 The question of what constituted divinity for ancient peoples is further complicated when one considers Egyptian conceptions of deity alongside Levantine and Mesopotamian examples. While it is clear that overt linguistic connections do not occur between the cognates of ‘ilu and the Egyptian ntr/netjer, connection between the geographic regions from which these terms originated leads us to believe that they were elements of a broader shared “cognitive environment.”6 Egyptologists maintain a range of positions on the degree of influence.7 Some have gone so far as to argue that Egypt and the Levant even shared a cultural and religious koiné.8 Present research on migration and religion would substantiate the probability of the later, but it remains difficult to assert the degree of mutual influence for any given time. Characterizations of divinity and of divine personhood are responsive to the functions and outcomes of mobility. Divine mobility in the ancient Near East is DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-4

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commonly linked with anthropomorphic representations of gods that correlate with the lived experiences of religious practitioners. Anthropomorphic representations of divinity frequently mirror the lived experiences of religious practitioners. Yet, divine bodies don’t simply mirror human bodies in all attributes, abilities, or scale. Divine bodies amplify and augment human abilities, expand bodily scale, and transgress the limits of human embodiment. With humanly recognizable forms, deities perform actions that humans cannot. As a constituent aspect of divine personhood, divine mobility takes intelligible human forms but ultimately exceeds those forms. Characterizations of anthropomorphized divinity could also change over time; as seen in Deut 4:12, 15 and in Ezekiel 1, where later biblical editors move away from speaking of any definite divine form.9 Many Egyptian deities maintained anthropomorphic, theriomorphic, and cosmomorphic manifestations, with the fullness of their power deepening as they were subsequently recognized in additional forms.10 Despite the many instantiations of divine agency that make use of bodily metaphors, divinity in the ancient world need not always be anthropomorphized.11 One difficulty associated with enumerating the qualities, capacities, characteristics, capacities, and other aspects of divinity arises in part from the attribution of the DINGIR determinative to, or using terms such as ‘el, ilū, or their cognates for, things or people that most (Western) moderns would not count as deities/divinity. In cases where deities are presented anthropomorphically, variations in their size, number, and capabilities comprise a broad spectrum.12 In the case of biblical Israel, the presentation of nonhuman items such as the calves at Dan and Bethel as deities in their own right shows that biblical authors did not limit conceptions of divinity to anthropomorphic forms.13 The role that inanimate, non-anthropomorphic objects played in maintaining the order of the universe was important enough for them to be deified. Thus, seemingly ordinary items like drums, beds, crowns, spears, harps, or medical conditions could be seen as divine entities in their own right.14 We find the same when understandings at work in mentions of astral phenomena, planetary bodies, and water sources.15 Even if the nonanthropomorphic entity could not act in human ways, it appears that such entities were granted the status of having agency of one kind or another.

Deities on the Move From the earliest historical periods, we find instances of divine beings on the move. By and large, access to the presence of a deity through a particular site or via its statue/image hypostasis was normative across the ancient Near East. Deities typically traveled in their statue forms, although, sometimes non-statue forms such as stones or common items with symbols or images of deities on them were transported.16 Some deities made visits to cities for which they were patrons. Others traveled to visit gods of greater stature.17 Still others moved as participants in local religious ceremonies, as tourists, as guarantors of agreements made between polities, and as participants in annual festivals.18

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Egyptian apotropaic wands depict, among other things, Thoth’s journeys into the desert to bring back the power of the solar eye.19 According to one epistolary text, Tab-Sar-Assur, the Assyrian state treasurer during the reign of Sargon II, travels on the Tigris river with set of items – perhaps gifts for the divine hypostases located in a newly built temple – that are depicted as traveling on their own volition and not in the possession of Tab-Sar-Assur.20 Jacob’s claim in Genesis 35 is that his deity has traveled with him wherever he has gone (Gen 35:3; cf. Gen 28:20, 31:42, 32:9–12). In other instances, such as the Akītu festival, a deity was understood to be physically capable of engaging its audience through actions like opening its own mouth, turning its body toward or away from temples, and even changing its pace from walking slowly to running.21 Deities could also operate as independent envoys between kingdoms. In doing so, some substantiated treaties or served as gifts, while others aided neighboring polities. In the Late Bronze Age, Tushratta, king of Mitanni, sent a statue of Ishtar to Pharaoh Amenophis III, who was then ill. An accompanying letter states that Ishtar’s journey would be a round trip. As a deity onloan, once she had completed her task of healing the Pharaoh she was expected to return. Tushratta reminds the Pharaoh that Ishtar does not belong to the Egyptian pantheon but is there as an act of service. He writes, May Ishtar, Lady of Heaven, protect my brother and myself. May our Lady grant both of us 100,000 years and a great joy. And may we be well. Ishtar is a goddess of mine; she is not a goddess of my brother.22 Other instances of sending gods to neighboring kingdoms were not as benevolent. In such times, the arrival of a foreign deity was not a provision of assistance or signifier of goodwill but a declaration of hegemony. In the Teachings for King Merikare, the king is counseled, “Let your images [of deities] be sent to foreign lands, [even ones] which will not acknowledge them.”23 Whatever the reason for the god’s movement, it was important to make it publicly known and to have it officially recorded. Divine travel records abound among imperial archives. One notice informs the king’s subjects that Enlil will travel to a specified fort in the month of Iyyar.24 The king is concerned for Enlil’s safety and requests notification of his arrival there. Addressing similar royal concerns for the safety of gods en route, a completed round of travel by Mullissu and Serua is reported to the king in another text.25 In one correspondence, the king submits an inquiry regarding the proposed arrival of Marduk’s statue to the city.26 In still another letter, a priest of Marduk corresponds with the king of Assyria to relay the news of Ishtar’s journey to the divine feast.27 Similarly, projecting the arrival of Ishtar from her journey from Milqia, an Assyrian text, whose author remains unknown, inquires of the king’s preferred means for meeting with Ishtar upon her return.28 Another correspondence to the king of Assyria announces Adad’s travel plans to the festival chapel on the sixth day of the month of Iyyar.29 In one

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particularly humorous text, the priest Shamash-shumu-leshir informs the king that six deities had traveled with Marduk to his city at an earlier time, before he himself arrived as a functionary. His concern is that he is the only priest for the temple and is being run into the ground taking care of all the gods by himself. He requests relief from the king, who he hopes will send word for the deities to move from his temple back to Babylon.30 Deities typically accompanied kings as members of their royal and military entourages. In one instance, Sîn, Shamash, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela are called upon to attend the king as both his protectors and as members of his family while he travels to Egypt on conquest.31 Another archival text records messengers or attendants of the gods Marduk (Bel) and Nabû traveling with the king on his rounds of the empire.32 Concerns for a deity’s means of travel in these imperial retinues was of great importance. One of the questions asked of the Babylonian Oracle regards which horse was appropriate for the weighty task of pulling Marduk’s chariot, Shamash, lord of judgment, Adad, lord of the inspection, the white horse whose hair and bristles I am holding up in my hand, in the presence of your great divinity, and am resting my hand on the brow of a ram, is it commanded that it be hitched up to the chariot of the great lord Marduk, who resides in the Esagil, for the great lord Marduk who resides in the Esagil? … Is it good to Shamash and Adad, your great divinity?33 Another Neo-Assyrian text speaks of the illustriousness of Marduk’s bejeweled chariot.34 In one Assyrian letter, the unknown author complains to the king that the men who carry the statue of Ishtar about are not from elite lineage but are mere commoners. All of the properly associated men who should have performed the work are currently located in Calah.35 The Egyptian Instruction of Ani/y counsels its student regarding the careful transport of a personal deity, “Do not jostle him in order to carry him, do not disturb the oracles. Be careful, help to protect him.”36 Similar images of persons carrying their personal deities around can be seen in Isa 45:20–25 though, here the tone is one of derision as Isaiah chides Babylonians for their belief that the gods they carry are real. Isaiah 46:1–2 plays further on the trope of deities moving about on the backs of beasts of burden by implicitly mocking their inability to move on their own. The question of a deity’s potency while on the move is central to discussions of divinity in contexts of mobility. A person or group’s movements could result in a growing understanding of their family deities as portable. Thus, while in most cases family gods must be present with their devotees in order to be effective, they could sometimes travel with devotees – either independently or by being carried. Families who moved often maintained their previous gods

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and adopted new ones upon their arrival to a new place. Although affiliated with a “hometown,” many major deities could travel at will without their powers being limited on the move. There are cases, however, when being bound to the physical locations of their association and/or veneration meant that geographic distance could obstruct a deities power or abilities to influence events. Sometimes, persons who were beyond the topographical boundaries of their god’s provision/efficacy had to return to a proximal location or directly to the site to which their god was bound.37 In an archival text of Zimrī-Līm from Mari, a servant suffering from illness implores his master for a leave of absence to return to his home where he can worship his personal god who is currently inaccessible from his present location. If the master will not grant him leave for travel, the servant hopes that he will at least allow a letter to be sent from the servant to his god asking for healing.38 Several Egyptian letters contain requests from their senders to family members back home to go to the local temple to offer prayers on their behalf while they are away.39 These examples of requests or desires for veneration at particular sights maintain striking similarities to accounts of modern migrants relying on the religious intercessions of friends and family at home sites who do not undertake the journey with them.40 The account of 2 Kings 5 – wherein Naaman the Aramean commander is healed of his skin condition – demonstrates another instance of landbound conceptions of divinity. Following the healing of his malady, Naaman requests that dirt from the land of Israel be sent back to Aram, likely so he could build an appropriate altar from which to venerate Yahweh, whose efficacy was tied to the land and the water in which Naaman bathed. The Egyptian Report of Wenamun vividly illustrates concerns regarding a deity’s potency when abroad. At the heart of this tale is an intriguing set of elements related to mobility and religiosity. The conversation between the prince of Byblos and the Egyptian courtier Wenamun, who is in Byblos to retrieve lumber for royal buildings back in Egypt, reveals several features of interregional religious practice in the Levant at the start of the Iron Age. Travelers like Wenamun set out not only with a portable version of their god in hand, but also with paperwork from the priests of that deity that legitimized their travel. As Wenamun reports, it was common to provide rulers in ports of call with these documents as gestures of good will. By the account we have, it appears that such documents were left by Wenamun with the local rulers in Tanis. When Wenamun reaches Byblos, the prince there is befuddled that Wenamun has no official documents from the priests of Amun by which he can substantiate his voyage. A particularly perplexing part of the story concerns Wenamun’s attempts to hide the Amun statuette he identifies as “Amun-of-the-Road,” and the god’s attendant possessions with which he travels, upon his mooring in Byblos.41 Perhaps he is afraid that he will not be well received and that his god, which is his source of protection while traveling, will also be stolen. One day, while one of the prince’s servants offers sacrifices to the local gods, a local deity

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entrances a young slave and uses him as an intermediary to inform the prince that Wenamun is traveling with a statue of the god Amun and that Amun has commissioned Wenamun’s journey. This recognition is a turning point in the story. The local god, who can sense that Amun is nearby, demands that Amun be brought before him. Upon hearing this news, the prince, who had demanded that Wenamun leave Byblos for the previous 29 days, unexpectedly changes his mind and insists instead that he stay one more night. Meanwhile, Wenamun had finally decided to leave Byblos without the cargo for which he came. He had secured passage on a ship that can take him back to Egypt and loaded his belongings. While making his preparations for departure, he devises a plan to secretly move his statue of Amun from its place of hiding to the ship. Wenamun is rightly skeptical that the prince’s invitation to stay another night is a ploy to cause him further consternation. Yet, because protocols for hospitality included the host’s prerogative to detain guests for as long as they see fit, Wenamun acquiesces to the prince’s demand and passes the night in Byblos. The following day he is brought before the Prince while his god remains hidden in his tent. As Wenamun and Prince meet, an argument ensues regarding Egypt’s former and present power over Byblos. During their debate Amun’s character and scope of power takes center stage. Wenamun implores the prince to recognize that Amun is the owner of all ships because he ultimately is the one who controls the Lebanon and its timber. He urges the prince to concede that he too is a servant of Amun and admonishes him not to hold on to resources which ultimately belong to Amun-Re, “the king of the gods.”42 The exchange continues with Wenamun sending word back to Egypt for additional payments to be sent for the required lumber. The prince of Byblos accepts the terms of the offer and supplies the timber. Ultimately, Wenamun’s ability to convince the Prince to accept the terms of his arrangement is tied to the fact that he has brought Amun-of-the-Road with him. Interestingly, Amun never appears before the local god. This is likely an indication that Amun as the more powerful deity does not submit to a summons from a less powerful one. All appears well on the day when Wenamun intends to depart until a fleet of Tjeker arrive in Byblos’ port with the intention of arresting him for his earlier theft of silver. The prince of Byblos intervenes on Wenamun’s behalf, insisting that he cannot allow a fellow servant of Amun to be killed in his land. Thus, the Tjeker are permitted to have a go at Wenamun, but only after he sets out to sea and is beyond the prince’s waters. Sailing hard to outpace the Tjeker, Wenamun makes it to the port of Alashiya where he seeks refuge, but the remainder of the document is missing, so we never find out how the story ends. In sum, the account of Wenamun demonstrates the interrelated nature of trade and religion. Themes of divine ownership of resources and intervention in mercantile affairs resound throughout the tale. Furthermore, Wenamun and the prince of Byblos’s interactions provide excellent examples of the kind of religious pluralism facilitated by mobility and cross-cultural

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interactions in the Late Bronze and Early Iron periods. The prince’s respect for Amun is indicated by the seriousness with which he takes the account of his entranced offering bearer, demonstrating his recognition that Amun-Re is a legitimate deity with the capability to act beyond Egypt proper.43 As the prince recognizes Amun’s power, he also links him with Seth, an Egyptian storm god whom Syrians associated with Baal. The Report of Wenamun also reinforces the reality that travel for royal service or military action was dangerous for gods and humans alike. Gods that served as envoys or went into battle with their armies could be captured, and even destroyed. The practice of “godnapping” deities during battle, or from their temples after a siege, occurs frequently in Assyrian and Babylonian contexts.44 In most cases, the captors recognized the statues they obtained to be legitimate deities and in need of proper care. Some went so far as to place them in temples in their home cities. Those that were relocated could remain exiled from their home sites for centuries. The memories of exiled gods ran deep. In one instance, a deity is recorded as having been absent for two millennia.45 The Assyrian captors catalogued the deities they acquired but did so without directly naming them. This non-descript record keeping method may indicate their assumptions about the deities’ powers. If they recorded their actual names, when the inscriptions were read aloud, they might accidentally call the captive gods to action and induce their retribution.46 Such practices relay the Assyrians’ belief that the deities’ powers were not substantially diminished by relocation. In a biblical instance of godnapping, Genesis 31 records Rachel’s theft of Laban’s personal gods. Another occurrence of this type of thievery – this time at the hands of Israel’s arch enemies – is observable in the Philistine capture of the ark (1 Samuel 5–6). Yahweh’s destruction of the Philistine deity Dagan demonstrates that he, like the gods captured by Mesopotamians, is not rendered defenseless as a prisoner of war. A final instance of godnapping can be seen in the Danite theft of a statue (‫ )פסל‬from Micah’s household shrine (Judges 17). The episode may indicate a common understanding of the power that a hypostasis was thought to have, regardless of who possessed it. Depictions of deities willfully leaving their home sites as a form of punishment for their adherents appears across a broad range of source material. This type of divine mobility is often linked with the occurrence of a military defeat or serves as an explanation for political misfortune. Texts from different periods and genres attribute varied agency to the deities who are on the move. The motif of divine abandonment appears, at least from current sources, to have been more popular in Sumer and Babylon – where it was understood that a deity could return to a forsaken patron city at will – than in Assyrian contexts. The only deities recorded in Assyrian royal inscriptions as having abandoned their home cities are Nanāia and Marduk.47 A reasonable explanation may be Assyrian unwillingness to recognize military defeat in official documents. This way of thinking is confirmed when one sees how regularly Neo-Assyrians claim military victory by describing the exile of their enemies’

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gods from their homelands. Moreover, according to Neo-Assyrian understandings, once a deity was captured it could not simply return to its home site at will, but only if they were repatriated by a king who also refurbished their hypostasis.49 References to retributive desertion appear through the biblical corpus.50 As is clear from the variant presentations of Jer 42:10–11 and Ezekiel 10, biblical authors agree on Yahweh’s freedom to move but not on the extent that he is willing to leave the land, and particularly the temple, behind. This is due in part to disagreements over where the faithful remnant of the covenant community resides. Ezekiel 10–11 pictures Yahweh moving his temple abode to be with the people. In Jeremiah, the motif is reversed to show Yahweh admonishing his people to stay in the land while the worshippers leave their god. Yahweh exclaims, “My children have gone from me, and they are no more; there is no one to spread my tent again, and to set up my curtains” (Jer 10:20). Psalm 74 beckons God to “direct your steps to the perpetual ruins” of the destroyed Jerusalem temple.

Mobility and Religiosities in Egypt and Mesopotamia While the bodies of evidence examined above generally deal with the mobility of gods, this section will briefly take up the religious concerns of human movers as represented in travel poems, prayers, incantations, hymns, and accounts of blessing or thankfulness in contexts of movement. The unpredictable nature of any kind of travel meant that most people turned to implore the gods for safety and success. Appeals to the divine often took the form of extispicy and divination.51 Incantations were accompanied by ritual behaviors of bathing, offerings of food and libations, or formulaic verbal recitations.52 A commonly repeated refrain among incantations for personal wellbeing is “Watch over my footsteps, my coming and going.”53 Among canonical prayers, the Shamash Hymn is a quintessential Mesopotamian example. While enumerating the broad and substantial capacities of Shamash, the Sun God, the hymn includes Shamash’s provision for the many needs of those on the move. You give support to the traveler whose j[ourney] is trying, To the seafarer in dread of the waves you lend [aid], You are wont to g[uide] the roamer (?) on the unexplored routes, You always guide [on the ro]ad any who turn toward [Shamash]. You rescue from the flashflood the [mer]chant bearing his purse, You bring up∗ the one gone down to the deep, you set wings upon him. You reveal havens to refugees and runaways.∗ You show the exile roads he did not know.54 In addition to general safety for travelers and merchants of road and sea, Shamash also watches over those whose movements are characterized

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as wandering. Exiles, runaways, and others seeking refuge fall under his protective gaze. Similar sentiments for traveling mercies can be found in an Old Babylonian prayer in which a traveler cries out to the gods in night for help. Much to his dismay, they remain asleep and unable or unwilling to offer assistance. Thus, it is necessary to call specifically on the help of the deities who reign over the night hours (ilū mušītim).55 A later biblical Psalm captures the same notion that deities who are asleep may be difficult to rouse and are thus potentially unhelpful for resolving troubles encountered in the night hours (Ps 44:23, 77:1–9).56 Gen 32:23–25 and Exod 4:24–26 may indicate a similar fear of encountering demons or malevolent divinities when embarking on travel.57 To combat these malevolent actors, Egyptian religious specialists called on multi-form composite superhuman entities whose combined powers could render the demons ineffective in their pursuits.58 Additionally, groups of traveling Egyptian workers were accompanied by amulet-making specialists called Sau who could attend to their various needs throughout their journeys.59 Exorcism was commonly undertaken to remove ill-meaning spirits or demons that could wreak havoc on a person’s health or life situation. While humans were not able to destroy these spirits, they could at least cast them out of one’s body or space. Since such beings are generally unwilling to go on their own, one must help them along. One Old Babylonian incantation demonstrates the process of relocating a maleficent spirit. The incantation includes prescriptions for assisting the ghost or evil entity in packing its bags and preparing it for travel.60 Another Akkadian incantation invokes Ea, Shamash, and Asalluhe (Marduk) to muster their forces against demons and ill-meaning spirits, and to consign them to the deities Girra and Erra who will banish them to the far regions of the physical world.61 A composition from Ugarit takes up the real-world concern of serpents biting equids and humans.62 It calls for the deities of Ugarit’s pantheon, who maintain residence in various locations of the Levant, to respond to snake bites with healing and to remove all snakes from the land. The incantation’s primary character is a female equid of mythical proportions who bears the concern for humans and equids alike. While serpents were troublesome for sedentary and mobile persons alike, the text is primarily concerned with the wellbeing of travelers. If the chief audience was sedentary agriculturalists wary of snakes in their fields as they worked, one would expect the text to also include the more common bovine draft animals. Since equids were reserved primarily for traveling and military tasks at this time, it makes sense to situate this text beyond the concerns of day-to-day agricultural life. The text also makes interesting juxtaposition of creaturely and divine mobility at the occurrence of a snake bite. Upon observing a bitten horse’s stagnated mobility, the mythical horse cries to Shapsu to run as a messenger to Ugarit’s many deities in their principal locations of residence with the hope that their combined efforts will rid the land of dangerous serpents. Several Mesopotamian texts record similar desires

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to remedy scorpion stings or snake bites while en-route.63 In Egypt, the deity Serqet was typically portrayed as a scorpion and was responsible for both inflicting stings and healing them. In one myth, she accompanies Isis on her travels to the Delta region and punishes a woman who refuses to offer hospitality to the traveling goddess.64 The job of “scorpion charmer” (kherep Serqet), who were the go-to specialists for stings and snake bites, was a relatively popular position throughout Egyptian history. Companies of stone workers that traveled into the Sinai to retrieve turquoise often included these religio-medical specialists.65 Briefer accounts of interregional mobility and its attendant religious concerns are found in epistolary content as well. One letter captures the work of the scribe Balasî writing to the king concerning the timing of his journey to make sacrifices.66 In a similar way, the interpretation of astrological events could dictate travel plans. In one such report, we read, “If Leo is dark: lions and wolves will rage and cut off travel to the Westland.”67 In several other letters to the king, Balasî addresses the king’s concern with the timing of a crown prince’s visit and its overlap with the rising of Mars, Mercury, and the period of the new moon.68 Other texts indicate prohibitions for travel in accordance with the lunar cycle when it was deemed unsafe to proceed from the city gates.69 Related questions of whether or when journeys should be undertaken are exemplified by the formulaic divination inquiries posed to Shamash and Adad. One tamītu depicts the real and perceived dangers associated with departure from the sedentary realms of the city. The request is levied on behalf of soldiers going to their posts, for workers of different stripes on their daily commutes, and even for the animals that must leave the protection of the city’s walls.70 Movement beyond the city is clearly a necessity for life, but is always characterized by unpredictability, and thus the gods are relied on for the safe return of all to life within its walls: Shamash, lord of judgment, Adad, lord of the inspection … the soldiers which Shamash and Marduk rule over, the force that goes out of this city: the grouped soldiers, the sling(?) soldiers, the foot soldiers, the chariot soldiers who are stationed in … tower and fortress, the oxen, the sheep, the donkeys, the people, the ploughing oxen, the oxherds and their supervisors, the bird-catchers, the look-outs, who leave this city daily … Will the soldiers who go gout of this city, by god’s initiative, the [king’s] initiative or their own initiative be safe, be saved be spared, escape?

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Is their safety and survival decreed and sure at the command of Shamash and Adad? For the safety of the soldiers who go out of this [city] I thus treat this lamb with the right hand, from the horns of the head to the tail I bless with the right hand, that the omens on the right maybe favorable.71 Additional petitions to Shamash can be seen in another tamītu for things to go well for the duration of the year. Among a variety of wishes for success and prosperity, we find requests that Shamash will offer protection for the petitioner, … taking the road and going to (other) towns wherever the king, his, lord, may send him so that he goes wherever he is sent, where his knees may carry him, and he may go in steppe, country or the outdoors, on water, dry land, donkey saddle (?) or boat, whether up early or spending the night unexpectedly where he stops for the night; from an enemy attack, attack of a lion, an attack by robbers, the onset of a storm … .72

Notes 1 Cf. Michael B. Hundley, “Divine Presence in Ancient Near Eastern Temples,” Religion Compass 9 (2015): 203–15; “Here a God, There a God: An Examination of the Divine in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Altorientalische Forschungen 40 (2013): 68–107; Barbara Nevling Porter, One God or Many?: Conceptions of Divinity in the Ancient World (Chebeague Island, MN: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2000); Barbara Nevling Porter, ed. What is a God?: Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, vol. 2 (Chebeague Island, MN: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2009); Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 6–13. 2 David P. Silverman, “Divinity and Deities in Ancient Egypt,” in Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice, ed. Byron E. Shafer (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 7–87. See also Jan Assmann, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 1–13; Christian Smith, Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 22; Mark S. Smith, God in Translation, 14. See Mark Smith’s comments regarding the connection between the term el as one for both divinity and power. See also Beckman’s definition of religion with its power-centric focus, Gary Beckman, “How Religion Was Done,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel C. Snell (Malden: Wiley, 2005), 343–53. 3 Following Christian Smith, I differentiate the term “superhuman” from “supernatural” since certain religious frameworks see the superhuman embedded in the natural world; Smith, Religion, 21, 24. It should be noted that while all religions contain practices oriented toward the access and engagement with superhuman powers, not all religions conceive of such powers in personalized or animate forms. Some religions contain

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superhuman powers that are identified as constant and impersonal forces. Smith is careful to note that securing blessing, avoiding ills, or resolving crises are not always accomplished through “instrumental exchanges between humans and superhuman powers.” Smith, 37. Daniel C. Snell, Religions of the Ancient Near East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 15–16; Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2010), 11. For an excellent record of scholarly discussion on such matters, see the transcript of conversations of a meeting of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute “Discussion” in One God or Many?, 325–36. John H. Walton, “Interactions in the Ancient Cognitive Environment,” in Behind the Scenes of the Old Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts, eds. Johnathan S. Greer, John W. Hilber, and John H. Walton (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 233–39; Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 6–16. For a pertinent discussion regarding Levantine religious influence in Egypt during the Second Intermediate/Hyksos period, see Manfred Görg Religion in Umwelt des Alten Tesatments III: Ägyptische Religion – Wurzeln – Wege - Wirkungen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), 84–87; Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 33–65. For a helpful introduction to the discussion, see John Baines, “Presenting and Discussion Deities in New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period Egypt,” in Reconsidering the Concept of Revolutionary Monotheism, ed. Beata Pongratz-Leisten (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 41–89. Thomas Staubli, “Cultural and Religious Impacts of Long-Term Cross-Cultural Migration between Egypt and the Levant,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 12 (2016): 51–88. Others have named the religious interdependence between northern Syria and Asia Minor, particularly regarding Hittite culture, as a cultural koiné. See Manfred Hutter, Religionen in der Umwelt des Alten Testaments I: Babylonier, Syrer, Perser (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1996), 118–20. Mark S. Smith, “Myth and Mythmaking in Canaan and Ancient Israel,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001), 2021–41. Cf. Eric Hornung, Conceptions of God, 125–26. Izak Cornelius, “The Many Faces of God: Divine Images and Symbols in Ancient Near Eastern Religions,” in The Image and the Book: Iconic Cults, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Karel van der Toorn (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 21–43; Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 7. Barbara N. Porter, “Blessings from a Crown, Offerings to a Drum: Were There Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia?” in What is a God? Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, vol. 2, ed. Barbara N. Porter (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 153–94. Barbara N. Porter, “Introduction,” in What is a God? Anthropomorphic and NonAnthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, vol. 2, ed. Barbara N. Porter (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 1–13. Beate Pongratz-Leisten, “Imperial Allegories: Divine Agency and Monstrous Bodies in Mesopotamia’s Body Description Texts,” in The Materiality of Divine Agency, eds. Beate Pongratz-Leisten and Karen Sonik (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015), 119–41; Mark S. Smith, Where the Gods Are: Spatial Dimensions of Divine Anthropomorphism in the Biblical World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016). Cf. Smith, God in Translation, 12–14. Porter “Blessings from a Crown, Offerings to a Drum,” 153–94; Gebhard J. Selz, “The Holy Drum, the Spear, and the Harp. Towards an Understanding of the Problems of

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Deification in the Third Millennium Mesopotamia,” in Sumerian Gods and Their Representations, eds. Irving L. Finkel and Markham J. Geller (Gröningen: Styx, 1997), 167–213. Association of certain deities with natural forces, planetary bodies, or cosmic structures could indicate their alignment with those things, but also their embodiment of them. Such appears to be the case in instances where An/Anu is the embodied heavens, Enlil is embodied air, Ishkur/Adad/Baal/Yahweh are embodied storms, Utu/Shamash/Aten are embodied sun, or Sîn/Nanna are embodied in the moon. On the divinity of water sources, see Porter, “Blessings from a Crown, Offerings to a Drum,” 161–62. Cf. Cornelius, “‘Trading Religions’ and ‘visible religion,’” 141–66. Michael Seymour, “Mesopotamia,” in The Oxford Handbook of The Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 775–94, 781. Karljürgen G. Feuerherm, “Have Horn, Will Travel: The Journeys of Mesopotamian Deities,” in Travel in Antiquity, ed. Philip A. Harland (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2011), 83–97, 86–87; Steven W. Cole and Peter Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, SAA 13 (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998). Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 40–42. Barbara Nevling Porter, “Feeding Dinner to a Bed: Reflections on the Nature of Gods in Ancient Mesopotamia,” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 15 (2006): 307–31. Porter suggests that the purpose of this trip was to deliver the objects, particularly the bed to Aššur, where they will join and be of use to divine statues that have also made a journey from Dūr-Sarrukēn to Assur. As objects that are for the gods’ use, they themselves possess attributes of divinity. Julye Bidmead, The Akitu Festival: Religious Continuity and Royal Legitimation in Mesopotamia (Piscataway: Gorgias, 2014), 94–101. See also Feuerherm, “Have Horn, Will Travel,” 85. EA 23: 13–32. Vincent A. Tobin, trans., “The Teaching of King Merikare,” in The Literature of Ancient Egypt: An Anthology of Stories, Instructions, Stelae, Autobiographies, and Poetry, 3rd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 152–65. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 7. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 44. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 150. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 147. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 149. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 189. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 190. Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, SAA 10 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1993), 136, 137. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, 118. Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Oracle Questions (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007) (no. 9), 81. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, 203–4. Cole and Machinist, Letters from Priests to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 152. “Instruction of Any,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 1.46: 110–15), 113. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 83–84. J.M. Durand, Archives épistolaires de Mari, I/2 (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1988), 403. Maria Michela Luiselli, “Personal Piety in Ancient Egypt,” in Religion Compass 8 (2014): 105–16, 107.

Religiosity(ies) on the Move around Canaan 121 40 A similar phenomenon is witnessed among many modern Central American migrants who venerate a particular saint or icon of Christ or Mary that is associated with a shrine in their hometown. The assumption among these practitioners is that the fullness of the venerated being is present in both locations but that it is ideal to perform the practice at the homesite. Thus, many migrants make promises to the Divine and to the image to return one day and offer proper thanks for successful journeys. Sometimes, in their absence, they call on family members to visit the homesite shrine to offer prayers or light candles on their behalf. Jacqueline Maria Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 133–54. See also Holly Straut Eppsteiner and Jacqueline Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support in the Migration Undertaking,” in Intersections of Migration and Religion: Issues as the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer Saunders et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 49–70; Kim Knott, “Living Religious Practices,” in Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer B. Saunders et al. (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 71–90. 41 This statuette most likely represents Amun’s capacities as protector or guide of those on the move. “The Report of Wenamun,” trans. Miriam Lichtheim (COS 1.41: 89–93). Cf. Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, “Amun-of-the-Road: Trade and Religious Mobility between Egypt and the Levant at the Turn of the First Millennium BCE.” Die Welt des Orients 47 (2017): 52–65. 42 “The Report of Wenamun” (COS 1.41): 91. 43 The cult of Amun, a popular Egyptian cult in the Bronze age, was also popular in other parts of the Iron Age Levant. This is witnessed by the ubiquitous presences of Amunrelated inscriptions on scarabs and amulets. Ben-Dor Evian, “Amun-of-the-Road,” 52, n. 1. The production of these post-Ramesside seals and seal impressions in Canaan is important because the seals are Egyptian in style, but not direct continuations of those that came from Egypt. The localized variations show differing levels of motif adaptation. Rather than suppose these are Philistine adaptations of Egyptian motifs, Ben-Dor Evian argues that it more likely they are Philistine adaptations of Canaanite motifs which had already been influenced by Egyptian elements during the Late Bronze Age. Ben-Dor Evian, 56. Cf. David Ben-Shlomo, “New Evidence of Seals and Sealings from Philistia,” Tel Aviv 33 (2006): 134–62. In addition, veneration of Amun is attested in southwest Canaan where a temple to Amun was built and possibly served as a center for creating Amun seals distributed throughout Philistia and other parts of the Levant. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 113–14. Though no temple of Amun is known north of Canaan, attestation of knowledge of him there can be found in scarab and other material remains. The height of Amun worship in the region appears to have peaked in the Late Bronze period and subsequently declined following the diminution of Egyptian power over the region at the turn of the Iron Age. Ben-Dor Evian, “Amun-of-the-Road,” 52. The cult of Amun, however, did not altogether disappear. Biblical witnesses make mention of Amun of Thebes (Jer 46:25) and Greeks later adopted Amun, maintaining a temple for him at Thebes and building one for him in Sparta. Pausanias, Description of Greece, 3.18 (sections 1 and 2). 44 Shana Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege: ‘Godnapping’ and Omission in Neo-Assyrian Inscriptions,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 2 (2015): 19–54, 19–23; See also Alasdair Livingston, “New Dimensions in the Study of Assyrian Religion,” in Assyria 1995: Proceedings from the 10 Anniversary Symposium of the Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, September 7–11, 1995, eds. Simo Parpola and Robert M. Whiting (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1997), 165–77; Seymour, “Mesopotamia,” 781. 45 Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege,” 25; cf. Rykle Borger and Andreas Fuchs, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals: Die Prismenklassen A, B, C = K, D, E, F, G, H, J un T sowie andere Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1996), 57–58, 242.

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Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege,” 22. Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege,” 25 Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege,” 28; Zaia records 56 such occurrences. Zaia, “State-Sponsored Sacrilege,” 23. For an extensive treatment of divine absence in the biblical corpus, see Joel S. Burnett, Where is God? Divine Absence in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010). Cf. Ivan Star, ed., Queries to the Sun God: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, SAA 4 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1990), 287. Another divinatory record includes a liver reading for the prediction of an unsuccessful business trip. Star, 281. For examples of the types of ritual behaviors that commonly accompanied divinatory exercises, see Alan Lenzi, “An OB Ikribu-Like Prayer to Shamash and Adad,” in Reading Akkadian Hymns & Prayers: An Introduction, ed. Alan Lenzi (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 85–104. Andrew K. George, Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts from the Schøen Collection (Bethesda: CDL, 2016), 157–58. Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed. (Bethesda: CDL, 2005), 627–35. Jeffery L. Cooley, “An OB Prayer to the Gods of the Night,” in Reading Akkadian Hymns & Prayers: An Introduction, ed. Alan Lenzi (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 71–84. For explication of sorrow and weeping as night visitors and travelers in Psalmodic literature, see David A. Bosworth, House of Weeping: The Motif of Tears in Akkadian and Hebrew Prayers (Atlanta: SBL, 2019), 123–24, 124, n. 98. See Albertz’s discussion of the earliest form of Passover as pre-travel apotropaic ritual, Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 1, trans. John Bowden (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 35. See also Pinch’s presentation of Egyptian apotropaic amulets worn for protection of malevolent superhuman beings that reside in rivers, canals, and other water sources. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 36–37. Pinch offers the example of a 4th–3rd century BCE magical papyrus from Heliopolis. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 36–37. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 56. Benjamin R. Foster, trans., “Bring Me Your Sons!,” in From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia (Bethesda: CDL, 1995), 402. George, Mesopotamian Incantations, 157. “Ugaritic Liturgy against Venomous Reptiles,” trans. Dennis Pardee (COS 1.94: 295–298). George, Mesopotamian Incantations, 34–35, 115–116; Foster, Before the Muses, 192–193, 196. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 37. Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt, 55–56. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, 34–35. F. M. Fales and J. N. Postgate, eds. Imperial Administrative Records, Part I: Palace and Temple Administration, SAA 7 (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1992), 437. See also Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, 85. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, 36, 38–38. René Labat, Un calendrier babylonien des travaux, des signes et des mois (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1965), 126–29, no. 59. Cf. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 50–51. For another inquiry of military success, diviners petition the gods for the outcomes of safe travel and return, see Star, Queries to the Sun God: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, 87. Lambert, “A tamītu for the Safety of Those Who Go Out of the City,” Babylonian Oracle Questions, 29–31. Lambert, “A tamītu for Things Going Well Up to the Deadline of the Year,” Babylonian Oracle Questions, 35–41.

5

Cultures of Mobility and Migration in Canaan, Israel, and Judah

Israel’s Emergence in Light of Migration Studies Scholarly conversation about Israel’s emergence amid the changing demographic and political landscapes of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages fills the pages of hundreds of journal articles, book chapters, and monographs. Part of the reason for the robust discussion is that there is a lack of interpretive consensus regarding the archaeological evidence for the timeframe in which Israel is said to have emerged as a distinct entity in the central highlands. The conversation is further complicated by questions about Israel’s socio-cultural composition and ethnic identity. Nevertheless, one element that remains unassailably true is that there are significant population density changes within the central highlands at the beginning of the Iron Age.1 Where the peoples who came to inhabit this region originated and what constituted their selfunderstanding, ethnic identity, religious associations, and other cultural elements remain matters of debate. Whether their experiences of movement were large or small scale, peoples moved and, as a result of moving, established homes in a new location. Thus, the identity of this collective population, whether construed as colonists, settlers, refugees, revolutionaries, or otherwise, is fundamentally colored by one or more experiences of migration. Textual and archaeological records indicate Israel’s mobile past and likely heterogeneous constitution. This originally “mixed-multitude” (Exod 12:38)2 undertook cultural negotiations that included clarifying a set of central religious practices and underlying assumptions of those practices, including their conceptions of Yahweh’s personhood. Two fundamental assertions form the basis of my reconstruction. The first is that Canaanites – who were the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age inhabitants of the broader region in which Israel emerged – were themselves a mixed-ethnic population that shared a larger set of material cultural markers.3 The second is that the majority of the people who became Israel, despite the likelihood that other members of this group came from beyond Canaan, were primarily “Canaanite” in their geographic and cultural origins (cf. Ezek 16:3).4 Likewise, the material repertoire and the cultural heritage of the inhabitants of this region were influenced by the political and cultural forces of the surrounding polities. DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-5

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The biblical corpus contains multiple memories of Israel’s ethnogenesis. On the one hand, we can trace a storyline of pastoralist ancestors from the north and east (Gen 11:27–37:1; Deut 26:5). A second origin narrative presents Israel’s beginnings in the context of the exodus from Egypt (Genesis 37–50; Exodus 1–39; Numbers 1–33; Deuteronomy 1–8; Hos 2:17, 11:1, 12:10, 13, 13:4; Amos 2:10–11, 3:1, 9:7; Ps 78:43–51, 135:8–12, 136:10–22).5 Both of these etiologies preserve the claim that Israel’s beginnings are rooted in contexts of mobility beyond the land of Canaan. As later compilers merged different stories of ethnogenesis, they joined the distinct religious histories that each preserved (Joshua 24). One of the outcomes of this editorial process was the combination of ancestral deities into a single god, Yahweh (Exod 3:6, 13–15, 4:5; Ps 105:6–45). Another result was that lowland Canaanites, with whom populations in the central highlands maintained ancestral ties, were recast as enemy inhabitants of a land that was not their own (cf. Ezek 16:3). In the last century, many theories have been put forth by biblicists and archaeologists attempting to explain Israel’s origins. Most explanations fall under the umbrella of one of several theoretical models that include the conquest model, peaceful infiltration model, agrarian social revolution model, peaceful transition (or transformation model), and the internal nomadic settlement model (also known as the symbiosis model).6 Yet, as is often acknowledged, none of the present models adequately accounts for all the data.7 At present, Ann Killebrew’s “mixed multitude” theory accomplishes the necessary task of incorporating archaeological and biblical evidence with equal sincerity and criticalness.8 As have other commentators on the subject, Killebrew builds on Mendenhall and Gottwald’s earlier understandings that Israel was primarily a mix of indigenous Canaanites who were joined by outsiders. Her approach differs in that she does not adopt Gottwald’s Marxist interpretive lens and is able to integrate archaeological data Mendenhall did not have at his disposal. Likewise, Killebrew makes no assumption that a unified social reconstruction project was the impetus for Israel’s coalescence. Instead, she posits along similar lines as Coote and Whitelam that the regional changes in Canaan during Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages were the result of economic and political systems that had been disrupted by larger Mediterranean-wide catalysts.9 Taking Killebrew’s mixed-multitude theory as a starting point, I account for the well-known demographic changes in the central highlands in a novel way by explaining key aspects in light of what is known from modern migration studies. The beginning of the first millennium BCE in the Levant followed on the heels of the dramatic transitions in the regional systems of power and international exchange. No single catalyst can be identified for these reorganizations, but changes in climate, disrupted economic and political systems, and movements of various peoples appear to have formed a cacophony of challenges that resulted in a drastically different world than the preceding centuries had seen. In the Levant, larger regional changes were realized locally through the decline of Egyptian hegemony in the 12th century and the related

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disintegration of vassal city-state networks in the coastal and northern regions of Canaan, as well as significant population shifts. Steady population declines, particularly in urban contexts, had already taken place across the region between the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Age.10 Some estimates posit demographic declines from 150,000 Middle Bronze inhabitants to 50,000 in the Late Bronze Age II.11 Among the cities that remained, the frameworks of regional integration that were once robust in the Middle Bronze period had significantly weakened. In addition, the number of rural settlements and fortified towns also decreased in this period, both indications of a wholesale decline due to a jump in mortality rates or large-scale population movements to places far beyond the region, rather than a simple out-migration from urban to rural domains. A renewed round of population declines took place in the central highlands during the earlier part of the Late Bronze period. These latter changes may indicate the transition of populations to non-sedentary lifeways or declines in total population due to increased mortality rates though, a combination of both is a legitimate assumption. Between the 13th and 11th centuries BCE, several urban sites in Canaan also witness destruction and abandonment.12 At the same time, concurrent arrivals of Sea Peoples to the Levant contributed to demographic redistribution there. Inter- and intra-regional movement of goods and people had formed the social and economic foundations of the Late Bronze Age regional system. The economic success of larger kingdoms had depended on the inflow of resources and labor from vassal territories. As was the case throughout the broader ancient Near East, the stratified city-centric social organization prevalent in Canaan’s coastal regions relied on the economic input of the surrounding rural regions.13 This was also true for the Canaanite city states situated in the lowlands adjacent to the central highlands. By the end of the Bronze Age, however, none of the region’s previously hegemonic powers were stable enough to continue exerting consistent influence beyond their core territories. The changing political paradigm resulted in a power vacuum in which new actors and socio-political structures emerged. Israel’s appearance in the archaeological record coincides with a marked increase in small rural settlements in the northern central highlands of Palestine and the rise of neighboring ethnic polities such as Ammon, Moab, and Edom to the east, and Philistia to the south.14 The majority of the central highland sites appeared in locations that had not been densely inhabited for quite some time.15 The amount of people on the move in Canaan at the outset of the Iron Age is difficult to know with certainty. While the lowland areas west of the central highlands contained urban centers in the Late Bronze period, the destruction and abandonment of several sites between the 13th and 11th centuries coincides with new waves of small settlements in formerly sparsely inhabited areas of the highlands.16 These new unwalled settlements first appeared in the north near Shechem and Shiloh.17 Each settlement appears to have sustained between 50 and 150 inhabitants.18 Dever estimates that the total population of

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the central highlands increased from 10,000 in the 13th century to 40,000 by the 11th century.19 Regardless of disagreements over total population statistics and rates of increase, most scholars agree that the population that coalesced in the northwest central highlands and spread east and south understood themselves to be members of the same group that later came to be known as Israel.20 The potentially nomadic origins of the highland settlers have received a great deal of attention. Some scholars posit that the growth of highland populations occurred as members of such groups strategically transitioned to sedentary life. Lemche has championed the opinion that the observable changes in total population and settlement distribution may have been the result of semi-nomadic social elements who undermined the lowland political structures of the day by withdrawing from participation in the city-state system and sedentarizing further inland.21 While ultimately driven by different kinds of insecurities than lowland urban elites, the catalysts of pastoral nomads’ movements and their potential sedentarization likely still overlapped in some respects with those of urban movers with whom they maintained symbiotic relationships.22 Finkelstein’s picture of oscillations between sedentary and nomadic lifeways makes sense as an element of this reconstruction, though, whether such cyclic transitions took place in his well-defined timeframes or can account for the total population that appears in the highlands remain open to question.23 Changing urban paradigms may not have brought a total end to nomadic ways of life, but it is likely that economic and political changes were also accompanied by climatic and population disruptions that altered resource availability in the regions where such groups cycled their herds.24 Enlarged dry zones and increasing populations in the hill country would have strained the capacities of pastoralist groups with lower levels of resilience and forced their (re)settlement and (re)adaptation to mixed-agrarian subsistence. It is likely that pastoralist peoples integrated with originally urban-based groups as their resource toolkit complimented their sedentary counterparts. Changes in local climates were also likely prime insecurity-inducing events for sedentary groups. Even if homesteads were self-sustaining, the region’s microclimatic zones maintained thin margins of change. The communities present in a given locale would have possessed different abilities to cope with or respond to climate disruptions. When these geographically small subregions faced environmental changes that led to adverse agricultural outcomes, lifeways were disrupted, and households were forced to rely on the help of others beyond their immediate kin. It is to be expected that some groups opted to relocate a portion or all of the population as a strategic response to environmentally induced insecurities. In recent years, Dever has employed the terminology of frontier settlement to describe the demographic transitions witnessed in the central highlands.25 Although not rooted in migration studies, Dever’s social science framework is consonant with elements of research in the field, particularly studies that

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engage questions of ethnogenesis in contact zones.26 His most recent characterization of early Iron Age movers is that they compose a “frontier agrarian reform movement”27 and are “agrarian reformers with a new social vision.”28 That he calls them “pioneers” conjures imagery of Manifest Destiny that may be misplaced. Moreover, while Dever himself claims, “all older models are obsolete overall,”29 his own focus on frontier social conditions and the “withdrawal” of marginalized groups still sounds similar to Mendenhall’s and Gottwald’s models, which placed ideology as the primary catalyst of movement.30 The way that Dever distinguishes his own approach from the former is by differentiating the motives for social withdrawal from those proposed by the primary tradents of the peasant revolt model; a quest he ultimately executes unconvincingly.31 Still, Dever’s model cannot be dismissed wholesale. He rightly assumes that the groups who settled in the central highlands had to possess a working level of agricultural know-how, and could therefore, not be comprised wholly of pastoralist members.32 Like Killebrew, he relies on a mixed population theory and refers to “a motley crew”33 for which he assumes a collection of short- and long-term movers “who are displaced, both geographically and ideologically.”34 Among their ranks he locates: (1) Urban dropouts – people seeking to escape from economic exploitation, bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption, taxation, and conscription; (2) Habiru and other social bandits (Hobsbawm’s term), rebels already in the countryside, some them highway men, brigands, former soldiers and mercenaries, or entrepreneurs of various sorts – freebooters, in other words; (3) refugees of many kinds, including those fleeing from Egyptian injustice, displaced villagers, impoverished farmers, and perhaps those simply hoping to escape the disaster that they saw coming as their society fell into decline; (4) local pastoral nomads, including some from the eastern steppes or Transjordan (Shasu), even perhaps an “exodus group” that had been in Egypt among Asiatic slaves in the Delta.35 Dever also notes, “Many villagers and peasant farmers, as well as landless Habiru, were already impoverished and socially marginalized … Withdrawing was prudent, if not necessary.”36 His assumption that a driving motivation for relocation among lowland populations was dissatisfaction with present economic conditions is certainly supported by the findings of migration scholars on economic insecurity as a potential precursor of movement. Likewise, he is right to assume that waves of insecurity undulated from weakened urban social structures into peripheral population zones and social contexts. The trouble with Dever’s “frontier agrarian reform” model is not that it is premised on the realities of marginalized actors seeking respite from oppressive economic or political structures, nor that such actors could build a shared identity around those wishes. The difficulty is that Dever assumes the demands for reform were brought to fruition through

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the movements of “a large, landless, disenfranchised lower class.”37 That is, these disparate actors collectively organized their relocation. Dever’s reliance on Eric Wolf’s model of frontier settlement leads him to present a romanticized and frankly unverifiable reconstruction of migration to the central highlands according to which he sees his proto-Israelites as precursors to the colonists at Jamestown and Plymouth,38 the Shakers, and the Amish.39 Regardless of whether these historical parallels are legitimate, it is noteworthy that none of these groups was composed primarily of the most marginalized members of society, but rather by persons with networks of access to mobility resources. It is also important to note that each of these historic group migrations took place in contexts where their movements were endorsed by sending groups. In the case of Jamestown and Plymouth, their movements were made possible via land contracts and charters backed up by foreign military protection. For the Shakers and Amish, many of whom were not landless in their sites of origin, land was made available for purchase under the auspices of other new political regimes in the place of colonization. For all of these groups, migration was facilitated by community members who did not make the journey themselves. These realities complicate Dever’s depiction of the process. In a similar fashion to Dever, Pekka Pitkänen has championed a model of Israel’s emergence known as “settler colonialism” which he relates to a category of migration known as colonizing migration.40 The terminology is not Pitkänen’s invention but comes from within anthropological and migration studies as a framework to explain early modern colonial activities and outcomes.41 The premise of this model is that a group moves with the intention of establishing a replica community in a new location. The replica community and the space that they come to inhabit are a colony. There are aspects of the model that relate well to what is known about migration as a group process and about migrants’ tendencies to replicate or reconstitute lifeways from in a new location. In this regard, settler colonialism captures the reality that groups seek to maintain continuity with a previous place or site of origin. There are, however, important points to be made about the nature of that continuity and the intentions of the movers. First, not all forms of group migration are colonialization.42 Second, settler colonialism is differentiated from other types of colonizing activity in that the intention of the movers is not simply to subjugate populations in the new location but to eradicate those populations.43 Pitkänen’s approach is helpful in that it takes seriously biblical accounts of violence between tribes and their common enemies described in Judges, Exodus, Deuteronomy, and 1 & 2 Samuel. The model falls short, however, because it doesn’t adequately account for the earliest archaeological evidence of settlement in the central highlands. If the intention of the movers was to eradicate the local population, we need to then deal with the reality that while the central highlands had maintained significant populations at earlier points during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, there were few people living in the central highlands at the turn of the Iron Age. So, while settler

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colonization may be a helpful model for understanding some instances of land acquisition and violent encounter that took place as movement unfolded, it does not fully explain all the processes of migration that lead to Israel’s early emergence. As with Dever’s reliance on comparisons between Pilgrims, the Amish, and Israelites, there are serious complications in applying the concepts of colonies and colonization to the types of population movements we see in ancient Israel. Returning to the earlier overview of migration trends, I reiterate here the reality that migrants are rarely those persons who occupy the lowest rungs on the social ladder because they simply do not have the proper resource set needed to actualize movement. In light of these realities, Dever’s suggestion that the groups composing early Israel could have been informed in their movements by some kind of shared ideology is not totally out of the question, but we must temper notions of peasant uprising or concerted ideologically driven movement with what we know migrants actually do. Furthermore, there does not appear to be a sizeable enough decrease in lowland populations to indicate the kind of widespread abandonment that Dever supposes. A mass relocation comprised solely of peasants, regardless of any widespread dissatisfaction with their present economic or social location, is ultimately unlikely. We should envision the core groups of movers to the central highlands as those with moderate to significant resource networks that included both economic and social capital. It makes the most sense that those persons from the lowland regions who could effectively weather the transitions taking place in urban centers by establishing themselves and their family groups with increasing certainty over time in the highland regions were the foundational members of the new kinship-based social entities that came to dominate the landscape of the central highlands in the Early Iron Age. It is reasonable to assume that small numbers of persons from lower social standing and less economic means joined more stable groups of movers at various points in time, particularly after new urban centers arose later. Archaeological evidence would appear to support this claim as the size and organization of the pillared houses found in the highland and Transjordanian regions, as well as terracing systems, required the concerted efforts of sizeable groups of workers cooperating over long timeframes to construct both standalone structures and villages. It is possible that non-elite skilled workers were the backbone of the construction processes while elites supported other aspects of the gradual transition from urban to rural life. To reiterate the ways such a model differs from theories of peasant-led revolt and resettlement, the skilled workers potentially responsible for the highland construction efforts maintained higher levels of motility than the true peasants in the urban areas from whence they came. As is common today, those poorest members of society, as well as those lacking supportive family networks, rarely have opportunities to move. These behaviors are ubiquitous throughout the spectrum of human movers across time. We can assume that inter-regional elite movers remained present throughout the Iron Age but were fewer in number and now associated with these smaller

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polities that had less economic, military, or political influence throughout the region. As these new regional polities – which were defined primarily by ethnic association – sought to assert their sovereignty, build alliances, and gain territory, they too tried to capitalize on and influence patterns of mobility by organizing armies, moving troops, and even claiming new territory. Likewise, non-elite movers were present throughout the protracted period of highland settlement as marginal social actors whose movements were catalyzed by newly emergent insecurities within Canaan and in neighboring lands. Any assertion that corporate religious ideology was a catalyst for the settlement transformations witnessed in the Early Iron Age central highlands can be tempered with data on the function of religion as a migration selection mechanism. While historic instances of movement such as Puritans emigrating from Europe or Spanish conquistadores colonizing the Americas have been associated with religious ideologies, the causes of their movements amount to more than religious predilection. As Phillip Connor posits, Relying on extensive research examining the role of social networks on migration, a steady stream of migrants could be selected by a particular religious group once the first few pioneering migrants settle within a destination country. For example, if x religious group were the first to emigrate, social networks within x religion would continue to cause this religious group to emigrate more than y religion.44 What Connor’s research indicates is that a particular religious group could build its own migratory momentum, but the reason for their movement is not necessarily or only an outgrowth of their religious convictions or praxis. Religion is an important resource for migrants at all stages of their journeys, but, more times than not, religion only becomes a significant force of large group unification following the initial migration undertaking. Later migrants, who are also spurred to move by a variety of factors, may count religious lifeways as a source of social capital they share among movers already located in the destination site. Again, this is not to say that migrants are more religious after their journeys than before or during. It is to say that social (re)organization following resettlement commonly involves attempts to clarify cultural repertoires of which religion is a central element. Therefore, it is less likely that populations of indigenous Canaanites were driven primarily by religious conviction to establish highland outposts and later villages. The continuities between earlier Canaanite praxis and those of the highland villagers is case in point. Israelite religion emerged from West Semitic foundations such as Phoenician, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, and Philistine (first millennium BCE), as well as the earlier religious influences of the Arameans (second millennium BCE) that are themselves partly original and partly hybridized forms distilled from Egyptian, Aegean, and Mesopotamian antecedents.45 Eventually, the adaptations that Israelites and Judahites made to this shared religious repertoire formed their own novel religious identities.

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The religious identities of the highland settlers find similarities with those of most migrants in the sense that their religious repertoires did not contract with movement but rather expanded.46 The archaeological record supports the notion that highland populations practiced Yahweh worship along with other modes of religiosity that resonated with those of their lowland neighbors. In this way, the religious repertoires were potentially more expansive than some of their neighbors. Contraction and centralization were later tendencies among select groups in the population. In the end, migration from the lowlands to the highlands cannot be characterized on the whole as a religiously based social movement. While a Yahweh-centric religion eventually replaced earlier Canaanite affiliations and praxis, the process took place gradually over centuries, not overnight. Cultural exchanges resulting from the abovementioned interactions included the intersection of different cultures of mobility and religiosity. Religion may have even been used by some movers to justify their migration during their journey or after the fact. As time passed, the underlying networks of mobility, fostered by the basic needs of existence, also led to the establishment of regionally shared religious sites to which inhabitants from different clans may have traveled at various points in the year to mark the planting-harvest cycle and to call on deities for their collective needs. Emergent Social Structures and Networks of Connectivity

Because insecurity is the primary driver of migration, and because migration takes place through complex social processes rooted in and directed primarily by the household, it is of utmost importance to enumerate the social structures and networks of connectivity of the emergent highland settlements. While the new highland settlements were not simply satellites of former Canaanite cities, it is unlikely that their inhabitants would have totally broken with the social structures that prevailed in their points of origin during the earlier period.47 If we understand the population transitions of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages as the result of networked movements, it is likely that different groups coming to the region perpetuated the social hierarchies and household organization from their sites of origin, at least for a time. Yet, tension often characterizes processes of preservation since the changing contexts in which migrants find themselves frequently necessitate social flexibility. Migration scholars are generally in agreement regarding the propensity for familial structures to increase in elasticity to meet the demands of sustaining movers and movement. Social norms of hierarchy that once applied may be creatively reformulated to allow the group to survive.48 If what is known regarding the propensity toward flexible kinship groupings in migratory contexts pertains to these highland populations, we can assume these kinship units functioned in expected ways through strategic utilization of human resources and social symbiosis. Being both biologically and fictively constituted, these kin-based structures were flexible enough to incorporate other internal

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and external actors who contributed to the group’s ability to thrive.49 As various groups coalesced over time, they developed shared norms for interaction that both incorporated and supplanted previous modes of organization. Early settlements in the north likely maintained different historic cultures of mobility than their southern counterparts. These differences were related in part to topography and climate.50 The northern stretches of the Samarian highlands were settled by populations that capitalized on the landscape with mixed methods agriculturalism. In the Judean Hills to the south, year-round cultivation was more difficult and transhumance more common due lower annual rainfalls and the seasonality of grazing land. The different groups who came together to form Israel had to negotiate their historically different cultures of mobility. A centrally shared origins narrative may have formed the basis of collective identity.51 Although the group that formed the earliest Israel was predominantly Canaanite in terms of ethno-cultural composition, they gleaned narratives of historic experiences of mobility from non-Canaanite groups that resonated with their own collective memories of smaller migrations from the lowland regions to the highlands. Given what some classify as a dearth of elite goods among material cultural assemblages and a supposed lack of public buildings marking off clearly defined hierarchies, the communities of highland settlements are sometimes described as egalitarian in nature.52 Dever asserts that the highlanders were held together by a “communitarian ethos.”53 But this is not to say that such an ethos necessarily led to egalitarianism. The point to be made here is that increasing flexibilities of kin relationship are not synonymous with or a catalyst of egalitarianism. In reflecting on the political organization of Jerusalem in the later 10th century, Finkelstein notes that even then Judah functioned as “an ‘Amarna-like’ demographic and territorial-political reality.”54 Thus, regardless of the extent to which a communitarian ethic prevailed, it is probable that patrilineal and patrilocal systems of hierarchy found throughout the broader region in the Late Bronze Age continued in the Early Iron Age.55 Varying house sizes at sites like Khirbet Raddana are indicative of a spectrum of social or economic hierarchy.56 The assumption of a general lack of elite goods should also be tempered with evidence from sites like Tel Masos which, while located further south than Ephraim and Manasseh, still indicates that there were persons or kin-groups during this era that had significant wealth and maintained trading relations with far-flung regions.57 Likewise, excavations at Shiloh have uncovered monumental architecture and a small number of elite goods that further trouble an “egalitarian” social model.58 Beyond these examples, we can recognize that the material culture of the period, though displaying continuity with previous modes of Canaanite styles and production methods, contains other wares that are evidence of trading relationships between some of the highland chiefdoms and their Philistine, Phoenician, and Cypriot neighbors and may indicate intentional status differentiation among highland settlers.59

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We also do well to remember that architecture and material goods are not the only means by which humans differentiate status or power.60 This is particularly true among groups that experience high levels of mobility, whereby non-material means of social differentiation, like the value of one’s herds, attainments of particular rites of passage, or acquisition of human property serve as markers of hierarchy. None of these former indications of status leave distinctly “elite” remains in the material record. Moreover, the consensus that a single settlement did not rule over several smaller ones may demonstrate a lack of hierarchy at the macro social level but does not substantiate the claim that internal settlement dynamics were entirely egalitarian. Miller characterizes some of the social entities living in the highlands north of Jerusalem as complex chiefdoms, which should be differentiated from the general notion of tribal social structures in several important ways.61 Miller’s identification of early Israel as a number of complex chiefdoms also challenges a superficial assessment of the settlements as egalitarian since chiefdom social structures are inherently hierarchical. Miller notes that a key attribute of tribute allotment in complex chiefdoms is mobilization.62 Complex chiefdoms are composed of mainly self-sufficient local units. The role of chiefs is not to distribute all normal goods as a means of economic mediation but rather to mobilize tribute goods as signs of favor as well as for political or ritual purposes. The economies of local units are intertwined with others. Production remains in the hands of local kin leaders, and international trade takes place through the chiefs.63 This evidence also counters the assumption that the villages of the Iron I central highlands were isolated from one another.64 It is true that the mountainous geography would have limited constant contact between certain sites, but it is unlikely that these geographic features ultimately kept persons or groups from coming into semi-frequent contact with one another. By one example, the biblical text substantiates the notion that community elders gathered together across regions for decision-making purposes (1 Samuel 8). Given that each village or homestead was within walking distance of several others, it is extremely likely that inhabitants came in contact with one another both for cooperation, and through crisis or conflict. Bloch-Smith and Nakhai note that hamlets in Ephraim and Benjamin were probably economically dependent on larger villages within their vicinity, but that others appear to be completely self-sufficient. Even if the latter is the case, self-sufficiency does not preclude contact with other settlements or interregional mobility.65 Readings of the evidence that assume hinterland regions are inherently socially and economically isolated or that they are more sedentary, are often premised – even if unknowingly – on the assumption that rural areas experience lower degrees of mobility and higher incidence of cultural and economic stagnation. In actuality, life in rural areas frequently requires extensive mobility because social and economic networks are spread across larger land areas. Inhabitants are,

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therefore, connected not only to other rural centers but also to urban ones that exist within the purview of the broader rural region.66 The condensed mobilities of the urban sphere should not then be taken as the only form of social and economic relationship. In a related way, presumptions that highland populations did not intermingle with lowland groups are often enunciated by reference to their distinctive material remains. The claim that intentional material cultural differentiation indicates a social boundary deserves consideration yet, a group’s enactment of different cultural norms does not necessarily indicate intentional separation from other groups. Social situations occur throughout the world in which people of stringent particularity interact with others quite unlike themselves without adopting their lifeways or material cultural markers. The same could certainly be true for highland and lowland populations. Perhaps the later biblical polemics regarding intermingling with Canaanites and the adoption of their lifeways are the greatest evidence that these groups were indeed in contact with one another throughout history in both highland and lowland settings. At minimum, the amount of trade-related travel that passed along the coastal road and the King’s highway, with their bisecting east-west connectors on the northern and southern ends of the hill country, meant that nonhighlanders occasionally traveled through the region. Furthermore, in light of what is known about patterns of migration and the need for transitional members of society who function as bridge persons between previous sites and cultural norms and new sites and cultural norms, it is almost certain that some members of the highland groups exploited connections with lowland populations.67 Even if established highland settlements were completely selfsufficient in agricultural production and wares creation, the actual flows of movers from lowlands to highlands occurred over more than a century, which suggests that cultural contact with outsiders was a long-term reality as new movers arrived. Likewise, the consistent addition of members means that nonmovers and interstitial bridge persons were likely connecting new and old communities during the timespan of settlement. Our understandings of the lowland-highland dynamic in Canaan can benefit from comparison with similar zones of contact in adjacent periods and regions. For example, data from the Zagros-East Mesopotamian interface indicates that interactions between highland and lowland groups were normative. According to Assyrian propaganda, the polities in the Zagros mountains threatened to destabilize Assyrian centers of power through their repeated incursions.68 In actuality, the picture of lowland-highland relations was more complex during the third and first millenniums than the trope of lowland city states fending off barbarous mountain folk.69 Material culture was exchanged and social interaction took place through the functions of intermarriage, though the lifeways of the peoples in the different regions where not wholly assimilated to one another.70

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Demonstrating that the demographic developments of the Early Iron Age indicate the emergence of a singular ethnic group in the central highlands is difficult, let alone whether that group might have claimed for itself the name “Israel.” In attempting to clarify the ethnic group(s) present at a particular site or region, other practices, including dietary and religious norms, burial practices, economic systems – including trade – and even potentially architecture, should be considered. Moreover, it is necessary to consider how different ethnic groups living in the central highlands at the start of the Iron Age might have later come to see themselves as associated groups or even members of the same ethnic group. The biblical record often recollects Israel’s declarations of ethnic distinctiveness from among her neighbors (Deuteronomy 7–8, Judges 2), but different texts, such as Ezek 16:3, recognize Israel’s deep historic connections to other Canaanite populations. The primary point of contention is whether material cultural differences between lowland and highland sites are indicative of different ethnic associations. On the one hand, the material record from the Middle Bronze through the Late Bronze Age maintains a remarkable level of uniformity.71 Disagreements arise, though, when considering the pottery assemblages from the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age lowland and coastal sites with those of the central highland regions from the same period.72 Some argue that material cultural continuity is maintained – and thus indicates social or ethnic similarity across regions and chronologies73 – while others posit that despite continuities between the types of material culture, meaningful differences occur that may indicate social or ethnic distinction between lowland and highland groups74 – potentially pointing to the arrival of peoples from outside of Canaan. Locally produced handmade wares from central highlands’ assemblages share characteristics with both their lowland predecessors and other groups across the region, albeit with a comparatively limited diversity of pottery types in the Iron Age I central highlands vs. the more expansive range found in Late Bronze lowland Canaanite cities. Highland ceramic forms also stand in contrast to typically bi-chrome Late Bronze Philistine goods that emerge in the archaeological record somewhere in the 12th century. In both Late Bronze and Iron periods, we find imported pieces, but such pieces are rarer in the central highland assemblages than in lowland regions. The repertoire of highland pottery – which is characterized by an austere selection of forms and is typically handmade rather than wheel thrown like lowland forms – contains mostly storage containers and cooking vessels. Even so, internal differences among the new Early Iron Age settlement types and their material assemblages do indicate some noteworthy interregional differences.75 These phenomena may be the result of itinerant potters who crafted vessels in similar styles but by different means throughout the central highlands.76 In the end, highland

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pottery reflects elements of the lowland repertoires with localized changes, some of which may be intentional as social boundary demarcations. Although material cultural differences can be strategically used as ethnic markers, they need not always function in this way. Cultural differences result not only, or primarily, from the things people have but also through the ideas they have about the nature and use of those things.77 One can assume that a group’s shared differences may indicate some kind of intentional selfdistinction from other surrounding groups, but the limits of determining the level of intentionality are also starkly apparent. Material cultural production represents local tastes but also intrinsic power structures by which certain forms of cultural display become dominant over others.78 It is necessary to allow room for the understanding that even though the material culture assemblages from Early Iron Age sites in the central highlands are fairly uniform, it is possible that they belonged to peoples who, at least originally, claimed different ethnic identities but later came to understand themselves as the same people through trade and other social networks.79 Thus, the primary concern for social boundary marking did not take place between various highland settlements, but rather through the concerted efforts of highland settlers to establish social boundaries against outsiders.80 Nevertheless, social boundary marking doesn’t necessarily imply intentional non-interaction. Other material cultural elements that are often looked to in order to discern purposeful ethnic self-differentiation include house types, dietary habits, burial practices, and religious structures.81 Aside from the definitive absence of pig bones among highland sites, the material record maintains the potential for varied interpretations of other data points.82 The pillared house, in its predominant three-, four-, and five-room forms has been found both in and beyond Israelite territory, though there is contestation over those boundaries, and whether any of the houses are officially outside of Israelite territory.83 Burial practices, though different from their lowland counterparts, may simply be the result of environmental constrictions, since the predominantly cavebased and bench-tomb burial practices found among Iron Age inhabitants align at points with those of Bronze Age populations.84 The lack of monumental religious structures in the highlands has also been suggested as a point of purposeful self-differentiation. Fuller discussion of these phenomena will be taken up in a later chapter. The addition made here to these complex and long-extant discussions regarding material culture and ethnogenesis is that each of the above categories of material remains was potentially informed in its eventual manifestation by the experiences of migration. Each may have been a contingency of lifeways cultivated in contexts of mobility that became established modes of existence following settlement. Differentiation from other groups took the form of austere lifeways and material culture informed by limited capacities for creating or carrying goods deemed nonessential in movement. To state it, perhaps too simply, fine pottery, pigs, robust religious ornamentation, and temples do not travel well. While certain patterns of preference were initially driven by utility

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in contexts of movement, they were reaffirmed by the challenges of rural subsistence life and later reified as defining traits of subsequently melded people groups. We turn now to discussion of the cultures of mobility in the later parts of the Iron Age as central highland populations made the transition to statehood.

Cultures of Mobility within Processes of State Formation Even though the pasts of the peoples living in the central highlands and Judean Hills were interlinked, Israel and Judah emerged as separate states at different periods of time in the 9th–8th centuries.85 Of the two, Israel was more demographically varied.86 This is due in part to its Aramean and Phoenician connections, but also to the fact that the initial backbone of an Israelite polity was formed among urban spaces such as Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, which were all sites of relatively high mobility due to inter-regional trade.87 Each of these urban zones was destroyed in the 10th century, a reality that potentially contributed to re-ruralization processes in the north before these centers were rebuilt along with several other new sites when the Omrides ascended to power.88 Judah’s rise to statehood is characterized by its demographic continuity.89 In addition to Jerusalem, administrative centers at Lachish and Beth Shemesh in the Shephelah, as well as fortified sites in Arad and Be’ersheva, mark the consolidation of power and resources in the south.90 Different cultures of mobility that emerged through geographically specific lifeways resulted in somewhat different modes of political organization during the period of transition to greater centralization. The insecurity-inducing disruptions that spurred human movement in the Iron Age Levant were not confined to the 13th through 11th centuries BCE but remained ever-present realities throughout subsequent centuries. In both lowland and highland regions, mobility was an inherent part of life. This is not to say that all people were constantly on the move, or even that most people traveled far beyond their village or hamlet on a regular basis in the Iron Age. Rather, it is simply to recognize that the social structures of the Iron Age Levant maintained cultures of mobility that often go unacknowledged. Throughout the Iron Age, the broader ecology of the Levant remained one of marginality. Various microenvironments came and went with changes brought by larger-scale climatic shifts, with environmental changes affecting persons and groups differently according to their varying levels of resilience.91 Migration was one response among others to such disruptions. For example, by around 900 BCE, transitions took place that included shifts in climate and rainfall patterns, which made a previously drier climate wetter for the next several centuries and thus opened up areas for settlement that earlier had not sustained agricultural lifeways.92 As is often the case with environmental change, events that can produce positive outcomes can also generate negative ones. Due to heavy logging of the cedar forests in the Syrian and Lebanese forests, the increasing amounts of rainfall in the Early Iron Age led to higher

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flooding not only in the mountains but also the lowland regions around them. Subsequently, these relatively small changes, brought about by both human activity and climatic shifts, instigated the displacement of peoples from deforested areas and lowland regions.93 Population redistributions of this kind, even if small in scale, typically placed new pressures on other regions. At the outset of the Iron II period, circa 980 BCE, the regional actors included Ammon, Aramean states, Edom, Israel, Judah, Moab, and the citystates of Philistia and Phoenicia; all polities commonly classified as ethnically defined entities. Processes of state formation in Israel and Judah likely began with chiefdom personalities who transferred kinship social structures to largerscale centralized models of governance that mirrored elements of Late Bronze Age society.94 The biblical record contains hagiographic materials and grand narratives of a unified monarchy in the accounts of Saul, David, and Solomon (1 Samuel 9–11, 16–17). Even though these materials have undergone inflation, redaction, and critique, they likely capture true and important aspects of intergroup relations in nascent Israel and Judah. The biblical authors’ memories of Saul’s rise to power in Benjamin followed by an incorporation of Ephraim into his circle of leadership align with archaeological evidence on early settlement patterns (1 Samuel 13).95 These same texts also provide accounts of what were likely realistic tensions between highland populations and neighboring peoples in the lowlands and Transjordan (Judges 1–3; 1 Samuel 11, 14–15, 17). The biblical corpus also preserves what appears to be a legitimate record of inter-highland tensions between Judah and its northern neighbors who sought to expand their political control southward (1 Samuel 18–19; 2 Kgs 12:17–18).96 Southern actors, such as David and his affiliates sought to capture a larger piece of the regional political pie by strategically positioning their centers of leadership and consolidating control over increasingly larger stretches of territory (2 Samuel 2–6). In recent decades, further evidence has mounted that counters the biblical descriptions of the United Monarchy.97 Despite the textual accounts, it is highly unlikely that a strong centralized kingdom reigned from Jerusalem in the 10th century.98 Instead, the earliest evidence of consolidated rule and nascent statehood come in the 9th century under the Omride Dynasty in the north (2 Kgs 3:4–12, 8:18; 2 Chr 6:13–21).99 Given its less-than-optimal economic position, Judah’s various moments of success can each be attributed to periods of cooperative vassalage to larger powers.100 Judah’s rise was initiated during its subjugation to the Omrides but truly flourished in the wake of that dynasty’s fall to Aram-Damascus.101 Judah operated for a time as a vassal of Aram-Damascus, even participating in the buildup of administrative centers in the southern lowland and hill country regions at sites such as Lachish, Beth Shemesh, Beersheva, and Arad during the latter part of the 9th century.102 Judean vassalage opened the door for the Damascene destruction of Gath, thus eliminating another troubling neighboring element from Judah’s purview, and generating the political situation in which Judah’s bureaucratic infrastructure was solidified beginning in the middle of

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the 8th century. These inter-regional alliances fostered novel mobile lifeways within Judah’s borders and beyond it. Encounters, exchange, and even differentiation among the actors of this new matrix are noticeable in the archaeological record at border region sites like Beth Shemesh, Lachish, and the northern coastal regions where cohabitation with the Philistines or other Sea Peoples and those populations identified variously as Canaanites or Israelites occurred.104 These developments took place in the shadow of Egyptian and Assyrian regimes that were attempting to reinvigorate their own polities. In 925 BCE, Pharaoh Shoshenq I (Shishak, cf. 1 Kgs 11:40, 14:25; 2 Chr 12:2–9) successfully led a campaign through Canaan to reassert Egyptian dominance over the main arteries of mobility and trade that it had once controlled so thoroughly.105 Though initially faced with little resistance, Egypt would soon catch the ire of Assyria, its imperial neighbor to the east who was also in the throes of rebirth. Nevertheless, Shoshenq’s display of military power appears to be a singular occurrence during Egypt’s 22nd dynasty as internal turmoil, partially caused by in-migration to Egypt from territories west of the Delta, kept Egypt from directly challenging the Neo-Assyrians in the early parts of the 9th century. The rise of Adad-nirari in 911 BCE initiated the resurgence of Assyria and its ambitions for political and cultural domination of the greater Near East. Assurbanipal II’s (883–859 BCE) subsequent reign marked the beginning of serious expansionist efforts that would be realized in their fullness under the leadership of his son Shalmaneser III (859–24 BCE). In 853, during one of several campaigns to the west, Shalmanesar III engaged in battle at Qarqar with an Aramean alliance that included, among others, Aram-Damascus and Israel. Though the outcome of the battle appears to have been a stalemate, Shalmaneser III redoubled his efforts and, between 849 and 841, managed to overtake the Hittite territory of Carchemish, subdue Damascus while it was under the rule of Hazael, and extend his circle of tribute extraction to include Israel and several Phoenician city-states. Each of these incursions spurred further inter-regional population movements as Assyria destroyed cities, acquired corvée laborers, and established their own administrative sites populated by officials relocated from the Empire’s core territories.106 Although his predecessors had established Assyrian presence in the northern and western stretches of the Levant in previous centuries, the imperial incursions of Tiglath-pileser III (744–27 BCE) began in earnest the definitive subjugation of Israel, Judah, Philistia, and the Transjordanian polities.107 Building on Tiglath-pilesar III’s advances, Sargon II continued to assert Assyrian hegemony in the region and intensified the Neo-Assyrian practices of bi-directional resettlement, though the rates of population exchange were never equal, since more persons were removed, fled, or killed than the Assyrians ever replaced.108 These events deeply influenced cultures of mobility in the Levantine subregion. On the one hand, Assyria now controlled the main international trade

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routes. On another, the Levant was utilized as a buffer state between Egypt and Assyria.109 By both accounts, movement was largely under Assyria’s auspices as they controlled trade and taxation while using lands to the west of the Samarian mountains as a tribute redistribution zone and staging areas for military encounters with Egypt.110 A secondary outcome of Assyrian imperial control of the region was the economic jumpstart for Judah and Jerusalem. Southern and coastal regions were not directly under Assyrian vassalage like their northern neighbors were during this period. Their productivity did not supply Assyria with raw materials of agricultural output. Instead, local economies grew and secondary tribute from these activities was directed back to Assyria.111 The “Israelite Household” and Mobility

The primary difference in the social landscape between the Iron I and Iron II is the rise of the type of sites able to be classified as urban.112 The general consensus among scholars has been that, even with the rise of cities, most persons continued to live in rural rather than urban areas for the larger part of the Iron II period.113 Likewise, despite increasing urbanization in the Iron Age II, the majority of city-dwellers were still likely farmers.114 Scholars who have taken up the discussion sometimes posit continuity between communitarian and egalitarian aspects of Iron Age I and Iron Age II rural society but in general suggest that urban domains operated with greater social stratification. Although the social structures of urban and rural domains appear to be oriented toward the leadership of a male head of household at the nuclear and extended family levels, there was also likely a larger social reality of clan elders in the rural sector.115 While most scholars concur that rural settlements existed throughout the Iron II period, questions remain regarding the continuity of specific settlements between Iron I and Iron II eras. Faust asserts that, even though there are rural settlements in Israel and Judah in the 9th century, none of the rural villages from the Iron I continued to exist as such into the Iron II.116 His critique deserves discussion given its potential impact on our present understandings of 10th–9th century cultures of mobility. Faust’s concern is that scholars have not accurately accounted for significant changes in settlement patterns during a roughly 100-year long period between the Iron I and Iron II Ages. He contends that the archaeological record shows a total absence of rural villages in the 10th century, the period commonly associated with the rise of the United Monarchy.117 Other scholars have recognized a similar pattern of site abandonment in the period of transition between the Iron I and Iron II Ages but attribute it primarily to rural-urban migration.118 Faust, on the other hand, emphasizes the scale of the changes and argues that the causes for the abandonment or destruction of these sites are more complex than outmigration by populations interested in a new urban life.119 Considering a list of potential causes, including nomadization, economically incentivized urban

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migration, and climatic changes, he rejects these options given that none can explain the scale of abandonment witnessed in the 10th century record. In the end, he posits a two-pronged explanation. First, migration to regional centers – which in turn, became new urban sites – was spurred primarily by insecurities and conflict with other people groups, mainly the Philistines. Second, forced urbanization may have been a political strategy of new urban leaders in an emergent state.120 Following the later, the re-emergence of rural life in the 9th–7th centuries came about through the processes of land acquisition and redistribution initiated by an increasingly powerful elite class and centralized bureaucratic structures. The economic milieu of the Iron Age was comprised of multiple levels of production, collection, storage, and trade that took place in the household, village, royal territorial, and interregional arenas.121 Centrally controlled production and trade became a pervasive reality in both Israel and Judah during the Iron Age II. Survival required successful navigation of these different realms and inspired greater degrees of mobility and interaction between individuals of different socioeconomic status and means. Across these different economic and geographic spheres, the household remained the affiliative paradigm. Despite a tendency to speak of the Israelite household as a monolithic entity that remains stable across the centuries, we should engage the study of household structures and mobilities by first recognizing that the shape of the household depends on the factors of place and time. Different ecological zones determined the limits of land use and sustainable population density for various settlements, be they urban, village, or home/farmstead sites.122 Differences in housing and settlement styles, which have been preserved in the archaeological record, indicate that groups from multiple social backgrounds brought different lifeways to bear in the central highlands that were slowly merged over time.123 In line with much of this data, the biblical record articulates some of these phenomena by preserving the recollection that Jerusalem and several Gibeonite cities, all highland sites, were not initially Israelite (Judg 1; 3:1–6). For both Iron Age I and II periods, the most discussed dwellings are those of the “four-room” or “pillared” types, though house types are by no means uniform.124 Differences also prevail regarding scholarly reconstructions of the social groups that inhabited these physical structures. This includes not only disagreements about whether nuclear or extended groups dwelled in the same house but also contending applications of biblical terminology for social groupings like the bêt’āb and mišhpāhā.125 For some, the bêt’āb is a nuclear family.126 For others, it is a larger clan-sized entity.127 Through diachronic analysis of shifts in Israelite home types in urban, rural, and royal environments, Faust has shown that the size of households and their modes of organization changed over time depending on socioeconomic and geographic factors.128 Grounding his claims on what he perceives as consistent differences in common house sizes between urban and rural contexts, Faust argues that urban households were predominantly nuclear families,

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a conclusion he comes to on the basis that the houses most commonly found in urban locales are quite small and appear to have room for only the members of a family of less than five members.129 Dever also sees nuclear families as the dominant urban social arrangement, though he allows for five to eight inhabitants in each house.130 With regard to the rural sector, Faust holds that the primary social entity of villages was the extended family in both Iron I and II periods.131 Drawing on evidence from House 7 at Tell Halif, Dever echoes Faust’s position.132 Faust further argues that the subdivision of larger homestead dwellings may indicate that multiple nuclear families, which comprised one extended family, lived in the same house.133 The positions represented by Dever and Faust are, however, not universally accepted. Households were responsive to the pressures of production and the size of a given family would likely have corresponded to their labor needs.134 Even so, family size does not always correlate directly with the size of their dwelling.135 While increasing urbanization in the 10th–9th centuries might have fostered higher numbers of nuclear family households, the size of urban homes cannot be the only explanation for the claim that cities were dominated by a nuclear family model. Likewise, larger houses in rural villages or homesteads cannot be uniformly classified as extended family dwellings because the uses of each dwelling likely varied across units. In considering Faust’s claim that nuclear and extended family-types can be discerned via differences in average house sizes between urban and rural locations, Routledge counters that “The most striking feature of Iron Age house size is not variability between sites, but rather variability within sites.”136 Routledge’s assessment of the data at the rural site Khirbet alMudayna al-‘Aliya suggests that several rooms in larger homes were used primarily for stabling animals and the short-term storage of agricultural surpluses rather than to house additional family members.137 In the end, Routledge’s conclusions resist easy classification themselves. On the one hand, he writes, “There are good demographic reasons to believe that, even allowing for a preference for extended families, domestic group size in antiquity was quite small.”138 On the other, he notes, “[T]here is no archaeological evidence that would disallow joint families occupying single houses at Kh. Al-Mudayna al-Aliya.”139 The upshot of this analysis is that the fluidity of social boundaries requires more robust consideration, especially in light prevailing cultures of mobility during the Iron Age. The landscape of domestic space is more complex than simple urban/rural or nuclear/extended family divisions. Differentiating between urban and rural modes of social organization using the categories of nuclear and extended families is ultimately unhelpful since both family types were likely found in both urban and rural contexts. Studies of Israelite and Judahite households have sometimes projected an image of the household as a sealed social unit. Even when considering the complexities of the extended family arrangement, there remains an assumption that membership is limited to those with defined lineage ties. Yet, we can draw the conclusion that interconnected regional and

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international systems of production, collection, storage, and trade required the internal and external movements of many members of society. Accordingly, it might be necessary to temper notions of an idyllic countryside of large biological families and self-contained modes of production with the reality that the movement of peoples for a variety of social and economic reasons – in addition to other variables of mobility – likely meant that household structures were responsive to these realities.140 Reconstructions of society should consider the ways households expand and contract physically and ideologically to meet the demands of labor/production, and of including (and excluding) members who are not related by lineage or marriage. In both urban and rural settings, we can assume that individuals who were not directly related to the family via lineage could have maintained a place in a family’s home. These might be the children of a deceased sibling, an older parent in failing health, or a widowed or single sibling. Rural couples with few children may have remained in another paternal or fraternal household framework.141 Larger homes in urban environments that are the dwellings of wealthy families could very well have performed the same function of housing members related directly by lineage or through other social and economic ties.142 As James Hardin notes, the household “may include visitors, captives, servants, apprentices, laborers, lodgers, and boarders in addition to blood relatives and adopted members as occupants of its bounded residential space.”143 This is affirmed by the prescription in Leviticus 25:35 that “if any of your kin fall into difficulty and become dependent on you, you shall support them; they shall live with you as though resident aliens.” In this way, the household functions as a semipermanent landing site for their more mobile members. We might compare this scenario to the ways modern migrants share living spaces, often maintained by a more permanently situated member of the group who functions as a head of the household while others transition through the dwelling on their ways to various final destinations, sites of employment, or even return to their places of origin. It is possible to extrapolate this function of the household to other nonlineage-based social arrangements that existed at the levels of royal production, storage, and trade. The labor required to make these operations salient necessitated the movement of populations that might have been comprised of hired, corvée, or slave labor. We know that such a culture of mobility existed in ancient Israel by virtue of the gēr (‫ )גר‬and Levite classes who were landless and transient and, therefore, dependent on the various structures of social integration that treated these groups as members of larger kinship frameworks.144 An exploration of marriage patterns further illuminates these processes. Marrying beyond one’s kin group, though often seen as problematic in the largely endogamous social structures of the ancient Near East, was often necessary for the group’s survival. Therefore, Lehman holds that “exogamy must have been extensive” among the Iron Age I settlements of the central highlands.145

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Lehman’s comments on the cultures of mobility surrounding marriage are especially pertinent to the discussion. He articulates the nature of marriage as an ongoing process of social cohesion, rooted in and upholding inter-settlement cultures of mobility and practices of identity negotiation.146 The distances most persons would have traversed to find a spouse are minimal but could easily have crossed household or larger kin-group boundaries.147 Among elites, however, marriage was used as an act of political alliance making and leverage and could take place across large distances. The frequency of polygamy remains an unknown in Israelite and Judahite society, but the practice was present among persons on opposite ends of the social spectrum, although for very different reasons. For resource-lacking members of society in need of additional labor, taking a second wife was an investment to secure the kin group’s future.148 Among the above-mentioned elites, polygamy was a source of increasing social capital. Through these various matrimonial forms, socially and geographically disparate persons established new families and communities.149 The central social groupings were expanded by the addition of those from diverse backgrounds, such as runaway slaves from Egypt and others from the Transjordan, such as Midianites, Kenites, Edomites, and Moabites.150

Mobility and Migration between Israel and Judah in the Iron Age II Total populations and patterns of demographic distribution fluctuated throughout the 8th and 7th centuries in both Israel and Judah for a number of reasons. In the Kingdom of Israel, architectural remains indicate consistency in monumental architecture and fortifications from the 9th century onward. The primary population centers of the north were strategically located in the region’s valleys and along major trade routes.151 By the 8th century, tensions between Israel’s rulers and the Assyrian regime were mounting. Land consolidation into the hands of elites continued and economic surpluses acquired through the exploitation of increasingly socially immobile lower classes momentarily satisfied Assyrian tribute demands.152 Nevertheless, Israel’s attempts at resisting annexation were futile and large portions of Galilee, Gilead, and southern Samaria were eventually razed.153 Galilee and Samaria appear not to have recovered from these blows and were thus sparsely inhabited for subsequent centuries. The sites that remained or were newly built likely functioned as points of Assyrian interest.154 Faust posits that recognizable, but limited, population increases in small parts of Samaria and Galilee during this time may have been the result of Assyrian persons that were resettled in the newly annexed territory rather than evidence of recovered Israelite settlements.155 The scale of influence – albeit temporary – that Judahite alignment with Assyrian regime had on the economic and political growth of Judah cannot be overstated when considering the outcomes of these developments on the cultures of mobility and religiosity in Judah in the 7th century.156

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When Israel attempted to undermine Assyrian control, its resistance was met with retaliation of the greatest severity. Facing serious population declines from war, starvation, and relocation, the northern territory that was formerly Israel was economically defunct by the 7th century and unable to recover its once robust systems of agricultural surplus.157 Judah, however, due to the acquiescence of its kings to Assyrian demands for tribute, was spared for a time from the same fate. Contrary to the general decreases in population in the north, particularly in the region directly north of Judah’s border, Judah experienced marked population increases throughout the 8th and 7th centuries. A consistent flow of migrants from the economically and militarily destroyed north comprised a part of the diachronic population increase in the Shephelah, Jerusalem, and greater Judah. During the 8th century, the Shephelah continued to flourish, but by the 7th century, most major sites had been destroyed or at least reduced in size by further Assyrian campaigns. At the same time, Jerusalem and its surrounding regions, which both had comparatively lower populations in the 10th–9th centuries than northern analogs, experienced a population increase that resulted in the expansion of the city and a surge in settlement building activity in rural regions, including in the Negev.158 Judah and Jerusalem’s population increases during this era were made possible, in part, by a growth in the number of elites – who rose to higher economic status by capitalizing on the fresh flow of goods, particularly that of the olive oil trade in the 8th and 7th centuries – and by the addition of peoples from regions overtaken by Assyrian forces.159 Eventually, Assyrian destruction would befall sites such as Lachish and Beth Shemesh in the Shephelah, as well as Philistine cities-states in the coastal region, when Sennacherib campaigned there in 701 BCE. The inland regions of Judah were spared from Sennacherib’s assault for unknown reasons. As each round of repeated conquest demolished sites in lowland and coastal regions, it makes sense to assume that some elements of the population who survived fled further east into the highlands, particularly if sites like Jerusalem came to be seen as places that provided safety or were even divinely protected from Assyrian incursion.160 The population relocation efforts of the Neo-Assyrian regime have already been discussed at length.161 What can be said of the matter here is simply that the picture of relocation was likely more complex than we are currently able to give an account of. Resettlement projects took place over the span of almost 20 years during the Iron II period. The first occurred under Tiglath-pileser III somewhere between 734 and 732 BCE. A five-year period preceded the next concerted Assyrian effort, which took place first in 729 BCE under Shalmanesar V, and then twice in 724 and 716 BCE under Sargon II, before Sennacherib’s generals undertook multiple attacks in the coastal and Shephelah regions of the Levant that resulted in the movement of people from Philistia and Judah. The movers who were catalyzed by Assyrian-related insecurities maintained a range of agency that is often flattened in most historical accounts.

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These migrations likely triggered additional compensatory movements within Israel and Judah. They also required a reshuffling of economic and subsistence networks and reorganization of basic social units since more males were likely sent into corvée labor than females. The question of population influx to Judah during the second half of the 8th century and first half of the 7th century has spurred debate over the years. The conversation is important to both biblical scholars and archaeologists since many questions regarding the eventual merger of Israelite and Judahite religious traditions and writings could be illuminated by a clarified historical picture of these events. Positing a migration of Israelites to Judah in the wake of Sargon II’s incursion has helped to explain how content that has been distinguished by biblical scholars as “Northern” or “Israelite” in origin came to exist in the literary traditions of Judah. Broshi was the first to articulate the hypothesis in a cohesive way using archaeological evidence.162 Broshi’s main argument was that a wave of refugees came to inhabit the slopes of the western hills of Jerusalem following Sargon II’s annexation of the Northern Kingdom. Since then, archaeological data has continued to accumulate, and others have contributed their interpretations of the finds. Inquiry has expanded to include the ways religious praxis may have been influenced by these moves as well, particularly with consideration for the likelihood that some of the migrants who came to Judah were religious specialists. At present, the opposite poles of the discussion are best represented by Nadav Na’aman and Israel Finkelstein.163 Both scholars appreciate the significance of the discussion for key questions regarding biblical composition but interpret the archaeological data differently. Na’aman’s essential argument is that a mass migration event from the north is not necessary to explain the population growth witnessed in Jerusalem or broader Judah between the 8th and 7th centuries.164 Instead, he posits a gradual buildup in Jerusalem’s population during the 8th century and attributes part of the increase to internal population movements within Judah that include both rural to urban migration and the relocation of Shephelah inhabitants to the hill country and city following Sennacherib’s destruction of major urban areas such as Lachish and Beth Shemesh in 701 BCE.165 Furthermore, he opines that Neo-Assyrian protocol for treatment of refugees and runaways would have kept any large numbers of movers from escaping round-up and resettlement by Assyrian troops. He points to a number of suzerainty treaties enumerating responsibilities vassals had for returning runaways to substantiate his claim.166 Na’aman’s position is supported by three main points of analysis. In the first of these he addresses onomastic data related to the presence of Israelite theophoric elements among Judahite inscriptional evidence, and reanalyzes the Siloam Tunnel inscription.167 For the second, Na’aman addresses the supposition that many migrants from the north opted to settle in the Shephelah following Sargon II’s destruction of the north.168 He argues that the timeframe required for new arrivals to the Shephelah to establish themselves before

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Sennacherib’s incursion is too brief to point to them as the reason for an upsurge in settlements in the region. Na’aman’s third argument entails the purported population growth of Jerusalem. In reevaluating the archaeological data for Jerusalem, Na’aman claims that population statistics put forth by several archaeologists have overestimated the proportion of increase in Jerusalem’s population in the 8th and 7th centuries.169 If this were true, the need to conjure explanations of large numbers of movers into the city during the period would dissolve. In a follow-up article to Na’aman’s latest, Israel Finkelstein addresses each of Na’aman’s points. Finkelstein’s position, which has been adjusted over the years via conversation with Na’aman and through reevaluations of his previous interpretations of the data, is that archaeological data attests several key migrational patterns from the north to the south, within the southern hill country, and from the Shephelah to Jerusalem and its surrounding hills. His refutations of Na’aman’s reasoning take Na’aman’s claims seriously, but ultimately, he offers compelling counter arguments for each. According to Finkelstein, Jerusalem’s rapid growth in the 8th century is recognizable by a drastically expanded footprint as well as the construction of new city walls and a water system. Likewise, evidence from other parts of Judah indicates an increased number of settlements, which were themselves larger and boasted public buildings and fortification structures.170 The greatest adjustment that Finkelstein has made to his own earlier position is that the population shift that resulted in the growth of Jerusalem and increased settlement in the surrounding countryside was not, as he originally stated, “a torrent of refugees,” but an elongated process that likely played out over the course of a century.171 My own analysis of the issues builds on Finkelstein’s position. I offer an evaluation of both perspectives while drawing on migration theory and findings. The concepts of place utility and duration dependence, which provide geographers a framework for interpreting migrants’ decision-making patterns, are pertinent to questions regarding Israel’s emergence and Israelite migration to Judah.172 Persons constantly evaluate their abilities to survive and thrive in specific environments. Throughout their existence, they repeatedly ask the questions “How long can/should/will we stay here?” The answers to which vary according to individual and context. Geographers refer to the product of this ongoing evaluative process as one’s sense of place utility.173 As was discussed earlier, barriers for relocation are typically high. Nevertheless, many migrants indeed respond in predictable ways to perceived and actual threats to personal safety. As such, in the face of increasing danger, they are likely to relocate when they anticipate a reduction in migrational barriers at either their point of origin or at a probable site of relocation.174 That potential migrants respond differently to environmental stimuli is apparent through the work of Melander and Öberg, who explore the duration dependence of migrants in the midst of violent situations of conflict-driven migration. Reinforcing theories of migrant autonomy, they find that even in

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contexts classifiable as forced/involuntary migration “some people more readily relocate than others.”175 What Melander and Öberg have identified is that in situations of conflict-driven migration, movement decreases over time rather than increases. This is the opposite of traditional models which posit that conflict-driven movement stimulates out-migration at an exponential rate.176 In contrast, Melander and Öberg find that movement reaches an apex and subsequently begins to decline. They indicate that “[o]ver time this generates a selection effect in the population that remains behind, such that the remaining population will become increasingly unwilling or unable to relocate.”177 Their finds accord with the observation that those having the lowest levels of motility and weakest social networks relative to other potential movers tend to remain, often with the outcome of further weakening economic and social systems in places of origin as those with the highest levels of motility and resources exit. Sending regions – even when under extreme duress – rarely, if ever, completely empty of inhabitants. This reality is important to recall at important junctures in our attempts to differentiate between the Israel’s historiography and our own history of Israel. Later assumptions of “empty” lands, whether from Assyrian or Babylonian incursions, would not have been the case historically. Moreover, Melander and Öberg’s work indicates that particular ideologies of attachment to the land can function alongside low rates of motility, meaning that some remain behind because they have to while others remain as nonmovers because they choose to. These findings regarding instances of migration in conflict zones should temper our understandings of migration patterns that developed in the wake of Sargon II’s and Sennacherib’s campaigns. The outward movement of peoples did not result in the total emptying of the north or the Shephelah. The same can be said for Judah during the later Babylonian incursions. It is probable that there was a larger readily mobile group who, if they survived the various atrocities of invasion such as personal violence, starvation, and resettlement, were capable of fleeing. Moreover, there were probably movers that anticipated Assyria’s impending attacks and began the process of relocation in advance of them. The biblical accounts of Amos’s and Micah’s travels may preserve these cultures of interregional mobility and demonstrate a collective memory of preemptive movement with Assyrian incursion on the horizon.178 Interestingly, neither Finkelstein nor Na’aman accounts for the potential scenario in which part of the population of the north were in actuality earlier migrants from Judah. If such persons had relocated there during the period when the north experienced greater productivity and economic vibrancy than the south, it is possible that some of the movers in the 8th and 7th centuries were actually return migrants from various regions they had gone to escape the realities of economic depression. They may have returned to household structures that were originally their sending units or to which they had remained attached through systems of bi-directional support. Furthermore, there is one point on which Na’aman is unequivocally incorrect. He writes that

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biblical historiography was composed for an elite group of literati and therefore, “it is anachronistic to compare it to the way modern societies try to integrate new immigrants into their confines.”179 While Na’aman is correct in his assertion that the biblical texts are the products of a small group of scribes, he shows his ignorance regarding the ways that religious narrative, in both oral and textual forms, functions to define group identity among migrants and their inclusion in host societies.180 Ultimately, the cultures of mobility between the various regions of Canaan in the Iron Age II were more robust and fluid than is commonly presumed.181 In countering what appears among some historians to be an assumption of the impermeability of social and physical boundaries between Judah and Israel, I presume that robust networks of inter-regional movement existed before the 8th century which set the stage for later migrations. This accords well with what I have argued regarding the interregional mobility for the Late Bronze and Early Iron periods. This by no means indicates that Israel and Judah were mobile powerhouses, but that their inhabitants experienced levels of mobility that remain unaccounted for in most historical reconstructions. While Jerusalem was a backwater site, at least when compared to other urban areas such as Lachish or Megiddo, it was strategically situated at the junctures of significant north-south and east-west transit routes.182 Furthermore, texts that speak of hospitality for travelers, even if historiographical retrojections, indicate at least the particulars of interregional mobility regimes during their periods of authorship, if not also for earlier times (Genesis 18, Judges 17–18, 19–21; 2 Kgs 4:8–16). At the same time, we should not assume that the polities in Judah or Israel maintained enough power to control the population movements of their respective inhabitants. The same is true for the Assyrian invaders, who though capable of rounding up inhabitants in urban areas, would not have been able to control the movements of all those living in the territories they annexed. It is likely that persons moved as freely as they were able between the territories according to their own personal and group motilities. Na’aman’s claim that it is inconceivable that Assyria would allow refugees to leave Israel or that Judah would openly accept refugees suggests that both of those entities could control the movement of populations more than they likely could in actuality.183 The movement of populations within Judah should be viewed through a similar lens as we have considered groups moving into Judah. Disruptions of all kinds catalyzed movement across Judah’s history and geography. The population growth that took place in the highlands and hinterlands can also be explained by turning to the prevailing cultures of mobility that I have argued were extant in previous periods. The flexible kinship-based social structures that made the consolidation of a “mixed multitude” possible in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages persisted into the 8th and 7th centuries. As a result, the new villages and agrarian homesteads that appear in relatively rapid fashion during this period can be explained not simply as the outcome of biological families relocating, but as the products of strategic social networks

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that functioned according to the flexibly fictive bêt ‘āb social model in order to (re)constitute a subsistence household following the migrations of some of its members. The upsurge in agriculturally based villages and homesteads occurred as kinship groups, with the means to do so, and the knowledge of agricultural lifeways – at least among some of its members – took up strategic resettlement initiatives that enacted the various resources of their households and larger kin groups. Inhabitants of the new hinterland abodes were, as in the case of Jerusalem, probably a mix of persons from the north and from other parts of Judah, including the Shephelah. They were spurred to move by a range of reasons that included economic insecurity and opportunity, intercultural tensions with Assyrian or Philistine, experiences of violence, and changing household demographics, such the death or addition of household members through birth, adoption, or marriage. Both archaeological and textual data are often silent on these processes, but the reality is that almost all migration – including that which takes place under extreme duress – is the outcome of household-based decision making and action structures. We should not assume that migration in ancient Israel and Judah took place in some way that radically counters the data on literally millions of migrants. Offering this explanation does not speak directly to Na’aman’s concerns regarding language and material culture, which form the foundation of his arguments against the migration-related growth of Jerusalem. Therefore, further consideration of his critiques of the north-south migration model are due. Na’aman suggests that if northern migrants made up a sizeable portion of the Jerusalem population, we would expect to find onomastic data that shows a proportional increase in names containing northern spellings of the theophoric element for Yahweh. However, instead of finding more names that include -yw, which is the predominant northern spelling of Yahweh in the 8th century, we find most names with -yhw, the common southern spelling of the theophoric element.184 As we know from many studies on acculturation and assimilation from the last four decades, the presence of robust mobility networks does not guarantee either the cultural flattening or preservation that Na’aman appears to assume are the only outcomes of interregional movements.185 Both extremes are potentialities yet, neither are inevitable.186 Intercultural contact can be simultaneously direct and indirect. Moreover, influence is no longer conceived as being unidirectional. Power is always an element of cultural negotiation as groups and persons maintain varying capacities for achieving their strategical goals. Therefore, the outcomes of cultural contact are seen to be the results of goal-oriented behaviors from different groups and persons participating willingly and unwillingly in the process.187 Migrants often continue to maintain cultural particularities in the midst of diversity, but the maintenance of these traits may take different forms depending on the social sphere in which the migrant is operative. Likewise, migrants are known to add new cultural elements they deem, through personal and corporate decision making, to be useful or beneficial for their situation.

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While non-efficacious elements of their cultural repertoires may be let go or lost, the assimilation of a migrant’s lifeways to those of the dominant culture is not a given. Identity negotiation takes place at varying paces depending on contexts and the cultural attribute in question.188 Each of these observations has a bearing on Na’aman’s assessment of the onomastic data. Beyond the difficulty of assessing naming practices through inscriptional material,189 additional problems attend the study of religious naming practices in contexts of migration. Without entering into a full discussion, it suffices to mention a few important realities. The first is that names found in the inscriptional record were not necessarily written by their bearers. This means that someone’s name could be represented in writing differently than how they might do so on their own.190 Instances of border officials misspelling or changing migrants’ names when processing migrants abound. (My own family’s name, which is Slovak in origin, was anglicized when my great grandfather passed through immigration in Philadelphia in 1903.) Secondly, it is common for migrants to adopt and use a name that maintains social currency in a new social setting while still maintaining their original name in home or familiar cultural contexts.191 The biblical story of Joseph’s and Daniel’s namechanging experiences relay different aspects of the same process (Gen 41:45; Dan 1:7). Put succinctly, the absence of northern spellings for theophoric elements does not indicate the absence of northerners. Similar difficulties surface in Na’aman’s assertion that material cultural differences should be present in Judah as indications of northern presence there. Here, Finkelstein’s response that most of the migrants came from the northern areas directly bordering Judah and therefore would not likely have had significantly different material cultural repertoires, makes great sense. On the whole, differences between Judean and Israelite forms of pottery appear to be less discreet than Na’aman suggests. To reiterate the conclusions made about onomastics for the case of pottery, the absence of northern style pots does not signal the absence of northerners.

Notes 1 Israel Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988), 119–234; Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 334–38. 2 Ann E. Killebrew, “The Emergence of Ancient Israel: The Social Boundaries of a ‘Mixed Multitude’ in Canaan,” in I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times: Archaeology and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, eds. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 555–72. Killebrew writes, “Ancient Israel during the Iron I period should be defined as constituted by largely indigenous, tribal, and kinship-based groups, with the additional influx of smaller numbers of members of external groups, whose genealogical affiliations together comprised a ‘mixed multitude’ of peoples” (Killebrew, “Emergence of Ancient Israel,” 556). Dever concurs with Killebrew regarding the mixed-multitude theory, which he refers to “A Motley Crew.” William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 222–31. Finkelstein

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Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah and Na’aman assert a similar argument but do not name it. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman, “Introduction: From Nomadism to Monarchy – The State of the Research in 1992,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, eds. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman (Washington: Biblical Archaeological Society, 1994), 9–17. See also Fleming, who writes, “Israel was an association of peoples from different environments in the southern Levant, both west and east of the Jordan River, both north and south of the Jezreel Valley.” Daniel E. Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History, Politics, and the Reinscribing of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 179. Ann E. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300-1100 B.C.E. (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 94. Cf. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 19–31. Cf. Daniel E. Fleming, “The Amorites,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 1–30. For an excellent introduction to each, see Paula McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 52–63. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith and Beth Alpert Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron Age I,” Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999): 62–92, 101–27; Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 184. Killebrew, “Emergence of Ancient Israel,” 556. Robert B. Coote and Keith W. Whitelam, The Emergence of Israel in Historical Perspective (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010). We know that disruptive events tend to send multiple groups into motion, albeit for different reasons and with different expected outcomes. It is noteworthy that what we witness in Israel’s emergence is similar in some respects to the group of people that come to be known as the Philistines. Although typically described as one of the “Sea Peoples,” the population that settled in and around the Pentapolis in the lower Levant was composed of more than maritime peoples. Both Israel and the Sea Peoples are best characterized as multi-ethnic social units that come to share a larger collective identity while maintaining internal differentiations. Although the dietary habits and material culture of these “Sea Peoples” indicate Aegean influences, or even heritage, the reality is that ancestors and members of this society made their ways to the Levant by a variety of means and over different timeframes, likely being exposed to different cultural influences and generating new lifeways along their routes. Furthermore, and in line with the material evidence from the Early Iron Age Central Highlands, the pottery assemblage of Philistia reflects attributes from the society/sites of origin but is ultimately its own localized collection of forms. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 97, 217–34; Assaf Yasur-Landau, The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 227–43. Cf. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 184–85. See also William G. Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 41, 99; Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and The Origin of Its Sacred Texts (New York: Touchstone, 2002), 117–8. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 97; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 240. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 74. Ann E. Killebrew, “The Materiality of Migrants, Refugees, and Colonizers at the End of the Bronze Age,” in An Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Jan Driessen (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2018), 187–202. Approximately 80% of Ugarit’s population lived in the rural areas surrounding the city and provided it with both animals and produce. Marta Luciani, “The Northern Levant

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(Syria) during the Late Bronze Age,” in The Oxford Handbook of Archaeology in the Levant, eds. Margreet L. Steiner and Ann E. Killebrew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 509–23, 510, 519. See also Aaron A. Burke, “The Decline of Egyptian Empire, Refugees, and Social Change in the Southern Levant, ca. 1200-1000 BCE,” in An Archaeology of Forced Migration: Crisis-Induced Mobility and the Collapse of the 13th c. BCE Eastern Mediterranean, ed. Jan Driessen (Louvain: Presses Univeritaires de Louvain, 2018), 229–49. For a summary of four decades of archaeological surveys documenting this transition, see Esther J. Van Der Steen, Tribes and Territories in Transition: The Central East Jordan Valley in the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Ages: A Study of the Sources (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 96–101. Finkelstein and Na’aman, “Introduction,” 10; cf. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 69. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 74–8; Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 97. Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 185–204. Richard Nelson, Historical Roots of the Old Testament (1200-63 BCE), Biblische Enzyklopädie 13 (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 19. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 180. Whether they can be called “Israel” in the Iron Age is a matter of debate. Finkelstein argues that only in the Iron II period do we find definitive evidence of Israel as a recognizable polity. Israel Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and the Origin of the Iron I Settlers in the Highlands of Canaan: Can the Real Israel Stand Up?” Biblical Archaeology 59 (1996): 198–212; “When and How Did the Israelites Emerge?” in The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian B. Schmitt (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 73–83. Dever’s approach is to refer to this group as “ProtoIsrael,” which follows on the heels of Finkelstein. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites?, 194–200; Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 27. Niels Peter Lemche, Early Israel: Anthropological and Historical Studies on the Israelite Society before the Monarchy (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 411–35. Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 345. Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” 151–2. Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” 153–8. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites?, 167–89; Beyond the Texts, 222–33. Though perhaps unintentionally, this language follows Stager, who earlier writes of the Central Highlands as, “an obstacle and a refuge, a frontier of freedom.” Lawrence E. Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260 (1985): 1–35, 5. It also follows Finkelstein. Israel Finkelstein, “The Great Transformation: The ‘Conquest’ of the Highlands Frontiers and the Rise of the Territorial States,” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), 349–62. Cf. Rachel Corr and Karen Vieira Powers, “Ethnogenesis, Ethnicity, and ‘Cultural Refusal’: The Case of the Salasacas in Higher Ecuador,” Latin American Resource Review 47 (2012): 5–30. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 222–33; Who Were the Early Israelites?, 167. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 191. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 167. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 222–31. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 229. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 225. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 226–8. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 231. Author’s original emphasis. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 226. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 225–6.

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Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah Dever, Beyond the Texts, 228–30, 229. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 225. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 229; Who Were the Ancient Israelites?, 194–6. Pekka Pitkänen, “The Ecological-Evolutionary Theory, Migration, Settler Colonialism, Sociology of Violence and the Origins of Ancient Israel,” Cogent Social Sciences 2 (2016), doi:10.1080/23311886.2016.1210717; Migration and Colonialism in the Late Second Millennium BCE Levant and Its Environs (London: Routledge, 2020), 28–69, 135–72. Cf. Tamar Hodos, “Colonisations and Cultural Developments in the Central Mediterranean,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze & Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter Van Dommelen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 215–29; Ido Koch, “The Egyptian-Canaanite Interface as Colonial Encounter: A View from Southwest Canaan,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 18 (2018): 24–39; Ido Koch and Lidar Sapir-Hen, “Beersheba-Arad Valley during the Assyrian Period,” Semitica 60 (2018): 427–52. Hodos also helpfully reminds us that “colonisation is not the same as colonialism.” Hodos, Archaeology of the Iron Age Mediterranean, 68. Pitkänen, Migration and Colonialism, 46. Phillip Connor, “International Migration and Religious Selection,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51 (2012): 184–94. Aaron A. Burke, “The Archaeology of Ritual and Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, and the Origins of Judaism,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 895–907; Thomas Staubli, “Cultural and Religious Impacts of Long-term Crosscultural Migration between Egypt and the Levant,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 12 (2016): 51–88. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 319–27. Volkmar Fritz, The Emergence of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C.E., trans. James W. Barker (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 135. Jeffery H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci, Cultures of Migration: The Global Nature of Contemporary Mobilities (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 1–22. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 78–85. This process may have led to the later Pentateuchal legal considerations for the inclusion of the gēr, who was an extra-kin actor that could obtain kin status via their contributions to the group. Likewise, once established, these core social groups could care for members, such as orphans and widows, who contributed to the group’s well-being but who would have drawn on its collective resources. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 66–67; Finkelstein, “The Great Transformation,” 349–62. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 184–5. Avraham Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction, Expansion, and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2014), 92–107; Norman Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 BCE (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1974), 338; John S. Holladay Jr., “The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah: Political and Economic Centralization in the Iron IIA-B (ca 1000-750 BCE),” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), 368–98, 370–71. Cf. Dever, who describes Gottwald’s characterization of the socioeconomic structure of the highland settlers as “communitarian,” and notes that “no truly egalitarian society has ever been found.” Dever, Beyond the Texts, 172. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 173. Israel Finkelstein, “The Two Kingdoms: Israel and Judah,” in The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 147–57, 151.

Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah 155 55 Gunnar Lehman, “Reconstructing the Social Landscape of Early Israel: Marriage Alliances in the Central Hill Country,” Tel Aviv 31 (2004): 141–93, 170. 56 Beth Alpert Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel (Boston: ASOR, 2001), 173–4. 57 Israel Finkelstein, “Arabian Trade and Socio-Political Conditions in the Negev in the Twelfth-Eleventh Centuries B.C.E.,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47 (1988): 241–52. 58 Israel Finkelstein et al., “Excavations at Shiloh 1981–1984: A Preliminary Site Report,” Tel Aviv 12 (1985): 123–80; Israel Finkelstein et al., Shiloh: The Archaeology of a Biblical Site (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, 1993). 59 This is contrary to Dever who notes a general lack of imported pottery forms from the Aegean except at Tel-el ‘Umeiri. Dever, Beyond the Texts, 172. 60 Nava Panitz-Cohen, “A Tale of Two Houses: The Role of Pottery in Reconstructing Household Wealth and Compositions,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, eds. Assaf-Yasur Landau et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 85–105. Cf. Avraham Faust, The Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 117–26. 61 Robert D. Miller II, Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 6–14. 62 Miller, Chieftains of the Highland Clans, 8–9. 63 Miller, Chieftains of the Highland Clans, 11. 64 Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 75; Dever, Beyond the Texts, 179; Finkelstein and Na’aman, “Introduction,” 10. Cf. Miller, Chieftains of the Highland Clans, 8. See also Robert D. Miller II, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 333 (2004): 55–68. 65 Cf. Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 72. 66 Michael M. Bell and Giorgio Osti, “Mobilities and Ruralities: An Introduction,” Sociologia Ruralis 50, no. 3 (2010): 199–204. 67 Cf. Monica Boyd, “Family and Personal Networks in International Migration: Recent Developments and New Agendas,” International Migration Review 23 (1989): 638–70; Douglas S. Massey et al., “Theories of International Migration: A Review and Appraisal,” Population and Development Review 19 (1993): 431–66. 68 Cf. Susanne Paulus, “Foreigners under Foreign Rule: The Case of Kassite Babylonia (2nd half of the 2nd Millennium BC),” in The Foreigner and the Law: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East, eds. Reinhard Achenbach, Rainier Albertz, and Jacob Wöhrle (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 1–16. 69 Claudia Glatz and Jesse Casana, “Of Highland-Lowland Borderlands: Local Societies and Foreign Power in the Zagros-Mesopotamian Interface,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 44 (2016): 127–47. 70 Claudia Glatz and Jesse Casana, “Of Highland-Lowland Borderlands: Local Societies and Foreign Power in the Zagros-Mesopotamian Interface,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 44 (2016): 127–47. 71 Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 97; Miller, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” 56. 72 For a helpful, if potentially dated, introduction to the basic set of issues under discussion, see Finkelstein and Na’aman, “Introduction,” 9–17. 73 Dever, Beyond the Texts, 177, 180; Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 177–81. 74 Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” 150–78; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 345–8; “The Israelite Settlement,” in The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian B. Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 85–98. Killebrew still holds that the limited differences in material culture may constitute “a boundary.” Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 185. 75 Dever, Beyond the Texts, 172–73, 218–22. 76 Killebrew, “Emergence of Ancient Israel,” 569. 77 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 161.

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Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah Miller, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” 56–57. Miller, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” 57. Miller, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” 57–63. Avraham Faust, “The Emergence of Israel and Theories of Ethnogenesis,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel, ed. Susan Niditch (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 155–73. Finkelstein, “Ethnicity and the Origin of the Iron I Settlers,” 198–212; Lawrence E. Stager, “The Impact of the Sea Peoples (1185-1050 BCE),” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. Thomas E. Levy (London: Leicester University Press, 1995), 332–48. Cf. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 71. Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 77. Israel Finkelstein, “State Formation in Israel and Judah: A Contrast in Context, a Contrast in Trajectory,” Near Eastern Archaeology 62 (1999): 35–52; “The Two Kingdoms: Israel and Judah,” in The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian B. Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 147–57; Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 368–98. Israel Finkelstein, “Two Kingdoms: Israel and Judah,” 150–1. Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 371–2. Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 373. Finkelstein, “Two Kingdoms: Israel and Judah,” 151. Finkelstein, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 151–7. David C. Hopkins, “Agriculture,” in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richard (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 124–30. William Mierse, Temples and Sanctuaries from the Early Iron Age Levant: Recovery after Collapse (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), 18–20. Mierse, Temples and Sanctuaries, 21. Cf. Nelson, Historical Roots, 49–57. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites?, 75–85; Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” 164–71, 175–8; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 334–6. Dever, Who Were the Early Israelites?, 86–87, 96–100, 213–4; Finkelstein, “Emergence of Israel,” 175–8; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 336–8. For an introduction to the state of the research, see Brad E. Kelle, “The Early Monarchy and the Stories of Saul, David, and Solomon,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel, ed. Susan Niditch (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 177–96. Israel Finkelstein, “King Solomon’s Golden Age: History or Myth?” in The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian B. Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 107–16; Amihai Mazar, “Jerusalem in the 10th Century B.C.E.: The Glass Half Full,” in Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context: A Tribute to Nadav Na’aman, eds. Yael Amit et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 255–72; “The Search for David and Solomon: An Archaeological Perspective,” in The Quest for Historical Israel: Debating Archaeology and the History of Early Israel, ed. Brian B. Schmidt (Atlanta: SBL, 2007), 117–39; Nelson, Historical Roots, 58–79. Cf. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 139–46; Israel Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age: Archaeology and Text; Reality and Myth,” in Unearthing Jerusalem: 150 Years of Archaeological Research in the Holy City, ed. Katharina Galor and Gideon Avni (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 189–201. Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age,” 189–201; “Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of ‘Biblical Israel’: An Alternative View,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 123 (2011): 348–67. Finkelstein, “Two Kingdoms: Israel and Judah,” 151–2. Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age,” 192; Cf. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “The Early Israelite Monarchy in the Sorek Valley: Tel-Beth Shemesh and

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Tel Batash (Timnah) in the 10th and 9th Centuries B.C.E.,” in “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar, eds. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 407–27; Zev Herzog and L. Singer-Avitz, “The Fortress Mound at Tel Arad: An Interim Report,” Tel Aviv 29 (2002): 3–109. Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age,” 193–5. Avraham Faust, “Settlement and Demography in 7th Century Judah and the Extent and Intensity of Sennacherib’s Campaign,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 140 (2008): 168–94. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “Migration, Hybridization, and Resistance: Identity Dynamics in the Early Iron Age Southern Levant,” in The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, eds. A. Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 252–65; Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, “Swinging on the ‘Sorek Seesaw’: Tel Beth-Shemesh and the Sorek Valley in the Iron Age,” in The Shephelah during the Iron Age, eds. Oded Lipschits and Aren M. Maeir (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 27–43. Biblical accounts of Pharaoh Shishak’s plundering of multiple sites in Judah, including the looting of Solomon’s Temple, are dissonant from the Egyptian record which specifies that Shoshenq’s campaign progressed primarily through the coastal regions before attacking Israel and other northern vassals. Cf. Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 372–3. Simo Parpola, “Assyria’s Expansion in the 8th and 7th Centuries and Its Long-Term Repercussions in the West,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age Through Roman Palestina, eds. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 99–111. Avraham Faust and Shawn Zelig Aster, “The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination: An Introduction,” in The Southern Levant Under Assyrian Domination, eds. Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 1–19. Faust and Aster, “Introduction,” 4. Faust and Aster, “Introduction,” 5. Avraham Faust, “The Assyrian Century in the Southern Levant: An Overview of the Reality on the Ground,” in The Southern Levant under Assyrian Domination, eds. Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 20–55, 39. Faust, “The Assyrian Century in the Southern Levant,” 24–25. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 387–97; McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 148–53. William G. Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 142–205; Faust, Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, 128–89; McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 152–3. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 152. Avraham Faust, “The Rural Community in Ancient Israel during the Iron Age II,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 30 (2000): 29–30. Despite his acknowledgment of these social hierarchies, Faust still assumes that the general nature of most rural villages in the Iron II period was egalitarian. Faust, “Rural Community in Ancient Israel,” 17–34; Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 112–9. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 118. Dever sees the process as gradual and not total. William G. Dever, “From Tribe to Nation: State Formation Processes in Ancient Israel,” in Nuove fondazioni nel vicino oriente antico. Realtà e ideologia, ed. Stefania Mazzoni, (Pisa: Giardini, 1994), 213–29; Behind the Texts, 296–8. See also Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 338, 378. Finkelstein suggests the process did not affect all the villages in the Highlands. Finkelstein, “Tell El-Ful Revisited,” 110. Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 120–3.

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120 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 122–34. 121 Avraham Faust, “Household Economies,” 255–73. See also McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 154–65. 122 Avraham Faust, “Farmsteads in Western Samaria’s Foothills: A Reexamination,” in I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times: Archaeology and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, eds. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 477–504, 477–80. 123 Fritz, The Emergence of Israel, 102–3. 124 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Israelite Ethnicity in Iron I: Archaeology Preserves What Is Remembered and What Is Forgotten in Israel’s History,” Journal of Biblical Literature 122 (2003): 401–25; Bruce Routledge, “Seeing through Walls: Interpreting Iron Age I Architecture at Khirbat al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 319 (2000): 37–70. 125 Cf. Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 170–2. 126 William G. Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 186; Faust, “Rural Community in Ancient Israel,” 19; John David Schloen, The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2001), 150-ff. 127 Holladay, “Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” 386–7; McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 87–94; Stager, “Archaeology of the Family,” 18–23. 128 Faust, Israel’s Ethnogenesis, 71–84; Cf. McNutt, Reconstructing the Society of Ancient Israel, 49. 129 Faust, “Rural Community in Ancient Israel,” 22–23. 130 Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 157–58. 131 Faust, “Rural Community in Ancient Israel,” 19–22. 132 Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 159–60. 133 Faust, “Household Economies,” 262–6. 134 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 54. 135 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 62. 136 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 51. 137 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 62–63. 138 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 60–61. 139 Routledge, “Seeing through Walls,” 61–62. 140 Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 141–93. 141 Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 41. 142 Faust, “Household Economies,” 61–62, 257. 143 James W. Hardin, “Understanding Houses, Households, and the Levantine Archaeological Record,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 9–25, 14. 144 Stager, “Archaeology of the Family,” 1–35. For a full investigation of related questions, see Mark Glanville, Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 32–150. 145 Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 143. 146 Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 155–6. 147 Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 147–50, 156–69. 148 Lehman, “Social Landscape of Early Israel,” 154. 149 Killebrew asserts that these originally disparate social groups, who likely maintained a variety of ethnic identities prior to their unification as “Israel,” also had “porous borders [that] permitted penetration by smaller numbers from external groups.” Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 184. 150 Killebrew, Biblical Peoples, 185. 151 Faust, Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, 68.

Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah 159 152 Faust, Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, 22–23. 153 Avraham Faust, “Settlement, Economy, and Demography under Assyrian Rule in the West: The Territories of the Former Kingdom of Israel as a Test Case,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135 (2015): 765–89. Faust maintains that 27 of the 42 excavated 8th century sites in these regions show “complete collapse.” This stands in contrast with Finkelstein’s survey analysis which suggests that “76.5% of the Iron I sites continued to be occupied in the Iron II.” Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, 188. 154 Faust, “Settlement, Economy, and Demography,” 775. 155 Faust, “Settlement, Economy, and Demography,” 776; “Farmsteads in Western Samaria’s Foothills,” 477–504. 156 Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age,” 195. 157 Faust, Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, 28–29, 33–35. Building on Bustenay Oded’s work, Faust makes a compelling case against reconstructions of the period that suggest Assyria’s two-way population relocation practices resupplied the demographic stores of the region following Israel’s destruction. His presentation of the archaeological data on resettlement patterns demonstrates that the inflow of Assyrian migrants never equaled the outflow of persons taken to the primary resettlement cities of Assur, Caleh, Nineveh, or Dur. 158 Faust, Archaeology of Israelite Society in Iron Age II, 95–99; “Settlement, Economy, and Demography,” 766. 159 Finkelstein, “Jerusalem in the Iron Age,” 195. 160 Cf. Avraham Faust, “The Settlement of Jerusalem’s Western Hill and the City’s Status in Iron Age II Revisited,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 121 (2005): 112. 161 For an excellent study of the onomastic data related to Israelite and Judahite (forced) migrants in this period, see Ran Zadok, “Israelites and Judeans in the Neo-Assyrian Documentation (732-602 B.C.E.): An Overview of the Sources and a SocioHistorical Assessment,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 374 (2015): 159–89. 162 Magen Broshi, “The Expansion of Jerusalem in the Reigns of Hezekiah and Manasseh,” Israel Exploration Journal 24 (1974): 21–26. 163 For their most recent publications on the matter, see Israel Finkelstein, “Migration of Israelites into Judah after 720 BCE: An Answer and an Update,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 127 (2015): 188–206; Nadav Na’aman, “Dismissing the Myth of a Flood of Israelite Refugees in the Late Eighth Century BCE,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 126 (2014): 1–14. 164 Knauf has joined Na’aman in this position. For his most recent set of arguments, see Ernst Axel Knauf, “Was There a Refugee Crisis in the 8th/7th Centuries BCE?” in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor or Israel Finkelstein, eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, and Matthew J. Adams (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 159–72. 165 Na’aman more fully articulated these arguments in the earlier article: Nadav Na’aman, “When and How did Jerusalem Become a Great City? The Rise of Jerusalem as Judah’s Premier City in the Eighth-Seventh Centuries B.C.E.,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 347 (2007): 21–56. Faust also posits gradual growth, although he allows for Jerusalem’s increased population to partially be the result of “an unknown number of refugees” from the North following the fall of Samaria. Faust, “Settlement of Jerusalem’s Western Hill,” 97–118. 166 Na’aman, “When and How did Jerusalem Become a Great City?” 33–35. Na’aman goes so far as to suggest that extradition treaties had to have existed between Assyria and its Levantine vassals, “but since they were written on papyrus, they did not last.” See Na’aman’s earlier work on the topic of deportations: Nadav Na’aman,

160

167 168 169 170 171 172

173 174 175

176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185

186 187 188

Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah “Population Changes in Palestine Following Assyrian Deportations,” Tel Aviv 20 (1993): 104–24. Na’aman, “Dismissing the Myth,” 4–8. Na’aman, “Dismissing the Myth,” 8–11. Na’aman, “Dismissing the Myth,” 11–14. For further discussion of Jerusalem’s Late Bronze Age boundaries, see Na’aman, “Jerusalem in the Amarna Period,” 45–48. Finkelstein, “Migration of Israelites,” 194. Finkelstein, “Migration of Israelites,” 201. Elements of this theoretical framework have already been discussed. They appear here as a slightly reformulated version of a previously published essay, Eric M. Trinka, “‘If You Will Only Remain in This Land’: Migration Decision Making and Jeremiah as a Religiously Motivated Nonmover,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 80 (2018): 580–96. Jerome D. Fellmann, Arthur Getis, and Judith Getis, eds., Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities, 8th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 88. George Groenewold et al., “Psychosocial Factors of Migration: Adaptation and Application of the Health Belief Model,” International Migration 50, no. 6 (2012): 211–31. Erik Melander and Magnus Öberg, “Time to Go? Duration Dependence in Forced Migration,” International Interactions 32 (2006): 129–52, 129. See also Delf Rothe and Miriam Salehi, “Autonomy in Times of War? The Impact of the Libyan Crisis on Migratory Decisions,” in Understanding Migrant Decisions, From Sub-Saharan Africa to the Mediterranean Region, eds. Belachew Gebrewold and Tendayi Bloom (New York: Routledge, 2016), 80–98. Cf. Susanne Schmeidl, “Exploring the Causes of Forced Migration: A Pooled TimeSeries Analysis, 1971–1990,” Social Science Quarterly 78:2 (1997): 284–308. Melander and Öberg, “Time to Go?” 129–34. Cf. Yin Lan, “Internal Migrations and Social Justice in Amos and Micah,” in Migration and Diaspora: Exegetical Voices of Women in Northeast Asian Countries, ed. Hisako Kinukawa (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 19–26. Nadav Na’aman, “Saul, Benjamin and the Emergence of ‘Biblical Israel’ (Part 1),” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 123 (2011): 348–67. Cf. Eric M. Trinka, “Mirrored Selves: Reflections on Religious Narrative(s) in The Lives of Migrants,” in Cultures of Migration: A Handbook, eds. Jeffery H. Cohen and Ibrahim Sirkeci (Brookfield: Edward Elgar, 2021), 68–81. For a robust defense of this position over and against those who argue for primarily isolated social structures in the period, see Faust, “The Rural Community in Ancient Israel,” 17–34. Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 73. Cf. Na’aman, “The Rise of Jerusalem,” 35. Na’aman, “Dismissing the Myth,” 4. John Berry, Acculturation: A Personal Journal Across Cultures (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019). See also Ria O’Sullivan-Lago and Guida de Abreu, “Maintaining Continuity in a Cultural Contact Zone: Identification Strategies in the Dialogical Self,” Culture & Psychology 16 (2010): 73–92. Cf. Yasur-Landau, Migration of the Philistines, 16–17. Berry, Acculturation, 16–33. For further discussion of these processes in the contexts of the ancient Near East, see Eric M. Trinka “Migrants, Identity, and Body Modification in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Media,” in Migration, Media, and Art, eds. Vildan Mahmutoglu and John Moran Gonzales (London: Transnational Press, 2020), 61–84.

Cultures of Mobility in Israel and Judah 161 189 For helpful enumeration of basic problems, see Smith, Early History of God, 4–5. 190 M.A. Dandamayev, “Egyptians in Babylonia in the 6th-5th Centuries B.C.,” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le proche-orient ancient, Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique international, eds. Dominique Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris: July 8–10, 1991), 321–5. 191 David Danzig, “Lives and Identities of Egyptian Migrants to Neo-Babylonia and Achaemenid Babylonia” (Paper presented at Melting Bowl or Salad Pot? Identity Dynamics of Migrants to State/Imperial Heartlands through the Ages, New York University, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York: 1 November 2019).

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Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity

Yahweh’s Emergence It is apparent from both textual and archaeological sources that Yahweh was a later addition to the pantheons of some groups living in the Central Highlands at the turn of the Iron Age. Although Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic Historian(s) consistently enunciate the claim that Israel brought their Yahweh religion with them when they entered the Land, other biblical texts such as Gen 32:28, 30, and 33:20, as well as archaeological evidence like the 13th century Merneptah Stelae are in implicit agreement that Israel’s religious allegiance was not initially to Yahweh, but to El, as can be seen in the name Isra-el.1 The structure of the Israelite pantheon was influenced by that of Ugarit and other neighbors, whereby El (-Elyon) was a high god but other secondary gods – such as Baal or Yahweh, who were associated with war and sometimes weather – were given power to rule over specific domains (Ps 82:6-8).2 Thus, the earliest version of Deut 32:8-9 likely presented Yahweh as one of the many gods who was subordinate to El. In this scenario, Israel – described in the text as Jacob – is Yahweh’s portion when El distributes lands and peoples to the lesser gods.3 Several biblical passages preserve the understanding that Yahweh originally came to meet Israel from the South (Deut 33:2; Judg 5:4-5; Ps 68:8-9,18; Hab 3:3,7,10; Zech 9:14). I will take up a more thorough discussion of Yahweh’s southern origins and theophanic appearance momentarily. It is important to note at present the significance of the above passages as proclamations that Yahweh came to the people as a deity they did not necessarily know. This is one of the reasons other biblical passages demonstrate attempts to reconcile the reality that the ancestral deities and Yahweh were different gods. The earliest inscriptional evidence mentioning Yahweh as a deity in Israel is the 9th century Mesha Stelae from Moab. Other extra-biblical mentions of Yahweh come from Arad, Ketef Hinoam, Khirbet el-Qom, Khirbet Beit Lei, and Kuntillet ʿAjrud. None of these is older than the 9th century and many are from the 7th and 6th centuries. In addition, onomastic data indicates that it was not until the Iron Age II that Yahwistic theophoric DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-6

Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity 163

elements were widespread among Israel and Judah.4 The upshot of this data is that by inscriptional evidence alone, it would appear that the worship of Yahweh only existed in Israel and Judah from the 9th century onward. Yet, scholars generally hold that the biblical passages enumerated above, which mention Yahweh’s origins from the South, represent traditions that are earlier than the 9th century. Based on the early dating of these traditions, and on the historical reality that it would have taken time for Yahweh to rise to the head of the pantheon as a national god who was recognized by a foreign government such as in the Mesha Stela, it is possible that Yahweh worship was present well before the 9th century among some of the peoples who would later be known as Israel. Precisely how much earlier is difficult to say with certainty, but the cultures of mobility in the Sinai, northwestern Arabia, and in the Transjordan that have been discussed so far would have provided the conduits for the spread of Yahweh veneration before the formation of the Israel mentioned in Merneptah’s victory stela. As we will see, Yahweh’s mobile characteristics may have facilitated the spread of his cult during these nascent periods. Etymologies of the name Yahweh abound with no clear answer as to which is correct.5 In his earliest appearances, Yahweh was most likely a war god who may have had storm god attributes (Gen 49:24; Exod 15:3; Judg 5:4-5; Ps 68:4,7–9,33, Ps 77:16-19, 89:9-10; Hab 3:3,7,10; Zech 9:14, 10:1). While there is consensus among biblical scholars that Yahweh’s origins are in the lands south and east of Israel, debate continues regarding which specific location should be identified as the South.6 Edom, Seir, and Midian are primary candidates based on Deut 33:2; Judg 5:4-5; Ps 68:8-9,18; and Hab 3:3,7,10. Other biblical place names such as Paran and Sinai are also associated with Yahweh’s southern abode. In addition, inscriptional evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrud, which names a “Yahweh of Teman / Yahweh of (the) Teman,” has further convinced many scholars of Yahweh’s earlier, if not original, southern associations. Though much later in origin, Papyrus Amherst 63 preserves a Syrian hymn of praise for the god Bethel wherein Yahweh (Yaho) is remembered, along with his consort Asherah, as originating from the Southlands.7 The consensus of Yahweh’s southern origins has, however, not gone unchallenged. Several German scholars have raised concern that too much trust has been placed in the early dating of biblical material depicting Yahweh’s southern home. This counter hypothesis, though articulated in slightly different variations, is that given the prominence of storm deity imagery associated with Yahweh, it is more likely that his origins lie in the North, either within Canaan proper, or the stretch of land between the Phoenician coast and the mountains of western Mesopotamia.8 The suggestion of a northern provenance is not totally illegitimate, as several of Yahweh’s characteristics do indeed bear resemblance to the Phoenician/Canaanite Baal and the Syrian Baal-Hadad/Hadad. Moreover, given our increasing knowledge of post-exilic editorial realities, Pfeiffer‘s question regarding the creation of supposedly early

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texts (Judg 5:4; Deut 33:2) in the post-exilic period should at least be entertained for the sake of discussion.9 Strikingly, even though those in the northern-provenance camp contest the reliability of what many careful scholars trust to be archaic texts, their own evidence for comparison between Syrian gods and Yahweh is only drawn from biblical texts, since at present, there is no toponymic, onomastic, or inscriptional evidence of Yahweh in Canaan or Syria in the Late Bronze Age.10 Thus, as Leuenberger rightly points out, those questioning the southern hypothesis have yet to produce solid counter evidence beyond blanket associations of Syrian royal storm god characteristics with Yahweh’s own.11 Their position is further challenged by the evidence from Elephantine, where it is apparent there that the community assimilated Yahweh with the Syrian storm god Bethel while maintaining Yahweh’s more ancient southern origins.12 Additional difficulties attend other-than-southern proposals which cannot be enumerated here due to limitations of space. The takeaway is that while there are several points of potential Yahweh-related evidence in the lands north and east of Israel, the dates for the majority of these data are well into the Iron Age and of little consequence for clarifying the question of Yahweh’s origins.13 While these different hypotheses are at odds over the question of Yahweh’s origins, they need not be so with regard to the broader picture of Yahwism’s development. It is possible to account for both southern and northern influences on perceptions of Yahweh’s personhood over time, as well as the spread of Yahwistic influences into other spheres during those same periods. Having briefly outlined the major contours of the north-south origins debate, I proceed by exploring the connections between Yahweh’s southern origins – particularly his association with mountains – and his own mobility/migration.

Yahweh, Mountains, and Mobility Key events linked with Yahweh’s origins and activity are linked with mountains.14 This is not surprising given that the practice of associating gods with mountains is common across the ancient Near East. Among Israel and its neighbors, we find many instances where mountains are divine abodes, the site of temples, and mythic centers of the world. Yahweh’s eventual selection of a permanent mountain residence ranks high among the concerns of biblical authors (Exod 15:17; Deut 12:5-7, 11, 21, 16:2, 6, 11, 21; 1 Kgs 14:21; Jer 31:38; Amos 1:2; Joel 3:16; Mic 4; Neh 1:9; Ps 48:1, 68:6-7, 76:1-2, 78:67-72, 87:1-2). Beyond the biblical text, we find that one of the inscriptions from Khirbet Beit Lei reads, “The (mount of) Moriah thou has favored, the dwelling of Yah, YHWH.”15 The understanding that mountains could be divine agents in their own right was also a possibility. For example, Sumerians considered some of their gods to be personified mountains, a tendency that informed later Mesopotamian conceptions of divinity.16 In Egypt, where the cosmos was envisioned as intertwined divine bodies, deities were mapped onto the

Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity 165

topographic landscape when given domain over particular geographic sites or regions.17 So it was for Ha, a god who protected the northwest Nile Delta regions, and who is depicted with a three mountain hieroglyphic determinative above his head and often with a bow in hand.18 Among the islands of ancient Greece, we find the Nῆσοι – goddesses of islands – as members of the primordial οὔρεα (mountain) class of gods thrown into the sea by Poseidon. These mysteriously transient geographies were understood to be places of divine dwelling, and in some instances, personifications of divine presence.19 Beyond the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, patterns of anthropmorphized/deified mountains overlap among Polynesian, Hawai’ian, and other Pacific Islanders, as well as in China, Tibet, Japan, and Korea.20 In East Africa, modern bands of Samburu, a Nilotic people, venerate a high god who lives in the nearby mountains and is sometimes understood as being present as a mountain. Samburu even name their gods after the mountains they are associated with. The anthropomorphization of mountains is evidenced in the biblical corpus. Mountainous landscapes are described using human bodily language and are presented performing human-like movements such as trembling.21 Another way that mountains “move” in the biblical corpus is through the transference of geographies.22 Horeb, “the mountain of God” (‫חרבה‬ ‫( )הר האלהים‬Exod 3:1), and Sinai stand in for one another. In a similar way, Paran and Teman and Seir and Edom (Hab 3:3,7; Deut 33:2) overlap. Geographic transference is also the means by which Sinai/Horeb can come to exist on the plains of Moab (Deuteronomy 5) or Zion can become a new Sinai (Mic. 4:2), Hermon can be transposed with Zaphon, Moriah can become Zion, and Zion is understood as Eden.23 The broader phenomena of mountains as living or moving landscapes requires attention in light of the many correlations between Yahweh and mountains.24 To move a mountain is a culturally ubiquitous concept for something that is insurmountably difficult, if not impossible. Yet, mountains have moved on their own since the beginning of things. Anyone who has spent time trekking around the base of a mountain can attest to the experience of a mountain appearing to move as one’s vantage point changes. Depending on their relative elevation and the surrounding landscape features, mountains that look immanently close at one point can become elusively further away at another. In a similar way, those who have climbed mountains can attest to the trickery of a “false summit” where, due to their relative location, a hiker chases after a summit that is ever so incrementally moving itself beyond their reach. Such experiences could lead one to conclude that mountains indeed move under their own volition. The question is how do mountains relate to Yahwistic religiosities in contexts of mobility? The occurrence of Yhw3 or Yah/Yaa in conjunction with Shasu peoples in the 13th-century inscription of Amenophis III from Sudan (Soleb) and in the later ‘Amara West inscriptions under Rameses II may represent either a toponym or a gentilic. If the term functions as a gentilic, it may serve to

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delineate a specific category of Shasu, those associated with the site/region of Yhw3 or those affiliated by the kinship moniker Yhw3.25 If the term is functioning as a toponym only, it may be a reference to a mountainous region or a particular mountain somewhere in the lands east of the Nile Delta.26 Is the mountain of Seir Yah or Yhw3, the deified mountain of the Shasu? Was Yahweh understood to be the very mountain of Yah?27 An inscription of Rameses II found on an obelisk in Tanis records, “The fierce lion, full of rage who … plundered the Shasu and seized the mountain of Seir by his mighty arm.”28 The account of Ahab battling Ben-Hadaad of Aram contains a reference to Yahweh’s association with mountains. The advisors to the king of Aram voice their frustrations at previous losses and plot their reprisal by noting that Israel’s ‫אלהי הרים אלהיהם‬, “gods are gods of the mountains” (1 Kgs 20:23). Römer provides the examples of Judg 5:5 and Ps 68:8, in which the names Yahweh and’elōhîm are situated in apposition to the site of Sinai (‫)זה סיני‬, as an indication that Yahweh and Sinai are the same entity and are distinguished from the other mountains in the passage.29 The assertion that Yahweh may have been understood as a mobile mountain or personified rock is potentially bolstered by an identification of ‫( שׁדים‬Cf. Akk. šadû) with Canaanite deities who may have been thought of either as mountains or as metal or stone that came from mountains (Deut 32:17; Ps 106:37-38). The inscriptional evidence found at Deir Alla that combines El with Shaddai-type gods may offer another point of connection.30 Although sometimes contested, interpretation of the name El-Shaddai (‫ )אל שׁדי‬as “god of (the) mountains” or “El of the highlands” may indicate a similar notion of mountainous divinity (Gen 17:1, 35:11).31 At the very least, Yahweh is the maker of mountains (Ps 65:6) who is praised by the mountains he creates (Ps 89:12). Qurayyah-type pottery, manufactured in northwest Arabia during the 13th–11th centuries BCE correlates with the time and region of biblical Midian.32 The characteristic geodesic designs on this type of wares may indicate certain religious tendencies among their producers and users.33 Though neither Miller nor Tebes draw the connection in their analysis, it is noteworthy given the current discussion, that triangular designs on Qurayyah-type pottery may be abstract representations of mountains, and therefore, perhaps associated with mountain veneration.34 These images can be compared to the use of the mountain determinative for the Egyptian god Ha and even with analogs in Hawai’ian art where the goddess Pele, the largest volcano (Mauna Loa) of the Big Island (Hawai’i), is often represented simply as a triangle in paintings, body art, jewelry, and other artisan creations. Othmar Keel has suggested associations of Yahweh with volcanoes.35 He analyzes passages that present Yahweh as one producing or shrouded by smoke (Gen 15:17; Ps 18:7-8, 97:5, 104:32) and argues that Midian, the land of Yahweh’s most likely origins, was a place with “active volcanoes up through the late Middle Ages.”36 He also recognizes the importance of earthquake imagery associated with Yahweh’s theophanies.37 Though not mentioned by Keel, Ps 68:2-3 provides readers with an image of God (‫ )אלהים‬as an erupting

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volcano that is asked to “rise up” (‫ )יקום‬over his enemies while the people are scattered on the slopes below as the mountain rages (‫רשׁעים מפני אלהים‬ ‫)כהנדף עשׁן תנדף כהמס דונג מפני־אשׁ יאבדו‬. With these parallels in mind, one might read Hab 3:6, which recounts the mountains crumbling and ancient hills collapsing when Yahweh stands and marches across them (‫גבעות עולם הליבות‬ ‫ ) יּתפצצו הררי־עד שׁחו‬as a proclamation of other gods coming to their demise in his wake (cf. Isa 41:21-24; Psalm 77:18; 82).38 Both volcanoes and earthquakes are related to moving mountains and may, therefore, offer us another angle from which to consider Yahweh’s agency, and perhaps even his mobility. Scholars have posited other associations of Yahweh with types of landscapes. Keel and Uehlinger postulate that several scarabs containing images of “The Lord of the Ostriches” may potentially indicate that Yahweh was a deity of the steppe, a place of extensive mobility because of the hardships of living there (Ps 68:5).39 While consideration of the connection to the steppe is warranted, other broader instances of the “Lord of the Animals” motif abound in the Levant and are not necessarily connected to the steppe.40 Examples of a similar motif captured in the “proto-Shiva” inscription from the Indus River Valley show that the conception of divinity associated with a kind of ruler of animals or of wildlands was widespread in the ancient world.41 Thus, the association of this trope with Yahweh may have come later rather than as the original understanding of Yahweh’s domain. More recently, and with stronger comparative ethnographic evidence, Miller has demonstrated that essential elements of Yahweh’s character accord with the desert South. At least in his earliest conceptions, Yahweh is desert; not in an animistic or totemic way, but in the essential elements of his person. By Miller’s account, it is not a desert like the sandy Sahara or the coastal dunes of the Namib, but rather like the craggy silent quarters of the northwestern Arabian mountains which rise starkly over the Great Rift Valley.42 The suggestion that Yahweh’s name is related to creative and re-creative capacities may provide an account of a southern-oriented deity whom desert agriculturalists venerated for his ability to bring life to the arid environment.43 If, on the other hand, Yahweh’s name is a verbal form of being, it may be because his essential nature, as one who is, derives from his desert-bound characteristic of permanence.44 Landscapes are not merely objects of aesthetic pleasure. Rather, a landscape is comprised of things and places in relation to one another. As Tilley suggests, “to know a landscape is to know who you are, how to go on and where you belong.”45 As a land of extremes, the desert’s beauty and unexpected provision are always balanced against its dangers. Provision and danger are two central characteristics of Yahweh who is the South. Thus, to know the desert, and as a result the South, was to learn to know Yahweh. This deeply seated understanding of Yahweh’s person retained importance for later generations of biblical authors who themselves did not live in or travel to the desert.46 The centrality of the wilderness wandering narratives in Israel’s self-understanding points to the understanding that the covenant community came to know Yahweh and itself in the desert, and should thus,

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seek to cultivate the ethos of wilderness life in its dependence on Yahweh as its primary way of being in the world. In addition to overt associations of deities with mountains, we can consider superhuman powers or ancestral personages that are present through the experiential spaces of stone. The example of the Ojibwa peoples of northern Canada demonstrates how certain stones could come to be understood as living entities; in this case, as the embodiments of Ojibwa ancestors. Among the Ojibwa, stones have not only the ability to move on their own but also to speak, representing a living connection between past and present.47 Similar assumptions may be at play among the many Neolithic menhirs found throughout Brittany.48 Closer chronologically and geographically to the Levant, we find in Hurrian and later Hittite mythology the rock monster, Ullikumi, born of the relations between the god Kumarbi and a female rock.49 Proclaimations that that Yahweh is a “rock” abound in the biblical corpus (Deut 32:4,15,31,37; 1 Sam 2:2; 2 Sam 22:32, 23:3; Ps 18:31, 42:9, 89:26; Isa 26:4, 44:8; Hab 1:12). Depictions of Yahweh as a rock who gave birth (‫)ילד‬ to Israel may resonate with the broader phenomenon of stone-ancestor associations (Deut 32:18). Isaiah 30:29 beautifully combines images of pilgrimage with those of a divine rock and mountain, ‫כּהולְך בּחליל לבוא בהר־יהוה אל־צור ישׂראל‬, “… when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel.” An early pilgrimage site, Beth-Zur translates to the “house of (the) rock” (Josh 15:58; 2 Chr 11:7; Neh 3:16). Genesis 49:24 merges the images of Yahweh as a warrior like Baal, a bull-like El, a shepherd, and a rock, and sets the bovine and montane depictions in parallel to one another. In 2 Sam 22:32, a hymn of praise for Yahweh asks, “Who is God (El) but Yahweh, and who is a rock except our God?” demonstrating the merger of rock imagery with the convergence of El and Yahweh. Although requiring further etymological analysis, there are several instances in the biblical corpus where the name Zur (‫ )צור‬appears in relationship to Midianites (Num 25:15, 31:8; Josh 13:21), perhaps further enunciating Yahweh-Midianite-rock-mountain connections. The use of standing stones in contexts of mobility appears fairly frequently throughout the biblical narrative. Jacob twice sets up stone “pillars” (massebah) at Luz (Beth-el). In the first instance, he does so while making a vow that Yahweh will be his personal god if Yahweh will travel with him and bless him while he sojourns as a member of Laban’s household (Gen 28:18-22). In the second, he does so to commemorate a conversation with the Divine and offers libations of oil and drink (Gen 35:14). Shortly after this narrative moment, Jacob’s wife Rachel dies in childbirth while they are journeying southward. At her roadside grave, he erects another massebah in her remembrance (Gen 35:20). To commemorate the receipt of the Torah, Moses constructs an altar and sets twelve massē bôt up at the foot of Mt. Sinai (Exod 24:4). Joshua twice echoes this memory when he sets up (‫ )קום‬twelve stones – either as a collection of menhirs/massē bôt or as a cairn – first, in the Jordan river and then in Gilgal

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to mark Yahweh’s salvific deeds. In another example, Samuel sets up a single stone of remembrance to commemorate the defeat of the Philistines (1 Sam 7:12). His identification of the stone as a helper (‫ )אבן העזר‬is followed by the etiological explanation, “Until this point, Yahweh has helped us.” Such acts relay, on one hand, the notion that stones could serve as visual reminders of human commitments but, could also intimate the belief that stones maintained their own abilities to hear and remember events. That several biblical texts stridently oppose the use of massē bôt or call for existing ones to be destroyed (Lev 26:1; Deut 7:7, 12:3, 16:22; Ezek 23:24, 34:13; Mich 5:10, Hos 4:13, 10:1-2; Jer 2:20) may be a sign that associations of Yahweh with actual rocks, and not simply in a metaphorical sense, was a major concern among religious elites. Genesis is also replete with stories of ancestral personages building altars to various gods while they journey to, in, and beyond the land of Canaan (Gen 12:7, 13:18, 26:25, 33:20, 35:7). According to biblical tradition, many of these served as sites of propitiation, thanksgiving, and petition, often for multiple generations since it is assumed that such accounts are intended, at least in part, to provide etiological explanations for certain popular cult or pilgrimage sites in later periods. Modern migrants passing through the Sonoran Desert often construct altars of remembrance along their route that commemorate both positive and negative experiences.50 Such sites serve as points of religious engagement for other migrants who also relate their own struggles and successes at such sites. Both single stones and piles of stones are used for a covenant-making ceremony between Jacob and Laban in Gen 41:43-55 in which God is the chief arbiter. This event demonstrates the concerns a family of origin maintains when its members, in this case, daughters and their offspring, migrate for marriage. At stake in this arrangement is not simply the safety of the family members who will be at a distance, but also concerns for the continuity of family wealth. Throughout the Negev, northwestern Arabia, and regions of the southern Transjordan, archaeologists have found cairns built along transit ways.51 The presence of such cairns throughout may relate to Yahweh worship among Shasu or Midianite tribes.52 Cairns could also have been associated with altar construction. While cairns are not typically sacrificial altars, they often represent seminal moments of religious encounter or experience, and are therefore sites of remembrance, thanksgiving, and petition. Cairns may have been used with the shared assumption that they were miniature mountains from which to access the divine. If Yahweh was understood to be, at least in some respects, a deified mountain or rock, perhaps cairns were understood by some practitioners to be images of Yahweh or points of access to him in whichever location they were built.53 Exodus 20 mentions the creation of an altar using uncut stones and may provide a link between cairns and altars as ritual installations where notions of aniconism are connected to the practice of leaving stones undressed. Deuteronomy captures changing perceptions of Yahweh’s mountainous character and associations. On one hand, writers present Yahweh as a rock

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that is identified with the mountain of Horeb – a seemingly mobile mountain that moves from the wilderness to Nebo – and with the rescue of people from Egypt. On the other hand, the primary momentum of Deuteronomy pushes readers to see that Yahweh has chosen a place to establish his name and is, therefore, no longer on the move, even though he remains Israel’s Rock. For the Deuteronomist, Torah, now inscribed in stone and on the people’s hearts, comes to be a new mobile form of divine presence. Yahweh’s movement, either as a deified mountain or as divine presence that moves from mountain to mountain also played a role in polemics between the Northern and Southern Kingdoms. Judahite texts maintain the assumption that although Yahweh was originally associated with Israel, his allegiance had transferred to Judah. The contents of such a polemic are not simply that Israel was neglected in favor of Judah, but that Judah has replaced Israel. Psalm 78:56-72 exemplifies this perspective. In it, Yahweh realigns his covenant loyalties and migrates – either as a moving mountain or from abode to abode – from Shiloh to Jerusalem. In addition to supporting Yahweh’s preference for Judah, this text potentially contains content regarding the historical events of northern migrations and that of associated religious traditions from the North to the South.

Yahweh’s Mobility and His Rise to the Head of the Pantheon Attending to the question of Yahweh’s mobility begs additional questions regarding the physical and cultural avenues by which Yahweh became Israel and Judah’s god. Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic historical texts, consistently enunciate the claim that Israel’s Yahweh religion, which they brought with them upon entering the Land, is distinct from the religion(s) of those groups that the texts’ authors identify as Canaanites. For some time, biblical scholars took the texts’ accounts as history. Often for lack of evidence and not by intention, scholarly presentations flatten what had to have been a complex process by assuming a linear growth trajectory of Yahwism in the Levant. We should, however, envision the emergence of Yahwism as a phenomenon with multiple simultaneous points of development. Rather than presupposing that a single group had to import Yahwism to one region before it was disseminated to another, our reconstructions should assume Yahwism emerged in a fashion similar to other religions, with multiple actors sharing, adopting, and adapting practices from others with waxing and waning momentum across space and time. Since there is no mention of the Shasu in any biblical texts, Mark Smith reckons that the biblical memory of Yahweh coming from Midian must be “a secondary mediation” whereby the Shasu shared their Yahweh worship with Midianites.54 In opposition, Miller argues that the Egyptian evidence relating the Shasu with a land of Yaa/Yah/Yau is not evidence that Yahweh lived in that land, nor that the Shasu venerated Yahweh there.55 By Miller’s account,

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Yaweh was originally a Midianite deity that was secondarily adopted by Shasu and Shasu-like tribes who became a conduit of Yahweh worship to the northern stretches of Canaan and one of the means by which his identity as a highly mobile deity was established.56 Regardless of the direction of exchange between Shasu and Midianite peoples, it is reasonable to assume that members of both groups came to eventually settle in Canaan. In this scenario, worship of Yahweh could have percolated throughout different regions, along with collective stories of migration and desert journeying that later merged with stories of escape from Egypt. As the picture of Yahwistic origins has come into focus, so too has the reality that in the process of becoming Israel and Judah’s chief deity, Yahweh’s personality was broadened by the addition of attributes from other Syrian and Canaanite deities.57 Most notable among these are El and Baal, whose characteristics were assimilated to Yahweh both separately (Ps 20, 29; 89:9-10; Hosea 2) and jointly (Psalm 18). El’s wife would also come to be Yahweh’s consort, though this assimilation would generate much resistance from biblical authors.58 Smith has extensively discussed these associations and identifications of Yahweh with El, Baal, and others using the terminology of translation, convergence, and differentiation. I direct readers to his multiple monographs on the subjects for fuller analysis while commenting on a few elements here.59 The process of translation is the avenue by which people come to see other deities as being equally real as their own deities.60 Convergence and differentiation are two possible outcomes of the broader processes of identity negotiation which take place through cross-cultural contact and translation. Both convergence and differentiation are processes by which deities’ relationships with one another are clarified, as well as the potential means by which their capacities are equated, adopted, and adapted. Translational activities are not merely cognitive endeavors, but are also present in other aspects of lived experience. As such, translation is bound to the practical concerns of seeking to identify similarities and differences between the causal capacities of different divinities, their powers, and the application of those powers in present situations.61 The dominant cultural and religious paradigms of Central Highland inhabitants were West Semitic.62 Therefore, many of them already venerated Baal, El, and Asherah. Those who did not worship Baal, El, or Asherah outright, at least likely recognized that these deities were real deities. It is this later case which probably led to the merger of some of their characteristics with Yahweh who came to the pantheon as an outsider. Israelite and Judahite worship of Yahweh was complementary to that of other deities for practitioners who sought to build comprehensive religious toolkits. With Yahweh’s acquisition of these deities’ attributes, one’s religious tool kit could remain equally diverse and effective with fewer deities. If the theophoric element in the name Isra-el is the proper name of a deity rather than a general noun for a god, it may indicate that at least a contingent of the group who came to be known as Israel venerated El as their chief deity.

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Based on the conclusion that El is a proper noun, several scholars suggest that biblical poetry and onomastic data offer complementary evidence that El was the original god of the Exodus.63 Evidence mustered includes Num 23:22 and 24:8 wherein the deity who rescues Israel from Egypt has “horns like a wild ox,” a description that aligns with the Bull imagery often associated with El (Cf. KTU 1.3: 35-35). These passages bear similarity to Deut 33:17 in which the tribe of Joseph is said to have the same “horns of a wild ox,” that are bestowed on him by “the one who dwells on Sinai” (‫)שׁכני סנה‬. While it is accepted that various Levantine groups experienced the harsh realities of Egyptian labor regimes in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, some of which resulted in migrations of Canaanite populations to Egypt whereby they imported West Semitic deities, we have little (if any) evidence that El worship persisted among those who relocated to Egypt.64 Instead, we more commonly find instances of West Semitic storm deities, such as Teshub and Baal, who are later assimilated with the Egyptian god Seth.65 Egyptian references to storm deities also reflect common West Semitic motifs of such deities having horns, riding on the backs of bulls, and carrying a bow; all characteristics that align better with imagery of Baal rather than El. Bietak suggests that Temple III at Tell el-Dab’a was dedicated either to Haddad or Baal-Zaphon, based on its similarities to Levantine/Syrian broad-room temples and on iconographic evidence on a cylinder seal found at the site depicting what appears to be a Baal-like deity treading on two mountains with an arm raised in familiar fashion.66 The temple’s southern orientation may indicate that the assimilation between Haddad/Baal and Seth had already taken place since Seth’s traditional home was to the south in Upper Egypt.67 Other biblical content marshaled for the claim that El was the god of the Exodus is that the names of some of the earliest priests in Israel’s history, particularly those associated with Shiloh, which are understood to be Egyptian names (Exod 2:10; Num 3:32-39; 1 Sam 2:12-36).68 Shiloh’s long history of usage makes it difficult to know if it was always a place of religious significance, and if so, what deities might have been associated with the site at different points in history. Around the time of Israel’s emergence, it is likely that both El and Baal were venerated there. It may even be the case that worship of Yahweh was growing in prominence at Shiloh by this time. The names of the priests at Shiloh are not necessarily indicative of Egyptian origins. Instead, their names may be Egyptian ones given to local functionaries who served as part of an Egyptian-controlled administrative system in Canaan at the end of the Bronze Age, much like the story of Joseph records him receiving a new name. If the priests are instead Egyptians who have been transplanted to Canaan to serve as religious specialists, there is still no guarantee that they brought the god(s) venerated at the site along with them. They simply could have been tasked with maintaining the religious rites of local populations at the site. Nevertheless, we have scant evidence for the presence of El-worship outside of Syro-Canaanite territories during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity 173

Accounting for the difficulty of proving religious associations through onomastic data, we can examine the names of three functionaries in the ElAmarna texts that may suggest the limited extent of El’s presence in southern Canaan before the inscribing of the Merneptah Stele. One of these, Yabni-Ilu, was the “mayor” of Lachish.69 Another, Sab-Ilu was a Canaanite functionary who was trapped in a sieged town but was saved by Abdi-Asirta.70 Finally, Rab(i)-Ilu was a Canaanite functionary who was potentially detained in Egypt when he traveled there as an envoy of Paapu, another “mayor” of one of the Canaanite city-states.71 None of these names are necessarily indicative of El veneration in Egypt. On the contrary, because there is significant evidence of Baal worship in Egypt in the New Kingdom period, the -ilu theophoric element likely referred to Baal or Seth rather than El.72 The greatest difficulty with the hypothesis that El was the god of the exodus is the underlying assumption that the group who are known on the Merneptah Stela as Israel must be associated with the exodus group named in the biblical text. A polity known as Israel could have come to exist before it subsumed various groups of migrants from Egypt and elsewhere who brought with them their worship of Yahweh and stories of escape. As Smith convincingly argues, there is no evidence of an El cult among early Israel that is distinct from Yahweh, and that the biblical texts do not record any polemics against El.73 Thus, even though Yahweh was present early on among some of the central highland settlers, his association with El most likely occurred sometime shortly after the creation of the Merneptah Stele. It seems far more likely that migrants from the south would rely on the capacities of a highly mobile warrior deity – especially one that could have traveled with them from their ancestral sites of origin and defended them in liminal territories – than on the relatively farremoved head of the West Semitic pantheon who was not known for interjecting into situations of human concern.74 With these considerations in mind, I suggest that Yahweh became a popular deity for southern movers from various regions. Some of these movers already venerated Yahweh while others came to know of him in their migrations through the Sinai, Negev, and Transjordan, where they encountered Shasu, Midianite/Kenite-type populations. This deity’s mountainous characteristics would provide an entry point for his assimilation with and eventual supplanting of El, while his storm and warrior characteristics would align with those of Baal, both of whom were already prominent deities among the people such groups came to live with and whose name they would assume as their own (Exod 6:2-3). It may well be the result of this process we observe in reading Hosea 13:4 which states, (‫)ואנכי יהוה אלהיך מארץ מצרים‬, “I am Yahweh, your god since the land of Egypt” (Cf. Exod 18:1, 9–10). The processes by which Baal and Yahweh were assimilated maintain an added level of complexity that requires elaboration. Smith has explored additional processes of differentiation by which biblical authors sought to distinguish elements of Yahweh’s person from other West Semitic antecedents and analogs, such as Baal.75 This impulse was likely due in part to the fact

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that Baal and Yahweh’s original domains overlapped considerably (1 Kgs 18:16-45). The biblical authors do not shy away from the fact that worship of Baal was common (Judg 2:11-13; 1 Sam 7:3-4; 1 Kings 18). They do, however, present a picture in which worship of Baal is undertaken to the exclusion of Yahweh. This polemical representation does not do justice to the reality that many worshipped Baal alongside Yahweh. Both deities were warrior deities. Both maintained homes on sacred mountains; Baal on Sapon and Yahweh on Zion. Although, Yahweh would come to claim Sapon as his own (Ps 48:2; Isa 14:13). Baal’s association with storms, particularly with thunder, was easily equated with Yahweh’s tremendous voice that was associated with thunder and the seismic rumbles of earthquakes and volcanoes (Exodus 19; Ps 29:3-9). Yahweh was unique, however, in his overt associations with stones and mountains. Yahweh’s character as a god from the desert South meshed well with Canaanite understandings of Baal as a seaskirting mobile deity who is accompanied in his retinue by Resheph, the god of pestilence (Hab 3:4-5; KTU 1.4:18–19; 1.32:3).76 Other biblical passages overtly disavow Yahweh’s need for a retinue. For example, Deut 32:10–12 states, ‫ימצאהו בארץ מדבר וּבתהוילל ישׁמן… יהוה בדד ינחנו ואין עמו אל נכר‬, “[Yahweh] found [Jacob] in a desert land in a howling wilderness waste … Yahweh alone guided him; no foreign god was with him.” Still other texts implicitly argue that Yahweh’s powers, though similar to Baal’s were either more legitimate or actually always Yahweh’s (1 Kgs 18:16-45; Ps 77:16-19; Zech 9:14, 10:1). Some scholars have explored associations between Yahweh and Seth.77 Like Yahweh and Baal, Seth was a god of war and storms.78 His predilection for causing chaos and undermining ma’at led to him being a deity of the lands outside of Egypt, and therefore, a patron god of Egyptians who had migrated out of the Nile Valley and Delta into the greater Levant.79 While many questions arise from these claims, connections between the two do illuminate their shared nature as migrating deities. Flynn’s comments align with Miller’s understanding of Yahweh’s southern-ness, “Coming from the south is more about YHWH’s liminal status and marginality in these early texts, as the scribes who gathered those early expressions imagined the origins of YHWH.”80 The potential for Yahweh to be associated with both steppe and mountainous landscapes may align with Seth’s own association with the steppe. It is, therefore, possible to see how Yahweh, like Seth, could come to be associated with groups of highly mobile individuals – and even migrants from the South to other regions of the Levant – even if the two deities were never equated with one another. Israel and Judah’s shared religious heritage was fused through the systems of mobility that brought cross-regional interactions. Recognizing this foregoing pattern of Yahweh’s rise to prominence, I suggest that at some point, Yahweh’s mobility – as an attribute of divine power – was seen to be more comprehensive or expansive than other autochthonous West Semitic deities. Yahwism came to be the dominant religion of Israel and Judah not through

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top-down measures, but as Yahweh-centered family religion was adopted by the royal establishments.81 That is to say, the royal classes in Israel and Judah adopted Yahweh as a national god because he was already the most popular god among the people in those respective locales. The 9th century Mesha Stele attests to the fact that, by that time, Yahweh had risen to the position of primary association with a royal household.82 During the Early Iron Age, the social structures of various groups, some of whom were highly mobile, contributed to the adoption of Yahweh as a deity of choice, in part, because his mobility enabled him to maintain efficacy across geographies. The chiefdom structures of the Early Iron Age Central Highlands emerged from antecedent forms that underwent negotiation as groups met, engaged in conflict, and eventually merged.83 A highly mobile war/storm deity garnered great traction among the various groups that coalesced in the Central Highlands, in part, because he was easily associated with other mobile gods like Baal and Hadad whom some in these groups almost certainly already venerated. In fact, before the 9th century, Hadad and Baal were identified with one another in Canaan and Syria.84 While there is a biblical tradition of moving the Yahwistic cult from Shiloh to Jerusalem, there is no reason to assume that Judah’s exposure to Yahwism only came from northern influences (1 Sam 4; 2 Sam 6). Northern influence is indeed likely, but the earlier interregional mobility of pastoral populations in what would become Judah would also have repeatedly exposed inhabitants to northwest Arabian, Transjordan, and northeast Egyptian conduits of religiosity that would have included Yahwistic elements. The rise of the monarchy also required military consolidation on multiple fronts. On one hand, the coalescing polities in Israel and Judah built their own defenses up against potential near enemies. On the other, the emergence of significantly larger regional powers such as the Neo-Assyrian empire also required strategic military planning.85 These political developments cannot be separated from other instances of insecurity and mobility in Israel and Judah’s histories. Thus, Finkelstein and Silberman argue that biblical narratives of David’s rise to power, despite their exaggerated portrayals of the extent of his rule, contain a morsel of historical facticity that a leader like David and his band of fighter-followers were members of the Habiru class.86 If such a claim is true, it adds an important layer to David’s association with Yahweh. As a highly mobile war god, Yahweh suited the basic religious needs of a group of marauders who were themselves frequently on the move. As David’s power increased and he began to rule over the disparate sub-polities throughout an expanding Judah, demand for a deity who could appeal to the people’s mobile lifeways and heritage also likely increased. This by no means points to Judahite monotheism or even monolatry, but simply to the reality that the particular needs affected by mobile lifeways were met by appealing to Yahweh as one god among others. So far, I have argued that the original tradents of Yahwism were peoples for whom mobility was a central aspect of life, and who needed a deity that

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could meet the demands of life on the move. Yet, it is important to note that whether Yahweh was uniquely mobile among other deities has not been the focus of this investigation. At certain points, Yahweh’s mobility shares characteristics with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian modes of divinity on the move we have already encountered. Yet, at other points, Yahweh’s mobility is importantly different. He is unique from other ancient Near Eastern deities in that he does not travel as an envoy between kingdoms or visit other gods. The one instance in which the Ark of the Covenant is kidnapped (1 Sam 4:2–6:17) indicates that biblical authors recognized the trope of “godnapping” and wanted to clarify that Yahweh held power over Israel’s enemies wherever he went. Thus, his travel to the temple of Dagan is not a diplomatic mission. Likewise, though he sits in the Divine Council (Ps 29:1; 82:1; Job 1:6) he rarely travels with a retinue as was common for deities in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Mobility and Yahweh’s Personhood in Judah’s Bible Characterizations of divinity and of divine personhood are responsive to the functions and outcomes of mobility. Biblical authors narrate Israel’s history as one in which Yahweh’s people come to know who their god is, how he acts, and who they are in relation to him, through migration. Ancient pre-textual traditions foreground Yahweh’s Southern origins/nature and his capacities for movement and migration (Deut 33:2; Judg 5:4-5; Ps 68:8-9,18; Hab 3:3,7,10; Zech 9:14). Yahweh’s mobility is also on display in later episodes of the Divine meeting ancestral personages in contexts of travel, whereby he directs or leads them to various sites of covenantal importance (Genesis 12–14; 22; 28; 32). Fundamental elements of covenant theology emerge across biblical narratives through key moments of movement, whether through calling, sending, accompaniment, or rescue. Yahweh’s choice of Israel as a people, his mediation of the covenant through exilic punishment, and his repeated salvific actions turn on experiences of human and divine movement/migration. Collective memories of exodus and exile are imbued with imagery of a highly mobile God who travels with, for, and away from his people (Exodus 25–26, 36–37; Num 7:1-6; Ezekiel 1–10). Likewise, Israel’s choice of Yahweh as their God is reified in moments of movement (Gen 28:20-21). In naming monarchical and subsequent periods as the most prolific times of biblical composition and redaction, scholars note a general movement toward a centralization of theology and cult by which family and parochial religiosities were subjugated to a Jerusalem-centric version of Yahwism. The geographic centralization of Yahwistic worship was a means of eliding extant household and civic religious structures with those of the royal elites while concentrating the flow of economic and religious actors into the city of Jerusalem (Deut 12:13-14). Yahweh’s mobility would come under increasing limits by a priestly scribal class, who had become comparatively sedentary themselves, and who maintained that Yahweh’s mobility was also

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confined to the past. Through the metanarrative of Yahweh’s past mobility, biblical authors drew Israel’s historical religious pluriformity into coherence. In the end, the same scribes would operationalize the trope of a highly mobile deity to make the argument that Israel had only one God. Deuteronomy and the books of Samuel and Kings document Yahweh’s transition from a life of wilderness itinerancy to one wherein God “settles down.” This is especially apparent in the Deuteronomistic writings that recount Yahweh’s journeys culminating in his selection of a place where he will “set his name” and in the Deuteronomic language of Yahweh as the transcendent “god of Heaven and earth” (Deut 4:39; Cf. Ps 146:6). Even within these texts, which are by and large in favor of Yahweh establishing a permanent residence, visible tensions emerge regarding the nature of the location. Thus, the questions of whether the dwelling of Yahweh is meant to be in a city, on a particular mountain, or among a people forms the basis of intertextual conversation. Moreover, the books of Samuel and Kings deal with the secondary question of humans undertaking house/temple-building on behalf of the divine since Yahweh’s selection of a place to set his name does not necessarily require that he have a permanent abode. Yahweh’s elevation in Jerusalem, and his deepening connection to a particular place led to the emergence of Zion-theology. With Yahweh only accessible from Jerusalem, his characteristics as a non-autochthonous deity, an attendant traveler of Israel’s ancestors, and as an exodus leader were maintained as historical truths but cordoned to the past. Certain mobile characteristics of Yahweh were preserved among storm and solar imagery originally associated with other deities but, by and large, it was understood that Yahweh had “set his name” (Deut 12:4-7, 11) in a particular location and need not again be on the move.87 This emplaced theology would hold for a time, given that the Neo-Assyrian destruction of Jerusalem was averted. Yet, in the wake of repeated Neo-Babylonian incursions and the Jerusalemite elite’s experience of exile, discussions of Yahweh’s mobility would once again come to the fore as questions of his ability and willingness to travel into exile with his people or to rescue them could not be resolved unanimously. The experience of exile forced a dramatic reevaluation of scribal religiosities. Through repeated experiences of migration, Judah’s civic religion, though generally conservative in nature, had to be adapted in order to maintain efficacy and not become obsolete. In the wake of changing worship paradigms that were informed by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and resultant shifting centres of religious powers, textually bound forms of religiosity grew in both prominence and pluriformity. Responses to the reemergence of Yahweh’s mobility were by no means uniform, as the biblical corpus retains remnants of lasting theological differences that grew out of different conceptions of Yahweh’s capacities for movement. While Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah agree that Yahweh’s temple was central for worship and Yahweh’s home, they conceive of his person, and specifically his mobility, in different ways in the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction. The variant

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theologies contained in these texts can be attributed in part to competing perceptions of divine mobility. Jeremiah envisions Yahweh plucking and pulling Judeans up from the land, and counsels those who have been removed to seek the shalom of the Babylonian cities in which they now dwell (Jer 1:10, 31:28). Likewise, he urges those attempting flight to Egypt to remain in the land, citing Yahweh’s own words that he will not withhold his wrath or protect them from destruction in Egypt (Jeremiah 42). Throughout the book, the primary message is that Yahweh will remain in the land, despite the absence of the people.88 Ezekiel and Isaiah’s understandings of divine presence and mobility stand in contrast to those of Jeremiah. Ezekiel envisions the Divine Presence leaving its seat in the Temple and traveling into exile before later returning and dwelling there forever (Ezekiel 1–11, 43). Likewise, Isaiah describes the return of the remnant of Judah as a second exodus, led by none other than Yahweh, who has traveled to Babylon to rescue his peoples (Isaiah 40–45). Among those changes which took place along the way to Judaism’s emergence and its characterization as “a religion of the book,” we must also include in our investigation an aspect of religiosity that likely predated the official constitution of Judaism but came to fullness in the Exilic and postExilic periods. Members of the Exilic community not only wrestled with the question of divine mobility, but also came to understand their sacred texts as inhabitable spaces. In this matrix, narratives of Israel’s origins and experiences of coming to know their God function not only as historical retellings or as theological metanarrative, but as omni-temporal sites of religious engagement and re-enactment that placed recipients of the texts squarely in the middle of the migratory journeys told within the texts. The Deuteronomic authors capture this notion in the retelling of the moment Moses gathers the people on the Plains of Moab and reiterates the commandments from Sinai/Horeb (Deuteronmy 5). He begins by transferring the historical moment of the Sinai episode from the generation who experienced it directly to their offspring, who in actuality, did not yet exist. We read in Deut 5:3, “It was not with our ancestors that Yahweh made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.” The expectation for subsequent recipients of this text is that they are to situate themselves in the audience standing before Moses as ones who have experienced Yahweh’s liberation and the wilderness journey. In the pre-Exilic context, these accounts facilitated the reliving of a migrantory past without having to be on the move. Such texts subsequently came to be a means by which recipients could engage the realities of a mobile past and a mobile God in their own new and changing contexts of mobility. In the contexts of exile, the text became a site of dwelling for both the covenant community and Yahweh. Torah, as something that can be carried both physically—as one carries scrolls—and internally—as one incises its teachings on their heart, became a central medium by which practitioners accessed and aligned themselves with Yahweh in absence of a Temple-oriented cult.

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Notes 1 Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 173, 191–98. Cf. Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 142–45; The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 47–57. 2 For a book-length treatment of this specific topic see, James S. Anderson, Monotheism and Yahweh’s Appropriation of Baal, LHBOTS 617 (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Cf. Smith, Early History of God, 80–107. 3 Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 139–43; Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 142–43. 4 Seth L. Sanders, “When the Personal Became Political: An Onomastic Perspective on the Rise of Yahwism,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 4 (2015): 78–105, 59. 5 For a helpful introduction to etymologies of Yahweh see, Lester L. Grabbe, Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 151–52; Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, trans. Robert Geuss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 32–34. See also Andrea D. Saner, “Too Much to Grasp”: Exodus 3:13-15 and the Reality of God (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2015), 13–20; Earnst Axel Knauf, “Yahwe,” Vetus Testamentum 34 (1984): 467–72; Mark S Smith. “YHWH’s Original Character: Questions about an Unknown God.” in The Origins of Yahwism, Eds. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 484, (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 23–44. 6 For a helpful introduction to the discussion see, Martin Leuenberger, “YHWH’s Provenance from the South: A New Evaluation of the Arguments pro and contra,” in The Origins of Yahwism, eds. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 157–79. 7 Karel van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 159–60. 8 S. Matthias Köckert, “Die Theophanie des Wettergottes in Psalm 18,” in Kulturgeschichten. Altorientalische Studien für Volkert Haas zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Thomas Richter, Doris Prechel, Jörg Klinger (Saarbrüken: Saarbrüker, 2001), 209–26; “Wandlungen Gottes im antiken Israel,” Berliner theologische Zeitschrift 22 (2005): 3–36; Reinhard Müller, “The Origins of YHWH in Light of the Earliest Psalms,” in The Origins of Yahwism, eds. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 207–36; Heinrich Pfeiffer, “The Origin of YHWH and its Attestation,” in The Origins of Yahwism, eds. Jürgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 115–44. 9 Heinrich Pfeiffer, Jahwes Kommen von Süden (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005), 82, 86. 10 Leuenberger, “YHWH’s Provenance from the South,” 163–68. 11 Leuenberger, 161. 12 van der Toorn, Becoming Disapora Jews, 159–60, 167–68. Cf. Gen 35:7. 13 Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 69–78. 14 Robert D. Miller II, “The Origins of Yahweh,” (Talk given at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., February 13, 2018); Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 39–40; Cf. Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (London: Continuum, 2001), 250–51. 15 Joseph Naveh, “Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Cave,” Israel Exploration Journal 13 (1963): 74–92. 16 Eric Wagner, The Mountain’s Shadow: Personified Mountains and Character Representation in Hebrew Bible Narrative, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, Forthcoming), 5. 17 Valeria Turizzianni, “Beyond Politics: Religion and Symbolism at the Borders of Egypt,” in Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East, eds. Sarah Mohr and Shane M. Thompson (University of Colorado Press, 2022), 103–38, 111–14.

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18 Turizzianni, 117. 19 Callimachus, “Hymn 4 to Delos,” in Hymns and Epigrams, LCL 129, 15ff; 153ff; Philostratus the Younger, “Imagines 1,” in Philostratus Elder, Philostratus Younger, Callistratus, LCL 256. The conflation of islands and mountains as hierophantic sites makes sense in light of an understanding of islands as mountains of the sea. Cf. Christy Constantakopoulou, The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007) 116–17. 20 Cf. Terry F. Kleeman, “Mountain Deities in China: The Domestication of the Mountain God and the Subjugation of the Margins,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114 (1994): 226–38. 21 Wagner, The Mountain’s Shadow, 2–3. 22 For critical spatial analysis of such associative processes see, Robert D. Miller II, The Dragon, the Mountain, and the Nations: An Old Testament Myth, Its Origins, and Its Afterlives (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 281–86. 23 Nicolas Wyatt, Space and Time in the Religious Life of the Ancient Near East (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 147–57. 24 For an excellent set of essays related to this topic see, Christos Kakalis and Emily Goetsch, eds., Mountains, Mobilities, & Movement (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018). 25 For a full argument of the use of the term as a gentilic see, Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 26 Römer, Invention of God, 38–39, 82–85. This short form (yah) of the name Yahweh appears as a suffix theophoric element and independently as a “liturgical variant” of the name for God (Exod 15:2; Isa 12:2) Römer, 28. Römer also argues that the pronunciation of the divine name as Yahû or Yahô, as attested in 4QpapLXXLevb, is more likely than that of Yahweh. Römer, 30–32. 27 Thomas Schneider, “The First Documented Occurrence of the God Yahweh? (Book of the Dead Princeton, ‘Roll 5’,” JANER 7 (2007): 113-20. See also, Römer, Invention of God, 44; Cf. Thomas Dozeman, God on the Mountain: A Study of Redaction, Theology and Canon in Exodus 19–24 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 12–15, 19–35. With his language of “metaphor” and “metonymy” Dozeman does not say outright that the mountain in Exodus 19–24 is to be identified as God but rather that the boundaries between the signifier and the signified are purposely blurred so that the reader assumes the divine presence is inseparably associated with the mountain. One thing that Dozeman asserts with certitude is that the mountain and the divine presence are static in Exodus 19–24, meaning that neither migrate. While this is true for the moments during which the people congregate at the base of the mountain, the broader contours of the text show that both the people and divine presence traveled to the mountain (32–33). Later, Dozeman demonstrates that the priestly redaction of the text causes the divine presence to become more mobile as it descends the mountain to cut a covenant with the people (106–20). 28 Raphael Giveon, Les Bédouins Shosou des documents égyptiens (Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 100. Cf. Fleming, Yahweh before Israel, 55. 29 Römer, Invention of God, 44. See also Allen’s discussion of Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel’s analysis of the formulation which suggests that Yahweh is a distinct entity from any of the mountains, including Sinai. Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 262–63. 30 “The Deir ‘Alla Plaster Inscriptions,” trans. Baruch A. Levine, (COS 2.27, 140–45). 31 Knauf argues that the term likely corresponds to the Hebrew ‫שַדי‬ ָׂ , or field. If this is the case, the argument still stands that such open lands were often associated with the steppe lands, which are elevated plains, and therefore, mountains of a kind. Ernst Axel Knauf,

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32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39

40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

“Shadday” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons, 2nd ed., eds. Karel van der Toorn and Bob Becking (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 749–53; See also, Theodore J. Lewis, The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 101–9. For the specific translation “El of the Highlands” see, Mark Leuchter, The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 60. Juan Manuel Tebes, “Investigating the Painted Pottery Traditions of the First Millennium BCE Northwestern Arabia and Southern Levant: Contexts of Discovery and Painted Decorative Motives,” ARAM 27 (2015): 255–82. Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 115–48. Miller, 115-48; Tebes, “Painted Pottery Traditions,” 260–64. Othmar Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms, trans. Timothy J. Hallett (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997), 217–18. Keel, 218. Keel, 218. Amazallag’s hypothesis that Yahweh’s jealous personality and actions, as well as his holiness – which are described in the text as qannā’ (‫ – )קנא‬are linked with copper recycling draws on the above-named volcanic metaphors. While examples of Yahweh refining his people, eliminating the unjust through smelting-like activities, and references to his words being refined liked precious metals are abundant (Isa 1:25, 48:10; Jer 6:29; Zech 13:9; Mal 3:2-3; Ps 12:6, 66:10; Prov 17:3), Amzallag’s interpretations of specific textual moments of divine rejuvenation as metallurgical phenomena are unconvincing (Exod 4:1-9). Nissim Amzallag, “Furnace Remelting as the Expression of YHWH’s Holiness: Evidence from the meaning of qannā’ (‫ )קנא‬in the Divine Context,” Journal of Biblical Literature (2015): 233–52. Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, 140. This interpretation rests in part on an interpretation of biblical mentions of the araba as steppe. See Smith, who draws the connection between Baal as “cloud-rider” and Yahweh as “rider over the steppes” (‫)לרכב בערבות‬. Smith, Early History of God, 81. Cf. Mark S. Smith, trans. “The Ba’al Cycle,” in Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, ed. Simon B. Parker (Atlanta: SBL, 1997), 81–180, 124. Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, 277-78. Brodd et al., An Introduction to Religions of the World, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 491–94. Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 41–60. Anne Marie Kitz, “To Be or Not to Be, That is the Question: Yhwh and Ea,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 80 (2018): 191–214; “The Verb *yahwah,” Journal of Biblical Literature 138 (2019): 39–62. Robert D. Miller II, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2021). See also, Saner, “Too Much to Grasp,” 17–20, 109–64, 228–32. By Saner’s account, the nature of Yahweh’s self-revelation is both “concrete and indeterminant.” Saner, 229. Knauf has dissented from the opinion that Yahweh was associated with the meaning of “being” on the grounds that such a characteristic would not have been of efficacy to desert agriculturalists. While Knauf’s exposition of Arabic roots is helpful, his claim falls short; a creator deity who could make things come to life in the harsh environs of the desert would certainly have maintained efficacy. Knauf, “Yahwe,” 469; Cf. Saner, “Too Much to Grasp,” 15–16; Römer, Invention of God, 34. Tilley, Materiality of Stone, 25. Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 41–60. Tim Ingold, Anthropology: Why It Matters (London: Polity, 2018), 17–21. Christopher Tilley, The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology (Oxford: Berg, 2004), 33–86.

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49 “The Song of Ullikummi,” trans. Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., (COS 4.6), 51–57; Cf. Wagner, The Mountain’s Shadow, 17. 50 Juanita Sundberg, “Prayer and Promise along the Migrant Trail,” Geographical Review 103 (2013): 230–33. 51 Richard S. Hess, Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 200–202. 52 Cf. Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 40–41. Cf. “The ‘Sea Peoples’ Records of Ramesses III,” trans. K.A. Kitchen (COS 4.2:14); Papyrus Harris 1; “A Report of Bedouin,” James P. Allen, trans. (COS 3.5:16). 53 Cf. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Massebot Standing for Yhwh: The Fall of a Yhwistic Cult Symbol,” in Worship, Women, and War: Essays in Honor of Susan Niditch, eds. John J. Collins, T.M. Lemos, and Saul M. Olyan (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2015), 99–115, 106–10. 54 Smith, “YHWH’s Original Character,” 23–44; Early History of God, 32–33. 55 Miller, Yahweh: Origins of a Desert God, 79–92. 56 It is also unsurprising, therefore, that by the 14th-13th centuries BCE we find mention of Yahweh as YW with potential connections to Yam (YM) in Ugarit. Römer, Invention of God, 36–38. 57 Smith, Early History of God, 19–159. 58 Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 135–46; Early History of God, 19–60. 59 Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism; Early History of God; God in Translation. 60 Smith, God in Translation, 6. 61 Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 3, 28, 44–54. 62 For a helpful methodological inquiry regarding the use of classificatory terminology such as West Semitic see, Christoph Uehlinger, “Distinctive or Diverse? Conceptualizing Ancient Israelite Religion in Its Southern Levantine Setting,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 4 (2015): 1–24. 63 Mark S. Smith, “Yahweh and the Other Deities of Ancient Israel: Observations on Old Problems and Recent Trends,” in Ein Gotte allein? JHWH-Verehrung und biblischer Monotheismus im Kontext der israelitischen und altorientalischen Religionsgeschichte, eds. Walter Dietrich and M.A. Klpfenstein (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 197–234; Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 146–48; Nicolas Wyatt, “Of Calves and Kings: The Canaanite Dimension in the Religion of Israel,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 6 (1992), 68–91. 64 Keiko Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt: The Hermeneutics of their Existence (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2009). 65 Anna Latifa-Mourad, “On Cultural Interference and the Egyptian Storm God,” in The Enigma of the Hyksos, Vol. 1, ed. Manfred Bietak, CAENL 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 2019), 225–38. 66 Manfred Bietak, “The Spiritual Roots of the Hyksos Elite: An Analysis of Their Sacred Architecture, Part 1,” in The Enigma of the Hyksos, Vol. 1, ed. Manfred Bietak, CAENL 9 (Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 2019), 47–67. 67 Bietak, 60. 68 Smith, Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 147. These names include Moses, Phineahas, Hopni, and Merari. 69 EA, 328:4. 70 EA, 62:26. 71 EA, 170:36; 333:24; Hess cites additional forms by including the onomastic particle ’l along with -ilu in his tally. His argument for the additional name, be-ti-AN is that some instances of El and -’l should be considered as interchangeable in Amarna texts given the propensity for the logogram AN to represent the proper name of the god El

Yahweh: Israel’s Mobile Deity 183

72 73

74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84

85 86 87 88

more than the common noun for a deity. Richard S. Hess, Amarna Personal Names (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 237, 243. Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt, 13–37, 114–16, 129–30, 145–47. Smith, Early History of God, 33–35; Origins of Biblical Monotheism, 141. Biblical texts that describe Yahweh with imagery traditionally ascribed to El include, Ps 29:1-2, 82:1, 89:5-8, 102:28; Job 36:26; Isa 6:1-8, 40:28. Even the biblical record of religious activities at Shiloh, which from most angles looks like the cult of El, depicts those undertakings as the cult of Yahweh (1 Sam 1:21-28). Herrmann, “El,” 274–80; Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt, 154–60. Smith, Early History of God, 54–59. For discussion of iconographic dimension of these interrelationships see, Izak Cornelius, The Iconography of the Canaanite Reshef and Ba‘al: Late Bronze and Iron Age I Periods (ca 1500 – 1000 BCE) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994). See also CAT 1.12 in which Baal is depicted scouring the wilderness on a hunt. “The Wilderness,” trans. Simon B. Parker, Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, ed. Simon B. Parker (Atlanta: SBL, 1997), 188–91. Römer, The Invention of God, 48–49; Shawn W. Flynn, A Story of YHWH: Cultural Translation and Subversive Reception in Israelite History (London: Routledge, 2020), 38–44. Cf. Tazawa, Syro-Palestinian Deities in New Kingdom Egypt, 155. Römer, The Invention of God, 48–49. Flynn, Story of YHWH, 44. Seth Sanders, “‘The Mutation Peculiar to Hebrew Religion:’ Monotheism, Pantheon Reduction or Royal Adoption of Family Religion?” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 14 (2014): 217–27, 224–25; “When the Personal Became Political,” 78–105; Seth Sanders, We see this in the inscription when King Mesha claims to have dedicated the ‫כלי יהוה‬, “vessels of Yahweh” to the Moabite god Chemosh. “The Inscription of King Mesha,” trans. K.A.D. Smelik (COS 2.23 137–38). Cf. Pekka Pitkänen, “The Ecological-Evolutionary Theory, Migration, Settler Colonialism, Sociology of Violence and the Origins of Ancient Israel,” Cogent Social Sciences 2 (2016) doi:10.1080/23311886.2016.1210717. Jonas C. Greenfield, “Hadad,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed., eds. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 377–82. The biblical account of Naaman’s healing (2 Kings 5) may indicate Yahweh’s triump over Hadad as the deity par excellence in a way that mirrors Yahweh’s victory over Baal’s prophets on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). In a related way, the Northern provenance of the Ark of the Covenant traditions may suggest that Yahweh was not the first deity associated with this cultic object. Given Yahweh’s mobile nature, it makes more sense that the Ark traditions initially pertained to a deity that needed human assistance with his circumambulations. The merger of the Ark tradition with Yahwistic veneration was probably a later development and one that contributed to Yahweh’s growing immobility as the cult became centralized in Jerusalem. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Questions about Monotheism in Ancient Israel: Between Archaeology and Texts,” Journal of the Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions 9 (2013): 20–28; Flynn, Story of Yahweh, 84–85. Israel Finkelstein and Neil A. Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible’s Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006), 31–59. In its earlies rendition, the Jerusalem temple may have been a temple of Shamash. Römer, Invention of God,), 99–102, 126–30; See also, Mark S. Smith, “The Near Eastern Background of Solar Language for Yahweh,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 29–39. Eric Trinka, “‘If You Will Only Remain in This Land’: Migration Decision Making and Jeremiah as a Religiously Motivated Nonmover,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 80 (2018): 580–96.

7

Mobility-Informed Religiosity(ies) in Israel and Judah

Identifying Spaces of Religious Life This chapter demonstrates how migration studies and the data on religious identity formation in contexts of mobility can shed light on the ways localized and regional cultures of mobility influenced Israelite and Judahite religious identities. The intention is look for mobility-associated and mobility-informed religiosities in places traditionally investigated as sedentary domains. The process of exploring religious spaces in Israel and Judah also requires attempting to answer questions about the grammars of praxis that constituted those spaces. I have opted to structure my investigation according to the categories of civic and household spaces of religiosity. The hope is that these containers will allow us to focus on the social and mobile aspects of spatial construction that are part of religious life. Both categories include discussion of fixed sites of religious life but are not limited to sedentary perceptions of spatial fixity. Thus, they allow us to explore how religion is both on-the-move and emplaced in the lives of persons in ancient Israel and Judah.

Civic Spaces of Religiosity I employ the phrase civic religiosity as a container for religiosities that 1) take place in spheres beyond the purview of the household’s direct domestic concerns or space and, 2) are performed by persons whose identities are associated with a larger defined group that extends beyond the boundaries of the household. Civic religion is constituted by public activities/rituals that are intended to build greater coherence among members of a polity who are already variously associated with one another. Civic religiosities represent assumptions and practices that are oriented primarily toward the cultivation of group identity and the well-being of group members. As such, civic religiosities are aimed at bolstering attendant political structures that emerge from and enable the group’s daily interactions. Social divisions do not always follow the contours of changing spatial domains. Enactments of civic religiosities may draw upon and overlap with those found in other social or DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-7

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185

religious domains. Therefore, civic religiosities include practices and assumptions engaged at the national scale but also those related to other spheres of social engagement situated between the national level and the household. The spaces of civic religiosities found among textual and archaeological sources span broad spectrums of location, use, and organization. Some sites were small publicly accessible shrines with seemingly little to no remnants of administrative infrastructure while others display greater degrees of administration and likely served the needs of larger populations. While distinct from household religiosities in meaningful ways, civic religiosities in ancient Israel and Judah were also tied to personal and familial religious life, with the household present in varying degrees through implicit structures and explicit actors. For example, Israel and Judah’s civic religiosities emerged from the social networks of kinship that predated the structures of statehood in either place. Their core practices emulated aspects of broader West Semitic religiosities.1 Yet, despite early attachments to El, Yahweh became the focal point of veneration in Israel and Judah’s civic religious milieu. Like Israel and Judah’s broader social organization, civic religiosities were originally largely decentralized.2 As greater socio-political centralization took place, Yahwism became the religion by which monarchical rule was justified. The Assyrian-instigated downfall of Israel put Judah in a place to justify its centralization of the Yahweh cult in Jerusalem and to lead the broader project of pantheon reduction. The biblical authors provide information regarding the particulars of certain civic religiosities, but ultimately, they prescribe a form of Yahwism that synthesizes civic and household religiosities in hopes of eliding domains of praxis. Biblical editors in the exilic and post-exilic contexts sought to create a written tradition in which this uniform religiosity was put forth as a historical fact. The Question of Temples in Israel and Judah

Comparison between Late Bronze Age monumental temples and the religious architecture of the Early Iron Age makes clear that several transitions took place regarding the construction and perhaps function of religious spaces.3 In contradistinction to their Bronze Age predecessors, the more numerous but smaller Early Iron Age settlements lacked monumental cultic architecture. To acknowledge this architectural difference is not to state that there are no Early Iron Age monumental structures. Just north of Jerusalem, Tell el-Ful has been linked by some with biblical Gibeah and Saul. A fortress at the site was identified by Albright and Lapp as an Iron I monumental public structure. This conclusion has, however, garnered both support and dissent among archaeologists.4 Even with the dating of the tower at Tell el-Ful contested, the “Solomonic” gates at Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo, as well as the pillared buildings at Shiloh, demonstrate that monumental structures existed in the earlier parts of the Iron Age. However, while the Late Bronze Age material record witnesses the proliferation of large bipartite and tripartite temple

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structures throughout the Levant, a distinctive drop-off in the number of monumental public worship spaces characterizes the Iron Age archaeological record.5 The primary civic religious spaces are smaller open-air sites, shrines in industrial complexes and neighborhoods.6 The differences in Israel and Judah are especially stark when viewed in tandem with the comparative abundance of cultic sites among Israel’s contemporaries such as Philistia, where temples are common throughout the Iron Age.7 In the Late Bronze Age, Egyptian temples dotted the broader region, including at Beth Shean and in the Timna Valley.8 Later inhabitants of Beth Shean, would construct two temples on the previous Egyptian installations.9 Remains in Megiddo also suggest that religious activities may have continued at the Bronze Age temples into the Iron Age, but no new temples were erected in the later period.10 In the Northern city of Dan, a large cult site existed where functionaries likely performed activities typically associated with temples, but the architectural remains of a bi- or tripartite temple have not been found.11 Though unproven by archaeological record as of yet, Samaria may have also had a temple for Yahweh as well as other deities.12 Likewise, in Jerusalem, although no actual remains of an Iron Age temple have been found, it is widely believed that one once stood on the hill now known as the Temple Mount. At Arad, Beersheva, and Horvat Qitmit, we find cultic spaces from the ninth through seventh centuries – some of which were not Israelite – that some scholars have classified as temples.13 The dearth of monumental temples in the Central Highlands in the Early Iron Age is one aspect of religiosity that is often pointed to as an indication of intentional self-distinction by highland populations from their lowland counterparts.14 Accounting for the interplay between migration, ethnogenesis, and religious architecture requires that we evaluate which elements of religious identity and praxis are determined to be non-negotiable and which are open to change as migrants pass through changing environmental, cultural, and social realms. Even though there is no such thing as “migrant religion”, we still recognize that migration causes new ways of doing religion. It is sometimes the case that novel means of praxis become normative. If, as the data overwhelmingly indicates, migrants tend to “do what works” in their religious lives, then accounts of religious developments in the Iron Age must attempt to identify factors of practicality that influenced choices of religiosity and the effects of those choices on constructions and uses of physical spaces. Different architectural structures do not necessarily indicate different forms of religiosity or even different underlying assumptions. Architectural changes in templesized religious spaces witnessed between the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages may simply indicate changing domains of praxis that have evolved in light of new contexts rather than fundamental shifts in ideology.15 Other non-religious aspects of the human experience such as climate and locally available resources influence the types of religious structures that people construct.16 The architecture of mosques throughout the world serves as an exemplar. In the Muslim majority country of Indonesia, mosques rarely look

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anything like those built in Middle Eastern locales. The environment, locally accessible building materials, and the architectural predilections of those building a mosque determine what it looks like. Thus, many Indonesian mosques do not have minarets or calligraphic and geodesic designs. Yet, the primary spaces of worship reflect those non-negotiable elements of religious identity and praxis.17 Thus, it would be unusual to find a mosque anywhere that lacks a mihrab or a place where worshipers can perform the necessary preprayer ablutions of wudu. Architectural differences do not necessarily relay fundamental changes in religious understanding. Thus, the less ornate worship environments of highland groups may not indicate altogether different religious ideologies or practices from those of their lowland counterparts. One possible suggestion for the lack of monumental civic religious sites among highlanders may be that their mobile heritage – and potential lifestyle of continued mobility – inspired an initial independence from the use of large permanent temples. This assertion aligns well with two elements of data gathered on migrants. The first is that migrants frequently construct points of access to deities along their routes, but such sites are generally small scale and sometimes temporary in nature.18 Second, migrant communities often make secondary use of public spaces and extant private spaces as contexts of religious engagement.19 If the highland settlements are the result of region-wide transitions, we can assume that the disrupted social and economic infrastructures which spurred movement caused settlers to focus their energies, at least momentarily, on efforts to reestablish solid lifeways that did not include building monumental religious structures. The same centralized systems within which lowland temples functioned as centers of taxation, redistribution, and social cohesion did not initially exist among the central highland populations and took time to develop. Likewise, the systems of trade by which certain exotic materials were imported had not entirely disappeared, but apparently did not include or were not of interest to those living in the highland regions. Therefore, whether architectural changes evidence the dissolution of religious ways of being cannot be ascertained from the evidence we presently have. The specific activities that took place at civic religious site in Israel and Judah are also difficult to know with certainty. Given the broad architectural variance between sites, the primary identifier of cultic activity is typically installations or assemblages of objects deemed to have religious significance, such as altars, decorated stands with traces of organic compounds, votives and figurines made of both clay and metal, model shrines, as well as scarabs and other objects which may have been amulets. Items such as finger cymbals, found in temple loci at Tell Abu Hawam, Tel Mevorakh, Hazor, and Megiddo indicate that music of some kind was a part of ritual activities.20 Astragali were likely used for activities ranging from gaming to divination. The common presence of standing stones probably inspired manifold forms of veneration which could have included vow-taking, prayer, offerings, libations, or even ecstatic responses to the presence of a deity.

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Animal sacrifices and offerings of grain, libations, or ritually prepared foods were likely normative at temple-type civic religious sites since sacrifice was an essential religious activity at temples in the broader Syro-Canaanite region (cf. Deut 12:1-14).21 Tithing and communal feasting were other activities that were likely associated with sacrifices.22 Papyrus Amherst 63 contains hymns to Yahweh/Yaho that not only find remarkable similarity to biblical Psalms (cf. Psalm 20), but also illuminate temple religious practice among a later Yahwistic community. One of these hymns speaks of a banquet for Yahweh/ Yaho. The ritual activities enumerated therein include sacrifice, libations, singing and feasting, as well as playing the harp, lyre, and flute, and may have been performed at the Temple to Yaho in Elephantine.23 Although originating in a location distant from the Levant and from a later time, we might cautiously extrapolate the contents of praxis described in this text to earlier temple sites in the Levant. Sacrificial activities were deeply interconnected with the various mobility structures of the ancient world. On one level, the embeddedness of pastoralist lifeways across ancient Near Eastern society facilitated the production of animals that could be contributed to the sacrificial economy. On another level, the movement of people, in the forms of pilgrimage or other religiously motivated travel could also drive the engine of a sacrificial economy and trade of luxury items used in religious rites. On still another level, the aims of sacrifice or offerings entailed securing beneficial outcomes for engaging life’s mundane and extraordinary elements, of which travel was a part. It remains unclear, however, if non-temple sites of civic religiosity were consistently used as sites for ritual sacrifice. Even as migration brought about intercultural contact and the exchange of practices, the symbolic meanings of those practices did not necessarily remain consistent across cultures. For example, although vocabulary for sacrifice at Ugarit maintained similarities with later biblical descriptions, it is not clear that the meaning associated with the activities carried over.24 Both entailed animal and non-animal offerings and shared the common notion of access to the Divine through the act of offering, but as Pardee points out, “the [Ugaritic] ‘theology of the cult’ remains elusive on many levels.”25 The difficulty of tracing cultural transfer and adaptation is further illuminated by the example of the Passover rites. Biblical scholars once assumed that the Passover festival, being oriented around the sacrifice of a lamb, originated among nomadic peoples performing a set of rituals associated with their preparations for moving to summer pastures. This assumption was later challenged by evidence of the Zukru festival at Emar, which maintains striking similarities but was practiced in sedentary contexts.26 The typical participant at temple sites was most likely someone considered local to the region, but certainly could have included those who came from beyond it, either as pilgrims or as passers-by. The range of religious paraphernalia from across temple sites indicates a mix of personal praxis along with rituals performed by specialists, though the exact character of the religious

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specialists at each site likely varied. At Horvat Qitmit and the Timna Valley temples, it may have been the case that religious specialists traveled to these sites for official rituals at various points in the year while during other parts of the year the sites were open for more general use by whoever passed through.27 At Arad, vessels stamped with qop kap – an abbreviation for qōdeš (ha)kōhanīm, “holy for the priests” likely indicate they were used in the activities of priests installed by the royal regime as functionaries there.28 Given Arad’s location along a significant interregional trade route, the religious specialists there may have catered to the needs of mobile persons, whether seasonal miners, traders, pastoral nomads, military personnel, or traveling administrators. In considering the question of who might have frequented such temples, Avraham Faust has argued against the current consensus that Israelite religious praxis was primarily oriented around regional and central temple worship and posits that temples should not be considered the normative religious site in ancient Israel.29 Instead, religiosity is better observed among the kind of “simple cultic structures” found at domestic sites like Khirbet Raddana, Tell Irbid, and Tell es-Sa’idiyeh.30 The fact that temples may not have been places that the average person visited on a daily basis does not make them non-normative sites of religious practice. It simply means that we should continue working to understand how such sites fit into the rhythms of religious life. In doing so, we should certainly deal seriously with the reality that religious praxis in Israel and Judah was not limited to centrally administered public spaces. bāmôt

Many civic religious sites in ancient Israel and Judah were open-air gathering points. Some such sites were located in elevated landscapes that are understood by scholars to be synonymous with what biblical authors call bāmôt.31 Despite the application of the bāmôt label by scholars, biblical sources do not limit the understanding of this site type to “high places” but indicate that bāmôt were located in both rural and urban settings at various elevations (1 Sam 9:11-25; 10:5; 1 Kgs 11:7; 13:32; 2 Kgs 16:4; 17:9-10, 29; 23:5-8; Jer 7:31; 19:5; 32:35; Ezek 20:27-29; Ezra 6:3).32 Those in rural areas likely served as regional sites at which more disparately settled residents gathered. Villages often had their own bāmôt but some may have shared a meeting site with nearby villages or surrounding inhabitants. Scholars commonly associate the presence of “standing stones” or, what biblical authors call massēbôt, with bāmôt.33 Although generally not found surviving among material remains, it is also commonly assumed that items identified by biblical authors as’ašērîm would also have been present in the forms of sacred trees, poles, or potentially as standing stones representing a female divine consort.34 Given the difficulties associated with knowing exactly what biblical authors imagined when they used the term, I proceed with the general assumption

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that, for biblical scribes, a bāmâ is any site of civic religiosity in either the pre-Temple era or in subsequent periods when there was a Jerusalem Temple that is not the Temple itself. The term bāmôt, therefore, applies to a broad class of indoor and outdoor public worship spaces, that could include other templelike spaces smaller in scale than monumental temples. According to biblical sources, bāmôt were nodes of local and regional mobility, with practitioners coming from a range of distances to perform or participate in rites at each site. The ubiquity of their placement likely meant that persons did not have a single bāmâ but would visit multiple ones, perhaps to perform specific rituals associated with particular sites. Nevertheless, the maximum range an average person might travel to visit a given site remains unclear. As is the case with all religious structures, practitioners tend to find ways to use spaces to meet their most immediate religious needs, even if it means doing so in heterodox ways. It may have been the general assumption that bāmôt simply offered a space of religious engagement, the details of which were left up to the practitioner to execute as she or he saw fit. Worship at bāmôt, as well as veneration of māssebôt and āsherim, are all elements of civic religion that biblical editors hoped to excise from people’s religious repertoires in favor of aniconic Jerusalem-based Temple worship (1 Kgs 14:22-24). In the eyes of the Deuteronomistic authors, bāmôt were necessary sites of religious engagement in the eras preceding the Temple’s construction. Thus, although bāmôt came to be the targets of apostate worship for kings like Hezekiah and Josiah and later biblical authors, it is likely they originally served as royally sanctioned worship sites associated with a centralized political effort to control the religious landscape.35 The biblical account of David gathering and re-dispersing the Levitical functionaries throughout the land as a means of promoting continuity of praxis among the land’s many bāmôt (1 Chronicles 15; Joshua 21) may capture the initial stages of the centuries-long process.36 Even after David relocated the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, the Chronicler notes that the Tabernacle remained at Gibeon where it was attended by Zadokite priests (1 Chr 16:39-40; Cf. 1 Sam 9:16-24; 1 Kgs 3:4-5). According to the Deuteronomic scribes, bāmôt usage should have come to an end with the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Yet, Solomon actually increased the number of bāmôt in the city for both regional deities and the gods of his various wives (1 Kgs 11:6-8). Thus, the practice of worship at bāmôt continued into the era of the divided monarchy. Here the biblical evidence aligns with the archaeological picture; both internal diversity and worship at a variety of sites defined the religious worlds of most Israelite and Judahite families, regardless of attempts at centralization. Biblical accounts of ancestral altar building are pertinent to discussions of both bāmôt and the phenomenon of internal religious pluralism in Israel and Judah. It is in such texts that we find El epithets that combine El with other aspects of divine agency or efficacy. Examples include, ’el-‘ôlām (Gen 21:33), ’el-‘elyon (Gen 14:18), ’el-’elōhê (Gen 33:20), ’el-rō’î (Gen 16:13), ’el-bêt’el (Gen 35:7), and’el-shaddai (Gen 17:1, 28:3, 35:11, 43:14, 48:3; Exod 6:3).37

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It is likely that the ancestral accounts of altar building arose in conjunction with actual sites of veneration (i.e. bāmôt) that were initially associated with ancient traditions of family deities who had grown in prominence to become clan or national deities. Altar-building narratives accomplish several tasks. First, with them, biblical authors corroborate the historical construction and ancestral use of various altars for veneration of deities that possess different names and display different characteristics of divinity. Second, the collected stories express the point that, while their locations, original divine associations, and even the contents of their sacrificial behaviors may have been different, these previous acts of veneration/offering were performed to the same god, who is revealed to be Yahweh.38 Third, in addition to creating a theological landscape in which altar building allowed access to personal gods, the ancestral narratives also preserve the conception that one’s family God was portable or, at least accessible in multiple places given the presence of proper paraphernalia like its image. Gradients of Mobility and Civic Religious Participation

The biblical corpus contains stories of divinely-inspired movement, pilgrimages, and more mundane travel to regional religious sites including Bethel (Gen 28:10-22, 35:1-15; 1 Kgs 12:32-33; Amos 4:4; 5;5), Gilgal (Josh 4:20, 5:9-10, 9:6; Judg 2:1; 1 Sam 10:8, 11:14-15; Hos 4:15, 9:15, 12:11; Amos 4:4, 5:5), Mizpah(s) (Judg 11:11; 1 Sam 7:5-7, 16; 10:17; Hos 5:1), and Hebron (Gen 13:18; 2 Sam 15:7). Biblical passages concerning requirements for religious travel can be difficult to verify in the archaeological record. Several sites mentioned in biblical texts as sites of civic religiosity have been identified, but the religious activities described in the text have not been substantiated as of yet by archaeological discovery. According to the biblical authors, Israelites are to mark the passing of time through the observance of Maṣṣôt (Exod 23:15, 34:18, Lev 23:6), Sukkôt (Lev 23:34; Deut 16:17), Pesach, and Shāvuôt (Lev 23:17; Deut 16:17; Josh 5:10-12).39 Each festival had different points of origin but was later situated in Israel’s grand salvation narrative of the exodus (Exod 34:22-23; Deut 16:16; Leviticus 23). Regional centers, such as Shiloh and Taanach in the north, as well as Arad and Beersheva in the south may have served as sites of collective religious engagement for these festivals. Evidence from some of the locations indicates that they may have been sites of communal feasts. Pilgrimage may have even played a central role in sustaining Israel as an agricultural society.40 While the reality that all members of the population partook in cyclical long-distance religiously oriented travel is questionable, the biblical corpus records true-to-life patterns of mobility surrounding religious sites (1 Sam 7:16). The authors of 1 Kings tell of Jeroboam’s construction of two Yahweh shrines at Dan and Bethel that were to be sites associated with a fall pilgrimage festival.41 Jeroboam’s installations, while chiefly the result of political rivalry, were also substantiated by the practical reality that Jerusalem was too far for

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some Northerners to travel. The preference for Yahwistic adherents to frequent local sites rather than make longer journeys is partially at play when Amos chastises those bringing offerings to sites other than Jerusalem (Amos 5:5-7). At another point, the author of Lamentations personifies the empty roads leading to Jerusalem in the wake of its destruction as mourning the loss of their pilgrims (Lam 1:4). On one occasion, the biblical authors sympathetically recognize that religious commitment can depend on one’s distance from a central religious site. While articulating a broader polemic to destroy what the authors count as apostate spaces of worship, they include a concession indicating they recognize that not all people can make the journey to Jerusalem to perform ritual slaughter of their animals. The command regarding slaughtered offerings at a central location is thus tempered with a caveat for those persons living exceedingly far from Jerusalem (Deut 12:21). The concession does not negate the official requirements for pilgrimage for primary offerings to Yahweh but addresses the issue of common food consumption (Deut 12:26-27). As we have seen, a number of texts express Israel’s nomadic heritage and place their introduction to their ancestral god in the contexts of a migratory event from Egypt (Gen 11:27-37:1,39–50; Exod 3:6,13–15, 11–39; Num 1–33; Deut 1–8, 26:5; Hos 2:17, 11:1, 12:10, 13; 13:4; Amos 2:10-11, 3:1, 9:7; Ps 78:43-51, 135:8-12, 136:10-22). Some of these texts include prescriptions for treatment of other migratory individuals on the basis of a shared experience of marginalization and need for care. Nevertheless, the biblical corpus also contains texts which explicitly clarify categories of mobile actors and the appropriate community responses to different movers. Others offer implicit critiques of certain mobile groups, sometimes despite Israel’s deep historical connections to them. The primary category of disenfranchised mover found in the Old Testament is that of the gēr (‫ )גר‬or “sojourner”. Israel is frequently reminded that they come from a line of gērim, and prescriptions for active remembrance of Yahweh’s salvific deeds on their behalf include the task of recalling in an omni-temporal manner their status as gērim in Egypt (Deut 10:19). Nevertheless, there are mobile groups that played important roles in Israel’s history but who do not receive the benefits of gērim status. Two, in particular, deserve further discussion. The first of these are the Arameans, the second are the Midianites.42 Both of these groups maintain fundamental places in Israel’s history of religious self-understanding, as it is in the textual accounts of association with these groups that Israel situates its earliest and fullest moments of introduction to its God (Gen 35:11; Exod 2:11-22, 3:116, 4:5; 6:2-3; Deut 26:4-7). Exodus even records that Moses gave one of his sons the name Gershom in reference to his life as a migrant among the Midianites (Exod 2:18). These texts are means by which later biblical editors attempted to integrate pre-Israelite traditions.43 Nevertheless, despite these deep-seated memories of mobile pasts and their attendant realities of religious development, both Arameans and Midianites became targets of

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critique by biblical authors. Like Edom the Midianites are bound to Israel through ancestral heritage but ultimately pitched as an enemy (Exod 18; Num 20:14-21; Deut 23:3; Judg 5–7; Amos 1:11-12; Ps 137:7; Isa 9:3).44 Such sentiments are indirectly captured in the Joseph story, whereby a later redactor associates the Ishmaelites with Midianites as the group responsible for purchasing Joseph from his brothers and selling him to Potiphar (Gen 37:25-36). They are ultimately portrayed as participants in a larger divine plan but not remembered in a of positive light. Biblical authors were concerned to clearly enunciate the boundaries of religious participation by foreigners. Proscriptions could be broad, such as the exclusion of any foreigner/nekar (‫ )נכר‬from sharing the Passover feast or contributing offerings (Exod 12:43; Lev 22:25). Nekar is also frequently used adjectivally to describe gods other than Yahweh (‫ אלהי נכר‬/ ‫( )אל נכר‬Gen 35:2,4; Deut 31:16; 32:12; Josh 24:20, 23; Judg 10:16; 1 Sam 7:3). In Leviticus, ṯôšāḇim and zārim are prohibited from such activities as eating of the donated offerings (Lev 22:10), According to Deuteronomy, some groups of foreigners, including Moabites and Ammonites were excluded from cultic participation, while others, such as Egyptians and Edomites were granted entry after several generations (Deut 23:3-7). Different attitudes toward movement and migration influenced understandings of the place of foreigners in the community’s religious life. Therefore, while Nehemiah sees the presence of foreigners as pollution (Neh 13:1-3), Isaiah calls for the inclusion of foreigners in the acts of sacrifice and prayer (Isa 56:3-8). Likewise, the argument in the book of Ruth is that while she remains, “Ruth the Moabite” throughout the narrative (Ruth 1:22; 2:2; 4:5, 10), she is ultimately the great grandmother of King David, and thus, like Rahab (Ruth 2:9-14), a foreign woman adopted into the fold of the community because of her commitments to serve Yahweh (Ruth 1:16-17).45 Mobile Religious Specialists: Priests and Prophets

The institution of the priesthood in ancient Israel and Judah is not fully understood. Even though many activities of priests likely existed prior to their codification in biblical texts, the redaction of biblical content in post-exilic settings renders the task of situating particular priestly activities in their original historical contexts difficult. Thus, while several larger contours, such as different priestly groups and activities are identifiable within the biblical material, many particulars concerning the daily lives of religious specialists in ancient Israel and Judah remain unknown. Nevertheless, cultures of mobility related to the priesthood deserve further investigation. Some priests are directly associated with specific sites (1 Sam 1–3; 2 Kgs 23:8; Amos 7:10-13; Hos 5:1), while others have a more ambiguous relationship to any defined territory. Among the records of religious functionaries on the move, the biblical corpus preserves various memory layers of Levitical itinerancy. Presentations of Levitical mobility can be interpreted

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differently given varying conceptions of their landed inheritance and relationships to the broader social structures. In one respect, there is a tradition that Levites did not maintain their own tribal territory. Their itinerancy is potentially encapsulated in the memory of them as, ‫האמר לאביו לאמו לא ראיתיו‬ ‫ואת־אחיו לא הכיר ואת־בנו לא ידע‬, “the one who says of his father and mother, ‘I regard them not’; he did not see his kin, and did not know his children” (Deut 33:9). Joshua 21, however, presents the Levites as demanding and receiving the inheritance of cities with accompanying pastureland, an act which ties them more permanently to particular locations even if they do not maintain a specific tribal territory. Despite these territorial ambiguities, biblical tradition broadly asserts that provisions for the Levites’ well-being were the onus of the people (Num 18:21-25; Deut 12:12, 18–19; Joshua 21). For these religious specialists, daily rations were gleaned from the various animals and products offered by the people (Num 18:8-19, 31). What we might trace across the biblical record is a story of the Levites as functionaries who were originally highly mobile but became increasingly sendentary. The Levites, or at least their ancestors who were perhaps not known so definitively as Mushites or as members of the house of Levi, were potentially some of the earliest tradents of Yahwism in the region that sought to establish Yahwism through a system of itinerancy and local household and civic shrines. Having come from the south, they may have established their early home in the Central Highlands and expanded their influence as itinerant religious specialists. Spread throughout the region, it is possible that shrines in each locale developed rites around localized attributional conceptions or hypostases of Yahweh, growing the internal pluralism of Yahwism. Established cult centers would have allowed some Levites to settle down while others continued to act as mobile functionaries, building their ranks by gathering adherents and initiates in the places they established themselves. As the cult of Yahweh gained momentum and became the preferred religion for the leaders of the increasingly cohesive polity centered in Jerusalem, the Levitical class not only gained status as priests but also became less itinerant, focusing the cult and their community in and around Jerusalem.46 This increasingly sedentary priestly lifeworld led to changing narratives of Yahweh’s own sedentariness that influenced theologies of divine multiplicity. In response to the Neo-Babylonian incursions, some members of the priestly class were relocated to Babylon while others were displaced within Judah and the former northern Kingdom, further contributing to varying theologies of divine mobility. By the Persian period, a strong contingent of Levites who now resided in the Persian center of power would become important religious specialists marshaled to mold Israel and Judah’s traditions to meet the demands of a new political context and to employ nativist land claims (Ezr 8:15-19; Neh 8–9). It was during this time that biblical editors would codify the tradition that the Levites’ priestly primacy predated Israel’s monarchical periods and even its entry into the land.47 Another subset of religious actors requiring discussion are those religious specialists recognized as prophets. The definitional boundaries of prophecy and

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prophets are expansive, and this section is not the place to illuminate their particularities.48 The biblical record preserves the understanding that in addition to distinct priestly groups, there were other religious specialists who performed functions at different social levels and across various geographies. While the categories of prophet and priest are helpful for our investigation, there are enough instances in which prophetic and priestly roles overlap in ways that obfuscate scholarly dichotomization.49 In what follows, I reflect on several ways prophetic activities supported and were supported by the prevailing cultures of mobility in Israel and Judah which were themselves tied to other religious structures, including the priesthood. Like priests, prophetic persons appear to have maintained association with particular sites (2 Kgs 2:3, 4:38). Prophets associated with particular cult sites may have been under the leadership of priestly functionaries who controlled the sites.50 Across the biblical corpus, prophets such as Balaam, Elijah, Elisha, Amos, and Ezekiel are remembered as being highly mobile. Although the aforementioned prophets typically traveled alone or with a few companions, other texts indicate the normativity of troops of prophets moving about together (1 Sam 10:5). Persons also traveled to find prophets. Saul travels to Endor to consult with a medium (1 Sam 28). A Shunammite woman seeks out Elisha when her son falls fatally ill (2 Kgs 4:22). Such is also the case for the man from Baal-Shalisha, who brings Elijah food (2 Kgs 4:42-43). Likewise, Naaman, the military leader of Aram seeks Elisha out for healing from a skin condition (2 Kgs 5:1-19). In the midst of these inter- and intra-regional movements, tensions could arise between itinerant prophetic figures and engrained temple/site personnel, as is the case when Amaziah expels Amos from the temple at Bethel (Amos 7:10-17). Material Remnants of Mobility-Informed Civic Religiosities

To further illuminate the continuities of civic praxis among different sites, I turn to a fuller discussion of Iron Age archaeological sites and the potential influences of mobility/migration on those remnants of civic religiosities visible in the material record. Arad

Multiple strata at Arad have been the focus of intensive efforts to reconstruct Iron Age civic religiosities.51 While precise dating of the site is notoriously difficult, the collective finds indicate the Judahite nature of the site and its use sometime in the Iron Age II period, potentially from the 10th through 7th centuries. The earliest, and most ambiguous stratum, stratum XII, contained remains that the site’s original excavator, Yohanan Aharoni, identified as an altar associated with a nearby residential area. While some scholars have accepted this initial interpretation, others have challenged it on the grounds that finds from later strata influenced Aharoni’s interpretations of the relatively

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scant remains in stratum XII.52 It is generally agreed, however, that the later tripartite architecture of a courtyard and several adjoining rooms, which existed in various configurations across strata XI–VII, are the remains of a fortress shrine built overtop of stratum XII remains. Given a thick layer of fill throughout the courtyard and its associated rooms, existence of the cultic area appears to have ceased at the end of stratum VII. Excavation of stratum XI revealed that a broadroom attached to the courtyard had maintained benches around its perimeter.53 The fortress to which the shrine of this stratum was connected was apparently burned at one point. In the subsequent stratum X, the boundaries of the courtyard were enlarged slightly and the configuration of the benches in the broadroom was altered.54 A new altar was constructed using the remains of the previous one as a pedestal to reach the new one. While this altar is built from unhewn stones, the quintessential horns associated with Israelite altars are lacking.55 Importantly, no remains of sacrifice have been uncovered at the site, either as it relates to direct evidence near the altar, or to faunal remains elsewhere at the site. A stone basin was also added during this stage of renovation.56 It is from this same stratum that two bowls marked with official labels for priestly use (qop kap) contribute to an understanding of the site as one that operated under the auspices of centralized administration. The hypothesis that the site was a centrally administered shrine is bolstered by a variety of ostraca from stratum VII. Found in the adjacent storerooms, they contain the names of religious officials known to relate to the priestly infrastructure in Jerusalem.57 Thus, evidence indicates that at least during strata X-VII the site was under official oversight, and potentially a place where Jerusalem-based functionaries traveled to live and work. The fortress’ architecture indicates that Arad was an outpost in a marginal geographic context. As such, it may have been home to soldiers, regional administrators, and religious specialists. Its location along major east-west routes meant that passers-by, whether merchants, traders, seasonal mine workers, pastoralists, and more local residents of the region may have visited the site to perform religious rites and take quarter. We must also entertain the possibility that the shrine was strictly the domain of the religious specialists assigned to the site, and that no external users performed rites there, but rather perhaps, benefited from those the priests performed. Several artefactual finds from the site have been topics of heated scholarly debate. Three stela-like stones were found in a niche adjacent to the broadroom but likely belonged to different periods of use. Two of the stones, along with two incense altars, had been plastered over, presumably after they were decommissioned from use.58 The third, which displays signs of having been previously marked with red paint, was also located in the niche connected to the broadroom but not plastered over.59 Scholars debate the nature of the stones, with some arguing that they are indeed māssebôt for Yahweh and his consort Asherah.60 If the latter is true, it would provide evidence that even those cultic sites which fell under centralized administrative control

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maintained the kind of religious pluraliformity that runs counter to some later accounts of Judahite biblical religion. Whether the stelae were in continuous use across the site’s periods of existence is difficult to say, as is the potential association and arrangement of the incense altars.61 Other finds include four Judean pillar figurines and a bronze lion figurine.62 Recent archeometric analysis of the residue remaining on the altars has demonstrated that at one point cannabis and frankincense-related compounds were burned on them.63 Both the olfactory and neurological qualities of these substances are intriguing. Beyond the question of the goals of their use, we might also ponder the various mobilites that brought the products to the site. Were they mainstays at Arad? Was there a continuous flow of such substances to the site for use in daily ritual? Was the use of such substances condoned by the Jerusalem priesthood with which the shrine was associated? Perhaps their presence is more anomalous, the result of a special offering or an atypical or unsanctioned rite perfomed by a passerby. These questions likely will not be answered but we can know with greater certainty that the products did not originate at Arad and, therefore, are indirect evidence of mobilities that facilitated their transit and eventual use at the site. Beersheva

No architectural remains of a civic cultic structure have been found at Beersheva, however, recycled stones originally belonging to a limestone altar were discovered during excavations of another wall at the site. Nakhai, among others, suggests that the altar is an indication of a larger shrine that once existed at the site.64 The altar possessed four horns, and is thus similar to others assumed to be Israelite altars. Zevit suggests the altar was in use at the site between the 10th and 8th centuries.65 The actual location at the site where the altar was installed is also debated. The size of the stones indicates that in its constructed form the altar was fairly large, but the intensity of its use remains unknown. No specific deductions can be made regarding the intersections of mobility and this particular set of remains, however, the centrality of Beersheva in the biblical narrative may belie a long-term association of the site with ancestral religious heritages, some of which were connected with mobile lifeways. The “Bull Site”

The common scholarly assumption is that the site functioned as a regional shrine.66 In her introductory comments regarding the “Bull Site” near Dothan, Nakhai counts it as “the earliest of Israelite sacred places.”67 The site’s location is central to a number of villages in the region between Dothan and Tirzah. The ridge on which it is situated is accessible from the road between these two larger towns and may have been a rest stop or point of interest to those who journeyed in the region. The boundaries of the site were formed by

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what appears to be a border wall with a small paved area directly on its north side.68 A more recent survey by Zevit reveals that the site may actually extend beyond the summit, but this has not been corroborated.69 Amihai Mazar, the site’s chief excavator, suggests that the circular arrangement of stones found at the ridge’s summit potentially surrounded a sacred tree or pole.70 Other finds at the site include what some have considered a massebah and altar.71 Subsequent indications of ritual activities include a piece of pottery that may be a piece of an incense burner or a model shrine. The most striking find is a bronze bull figurine, which due to its undefined provenance, cannot be accurately dated relative to the other finds at the site, though, the object is characteristic of the patterns of religious blending observable throughout Israel and Judah.72 This reality does not keep Mazar from opining that it was “a major object of worship at this site,” though he intentionally does not specify which deity(ies) was venerated there.73 Objects that are less definitively cultic, but not dismissible as such outright, include cooking pots, bowls, flints and animal bones, as well as a bronze object that Nakhai suggests might have been a mirror.74 Despite the common identification of the site as a cultic installation, this assessment may require reconsideration.75 Zevit dates the sherds he found along the northern stretches of the site to Iron Age IA and identifies the site as a cultic temenos. Nevertheless, he argues that there is no archaeologic evidence that sacrifices were performed at the site.76 Gilmour points out that no store jars or pithoi were found among the remains.77 Likewise, he argues that the ceramic fragment identified by Mazar as an incense burner “appears too small to be diagnostic.”78 Citing the brevity of the site’s survey, the misdating of several pieces of material culture, and the dubious provenance of the bovine figurine after which the site was named, Miller contends that the so-called ‘Bull Site’ is not an Iron I shrine.79 Both Gilmour and Miller concur that the ceramic finds are primarily indicative of a domestic site, but Gilmour is more convinced of the cultic nature of the site than Miller.80 Zevit’s comparison of what he terms “Israelite” open-air religious sites with Minoan peak sanctuaries provides a helpful point for considering the means by which mobile lifeways could have fostered construction and use of sites such as the “Bull Site” in the Central Highlands.81 Scholars of these Aegean sanctuaries have recognized that they were initially created by pastoralist populations and later taken over by more sedentary agriculturalists. This pattern aligns in some ways with the settlement trajectories observed in Israel and Judah during the timeframe under consideration. Perhaps the lack of pithoi and cooking pot remains demonstrates that the site was more of a roadside shrine than a major point of pilgrimage. This assessment does not detract from the character of the site as one of civic religiosity. Rather, it accords with the type of sites that emerge in highly mobile social contexts that serve multiple purposes. Given its proximity to nearby transitways, the site could easily have served as a waypoint where food preparation and consumption took place, and where travelers and their animals rested. Those passing through the site could certainly have used

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their moment of pause to perform religious rites of thankgiving or petition. Other persons who were more local to the region may have journeyed to the site on a regular basis for their own religious ends, or even to serve at the site in unofficial capacities as custodians. Dan

The large cultic site from Dan stratum IV is well known and convincingly correlated with the religious building projects of Jeroboam I (1Kgs 12:32). The remnants of an elevated platform outline the installation’s foundation. Material remains from the locus include a large four-horned altar and ceramics that fit the profile of cultic wares – including three pithoi with serpentine accents and a figurine of a female deity identified by some as Astarte.82 The platform is surrounded by additional rooms in which were found another altar, a male figurine, more pottery, and faunal remains.83 Strata III and II show signs of the site’s renovation and enlargement.84 The size of the site and attendant biblical accounts of its purposes lend credibility to the notion that it served as a regional site of pilgrimage and sacrifice. As shown earlier, we know of miners traveling into the southern stretches of the Negev and Transjordan to retrieve ore. We also know of specific religiosities associated with such workers. It is within reason to suppose metalworkers at Dan may have shared similar mobile lifeways. The requirements for specialized skills and tools likely meant training and production were centered in relatively few locations. Therefore, metalworkers would have had to travel to learn and practice their craft. The religious life of such a guild could have centered around veneration of Yahwistic attributes associated with acts of metallurgy.85 Room 7082 in Area B has also been identified as a cultic space due to its presumed association with areas of the site devoted to metalworking.86 The relatively small room is located in the earlier stratum V which dates to the 12th–11th centuries. It maintained a plastered floor and contained a few pottery vessels indicative of ritual uses such as a krater, a large jug, and several chalices.87 Among these is also a cylindrical fenestrated vessel variously identified as the “snake house,” “sanctuary,” and “house model.”88 The area in which the room was found was clearly an industrial zone.89 Thus, the small room cannot be associated with a particular dwelling and its small size indicates the unlikelihood that it was a shrine for any significant number of people. Rather, it is most likely a small civic religious site where metalworkers could have performed ritual activities associated with the production of material goods and their personal wellbeing. One question that arises given the prominence of metal working at sites such as Dan, Megiddo, and Hazor is whether metalworkers traveled between sites or throughout the region practicing their craft and establishing networks of mobility that were potentially intertwined with religious practices at different civic sites. Stratum II of Dan also contained several noteworthy cultic installations that pertain to our discussion of mobility and religion. Three gate shrines, one

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located inside the main gate and two located on the exterior of the wall near the gate, contained upright stones and various ceramic assemblages that indicate ritual activities took place at these key points of entry and exit.90 The multiple standing stones found in situ may attest to the presence of deities that residents of the city and travelers appealed to during moments of arrival and departure. Finally, Dan’s location near Lake Hula potentially resulted in its inhabitants and visitors using reed boats as a means of transit near the site. The city’s association with water likely influenced it religious outlook and practices, but no definitive remains clarify this dangling question.91 Mt. Ebal

Mt. Ebal sits adjacent to Mt. Gerezim in the territory of Manasseh. It is the site of twelve points of archaeological interest, but only one dates to the Iron Age I.92 The altar-like structure on Mt. Ebal has been the topic of much discussion over the last number of decades. The site’s original excavator, Adam Zertal, forwarded the claim that the site was indeed the biblical altar of Joshua (Josh 8:30-35; Deut 11:29; 27:4-8).93 This conclusion has been the target of a number of attacks and most archaeologists hold that while the structure served cultic or even sacrificial purposes, its association with Joshua is ultimately unlikely.94 Zertal identified two strata at the site and proposed that they represented two stages of continuous use. The site’s first stage was as a family or clan cultic area. In the second stage, the nearby dwellings were incorporated into an expanded regional sacrificial site.95 The overall amount of ceramic remains from the site are remarkable and represent large-scale food preparation and storage activities. Finds include a significant number of pithoi (250) and jugs (142).96 The numbers of storage vessels and jugs are notably greater than other types of domestic pottery remains such as cooking pots (51), kraters (69), jars (49), and juglets (47).97 Non-ceramic finds from the site include 32 rock-cut basins, an earring, a bronze ingot, and an iron nail.98 Further excavation found that the site contained remains from a variety of animals, some of which were burnt. Sheep and goats comprise 65% of the site’s faunal remains, with 81% of those showing signs of exposure to fire or burning.99 Other animal remains found during the excavation include deer, cattle, polecat, partridges, rock pigeon, falcon, and fish. Notably, no equids, swine, or carnivore remains were among the faunal assemblage.100 While some of the faunal remains meet the biblical record’s standard for offerings, others, such as deer, do not.101 Miller has argued that the presence of deer remains, particularly antlers, should be associated with shamanistic activities.102 The “non-biblical” faunal remains bring to mind associations of Baal and Resheph with stags in the 8th–7th century Azatiwada Inscription.103 The remains may also be illuminated by a section of Papyrus Amherst 63, which records aspects of Syrian religiosity that may align with activities that took place earlier at Mt. Ebal. The Papyrus contains a text describing the deity

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Bethel’s beauty contest and another petitionary hymn from a group of Samarian migrants to the deity Yaho (Yahweh).104 It is clear from the petitionary hymn that the Syrian Bethel and Samarian Yahweh (Yaho) were understood to be the same deity by the communities living in Upper Egypt in the 5th century.105 In column 9 of the beauty contest text, Bethel’s feasting table is prepared and upon it are placed bulls and deer.106 Although the text’s provenance is from Egypt, it refers to practices originally performed in Syrian contexts. The earlier Aramaean/Syrian practices may be those represented among the remains at Mt. Ebal, either as evidence of Aramaean activity at the site or of Aramaean influence on other groups living in the region during the time of the site’s construction and use. Other than collectively challenging Zertal’s association of the site with Joshua’s altar, the scholarly community has not reached a consensus regarding the site’s potential builders or users.107 Nevertheless, that has not kept scholars from suggesting that the site played a significant part in the broader religious environment of the Iron Age Central Highlands.108 Zertal commented on the site’s isolated location and the attendant difficulties in accessing it as reasons to consider it as a cultic locale.109 Whether isolation should be a criteria for determining the cultic nature of a site remains debated.110 Taken together, the finds at least indicate that the site was a place for slaughtering animals – most likely for ritual purposes – storing, and maybe even distributing foodstuffs. My assertion is that Zertal underestimated the extent of regional mobility structures that would have made possible the building and intensive use of this hilltop site during its relatively brief period of existence. The site could well have served as the processing grounds for larger hunts where acts of ritual slaughter and consumption were part of the enterprise. In the offseason from hunting, the site may have functioned as a storage facility for other types of foodstuffs. In all of this, the lack of residential areas near the site (at least during its later stage of use) indicates that those who used the facilities had to travel there, likely across a range of distances. Although perhaps implicitly assumed, it is worth explicity acknowledging that such patterns of travel do not materialize on their own but are facilitated by larger regional cultures of mobility that cultivate preferences for certain types of movement and destinations. The biblical portrayal of the events at Mt. Ebal is also important to consider in light of our mobility-informed analysis. The covenanting ceremony that takes place is one by which an already mixed multitude assimilates even greater numbers of outsiders into the fold of the Covenant Community. Even if the remains at Mt. Ebal cannot be associated with the textual accounts of construction, we should take seriously the archaeological reality that the text substantiates a memory that sites like Mt. Ebal could have been places where sizeable numbers of persons visited or gathered for civic rites or rituals. As such, they maintained an important place in the identity development of populations in the Central Highlands.

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Lachish

The 10th century Room 49 at Lachish is a small space with a single street entrance. It is noteworthy for having benches on all four walls and corners oriented to cardinal compass points.111 The finds from the site represent a significant cache of cultic objects, including ten chalices, four cult stands, three cooking pots, a number of bowls, a storage jar, a damaged horned incense altar, and perhaps the remains of a tabun-style clay oven.112 Gilmour tempers Aharoni’s original assertion that the room was a shrine by suggesting that it may have instead been a storeroom.113 Moving forward with the assumption that the site is indeed a religious locus, Zevit suggests that the arrangement of the remains may indicate the veneration of multiple deities.114 Given Lachish’s high-traffic location in the Shephelah, if the room is indeed a public shrine, it may have been a known stopping point for travelers or merchants passing through the city. If such was the case, the probability of multiple deities being venerated there increases. Likewise, we should recall that movers frequently engage with religious paraphernalia that is already in place at given sites, often combining their use of those items or installations with amulets, figurines, or other objects they already carry with with them. If a robust assemblage of items was present in Room 49, perhaps movers through the site integrated their use of the more permanent paraphernalia with their own cultic articles. Shiloh

Scholars have long considered Shiloh to be a cultic site based on the biblical record (Josh 18:1-10; 21:1-3; Judg 21:19-21; 1 Samuel 1–3). Mazar considers Shiloh to be “the main Israelite cultic center” of the period of the Israelite settlement, though, his position is substantiated more by the biblical evidence than that of archaeology.115 Nakhai follows this trajectory by asserting that the remains of many settlements near Shiloh offer substantial evidence that it was a religious site from the Late Bronze through Early Iron Ages.116 We should pause to consider such positions in light of the archaeological evidence. Shiloh was first excavated in the early 20th century by Danish and American archaeologists who uncovered remains reaching back as far as the Late Bronze period. While no definitive cultic items were found by these teams, they were able to establish that the site was in use from the Middle Bronze Age through Late Bronze Age II and again during the Early Iron Age before being destroyed sometime shortly after, an end which the original excavators attributed to the Philistines.117 Work at the site was abandoned for a time following the sudden death of the lead excavator, a reality that left the official site report unpublished until 1969. Finkelstein, Bunimovitz, and Lederman excavated the site from 1981–84, this time focusing their efforts on a number of areas around the base of the tell. Their work substantiated the chronological picture painted by the earlier Danish team.118 The most significant architectural installations uncovered are those which Finkelstein describes as “pillared buildings” and the

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storerooms that housed many pithoi. Overall, the Bronze Age site is characterized by a noteworthy combination of few surrounding settlement remains and sizeable storage and administrative complexes.120 The comparatively remarkable storage space and amount of ceramics have led the excavators to posit that the facilities served the purposes of a religious temenos that was probably located on the site’s summit, a characterization for which they point to analogs at the Middle Bronze Age sites of Bethel, Beth-zur, Hebron, and Shechem to substantiate.121 Items found at the site include two cult stands, votive bowls, and a “bull” zoomorphic vessel, all dated to the Middle Bronze II.122 Although no evidence of a temple has been found at the site for this period, Finkelstein et al. suggest that such paraphernalia indicates evidence of religious activities which they extrapolate to point to the presence of a temple at Shiloh in the Middle Bronze Age.123 Late Bronze Age evidence is comprised mostly of bone and pottery remains that appear to have been discarded in a favissae. Finkelstein et al. identify the sherds as pieces of bowls that may have contained offerings and were intentionally broken after their use. The excavators argue that although the site was uninhabited during the Late Bronze Age II, it still served as a religious site, and, therefore, there had to have been a Middle Bronze period religious site that served as a precursor to the Late Bronze II installation.124 The circularity of their argument is readily apparent. Moreover, at least in their preliminary report, Finkelstein et al. accept the biblical testimony that the Ark of the Covenant was enshrined at Shiloh.125 The biblical text suggests the Tabernacle was at one point pitched at Gilgal (Josh 4:19), and records that, at least during the rule of David, the Tabernacle was located in Gibeon (1 Chr 16:39-40). It is important to note that not all scholars have accepted Finkelstein’s evaluations of the evidence. Aside from one instance in which he discusses the textual record of worship at Shiloh, Zevit does not mention the site in his 800-page book. Nor does Gilmour count Shiloh among the sites he documents in his own almost 900-page survey. Shiloh has been under renewed excavations since 2015 under the directorship of Scott Stripling.126 The last several seasons of digging have unearthed a number significant finds that, if verifiably dated to the Iron Age and demonstrated to have clear provenances, would shed light on the historically obfuscating relationship of textual descriptions of Shiloh and the actual site. The provisional finds include a ceramic pomegranate, Iron Age pottery of the “collared rim” type, fragments of cult stands, faunal remains, three altar horns of varying sizes, and several holes bored in the bedrock that Stripling argues were receptacles for tent poles – by which he means the Tabernacle’s tent poles. The most recent excavators have argued in initial press releases that the altar horns resemble those of other Israelite installations, particularly the altar found at Beersheva, and are indicative of a larger cultic complex at the site. Likewise, they believe the pomegranate to be a remnant adornment of a priestly garment and the storage jars containers for tithes brought to the Tabernacle sanctuary there.

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Given the biblical memory of Shiloh as a pilgrimage destination, many questions remain regarding the mobilities that contributed to the site’s existence. Scholars have ventured accounts that attend to the site’s emergence within broader regional cultures of mobility and religiosity. Mazar notes that during the Late Bronze Age Shiloh, “probably served seminomadic pastoralist tribes who lived in the vicinity, as no actual settlement from this period was found on the mound.”127 According to Finkelstein, Shiloh mirrored “the phenomenon of isolated cult places located far from urban centres,” in the Late Bronze Ages – such as the temples at the Amman airport and Deir ‘Alla.128 Despite its distance from urban centers, Shiloh was not necessarily an isolated locale. Judges 21:19 describes the site as being just east of a major transitway that connected Bethel and Shechem. Even if this passage dates to a much later time after Shiloh’s period of use, it locates the site in an area of intensive interregional transit that likely became so in an earlier time. Whether biblical recollections of Shiloh as a pilgrimage destination or as an early seat of Yahwistic veneration will ultimately be borne out by the material record remains uncertain. Forthcoming evidence from the most recent excavations will hopefully provide a sharper picture of the regional cultures of religiously associated mobilities in the Early Iron Age.

Taanach

The 10th-century site of Taanach has often been touted as an important site for religious activity due to the three ornate cult stands found there.129 Clarifying the provenance of these items has been difficult due to the inconsistent quality of excavation methods across their disparate times of discovery.130 A large number of bowls were found in storage room 1, five of which are classifiable as fine wares.131 In addition to these items, a total of 140 sheep astragali were found in three loci within in the room – one of which had been attached to an iron rod – as well as a sizeable collection of 58 loom weights. Both the cult stands and the astragali resemble similar items found at Megiddo.132 Gilmour identifies two other artifact types that likely maintained cultic uses at the site. They include three miniature stela-like stones and a mold for producing figurines.133 Together, the items from the site indicate a level of cultic activity likely beyond that of a single household. Likewise, the artistic quality of the cult stands is more ornate than most found in domestic settings. Identification of Room 1 as a storeroom makes sense, but the questions of who owned the items and where they were actually used remain unanswered. Thus, Room 1 is itself not a bāmâ but its contents may have come from one or more such sites. Speculations on the reasons for such a storehouse run the gamut. Regardless of who owned or controlled the items, they represent an array of

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styles and provenances that bespeak of broader cultural influences made possible by interregional mobilities of trade and travel. Kuntillet ʿAjrud: Mobilities and Civic Religiosities at the Crossroads

Each of the above site descriptions and analyses is relatively concise, intended to briefly illuminate evidence for the intersections of mobility and religiosity in a variety of contexts. In what follows, I offer a more robust case study of a single site, the 9th–8th century BCE desert caravansary, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman), for the purpose of demonstrating how more thorough evaluations of civic religiosities in a highly mobile context are also possible. Situated in a relatively isolated arid locale, the 9th–8th century BCE Kuntillet ʿAjrud is by most measurements a liminal site in comparison to those points of destination that it stands between.134 Excavated in the late 1970s by Zev Meshel, the site was first identified as an “Israelite religious center in northern Sinai.”135 Later analysis of the finds raised questions about its “Israelite” nature since some of the iconographic and inscriptional remains found there failed to align with biblical accounts of Israelite religion, even those expressed in the text as being explicitly unorthodox (2 Kings 23).136 Beyond any ethnic designation, other questions have surfaced regarding whether a strict classification of the site as a cultic venue is tenable.137 As a result of disagreements over the site’s primary uses, the architecture of the two buildings on the site have variously been described as shrines, temples, fortifications, and guest houses. Today, it is broadly assumed that the site was constructed and maintained by the Israelite court, but was used by Israelites, Judahites, and other regional actors. The primary visitors to the site were likely traveling merchants, traders, or military personnel. Remains from Kuntillet ʿAjrud indicate its likely role as a redistribution hub for various goods. Meshel recorded finds that include seashells from both the Red Sea and Mediterranean, as well as remains of wood sourced from as far south as the southern Sinai and as far north as Lebanon.138 Other items recovered from the site included loom weights and more than one hundred textile fragments.139 In addition to these, the site’s storage rooms contained myriad storage jars as well as large pithoi that came from Jerusalem.140 Throughout the site, but primarily in the “bench room” and adjoining rooms, several other objects were found that may have played roles in ritual activities. Among these are a large stone basin, lamps, vessels made of fine pottery, clay bowls, flasks, and juglets.141 Some of these items are inscribed with petitionary or blessings content, as well as images of flora, fauna, and humanoid figures undertaking various activities that might be construed as religious. While remains of sacrificial activities can be a marker of civic religiosities, Meshel notes that no evidence of sacrifice was found at Kuntillet ʿAjrud.142 Contrary to evidence from a similar Iron Age wayside Moabite shrine, WT-13 of Wadi ath-Thamad, no statues or figurines were found either.143 The site’s location near water sources could certainly contribute to its function as a place where rest was taken, thanks was given, and requests were made for continued success on one’s journey.

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Na’aman and Lissovsky have posited that there may have been a tree at the site that was used as a point of religious engagement.144 It is reasonable to assume that, if present, natural elements like trees and water could also be used in religious activities by those transiting through the site. In the end, the sum of these remains does not unequivocally indicate that the site served a strictly religious function. Rather, religiosities were likely incorporated with other non-religious activities in the daily routines of those at the site.145 With the above considerations in mind, the best characterization of the site to date is a caravansary, a term that is flexible enough to account for the reality that the site could have simultaneously served more than one purpose, including as a point of civic religious engagement, given the realities of interregional mobility between the Sinai, Negev, northwest Arabia, and the Levant during the Iron Age.146 Working from the assumption that religion permeates a variety of social spaces, we should ask how remains from the site can be illuminated by the evidence collected on the form and function of religion in contexts of mobility and migration. Five inscriptions from the site will provide a starting point for doing so. The first of these comes from Pithos A in the “bench room” – a long narrow room in which the stone benches are built along the length of the wall. It reads: Message of ‘[-]M[-]K: “Speak to Yāhēlî, and to Yô’āśāh, and to […] I have [b]lessed you to YHWH of Shômrôn and to His asherah”147 The second, found on Pithos B in the courtyard, reads: Message of Amaryaw: “Say to my lord, are you well? I have blessed you to YHWH of Têmān and his ‘asherah. May he bless you and may he guard you, and may he be with my lord [forever(?)]”.148 The third, also found on Pithos B in the courtyard, reads: “to YHWH of the Têmān and His ashera; Whatever he asks from a man, that man will give him generously. And if he would urge – YHW will give him according to his wishes”149 A fourth, found in ink on plaster in the “bench room,” reads: “… May] He lengthen their days and may they be sated […] recount to [Y]HWH of Têmān and His ashera [… because (?)] YHWH of Tê[mān], has shown [them(?)] favour, has bettered their da[ys…”150 A fifth, found on a wall just outside of the “bench room,” reads: “And in the shining forth of El at the he[ad of the mountains. And the mountains will melt like wax. And the knolls will be crushed [in Mount

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Bashan…and six on[…to bless Baal on the day of w[ar…to the name of El on the day of w[ar.”151 It is important to elaborate several observations about the objects and their inscriptions: 1 The author(s) of each of these inscriptions are unknown, though it appears that each was generated by a different hand. The identity of their creators cannot be adduced by analysis of the text alone.152 Given the common epistolary form, Smoak and Schniedewind surmise they are the work of a scribe(s) in training at the site.153 Along with Smoak and Schniedewind, Baruch Levine makes a compelling argument for the text being northern Israelite/Israelian in form.154 2 The inscriptions attest to association of Yahweh with more than one geographic location. These associations may be references to specific sites or they may be to broader regions. They may also indicate specific attributes of Yahweh that are associated with either site. 3 There are more instances of the epithet Yahweh of (the) Teman (four) than Yahweh of Shomron (one). 4 The presence of the [Y]HWH of Teman inscription on the plaster wall appears to indicate that it was put in place by whoever built or administered the site and may indicate a particular religious preference of the site’s builders, though not necessarily of those who sponsored the building, since architects or those building the site may have taken their own liberties during construction. 5 Though found in the same locus, the relationship between the YHWH of Shomron inscription on Pithos A and the [Y]HWH of Teman plaster inscription is a matter of debate. There appears to be no evidence that one was intentionally damaged in favor of another. 6 Pithos B, which was found in the courtyard, on the opposite side of the bench room’s interior wall, contains two mentions of Yahweh of Teman that are differentiated by spelling and uses of the definite article: “YHWH of the Têmān and His ashera” and “YHWH of Têmān and his ‘asherah.” 7 Each of the inscriptions appears to be a request for similar kinds of blessing. Ostraca found at Arad, which is another site of marked mobility in a later period, bear similar blessing formulae.155 8 Although El and potentially Baal are mentioned in inscriptions from the site, they are not named in the same kinds of blessing formulae with which Yahweh and Asherah are. The difficulty is that both names can function as proper names for specific deities or as common nouns whereby ēl means “god” and baal means “lord.” 9 Most scholars agree that the inscription and iconographic depictions were added to the pithoi after their arrival to the site. Yet, for several of the inscriptions, there remains debate over whether the drawings found with the texts are the work of the same person(s).

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10 Several other pieces of inscriptional evidence from the sight include Yahwistic onomastics. A full reconstruction of the religious lives of the persons at Kuntillet ʿAjrud is ultimately impossible. Nevertheless, scholars should try to imagine how various forms of movement to and around the site contributed to ascriptions of religious value to objects and spaces there. In his own investigations of the uses of items and inscriptions at the site, Schmidt reconstructs potential patterns of movement and veneration. His attempt to show these various elements “dynamically in place”156 feeds the imaginations of scholars who desire to clarify modes of praxis at the site. In a similar way, Mandell and Smoak have reoriented the study of epigraphic and other evidence found at various Iron Age sites in Israel away from purely metaphysical explorations of belief and toward a materially-based assessment with personal and communal praxis at the center.157 Though neither Schmidt’s nor Mandell and Smoak’s investigations draw explicitly from mobility or migration studies, they rightly proceed with praxis-based models of religion that center materiality and the socially constructed nature of space and movement. These scholars demonstrate how modern researchers who are separated from ancient religious subjects and places by time and space can postulate potential scenarios for how sites and objects were used to accomplish religious/magical ends. Beyond the necessities of sustenance, lodging, and refreshing one’s animals, it appears that Kuntillet ʿAjrud was a place where travelers took stock of their own emotional or spiritual wellbeing and that of others. Arrival to the site would have provided a moment of pause, as travelers transitioned from being on the move to being present in a moment of relative fixity. For some, taking account of the self in a moment of transition also includes calling upon the divine. Adopting a similar focus on materiality, we can envision ourselves as potential actors at the site and posit questions about the intersections of mobilities and religiosities there. What might visitors have already known about the site? When they arrived, what elements of the site guided their entry and exit, their presence and actions in specific buildings and rooms? Where permanent functionaries, whether administrative or religious, stationed at the site to facilitate its uses? The thought experiment can be extended to objects at the site. Did those passing through already expect certain objects or spaces of religious engagement to be there? Did they make deliberate choices in planning their journey to pack objects or vessels intended for religious use along the way? Were the basins, bowls, lamps, and juglets that probably performed both mundane and religious functions permanent fixtures at the site or were they left there by those passing through? What might archeometric analysis be able to tell us about the origins of the clay and stone from which these items are fashioned or their contents? Having likely come from Jerusalem, we might consider the paths of transit that brought the now-famous pithoi to the site or the types of persons who delivered them there. While all the particulars of the pithoi’s

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journeys are ultimately unknowable, the intersection of their presence along with that of the persons who are responsible for the various inscriptions has forever influenced our perception of the site. These contingencies, which are related by and large to the various mobilities that created the site of Kuntillet ʿAjrud, are well worth paying attention to. We should also consider how the site’s physical environment was entangled with mobility and religiosity. How did conceptions of distance between the site and other shrines, way stations, villages, or cities inform visitors religious behaviors? For example, how might the blessing formulae – which beckon divine attention or intervention on behalf of persons not at the site – be understood by the inscribers as religious means of bridging distance? Additionally, how did the site’s users perceive its relationship to other natural features? Some of the site’s users may have envisioned it as a type of peak sanctuary that was considered one of Yahweh’s mountain abodes.158 Visitors might have assumed that they were momentarily inhabiting a mountain residence of Yahweh of Teman. If the assumption that mountains can be mobile deities pertains to the personhood of Yahweh, then it is possible to read the inscriptions from Kuntillet ʿAjrud as indications that Yahweh was either accessible at these sites because they were his home, or he was personified in the mountain that was simultaneously understood to be Teman and Shomron. As we have seen, transference and overlap of religious sites are common realities for those on the move. Passers-by could have understood that the sites with which Yahweh was associated were connected or recreated in new locations, much like Deuteronomy does with Horeb/Sinai. If the site’s epithets are meant to identify Yahweh’s ability to appear in variant places as a mountain, further parallels might also be drawn between the mention of El/ēl as “the head of the mountain” in the inscription just outside the bench room and Yahweh’s own status as the head of a particular mountain(s). Perhaps persons at the site also associated surrounding landscape features with Yahweh’s attributes or abilities. Visitors to the site can easily look out across the desert and might have understood that the desert setting amplified specific characteristics of Yahweh’s divinity. Thus, the various Teman inscriptional hands may have wished to give prominence to Yahweh’s southern origins, to his association with the desert, or to a particular mountain in the South. In doing so, the epithets could accentuate the southern origins of Yahweh as well as his migratory nature for merchants, soldiers, and pastoralists moving throughout these desert regions. In contrast, the Shomron inscriptional hand, may want to showcase Yahweh’s northern-related attributes, mainly his association with a particular mountain in the North. It is possible that the persons responsible for the latter inscription recognized and accepted Yahweh’s Temanite origins but now believed that Yahweh resided in the royal temple city of Samaria. In a different way, we may also be witnessing a polemic regarding Yahweh’s domestication. The Temanite association of Yahweh with the wilderness

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could highlight characteristics of Yahweh that were seen as untamed or dangerous. Promoting an association that is primarily city-based, as is Samaria, has the effect of “civilizing” Yahweh according to a worldview that considers society to be essentially sedentary rather than mobile. The inscriptions may also represent a diachronic map of spatial knowledge whereby the old (Yahweh of Teman/the Teman) meets the more recent (Yahweh of Shomron/Samaria).159 In this regard, the sites are not necessarily juxtaposed to one another in any kind of antagonistic fashion, but are rather simply a record of sacred geographies and affiliations, and perhaps even a marker of appreciation for an ancient tradition regarding Yahweh’s origins.160 Such juxtapositions are also present in the purposeful association of Yahweh with particular sites such as Hebron (2 Samuel 15) and Jerusalem/Zion (Ps 65:1, 84:7, 99:2, 132:13, 135:21; Amos 1:2, Joel 4:16) for the sake of staking political claims to power.161 Although the epithet “Yahweh of Hebron” is not found at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, its singular appearance in 2 Sam. 15:7-8 may contribute something to our understanding of Yahwism as it is found at the site. Absalom’s vow-making in this passage is predicated on his desire to return from Geshur to Jerusalem and indicates an assumption that migratory outcomes can be determined by a deity. He makes his vow in Geshur, which is far from both Hebron and Jerusalem. This act presents readers with a situation in which a deity that is associated with a particular location is accessible beyond that location, a reality that stands in contrast to some modes of religiosity where persons can not properly venerate a deity because they are beyond their effective territory. While movers through Kuntillet ʿAjrud were drawn together by shared experiences of mobility, each person’s experience of the site as “place” was unique. Nevertheless, the inscriptional evidence from the bench room and the pithoi demonstrate that those present there shared more than the experience of mobility; they witness to the realities of a shared conviction that Yahweh was accessible there, perhaps even present in a unique way. And so, they called on his name. In addition to the inscriptional evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrud, drawings on the pithoi from the site (A & B) have also generated much discussion. At the center of the debate is the relationship between the drawings of the standing figures on Pithos A and the inscription that overlaps with it containing the words “I have [b]lessed you to Yahweh of Shômron and to His asherah”.162 Many scholars have suggested that the two standing figures, which appear to be locking arms and may be dancing, should be interpreted at the Egyptian god Bes and his consort Beset.163 Yet, the consensus requires further nuance. There is likely more to the images than a simple presentation of these Egyptian deities. As Ryan Thomas argues, the two creatures are more likely Yahweh and his consort portrayed with Bes characteristics, but still recognizable as Yawheh and Asherah.164 Bes amulets were commonly used in southern Levantine familial religion as apotropaic objects.165 Associating Bes’ apotropaic characteristics with Yahweh’s own healing abilities would likely have been common practice.

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The possibility that these images are not related to Bes and Beset but are bovine depictions of Yahweh and his consort also needs to be considered. It may be that the images are a characterization of Yahweh as a bull that emerges from the convergence of Yahweh and El. If this is the case, the bovine depiction could indeed be readily identified with the Israelite site of Samaria since bull iconography played a central role in the religious expression of this region (Judges 6; 1 Kgs 12:28).166 Remains of bull figurines have also been found at several Iron Age sites including, Tel Beersheva stratum III (Iron IIc),167 Beth Shean upper level V (Iron IIa),168 and Megiddo stratum IV.169 Associations of Yahweh with “the bull of Jacob” bolster these connections (Gen 49:24; cf. Ps 132:2, 4). Schmidt illuminates this set of issues by approaching the inscriptional evidence through iconographic analysis to investigate if and how ancient Judahite and Israelite peoples visually represented their god(s).170 While there remains significant disagreement over the aniconic nature of Israelite religion, Schmidt ultimately answers this question positively, claiming that “the concrete visualization” of deity(ies) was a key aspect of Israelite religion.171 Schmidt contends that the writing and drawing on Pithos A are the work of the same hand and that texts and drawings from pithoi A and B form a coherent whole that bears several stylistic commonalities with ancient Near Eastern art from the same period.172 Schmidt’s methodological protest is that the meanings of artistic and linguistic representations are dependent on the interpretations of both their parts and the whole. It is apparent that he sees meaning in both but believes that, in the case of pithoi A and B, the whole provides a more accurate representation of the religious ethos present at the site. In a subsequent monograph, Schmidt builds on his earlier claims and illuminates several potential ways the pithoi and their inscriptional content may have functioned across a broader timeframe.173 I review the contours of his argument here not only to affirm that several of his propositions are secure, but to demonstrate the ways they may further clarify the nature of mobility-informed religiosities witnessed at the site. Schmidt’s fundamental assumptions are that pithoi A and B were common objects that became sacralized via inscriptional activity and that they were subsequently venerated as religiously efficacious objects in their own right. He argues that they came to have sacralized status through their use as non-sacral draft surfaces for the larger wall paintings in the bench room.174 He believes, however, that the wall paintings were intended to function as sacred images from the start. Through association, the draft images on the pithoi also came to have similar sacral qualities, and thus the vessels themselves became more than objects located in the sacral space of the bench room; they were now points of access, in Schmidt’s words, to “numinous” realms.175 Schmidt’s assertion that the artistic representations and the textual inscriptions found at the site functioned as numinous conduits is plausible. The transformation of the mundane into the sacred occurs frequently among migrants who construct worship spaces using recycled objects and even

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rubbish. With its ramshackle scrap wood frame, a center beam made from a limb-stripped tree, plastic tarp walls, and patchwork corrugated iron roof panels, St. Michael’s Church, which once stood in the Calais migrant camp, is a modern example of ingenuity in the midst of limited resources. Many of the items that filled the church were similarly eclectic and makeshift in nature. Like Kuntillet ʿAjrud, St. Michael’s housed items that were created specifically as religious artifacts, such as paintings of the virgin Mary or of angelic beings. Other objects, however, like normal tablecloths, were repurposed as altar coverings, while small pieces of fabric were made into prayer rugs.176 Schmidt, Mandell, and Smoak’s observations of material religiosities can also be put into productive conversation with a well-known body of research on migrant religious artwork. To accomplish their religious goals, practitioners must procure reliable forms of access to divine/superhuman realms. Migrants secure this access by carrying items of religious significance such as amulets, images, statuettes, figurines, by generating textual reminders of faith and material art, and by constructing religious shrines along their journeys.177 Within each of these practices and expressions, multiple means of speaking of the same deity exist alongside one another without any sense of competition or tension. Each part is seen as an element of an undivided collective whole. We might then understand the various epithets applied to Yahweh at the site as appeals to aspects of divine agency/efficacy sought from a single deity.178 Over the last several decades, Jorge Durand and Douglass Massey have cataloged votive paintings left by migrants on their way through Mexico to the United States. Such paintings are broadly known as retablos, a Spanish word that derives from the Latin retro-tabula, meaning “behind the altar.”179 Ex-votos like retablos are not unique to migrational contexts, but are part of a long tradition, primarily among Catholic adherents, of adorning altars with votives of petition and thanksgiving.180 Comparative exploration of these mobile mementos demonstrates how civic religion influences personal religiosities and how personal religiosities can create points of religious access in civic contexts. Together, these findings may give us renewed insight on the depictions we find at Kuntillet ʿAjrud. Traditionally, retablos have been painted on small tin sheets that contain several common elements: an image of a holy entity – typically a saint or Christ, a depiction of the event to which the retablo refers and an account of its resolution that includes words of gratitude from the one who has been helped.181 Though there is a broad stylistic spectrum for these works of art, the intention behind them all is similar: They are offerings of thanksgiving for the receipt of a divine favor or intervention in the experiences of completing a journey, mitigating legal problems, needing rescue from imminent danger or death, returning to their country of origin, and thriving at the location to which they have migrated.182 In these regards, they align with the inscriptions at Kuntillet ʿAjrud which are primarily blessing formulae.183

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While the iconography of retablos does not share direct stylistic similarities with the pithoi painting(s) from Kuntillet ʿAjrud, two elements bear further discussion in light of the finds there. First, as Durand and Massey note, “Retablos testify to the feelings and experiences of people who migrate back and forth to work in a strange land.”184 These sentiments accord well with the likelihood that most of those who passed through Kuntillet ʿAjrud maintained transient existences as part of a broader context of interregional mobility that facilitated work and trade. Second, the depictions of the holy figures, explanations of travails, and related statements of gratitude on retablos all follow formulaic norms. While images are meant to conform to typical iconic depictions, artistic abilities and license govern the final forms, though rarely beyond easy recognition. The same tendencies are at work in the inscriptions and depictions we find at Kuntillet ʿAjrud where some images appear to trade on recognizable contemporary motifs, albeit with regional variations.185 Likewise, the text of each retablo utilizes “standard vocabulary that has evolved over hundreds of years.”186 Comparison of the formulaic texts and drawings of retablos with those at Kuntillet ʿAjrud is further illuminated by the words of Susan Niditch, who discussing amuletic writing practices suggests, Such writing is often an important feature of what we might call applied or practical religion, the goal of the writing being to control or alter a reality for the benefit of the writer or the person named in the writing or the wearer of the amulet.187 This fact stands as a reminder that formulaic writing is not simply the domain of scribes. Even in contexts of limited literacy, the ability to compose basic texts reflecting formulaic depictions of blessing, religious disposition, and personal aspirations is real.188 Just as with retablos or other stylized religious art forms, the pithoi drawings at Kuntillet ʿAjrud were not necessarily uniformly engaged by observers or practitioners. For some practitioners, ex-votos like retablos function numinously for their creators or subsequent users/viewers.189 Whether this was the case for practitioners engaging the pithoi drawings at Kuntillet ʿAjrud remains a question. Perhaps for the creators of the inscriptions at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, the impossibility of generating a coherent visual representation of the spectrum of Yahweh’s person resulted in the use of a combination of visual and textual mediums to clarify the nature of Yahweh’s character, abilities, and actions. Acknowledging the propensity for combinatory iconographic constructions in mobile contexts raises the additional question of whether the figures on pithos A might be simultaneously Bes-like, bovine, and leonine in character.190 The combination of multiple theriomorphic motifs to represent deities is not uncommon practice in the ancient Near East nor in the Hebrew Bible. Yahweh is described using characteristics such as the strength of a bull or bear, or the roar of a lion/leopard (Num 24:8; Hos 13:7-8; Amos 1:2; Joel 3:16; Lam 3:19).191 Thus, it may be the case that we are seeing the bull-imagery prevalent in the North joined with that of the leonine imagery of Judah in the South to

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represent Yahweh in a uniquely comprehensive manner.192 Fluidity, negotiation, and choice remain aspects of material praxis that ultimately forces our reconstructions of religious activities at the site to always be speculative.

Household Spaces of Religiosity In this section, I situate Yahwistic household practices in Israel and Judah, as found in text and artefact, in conversation with findings on religion and mobility/migration. Both migration decision making processes and religious praxis are driven by the demand to efficaciously meet the household’s needs. Nakhai separates Israelite family religious concerns into two categories, those containing economic and sustenance concerns, and those dealing with concerns related to health and reproduction.193 While this delineation appears helpful at first glance, it ultimately assumes division of aspects of lived experience that would not have been maintained in the ancient world. One’s economic abilities in an agrarian context are directly related to personal health and the ability to produce offspring who can contribute to the economic function of the family unit.194 With that in mind, I proceed not with abstract categories of being, but with categories of space and praxis that were within the primary domain of the household: 1) domestic spaces and practices of veneration 2) food preparation spaces and related dietary habits 3) spaces of birthing and naming practices 4) burial spaces and post-mortem practices. Belief and praxis at the personal and household levels are generally marked by higher levels of fluidity than that of civic praxis, which tends to be more conservative in its evolution. Across social contexts, persons maintain their own private religious practices that include elements of civic religion but are by no means limited to it. What this means for the present study is that a shared civic foundation of Yahwistic veneration did not prohibit a wide variety of household and local variations of expression. As demonstrated earlier, the social arrangement of the household was reflected in broader civic structures and in presentations of the pantheon. These civic structures cultivated an ethnonational identity and increased social cohesion. Even as a centralized nationally enforced religion grew to prominence, common persons maintained pluriform religiosities. Although Yahweh was known across both territories, not all inhabitants of Israel and Judah were Yahwists. General practices in Israel and Judah likely mirrored aspects of the broader regional bipartite religious structures whereby practitioners venerated ancestral personages along with a family deity(ies).195 However, focusing on the uniformity of household praxis should not lead scholars to assert that variance of practice between households means that each household had their own religion. Domestic Spaces of Veneration

Few of the domestic buildings that have been excavated in Israel and Judah contained areas specifically set aside for religious activities. Most scholars agree

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that spaces throughout homes were multipurpose and therefore common zones, including rooftops, were momentarily transformed into sacred spaces through the initiation of particular activities and rituals (2 Kgs 23:12; Jer 19:13, 32:29; Zeph 1:5).196 The types of objects associated with religious practices have been found in an array of locations within excavated homes. Most of this evidence comes from later periods in the Iron Age for which more robust digs have been accomplished. Among those objects which have been unearthed, items identified as “cultic” include anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and votives, amulets, incense stands, miniature altars, miniature temples/shrines and couches/thrones, as well as pottery types that appear to have specific cultic functions such as lamps or vessels for pouring out libations and offering consumables.197 Some homes may have contained niches, whereby residents maintained small displays of cultic paraphernalia.198 Household spaces served multiple purposes, some of which were “cultic.” In a similar way, household items or utensils could be used as mundane or sacred objects, depending on the circumstances.199 It is plausible that certain religious items were in use on a constant basis. For example, families could have continually burned incense to simultaneously clear the air and maintain the ritual purity of the home. Families with significant resources may have constructed permanent cultic structures within or nearby their homes. Although archaeological evidence for such a practice is minimal, the textual account of Judges 17 – which will be dealt with in depth momentarily – presents a family with what appears to be a permanently installed household shrine. In potential support of such a reality, installations at Megiddo, Tel Masos, and Hazor may be cult rooms or household shrines.200 Sacrifice does not appear to have been practiced in individual homes and may not have even happened at all village shrines, as the evidence, or lack thereof, for sacrificial activities at Arad demonstrates. According to Albertz and Schmitt, it appears the practice was reserved for larger local, regional, and supraregional sites to which persons would have traveled.201 Biblical authors attempt to create a landscape in which civic religious structures were primarily presided over by men. Although biblical texts and archaeological data preserve memories of times when women may have served in more public religious settings, the general tendency of later biblical editors was to excise women from official cultic activities (Exod 38:8; 1 Sam 2:22).202 Women’s lives were governed by the rhythms of civic religion but they were only allowed to participate in certain aspects of it, primarily those roles that supported male religious specialists.203 This polemic is especially visible regarding the activities of sacrifice, which women are not allowed to directly participate in (Lev 12:6-7,15:19-33).204 Those practices in which women do take leading roles are often portrayed by biblical authors as apostate (1 Sam 28:3-25; Jer 7:17; 44:15-25; Ezek 8:14; 13:17-23).205 Despite these textual portrayals of religiosity, scholars have begun to recognize the centrality of women as household religious actors.206 It is no

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overstatement to say that women were the primary practitioners and tradents of domestic religious rites and responsible for maintaining the household’s positive alignment with superhuman powers through rituals associated with reproduction and well-begin. The specifically female activities of birthing and nursing certainly need not confine women to their houses, but other types of work performed in domestic space, such as textile production and food preparation/storage were also often women’s domains. In addition to bringing new life into the world, women also typically maintained the responsibilities of caring for elderly household members as well as for the dead.207 In the midst of the daily activities associated with feeding and caring for the household, religious rituals and medical interventions were inseparable and executed for the most part by women.208 Thus, mention of women’s work preserving herbs was likely linked with their application as religious and medicinal substances (1 Sam 8:13). The example of the Shunammite woman also demonstrates that some women were key decision makers in the family’s migrational process (2 Kgs 4:8-37; 8:1-6). The role of children in household religion has also been understudied until recent years. As the primary domestic religious specialists, women would have been attended by their children who learned the ins and outs of family rituals including meal preparation, feeding ancestors, rites of passage, healing rites, and other forms of domestic religiosities.209 Fingerprint analysis of Middle Bronze Age miniature figurines even shows that children participated in making such items, likely for their own use in household rituals.210 In exploring the evidence related to household religious paraphernalia and spaces, questions remain regarding patterns of religiosity that may bear the marks of mobility-influenced praxis. Which practices were oriented toward the efficacious engagement of goods and avoidance of ills associated with mobility, travel, or migration? Likewise, how do practices we perceive among domestic spaces preserve potential former experiences of mobility/migration, either for their practitioners or for their ancestors from whom certain religious traditions were inherited? Votive objects and figurines were found in almost all archaeological contexts, though certain types appear to be more associated with specific domains. These include miniature pieces of furniture, miniature lampstands, miniature vessels, “collectibles,” and figurines of different sizes and materials.211 Higher quality metal figurines have mostly been found at larger regional sites while terracotta votives are typical in domestic loci. Obviously, miniaturized models of cultic items make sense as space-saving objects that were used in confined domestic settings. The portability of such objects is, however, also important to consider. Persons may have carried certain figurines to sites where they were deposited to accomplish ritual ends. Unfortunately, the current body of evidence does not tell us more about the persons doing the depositing. While ceramic analysis might be able to tell us where the clay for the object originated, it cannot tell us the path the item took to the site, whether it changed hands, or if it was intentionally left behind or forgotten.

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Two unique Iron IIC assemblages from Beersheva furnish us with further opportunities to understand the nexus of mobility and religiosity in southern Judah. The hoards consist of several votive figurines including a bronze female statuette of an Egyptian-style goddess, a jar handle resembling a Sethstyle animal head, an animal figurine resembling a Sphinx, a Neo-Assyrian cylinder seal, and a glass head in what appears to be a Phoenician-style.212 Although the concentration of these objects are atypical among the finds of most Iron Age domestic finds, they illuminate the realities of interregional mobility of religious symbols and perhaps even practices. Nothing is known at present about the owners of these objects. They may have been migrants from Egypt or Phoenicia, though it is more probable that they were local members of a higher social echelon that maintained interregional connections whereby such items could be acquired throughout trade or emulative production. It may even be the case that the owners of these objects traveled themselves to places where such artifacts could have been obtained. Whether the cultural variety demonstrated among the finds can be interpreted as intentional religious eclecticism remains open. Continuities between Bronze and Iron Age cultures of religiosity in the Levant were made possible, in part, by continuities in cultures of mobility.213 It is likely that a range of previous cultural assumptions represented among the related collections of objects was influential in the religious lives of their users, even as the users integrated and adapted those previous assumptions within their contemporary symbolic worlds. Food Preparation and Dietary Habits

Among the places in which cultic activities occurred, those where food was prepared and consumed rank as the most common sites of household ritual enactment.214 These sites are typically intelligible by the remains of a fire pit or hearth, and sometimes by animal remains. According to Albertz and Schmitt’s data banks, almost every domestic site (Types 1 and 2) contained remains of a food preparation area.215 Albertz and Schmitt also note the frequent presence of aromatics near such loci and suggest that they may have played a role in ritual consumption or ancestral feeding activities.216 Marginality was an ever-present aspect of Iron Age life for most people. The most basic tasks of food preparation, such as grinding flour, making dough, and processing dairy products were time consuming and arduous endeavors.217 The diets of most ancient Israelite and Judahites were limited by seasonal access to produce and relied on good harvests. Animals were consumed, but not on any regular basis since the resources they produced like wool or milk were more valuable for daily life than occasional meat-based meals.218 The question of pork consumption among Bronze and Iron Age populations in the Levant has spurred much discussion in the last forty years. Brian Hesse’s seminal studies revealed that most sites within the boundaries of Israel and Judah conspicuously lacked pig bones.219 This phenomenon appears in

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stark contrast to the patterns of pig consumption witnessed among Israel and Judah’s Philistine neighbors, at least during the Iron I period when Philistine consumption of pork appears to have increased for a time before decreasing in the Iron Age II.220 Many hypotheses have been suggested for how these different foodways came to be.221 The brief analysis that follows adds a mobility-informed reading of the data. Foodways are an elemental aspect of identity. Many migrants attempt to maintain foodways through experiences of migration, but the range of outcomes for these intentions varies.222 Changes in climate between origin and destination sites can alter ingredient availability. Likewise, the “exotic” nature of certain ingredients often means that staples that were affordable in home contexts now cost significantly more. Furthermore, different modes of cooking, such as using a stove or oven in a new urban home, contrasts with other more traditional means of preparation like pits or open fires. In addition to the challenges related to new culinary environment, other cultural considerations of when to eat, what to eat, and where to eat comes to the fore. In answer to these questions, we see that many migrants adjust their eating habits, at least as they are visible in the public domain, to be similar to those of their destination sites.223 Pork consumption is not typically a dietary norm among cross-land mobile populations since pigs are not ideally suited for such lifeways. Moreover, the biomes of the Central Highlands, particularly the southern regions, while not altogether unsuitable for pigs, were better geared toward other types of livestock. The pigs consumed by Philistine populations trace their ancestry back to the Aegean and were likely initially brought on ships to the Levant.224 The fact that Philistine dietary habits of pork consumption endured through at least the Iron Age I is a testament to the durability of certain foodways in contexts of migration. Avoidance of pork in Canaan can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age, before Israel’s emergence, when pork consumption was not totally avoided but was largely absent among most of the region’s inhabitants.225 Philistine consumption of pork may have continued as long as agricultural resources were available. Yet, in addition to increasing political control from outside – and its effects on primary food production and consumption habits – other cultural factors appear to have taken their toll on Philistine preferences for pork. In-line with Sweeney Tookes’ research, the Philistines eventually acculturated to the dominant food regimes of the place they came to inhabit.226 Regarding the continued avoidance of pork among Israelite and Judahite populations, the simplest answer remains the most compelling: purposeful selfdifferentiation from the Philistines. Whether abstaining from pork consumption was a uniquely religious practice remains up for debate. It is more likely, that it was a cultural practice that gained the status of religious institution in a later period.227 An analog is found in the practice of circumcision, which occurred in various parts of Canaan, but became an act of unique religious significance to the biblical authors and Yahwistic community at a later point.228

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Birthing Spaces and Naming Practices

Locations inside of homes where women gave birth and families gathered to share in celebration and petition are less identifiable than those where food preparation took place. Nevertheless, the remains of other items, some of which served ritual functions can be used as diagnostics for religious practices undertaken in these contexts. Those items identified as female pillar figurines are particularly ubiquitous across household contexts and often found with items related to other female associated concerns such as figurines or amulets of the Egyptian god Bes.229 Moreover, though they have occasionally been found at sites like the shrine at Arad, they are relatively rare at large sites of civic religious engagement.230 Several in-depth studies have been conducted on the nature of these objects, but their functions remain somewhat elusive.231 Some scholars assume that these figurines were related to the veneration of Asherah or Astarte. Others argue that they do not represent deities and suggest they may have represented present family members or ancestral personages as part of ritual activities.232 Many scholars assert that these objects functioned in some capacity related to fertility and associated childbearing and nursing activities.233 Shawna Dolansky offers an intriguing counter interpretation of the evidence whereby she traces the emergence of Judean pillar figurines in relation to other Cypriot/Aegean, West Semitic, and Mesopotamian instantiations of divine female protective figures. She demonstrates that Judahite creators of these objects drew together the Cypriot motif of goddesses with raised arms with the broader ancient Near Eastern motif of female warrior deities holding their breasts before arriving at her conclusion that the figurines are primarily apotropaic items representing divine protection.234 Dolansky’s work is particularly germane to the present study as the association of female protective deities with other mobility structures, like war horses, indicates that these figurines may have played protective roles within and beyond domestic spaces.235 Not only does she call into question the assumption that these objects were primarily used by women, she indirectly points to the fact that these objects may have been considered to maintain efficacy beyond the boundaries of the domestic domain. As such, persons may have carried the figurines with them in their daily comings and goings, as well as on longer distance journeys. That a small number of such items have been found at larger regional shrines, may indicate that they were brought there as petitionary deposits. Biblical sources indicate that women presided over birthing and childrearing, often in neighborhood collectives (Ruth 4:14-17; 1 Sam 4:20). These aspects of women’s lives are also contexts that require mobility-informed analysis. Given the specialized knowledge required to be an expert midwife, birth workers would have been in high demand. It is likely that experienced midwives traveled beyond the bounds of their immediate communities to assist women in their respective regions. Likewise, need for wet nurses may have resulted in acquisition of help from women beyond the local households.

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Even when not working directly with birthing mothers, women likely heralded a child’s birth to other members of the community (2 Sam 17:17; Prov 9:3). In moments of birth, women in the community also performed apotropaic rituals on behalf of mother and child, such as tying a red thread around a baby’s appendage to ward off demons or swaddling it in cloth after birth (Gen 38:28-38).236 Other rituals included washing a child or rubbing it with salt.237 Meyers argues that circumcision was first performed by women and likely served apotropaic purposes (Cf. Gen 4:24-26).238 Archaeologists have also found sets of figurines containing birthing women and other attendants who are presumably midwives or doulas.239 Association of the ritual semantics of these objects aligns with the protective qualities of female pillar. Finally, the presence of various types of lamps in household archaeological contexts may indicate that fire played a role in birthing practices, perhaps as a source of purification and means to ward off ills.240 Only in the most dire circumstances, when the knowledge of the midwife did not suffice, were male religious specialists such as priests called upon.241 Naming practices vary across contexts in the ancient Near East. Likewise, differences occurred across time in Israel and Judah. While some biblical texts record the practice of fathers naming their firstborn sons, mothers actually name their children more frequently in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.242 Such is the case when Hannah names Samuel (1 Sam 1:21). A similar but slightly different situation occurs when Pharaoh’s daughter names Moses (Exod 2:10). Infrequently, texts indicate joint naming by the parents (Gen 25:25). Occasionally, a person who was not an immediate family member may have given a name to a child (Ruth 4:14-17). Having already discussed the treacheries of interpreting onomastic data earlier, it is worth repeating that the onomastic record is not an entirely useless catalog for investigations of Israelite and Judahite religions. There are close to 1,900 Hebrew names represented between biblical texts and inscriptional data.243 Most Yahwistic theophoric names found in the Bible follow psalmodic forms of petition or praise, and relay immediate concerns for health, safety, and prosperity.244 These names do not, however, tell us that the one doing the naming was singularly allegiant to Yahweh. Nor do they indicate whether the name giver only associated the needs encapsulated in the name with Yahweh. Conspicuously absent from the onomastic record are the great narratives of Israel’s past migrations. No names mention the sojourn from Ur, the exodus from Egypt, or the period of wandering in the wilderness. Nevertheless, several biblical episodes relate to our discussion of naming in contexts of mobility and migration. The first of these is drawn from the book of Genesis where readers find Hagar, “the gēr,” as Sarai’s maidservant. Readers may miss the fact that even though she is Egyptian, she bears a Hebrew name, one that was not likely her original name, and one that essentially anonymizes her.

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Here experiences of leaving or being taken away from her home in Egypt, of running away from Sarai, and of eventually being thrown out of Abraham and Sarah’s household make her a migrant multiple times over. Throughout the Genesis narrative of Joseph’s time in Egypt, readers find Joseph responding pragmatically, as many migrants do, to his context. At one point, he takes on the Egyptian name Zaphenath-Panea, and marries an Egyptian woman who is the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41:45). Later, Joseph’s decision to give his two sons Hebrew names bespeaks not only his desire to remain connected to his ancestral heritage, but also likely a future hope of return to a place where “hardships are forgotten” (Mannaseh). Such onomastic activity can be read as instructive for migrant behavior in a foreign land, as one’s name can mark cultural affiliations, even when the named individual is native to the foreign place as is the case for Joseph’s children.245 Joseph’s willingness to take on an Egyptian name should be contrasted with Daniel’s experience of receiving a Babylonian name but resisting other forms of acculturation (Dan 1:7-8). Another significant naming event is found in Exodus, when Moses, a Hebrew who is given an Egyptian name, marries the daughter of a foreign priest (like Joseph), and names his son Gershom, a Hebrew name meaning, “a wanderer there” (Exod 2:22). This name overtly situates Moses’ own experience of wandering in a foreign land on the shoulders of his son, forever attaching a father’s experience of migration to his child, who is by all accounts a second generation native of Midian. Doing so may indicate the future reality that Moses’ offspring will lead lives of wandering on their ways to Canaan. Gershom’s son, Jonathan would eventually become a priest among a group of Danite migrants who settle in Laish (Judg 18:30-31).246 In all of this, we should pay attention to the fact that the names parents give their children may capture the concerns or religious commitments of the parent, but not necessarily of their children. Burial Spaces and Practices

Death in Israel and Judah fell primarily under the purview of the household who had to decide where and how to bury their deceased. For most Israelites and Judahites, spaces of lived experience and the close-knit structures of life were mirrored in the burial arrangements for the dead.247 Treatment of the dead relays religious assumptions of the dead and of those responsible for their burial.248 The biblical authors are by no means silent on the matters of appropriate treatment for the dead (Gen 23:4-8; 47:29-30; 2 Kgs 9:30-34) or regarding the potential for interactions with them (Lev 21:11; Num 19:11; 1 Sam 28:3-24).249 Studies of burial practices can reveal helpful information related to patterns of mobility as well as cultural contact and negotiation. In many religions, past and present, the human experience of death is perceived as a migratory phenomenon or discussed through the use of migration metaphors. Burial practices and other post-mortem treatments of the body are often responsively formed around these conceptions. Drawings of ships on

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tomb walls at Khirbet Beit Lei reinforce this notion.250 Even though neither seafaring nor river travel were common lifeways for many living in Israel or Judah, the motif of a passage by ship to the realms of death may have been present among those living in closer proximity to the coast and to other groups with sea-bound livelihoods.251 In addition to these realities, the experience of death as a migrant raises a spectrum of related concerns for persons in sending, transit, and receiving contexts. Bloch-Smith documents eight types of burial methods found across the southern Levant. They include simple burials, cist interments, jar, anthropoid coffins, bathtub coffins, bench tombs, cave tombs, and cremation.252 Simple and cist-type burials were common among coastal sites and lowland regions, including the Jezreel Valley, Beth Shean, and the Jordan Valley, where topsoil or sand was the primary surface layer and easily moved.253 Jar and urn burials were more common in coastal regions further north, as well as in Syrian valleys and the steppe of the Transjordan.254 Bathtub coffins appear to be the primary Assyrian inhumation method.255 Although locally different forms of burial are attested throughout Israel and Judah, cave and bench tombs were the predominant types of burial sites found throughout the Central Highlands in the Late Bronze and later Iron Age.256 Eventually, family-style bench tombs would surpass cave tombs as the most common burial type in the Central Highlands.257 Bloch-Smith and Nabulsi both clarify that there is a gap in Highland burial data between the 12th and 9th centuries.258 Speculations on the reasoning for this dearth of data range far and wide. A mobilities-informed analysis contributes the suggestion that higher levels of interregional movement resulting from dominant cultures of mobility may be a cause for the lack of established gravesites in this specific region during the early Iron Age. If certain populations living there during the Early Iron Age came from mobile heritages or led relatively more mobile lifestyles than lowland populations, simple inhumations or other means of post-mortem treatment such as cremation, may have been more popular forms of burial. An additional point of differentiation regards the location of tombs. As Suriano demonstrates, the burial spaces of the Iron Age southern Levant are located primarily beyond the realms of domestic space, a pattern which stands in contrast to burial practices in the northern Levant and Mesopotamia.259 The practice of interring bodies beyond the immediate space of the household signifies multiple levels of separation, but not necessarily permanent division of the living from the dead.260 The notion that the living will eventually join the dead via travel to their world is captured in David’s response regarding the death of his first child with Bathsheba (2 Sam 12:23). Grave goods can also provide opportunities to understand how ancient persons perceived the human experience of death. For many peoples in the ancient Near East, the realm of death was one that required navigation of some type. Items included in graves indicate those things the living assumed the dead still needed. These often included provisions for food and drink such as bowls and pilgrim flasks, but sometimes extended to other needs like lamps,

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additional clothing, grooming items, jewelry and amulets, seals and scarabs, gaming items, furniture, cutlery, tools, weapons and various figurines.261 One type of object, broadly known as horse-and-rider figurines, may provide insights into mobility-informed religiosities. These terracotta artifacts have been found primarily in domestic and mortuary settings. Some scholars have associated them with the deity Baal, who was known as a “cloud rider” throughout the Levant (Psalms 18, 20; Habakkuk 3).262 The provenance of a significant proportion of these objects in later periods leads me to conclude that if they signify a cloud-riding god, it is likely Yahweh and not Baal since Yahweh had subsumed many of Baal’s attributes by this period.263 Habakkuk describes Yahweh and his horses readied for battle or riding into it (Hab 3:8, 15). Other biblical texts depict Yahweh with the members of his divine cavalry (2 Kgs 2:11, 6:17; Ps 68:4, 17). Although separated by several centuries, the equid burials common in the northern stretches of the Egyptian Delta and broader Levant during the Middle Bronze Age may reflect a similar concern to bury beasts of burden or beasts of mobility/travel with human remains.264 In addition to providing evidence for movement of material goods throughout various regions, grave goods can also signal cultural associations or appreciations. Foreign goods do not necessarily indicate that the person buried was a foreigner. In the tombs of the Iron Age Central Highlands, the most common grave goods were cooking pots, lamps, and jewelry which almost certainly served amuletic functions.265 Many of these items, such as scarabs and Eye of Horus amulets were Egyptian in style or origin.266 Several forms of Egyptian pottery were also widely attested in many highland and lowland graves.267 Bloch-Smith’s evaluation of the evidence from Azor, Lachish, and Jerusalem, where a spectrum of burial types are attested even as bench tombs grew in popularity, leads her to claim that these sites were host to a variety of cultural groups who maintained distinct practices for interring their dead.268 Anthropoid coffins, typically understood as stylistically Egyptian, and bathtub coffins, typically associate with Assyrian burials, were not broadly adopted by locals but were limited in use to persons who had relocated to the region at various points.269 Many migrants wrestle with the problem of dying away from their homeland. Even for those who have come to know a new location as home, it is common to want their postmortem bodies to be treated in ways that reflect cultural preferences for sites of origins.270 In addition to types of coffins in use, the orientation of interred bodies can also indicate associations with particular sites of origin or religious assumptions of necessary bodily positions for the journey into death.271 The portability of many of the grave goods found may have been for the sake of the dead who were themselves on a journey. Interestingly, pilgrim flasks remained conspicuously absent from most highland burial sites.272 Perhaps this indicates particular understandings regarding the mobility of the deceased. It may well be that the dominant beliefs of the ancestral cult supposed that family members who had died were still essential persons in the family network and

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stayed in close vicinity to the homes of their living relatives.273 It may also be the case that as households moved to different lands throughout the Iron Age in response to the larger regional territorial and political changes that they were located further and further from their ancestral burial grounds. If families who had relocated were able to make the journey to visit their honored dead, the items which they brought with them needed to travel well. Small cultic items would certainly be more portable but those that were specifically oriented toward journey-related praxis may also have been seen as appropriate for the dead who journeyed in another realm. In some cases, the family’s return may have even involved the repatriation of a deceased member to ancestral burial grounds (Gen 50: 7–14). Questions of Yahweh’s mobility also arise in mortuary contexts. Biblical depictions of Yahweh’s access to the realms of the dead are mixed. While we find poetic instantiations of Yahweh’s ability to rescue one from the pit, the thrust of this language often refers to Yahweh’s saving action before one arrives to the point of death (Ps 3,0:3 49:15, 86:13, 103:4; Job 33:18, 28). According to the ancient hymn in Jonah, Yahweh maintains not only the ability to hear someone in Sheol, but to rescue one from it (Jonah 2:3-6). Other biblical voices affirm the notion that Yahweh’s reach extends to Sheol (1 Sam 2:6; Ps 139:8; Amos 9:2; Hos 13:14). Still, Isaiah argues against access to the Divine from Sheol (Isa 38:13). Perhaps the deceased or those burying them envisioned Yahweh coming to rescue them from death (Isa 25:8; Hos 13:14). Such an association would be plausible if the stories of Baal’s triumphs over death (Mot) had also come to be associated with Yahweh, or if other mythological tropes of deities traveling to the underworld or through the realms of death made their way into the cognitive repertoires of Yahwistic adherents. Sometimes, inscriptions on tomb walls or items placed with the dead relay the hope of divine blessing. Certain burial inscriptions might have even been intended as the words of the dead to the living who were tasked with their caretaking.274 Amulets, like those found at Ketef Hinnom, were likely worn by the deceased to accompany them on their journey to the realms of the dead.275 Two inscriptions from Khirbet Beit Lei offer an additional perspective from which to consider the nexus of mobility and death. One reads, “Yahweh is god of the whole earth. The highlands of Judah belong to the god of Jerusalem.”276 The other, “Intervene, O compassionate god! Absolve, O Yahweh!”277 While the writer(s) of both texts remains a mystery, a common hyptothesis among scholars is that the petitions found on the tomb wall were left by persons hiding there while fleeing a Neo-Assyrian incursion.278 If this is the case, other questions arise regarding why the refugees did not disturb any of the bodies or grave goods in the tomb.279 Perhaps rather than envisioning strangers hiding in this tomb, we ought to see the inscriptions as words of blessing and protection left by family members visiting the tomb of their ancestors one last time before fleeing in the face of the intruders.280 Knowing they cannot take

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their dead with them they invoked the claim of Yahweh’s dominion over the entire world to ensure protection for both themselves and their dead in their absence. Judges 17–18: Migration Memories and Household Religiosities

This section presents a mobilities-informed reading of Judges 17–18 as a case study of the ways elements of household religiosities and cultures of mobilities are textually entangled. Judges is a text that is ripe for mobilities analysis. The whole of the book is replete with stories of movement and migration. The book’s initial three chapters describe Israel’s experiences of migration and integration among the various people of the land. Throughout the text, descriptions of migratory success and misfortune are given in theological terms. In many ways, Judges contains the very kinds of narratives that migrant communities construct to explain things like the origins of fictive kin relationships, claims to land, and ethnic distinctions from other groups. The compositional history of the book of Judges is the subject of intense debate. Commentators posit varying periods of authorship that span the 6th Century BCE into the Hellenistic period. Most agree that the Masoretic Hebrew version of the book contains ancient traditions, particularly elements in Judges 5. There is little doubt that the present form of the text is the product of later redaction, though scholars disagree over the purpose and extent of editorial activities. Unable to resolve these complex disputes here, I proceed in my analysis with the claim that Judges preserves aspects of cultures of mobility in Israel, Judah, and the broader ancient Near East from times within and beyond its compositional horizon. Judges 17 begins with story of a certain Ephraimite named Micah, whose extended household resides in the northern Central Highlands. At the start of the account, we find that Micah has stolen a significant sum of silver from his mother but has since returned it. She responds to its reinstatement by commissioning a statue (‫ )פסל‬be made with a portion of the silver. The statue is set in Micah’s household shrine – for which he has also created an ephod, an instrument of divinatory import, and teraphim, which are frequently understood as representations of ancestral spirits – and in which he has installed one of his sons as a priest (Gen 31:19; 1 Sam 19:13).281 Household shrines were not ubiquitous phenomena in Israel and Judah, being minimally attested in the Iron Age IIA-B periods.282 Perhaps the example of the early Iron Age smallscale shrine at Tel Masos (stratum II), which may have belonged to a local elite, is exemplary of that in the Judges tale.283 Our first opportunity to consider the intersections of mobility/migration and religion in this pericope comes with the arrival of an itinerant Levite – a member of the landless priestly class (Num 18:21-25; Josh 13:33) – leaves Bethlehem in search of work and a new home, and who Micah hires as the household’s priest (Judg 17:7-8; cf. Num 3:1-18). We have seen that the household is the primary locus of religious socialization and the main site of

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migration sending and receiving. Likewise, it has been demonstrated that kinship structures are responsive to social, economic, environmental, demographic pressures. These realities are front and center in the Judges narrative. First, when Micah petitions the Levite to stay with him and “become like a father to me” (Judg 17:10), and again when the Levite comes to appreciate Micah “like one of his sons” (Judg 17:11). It is possible that the itinerant nature of a Levite coincides with Stager’s suggestion that the priesthood served as a large-scale social safety net of sorts to assume male members of society who had been orphaned or lacked appropriate familial networks to sustain them. Such a hypothesis fits well with the general assertion made throughout this project, those marginal and mobile actors were incorporated into extended kin groups through fictive relationships.284 Micah’s piety is laudable. His name, meaning “Who is like Yahweh?” speaks of his personal religious allegiance, and likely to that of his entire household.285 Even though we know onomastic data is not always a reliable indicator of personal religious affiliation, we can be sure that Micah’s name, as a literary product, is meant to infer his Yahwistic affiliation to the reader. Yet, his religiosity reflects the tensions between personal praxis and what the biblical authors hope to project as “proper” religiosity. He is concerned to worship Yahweh well, but relies on the use of an image and practices ancestral veneration.286 Michah’s situation demonstrates how the demands of everyday life can reshape religious practices, sometimes in ways that deviate from known expectations or explicit institutional requirements. For example, Micah can only initially install his son as a functionary in the family shrine. He is acutely aware that an official religious specialist would be a more appropriate person to have in the role. Thus, when he replaces his son as a priest with the Levite, he declares that having an official Yahwistic religious functionary in his household will bring him success (Judg 17:13). Mention of this “official” priest of Yahweh is likely meant to emphasize the legitimate kind of religious official over and against the canonically later incident of Jeroboam appointing “priests from all the people” to administer rites after his cultic reforms (1 Kgs 12:32, 13:33). Even though the text does not linger on the details, the spectrum of religiosity that arises in response to changing needs and available religious resources is readily apparent. Like most religious actors, Micah practices socially prescribed forms of religiosity to the extent that he can with what he has but is also willing to institute other practices in order to accomplish his desired ends. Interestingly, the author of the text does not directly criticize Micah for these behaviors. The importance of this should not be overlooked since the authors of Judges do not defer from offering moral critiques of other characters throughout the book. While the statue which Micah’s mother commissions is not described in the text, we might infer based on other biblical content associated with the region of Dan and evidence from the material cultural record that the statue was a depiction of Yahweh in the form of a bull-calf (‫)עגל‬a.287 Metal bovine figurines have been found throughout the Levant in both the Bronze and Iron Ages.288

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The bronze bull figurine found near Dothan and an older figurine from Hazor are quintessential examples.289 Such artifacts are generally associated with the Syro-Phoenecian worship of El, Bull-El, and Baal-Hadaad. Continuities also obtained between Syro-Phonecian bull-calf iconography and Marduk’s Sumerian logogram, dAMAR.UTU, “Bull-Calf of the Sun.”290 Later, bovine characteristics were extended to Yahweh.291 We find evidence for Yahwistic association and overlap with the worship of Baal and other divine images in several biblical texts (Exod 32:4; Deut 9:16; Neh 9:18; 1 Kgs 12:28; 2 Kgs 10:29, 17:16; 2 Chr 11:5, 13:8; Hos 10:5). The injunction against the production of cast deities (‫ )אלהי מסכה‬in Exod 34:17 is likely intended to ring in readers ears as they encounter the Judges 17 narrative. The plot of the story thickens when, in Judges 18, five members from the tribe of Dan who reside in the coastal region of Canaan set out to reconnoiter a new place of residence north of Ephraim (cf. Josh 19:40-48).292 On their journey, the scouts from Dan pass by Micah’s home, where he extends them hospitality. During their stay, they recognize the voice of the Levite as such and approach him. Perhaps the fact that the Danites recognize the Levite’s voice as distinct is an indication of a regionally specific dialect with which the men of Dan are familiar. It may be the case that he spoke in a similar way to them. It may also be the case that his accent identifies him as a “southerner,” a possibility that could demonstrate the text’s author(s) are making a claim about Levites being primarily from or situated in Judah. In either case, the presence of the Levite appears to be both surprising and fortuitous for the Danites. Knowing that as a Levite he is a priest of Yahweh, the Danites request a prophetic indication of the outcome of their scouting venture to Laish. This may be related to the tradition that Levites were assigned specific instruments and tasks of divination (Deut 33:8). The Levite responds positively, noting that their journey is being overseen or led (‫ )נכח‬by Yahweh (Judg 18:5-6). The Levite’s proclamation bears another interesting parallel to the demands of the people in the Exodus 32 golden calf scene wherein the people ask for “god(s) that will go before us” (‫)אלהים אשׁר ילכו לפנינו‬a.293 References to deities leading warriors into battle like kings is found in the biblical record and in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions.294 Upon returning from their initial survey of the land, the scouts give a positive report and assemble a group of armed men who set out to conquer Laish. The citizen army follows the same route as the scouts and also passes by Micah’s house where they attempt to steal the silver statue, and the ephod and teraphim before convincing the Levite to join them as their patron priest. The Levite acquiesces and carries the religious implements off with the Danites. Micah’s attempts to stop them go unheeded and they proceed to destroy the people and place of Laish before occupying the site. Several additional observations can be made regarding migrational behavior. The first rests on the body of evidence indicating that the primary reason people migrate is that they are faced with insecurity.295 The Levite’s

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insecurities cause him to journey north from Jerusalem in search of sponsorship that will provide work and a place to live. Likewise, the people of Dan respond to the insecurities of their situation by looking for an alternative home. Although the text is mute on their reasons for migrating, it may retain a nugget of historical facticity whereby coastal populations were displaced first by the arrival of Sea Peoples and then again as they expanded inland from coastal settlements.296 Thus, Judges 18 begins with the book’s cyclical declaration, ‫בימים ההם אין מלך בישׂראל‬, “In those days there was no king in Israel,” which speaks not only to the ambiguous moral situation of the people but also to the more mundane recognition of a lack of central authority that could keep marauding groups from attacking one another. The socially selective processes of moving, receiving, and sending that occur in the Judges texts are common functions of households and extended communities operating in mobile contexts. As is the case with the Danite migration, the smallest necessary group is mobilized first so as not to disrupt the stability of the larger household in their absence. Once potential sites of relocation have been explored, larger contingents of the sending population may undertake the journey. Historically, this stage of movement sometimes involved conflict between new arrivals and settled populations. It need not always be characterized by violent removal or displacement of peoples, but in the case of the Danite narrative, it does. Insecurity also instigates and informs religious praxis. When the Danites approach the Levite to inquire about the outcome of their relocative endeavor, we are reminded of analogs among modern migrants who rely on a spectrum of religious resources when making the decision of whether or not to migrate. Potential migrants commonly visit sites of religious pilgrimage to deposit petitionary offerings and request safety for themselves and family members.297 Migrants also actively seek out the counsel of religious leaders and participate in prayer and blessing ceremonies before making the trip.298 Within the text, the mobile nature of Levitical life is a testament to the ubiquity of Yahweh worship throughout the land. On one level, the text calls readers to remember a time when Levites were spread throughout the land because they had no central shrine in Jerusalem. On another level, it may preserve a historical instance when an intentional dispersion of religious functionaries took place to codify praxis. The general occurrence of Levites traveling in search of patronage and work at least assumes a world in which persons are familiar with this type of traveling religious specialist. That the Dannites want to take Micah’s religious paraphernalia with them evidences a religious pragmatism already observed with Micah himself. The Danites are sure to take everything from the shrine, perhaps thinking that all the items necessarily work together or that the ephod and teraphim may come in need if the statue cannot meet their needs. It is common for migrants to carry items such as prayer beads, amulets or totems, portions of religious texts, statuettes, pieces of fabric. Such items have been found along migrant routes or confiscated from migrants upon their arrival to destination sites.299

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Whatever their reasoning, the Danites and the Levite clearly assume that Yahweh, or at least an object providing access to Yahweh, is portable. After conquering Laish and rebuilding the city, the Danites erect a shrine to the stolen Yahweh image (Judg 18:30-31). The identity of the Levite is clarified when the text specifies that Jonathan, son of Gershom, and his descendants would be the priests to the tribe of Dan until the Neo-Assyrian period (Cf. 1 Chr 6:1).300 Construction of religious spaces at a new destination is frequently observed among migrants. Such installations serve many functions among which are expressions of gratitude to a particular deity for success, as well as attempts to recreate former sites of religious activity and access in new locations.301 Mentioned elsewhere in this project, the case of St. Michael’s church, which was constructed by migrants in the Calais camp that has since been destroyed, is an excellent example of such activities.302 Judges 18:30-31 and Exod 2:22 are the only texts that identify Moses’ son as Gershom.303 The Judges passage recalls Moses’ migratory experience among the Midianites as well as his introduction to Yahweh during his time of working as a shepherd. In doing so, the author reinforces a connection between the Mosaic line and the Levitical priesthood while making a statement about the essentially migratory nature of Levitical functionaries. The identification of Jonathan (Gershom) as a descendant of Moses may also be meant to stand in intentional contrast to a broader Deuteronomistic trend of identifying the Levitical priesthood specifically with the Aaronic portion of the tribe of Levi. In sum, the accounts of Micah’s household’s religiosity and the Danite migration display the pluriformity and bricolage that exists in many contexts of religiosity, especially those of human mobility. Flexibility, fluidity, and integration of practices from multiple spheres characterize the account found in Judges. Micah’s forms of praxis were likely commonplace for most ancient Israelites and Judahites. At the same time, the religious practices associated with the worship of Yahweh in the story are clearly not all consonant with later biblical notions of Yahwistic religiosity. The Judges account performs multiple tasks. On one hand, it functions etiologically to tell of the origins of a later cult site in Dan that coexisted with others in Bethel and Jerusalem. On another, it shows us that later biblical historiographers wanted to show that at an earlier point in Israelite history, it was common for individuals and households to take religious matters into their own hands, including the creation of personal religious figurines, divinatory paraphernalia, and distinct sites for their use. While such means of worship were once the norm, they are no longer. Processes of tempering belief and praxis across time are integral elements of the negotiation of internal religious pluralism.

Notes 1 K.L. Noll, “Canaanite Religion,” Religion Compass 1 (2007): 61–92; Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 6–14.

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2 Brendon C. Benz, The Land Before the Kingdom of Israel: A History of the Southern Levant and the People Who Populated It (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 366–400. 3 William G. Dever, “Archaeology and Folk or Family Religion in Ancient Israel,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10120667; David Ben-Shlomo, “Philistine Cult and Religion According to Archaeological Evidence,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.33 90/rel10020074; Volkmar Fritz, The Emergence of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C.E., trans. James W. Barker, Biblische Enzyklopädie 2 (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 83–103; Aaron Greener, “Archaeology and Religion in Late Bronze Age Canaan,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10040258; Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches, (London: Continuum, 2001), 81–113. 4 In support, see Dever, Behind the Texts, 158, 341–42. For dissent on both the identification of Tell el-Ful with Gibeah and on the dating of the tower at Iron Age I see, Israel Finkelstein, “Tell El-Ful Revisited: The Assyrian and Hellenistic Periods (With a New Identification),” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 143 (2011): 106–18. 5 William G. Dever, “Religion and Cult in the Levant: The Archaeological Data,” in Near Eastern Archaeology: A Reader, ed. Suzanne Richard (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 383–90; Richard S. Hess, Israelite Religions: An Archaeological and Biblical Survey (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 234; Avraham Faust, “The Archaeology of the Israelite Cult: Questioning the Consensus,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 360 (2010): 23–35; “Israelite Temples: Where Was Israelite Cult Not Practiced, and Why,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020106. Dever sites the Field V – Iron I level – migdal temple at Shechem as one of the earliest examples of an Israelite temple. William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 167–70. The deity associated with this site was most likely El-Berit, or “El of the Covenant,” who was later identified with Yahweh. Cf. Smith Early History of God, 41. 6 Garth Gilmour, “Early Israelite Religion During the Period of the Judges: New Evidence from Archaeology,” Kaplan Center for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town. Occasional Papers No. 1 (1997): 1–33. 7 Cf. Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 238–39; Margreet Steiner “Iron Age Cultic Sites in Transjordan,” Religions 10.3 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10030145; See also Ben-Shlomo, “Philistine Cult and Religion,” doi:10.3390/rel10020074; Craig W. Tyson, “The Religion of the Ammonites: A Specimen of Levantine Religion from the Iron Age II (ca. 1000–500 BCE,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10030153. 8 Amihai Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 285–87. 9 Gilmour, “Early Israelite Religion,” 5. 10 Garth Gilmour, “The Archaeology of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Early Iron Age: An Analytical and Comparative Approach,” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1992), 53–72. 11 Albertz and Schmitt as well as Nakhai classify the remains at Dan as a temple. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 237–38; Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Where to Worship? Religion in Iron II Israel and Judah,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 90–101. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 180, 248. 12 The biblical account of 1 Kgs 16:32, in which Ahab installs an altar for Baal in a temple for Baal, may originally have been a text explaining the installation of an altar or statue of Yahweh in the Baal temple in Samaria. If such a reconstruction is true, it would not only align with other evidence for the period that Yahweh worship was undertaken along with veneration of a variety of deities, but also demonstrates one context in which Yahweh eventually supplanted Baal.

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13 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 236–37; Beth Alpert Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel (Boston: ASOR, 2001), 186–88; Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 256–62. 14 Dever, “Religion and Cult in the Levant,” 387; Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come from? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 113–14. 15 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 254–55. 16 William Mierse, Temples and Sanctuaries from the Early Iron Age Levant: Recovery after Collapse (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), 22. 17 For examples of different architectural variation among mosques see, Brodd et al., An Introduction to Religions of the World, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 491–94. 18 Jacqueline Maria Hagan, “Faith for the Journey: Religion as a Resource for Migrants,” in A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration, eds. Daniel G. Groody and Gioacchino Campese (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 3–19; Gabriella Soto, “Migrant Memento Mori and the Geography of Risk,” Journal of Social Archaeology 16 (2016): 335–58. There are instances, especially along highly-traveld migratory routes, where wayside shrines are used for long periods of time. 19 David Garbin, “From House Cells to Warehouse Churches? Christ Church Outreach Mission International in Translocal Contexts,” in Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, eds. Gertrud Hüwelmeier and Kristine Krause (New York: Routledge, 2010), 145–64; “Marching for God in the Global City: Public Space, Religion, and Diasporic Identities in a Transnational African Church,” Culture and Religion 13 (2012): 425–47. See also, Kristine Krause, “Spiritual Spaces in Post-Industrial Places: Transnational Churches in North East London,” in Transnational Ties: Cities, Migrations, and Identities, eds. Michael Peter Smith and John Eade (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2008), 109–30; Tuomas Martikainen, “Muslims in Finland: Facts and Reflections,” in Islam and Christianity in School Religious Education, ed. Nils G. Holm, (Abo: Abo Akademi University Press, 2000): 203–27. 20 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 40. 21 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 234–39. 22 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 44–51, 201–203. For an excellent overview of the types of sacrifices found throughout biblical material see, Patrick D. Miller, The Religion of Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 106–30. The study of sacrifice in the archaeological record is attended by its own notorious difficulties, though several fruitful methodologies have emerged in recent years that are honing the research. Timothy Insoll, “Sacrifice,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 151–65; Glenn M. Schwartz, “The Archaeological Study of Sacrifice,” Annual Review of Anthropology 46 (2017): 223–40. For clarification of methodologies applied to identifying sacrifice and sacrificial praxis in material culture unearthed through excavation see, Laerke Recht, “Identifying Sacrifice in Bronze Age Near Eastern Iconography,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 24–37. For recent studies recommended by Schwartz see, Haagen D. Klaus and J. Maria Toyne, eds., Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes: Reconstructing Sacrifice on the North Coast of Peru (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016); Carrie Ann Murray, Diversity of Sacrifice: Form and Function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient World and Beyond (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016); Anne Porter and Glenn M. Schwartz, Sacred Killing: The Archaeology of Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012).

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23 Karel van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 168–70. 24 Gregorio del Olmo Lete, “The Sacrificial Vocabulary at Ugarit,” Studi Epigraficie Linguistici 12 (1995): 37–49; Baruch Levine, “Lpny YHWH: Phenomenology of the Open-Air-Altar in Biblical Israel,” Biblical Archaeology Today. Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Biblical Archaeology (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1990), 196–205. Regarding differences in sacrificial praxis and conception between Israel and other Near Eastern peoples see, William W. Hallo, “The Origins of the Sacrificial Cult: New Evidence from Mesopotamia and Israel,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross, eds. Patrick D. Miller, Paul D. Hanson, and S. Dean McBride, reprint ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), 3–13. For explanations of overlap in sacrificial language between Ugaritic and Hebrew see, Smith, Early History of God, 22–23. 25 Pardee writes, “[I]t is clear that the primary act of the Ugaritic cult was the offering of bloody sacrifices and other offerings to other deities. Not stated, however, are (1) the details of how the offerings were performed, (2) from whose assets they originated and whose assets they became and, (3) the function of each offering and sacrificial category, that is, ‘the theology’ of the cult.” Dennis Pardee, Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Atlanta, SBL: 2002), 26. 26 “The Zukru Festival,” trans. Daniel Fleming, (COS 1:123, 431–36); Cf. Hess, Israelite Religions, 181–82. 27 Cf. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 236–37. 28 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 186–87. 29 Faust, “Where Was Israelite Cult Not Practiced,” doi:10.3390/rel10020106. 30 Hess, Israelite Religions, 235. 31 Aaron Chalmers, Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel: Prophet, Priest, Sage, & People (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2012), 32–36; Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 92–95. 32 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 162–63. 33 Cf. Ann Andersson, “Thoughts on Material Expressions of Cultic Practice: Standing Stone Monuments of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 48–59; Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Massebot Standing for Yhwh: The Fall of a Yhwistic Cult Symbol,” in Worship Women and War: Essays in Honor of Susan Niditch, eds. John J. Collins, T.M. Lemos, and Saul M. Olyan (Providence: Brown University Press, 2015) 99–115; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 98, 212–13, 251, 351, 356; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 256–65. 34 Chalmers, Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel, 32–33. 35 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 161–68. See also, Nicolas Wyatt, “Royal Religion in Ancient Judah,” in Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, eds. Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton (London: T & T Clark, 2010), 61–81. 36 Nakhai, 165. Interestingly, though unnoted by Nakhai, the passage of 1 Chr 15:25-28 may also include a stylized narrative of Yahweh’s entry into Jerusalem from the southlands as the Ark of the Covenant is taken from the house of Obed-Edom to rest in the newly built tent David had built for it. 37 Cf. Frank Moore Cross, “Yahweh and’El,” in Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 44–75. 38 Cf. Albrecht Alt, “The God of the Fathers,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion, trans. R.A. Wilson (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1968), 4–100. 39 Zev I. Farber, “Religion in 8th-Century Judah: An Overview,” in Archaeology and History of 8th-Century Judah, eds. Zev Farber and Jacob L. Wright (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 431–53, 443–44.

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40 Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Varieties of Religious Expression in the Domestic Setting,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau, Jennie R. Ebeling, and Laura B. Mazow (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 347–60. 41 Cf. Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Israel and Canaan, 59. 42 The Amalekites are another group of mobile actors who the biblical record does not recall with favor (Exod 17:14). 43 See also Exod 18:11–24 in which Jethro, the priest of Midian announces Yahweh’s greatness above all other gods before offering a sacrifice. Cf. Thomas Römer, The Invention of God, trans. Robert Geuss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 64–65. 44 For discussion of the Judges account of Midian’s domination of Israel and Gideon’s battles with the Midianites, see Römer, Invention of God, 59–60. 45 Cf. M. Daniel Carroll Rodas, “Once a Stranger, Always a Stranger? Immigration, Assimilation and the Book of Ruth,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 39 (2015): 185–88. 46 For a full exposition of the origins and rise of the Levites see, Mark Leuchter, The Levites and the Boundaries of Israelite Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 59–92. 47 Leuchter, 218–48. 48 For a helpful introduction to the range of terminology used throughout the Bible to designate prophetic figures see, Chalmers, Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel, 41–42; Miller, Religion of Ancient Israel, 178–79; For general introductions to archetypal prophetic roles enumerated in biblical texts see, Joseph Blenkinsopp, A History of Prophecy in Israel, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996), 7–39; see also, Victor H. Matthews, The Hebrew Prophets and Their Social World: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 17–37. 49 Miller, Religion of Ancient Israel, 174. 50 Miller, 175–78. 51 Miriam Aharoni, “Preliminary Ceramic Report on Strata 12–11 at Arad Citadel,” Eretz Israel 15 (1981): 181–204 (Hebrew); Yohanan Aharoni, “Excavations at Tel Arad: Preliminary Site Report of the Second Season,” Israel Exploration Journal 17 (1967): 233–49; Ze’ev Herzog, “Arad,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Archaeology, ed. Daniel Master (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 38–41; Zev Herzog, et al., “The Israelite Fortress at Arad,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 254 (1984): 1–34; Amihai Mazar and Ehud Netzer, “On the Israelite Fortress at Arad,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 263 (1986): 87–90; David Ussishkin, “The Date of the Judaean Temple at Arad,” Israel Exploration Journal 38 (1988): 145–47; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 156–68. 52 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 157–58. 53 Zevit, 159. 54 Zevit, 159. 55 Zevit, 169. 56 Zevit, 169. 57 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 186. 58 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 167. 59 Bloch-Smith, “Massebot Standing for Yhwh,” 101. 60 Cf. Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 170–75. 61 Bloch-Smith, “Massebot Standing for Yhwh,” 101; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 167–71. 62 Bloch-Smith, “Massebot Standing for Yhwh,” 102; Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 186. 63 Arie and Namdar, “Cannabis and Frankincense,” 5–28. 64 Nakhai, 187.

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65 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 171. 66 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 171; Amihai Mazar, “The ‘Bull Site’: An Iron Age I Open Cult Place,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 247 (1982): 27–42. 67 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 170. 68 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 91; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 178. 69 Zevit, 178–79. 70 Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 351. 71 Mazar, “The ‘Bull Site’,” 32–36; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 178. 72 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 92–93. 73 Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 351. 74 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 171. 75 Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 77–78; William G. Dever, Beyond the Texts: An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah (Atlanta: SBL, 2017), 177. Cf. Israel Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1988), 220–34, 291; Mazar, “The ‘Bull Site’,” 27–42. 76 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 179–80. 77 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 92. 78 Gilmour, 92. 79 Miller, “Shamanism and Totemism,” 24. 80 Gilmour, “Arcaheology of Cult,” 93; Miller, “Shamanism and Totemism,” 24. 81 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 250–51. 82 Nakhai, 184. 83 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 184, Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 180–81. 84 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 184–85. 85 Amzallag’s claim that Yahweh was originally venerated by Kenite metalsmiths may contain a nugget of truth, but his argument should be nuanced in at least two ways. First, even if popular among metalsmiths, worship of Yahweh was not necessarily limited to such persons. Second, Amzallag’s analysis never accounts for the war god or storm-god imagery linked with Yahweh from very early on. Nissim Amzallag, “Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?,” JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387–404; “Furnace Remelting as the Expression of YHWH’s Holiness: Evidence from the meaning of qannā’ (‫ )קנא‬in the Divine Context.” Journal of Biblical Literature (2015): 233–52. 86 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 18–19. 87 Gilmour, 21–22. 88 David Ilan, Dan IV: The Iron Age I Settlement, The Avraham Biran Excavations (1966–1999) (Jerusalem: Hebrew Union College Press, 2019), 551–52; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 336. 89 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 19, 23. 90 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions in Canaan and Israel, 185. 91 Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 183. 92 Ralph K. Hawkins, The Iron Age I Structure on Mt. Ebal: Excavation and Interpretation (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 30. 93 Adam Zertal, “An Early Iron Age Cultic Site on Mt. Ebal: Excavation Seasons 1982–1987,” Tel Aviv 13–14 (1986–1987): 105–65. 94 Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 110–22; Robert D. Miller II, “Identifying Earliest Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 333 (2003): 55–68; Ann E. Killebrew, Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel 1300–1100 B.C.E. (Atlanta: SBL, 2005), 160–62; Cf. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 349–50. 95 Zertal, “An Early Iron Age Cultic Site on Mt. Ebal,” 105–65. 96 Hawkins, Iron Age Structure at Mt. Ebal, 9.

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Hawkins, 9. Hawkins, 10. Hawkins, 10, 63–66. Hawkins, 10. Cf. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 350; Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 120–22; Miller, “Shamanism and Totemism, 22–23. Robert D. Miller II, “Iron Age Medicine Men and Old Testament Theology,” in Between Israelite Religion and Old Testament Theology: Essays on Archaeology, History, and Hermeneutics, ed. Robert D. Miller II (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 87–128. “The Azatiwada Inscription,” trans. K. Lawson Younger, Jr., COS (2.31): 148–50. For translation of the complete text, see van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews, 149–87. See also Ran Zadok, “Bethel: An Originally North Syrian Deity,” Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires (2020): 62–99. van der Toorn, Becoming Diaspora Jews, 45–49, 66–73. van der Toorn, 160. Hawkins, The Iron Age Structure at Mt. Ebal, 226. Hawkins, 226–27. Adam Zertal, “Has Joshua’s Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?” Biblical Archaeology Review 2 (1985): 26–43, 38. Cf. Coogan’s proposal in favor and Mazar’s short rebuttal. Michael D. Coogan, “Of Cults and Cultures: Reflections on the Interpretation of Archaeological Evidence,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 119 (1987): 1–8; Amihai Mazar, “Of Cult Places and Early Israelites: A Response to Michael Coogan,” Biblical Archaeology Review 14 (1988): 45. Gilmour, “Early Israelite Religion,” 9–10. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 214. Gilmour, “Early Israelite Religion,” 10. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 213–215. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 335. Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel, 171. Israel Finkelstein, et al., “Excavations at Shiloh 1981–1984: Preliminary Report,” Tel Aviv 12 (1985): 123–80, 133; Cf. Hans Kjaer, “The Danish Excavation of Shiloh,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 59 (1927): 202–13; “Shiloh: A Summary Report of the Second Danish Expedition 1929,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 63 (1931): 71–88. Finkelstein, et al., “Excavations at Shiloh,” 135. Finkelstein et al., 129. Finkelstein et al., 164. Finkelstein et al., 164–65. Finkelstein, et al., 163. Finkelstein, et al., 163. Finkelstein et al., 163, 166. Finkelstein et al., 169. No official site report from the renewed excavations has been published, although, the pomegranate has been discussed in a peer-reviewed article. See David Ben-Shlomo, Scott Stripling, and Tim Lopez, “A Ceramic Pomegranate from Shiloh,” Judea and Samaria Research Studies 28 (2019): 37–56. Stripling has indicated to several news outlets and one popular periodical that other peer-reviewed articles discussing key findings are forthcoming. The information presented here has been gleaned from news sources to which Stripling has provided press releases or interviews. Amanda Borschel-Dan, “With Bibles and Shovels: Search for Biblical Tabernacle Gathers Pace at Shiloh,” The Times of Israel (July 17, 2017) [Online]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-biblesand-shovels-a-search-for-the-biblical-Tabernacle-gathers-pace-at-shiloh/; “At Shiloh,

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Israel’s Mobility‐Informed Religiosities Archaeologist Finds Artifacts Hinting at Biblical Tabernacle,” The Times of Israel, Podcast Interview, (January 16, 2020) [Online]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/listenat-shiloh-archaeologist-finds-artifacts-hinting-at-biblical-Tabernacle/; Maayan JaffeHoffman, “Was the Corner of God’s Altar Found in Shiloh, West Bank?” Jerusalem Post, (October 31, 2019) [Online]: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Was-the-corner-ofGods-altar-found-in-Shiloh-West-Bank-606477. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 348. Finkelstein et al., “Excavations at Shiloh,” 167. Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 68. Gilmour, “Early Israelite Religion,” 10–11. Gilmour, “Archaeology of Cult,” 69. Gilmour, 54–63, 69. Gilmour, 70. Yifat Thareani, “Empires and Allies: A Longue Durée View from the Negev Desert Frontier,” in Rethinking Israel: Studies in the History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel in Honor of Israel Finkelstein, eds. Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Matthew J. Adams (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2017), 409-28, 409-10. For dating of the site see, Israel Finkelstein and Eli Piasetzky, “The Date of Kuntillet ʿAjrud: The 14C Perspective,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008): 175–85; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 376–78. Ze’ev Meshel, “The Nature of the Site,” In Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, ed. Liora Freud, (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012), 65–71. For a full translation of all the inscriptions found at the site see Dobbs-Allsopp, et. al., eds., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 277–98. See Andre Lemaire, “Date et origine des inscriptions hébraïques et phéniciennes de Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” Studi epigrafici e linguistici sul Vicino Oriente antico 1 (1984): 131–143. See also Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 247; Most recently, Jeremy Smoak and William Schniedewind have rejected the designation of the site as “religious.” This follows on the heels of a revised site report which revises the language of “religious site.” Jeremy Smoak and William Schniedewind, “Religion at Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” Religions 10 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10030211. Ze’ev Meshel, “Kuntillet ʿAjrud: An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai,” Expedition 20 (1978): 50–54. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 375, 379. Meshel, “Kuntillet ʿAjrud: An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai,” 52. Meshel, 51; Cf. Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 379–81. Meshel, “The Nature of the Site,” 65–66. Recognizing the lack of an altar or specific cultic paraphernalia, Zevit still argues that the nature of the site is “one planned in advance for a certain purpose, and that is raison d’être was cultic.” Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 374. P.M. Michele Daviau and Margreet L. Steiner, A Wayside Shrine in Northern Moab: Excavations in the Wadi Ath-Thamad. (Havertown: Oxbow, 2017), 81–136. Nadav Na’aman and Nurit Lissovsky, “Kuntillet ʿAjrud, Sacred Trees and the Asherah,” Tel Aviv 35 (2008): 186–208. See also Brian B. Schmidt, The Materiality of Power: Explorations in the Social History of Ancient Israelite Magic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 17–21. Spencer L. Allen, The Splintered Divine: A Study of Ištar, Baal, Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 267; Brian B. Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings from Horvat Teman or Kuntillet ʿAjrud: Some New Proposals,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 2 (2002): 91–125, 103; Smoak and Schniedewind, “Religion at Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” doi:10.3390/rel10030211.

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146 Yifat Thareani-Sussely, “Ancient Caravanserais: An Archaeological View from ‘Aroer,” Levant 39 (2007): 123-41. Whether the site was a state-run caravansary is open to debate. Cf. Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of Gods, 247. 147 Shmuel Aḥituv, Esther Eshel, and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” in Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, ed. Liora Freud, (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012), 73–141, 87; Inscription 3.1. 148 Aḥituv, et al., “Inscriptions,” 95; Inscription 3.6. 149 Aḥituv, et al., 97; Inscription 3.9. 150 Aḥituv, et al., 105; Inscription 4.1. 151 Translation, Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 372. 152 Zevit, 377–78. 153 Smoak and Schniedewind, “Religion at Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” doi: 10.3390/rel10030211. 154 Baruch A. Levine, “Israelite Religion in Light of Hebrew Epigraphy: The Inscriptions from Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” in A Legacy of Learning: Essays in Honor of Jacob Neusner. eds. Alan J. Avery-Peck, et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014), 171-91, 175-76; Smoak and Schniedewind, “Religion at Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” doi:10.3390/rel10030211. 155 Cf. Arad ostracon 16, brktk lyhwh (I bless you by YHWH); Arad 18, yhwh yšʾl lšlmk (May YHWH seek your welfare); Arad 21, brktk l[yhw]h (I bless you by [YHW]H); Arad 40, brkt[k lyhw]h (I bless [you by YHW]h). Dobbs, Alsop, et al. date these ostraca to sometime between 598–587 BCE. Dobbs-Allsopp, et al., Hebrew Inscriptions, 277–98. 156 Robert Orsi, “Everyday Miracles: The Study of Lived Religion,” in Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3–21, 10. 157 Alice Mandell and Jeremy Smoak, “The Material Turn in the Study of Israelite Religions: Spaces, Things, and the Body,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 19 (2019): 1–42; Schmidt, Materiality of Power, 16–122. 158 Zevit argues that the hilltop buildings at Kuntillet ʿAjrud “comprised a cult complex, the sheer drops at the edges of the hill defining a natural temenos.” Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 375. 159 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 91. 160 Smith, 91,94. Cf. Jeremy M. Hutton, “Local Manifestations of Yahweh and Worship in the Interstices: A Note on Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religion 10 (2010): 177–209. 161 Smith, Where the Gods Are, 92–94. 162 Translation from Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, 87. Criticism of the linked nature of the drawing and inscription is most prominent in Pirhiya Beck’s and J.A. Emerton’s analyses of the inscriptions. See Beck’s work in Meshel’s site report; J.A. Emerton, “‘Yahweh and His Asherah’: The Goddess or Her Symbol?” Vetus Testamentum 49 (1999): 315–37. 163 Gabriel Barkay and MiYoung Im, “Egyptian Influence on the Painted Human Figures from Kuntillet ʿAjrud,” Tel Aviv 28 (2001): 288–300; Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud),” Tel Aviv 9 (1982): 3–68; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 387–88. 164 Ryan Thomas, “The Identity of the Standing Figures on Pithos A from Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Reassessment,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions (2016): 121–91. 165 Thomas, 146; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 388. 166 Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 173, 191–98. Cf. Smith, Early History of God, 47–57. 167 Yohanan Aharoni, Beer-Sheba I. Excavations at Tell Beer-Sheba: 1969–1971 Seasons (Publications of the Institute of Archaeology 2 (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 1973), plate 22.2. 168 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 88.

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169 Albertz and Schmitt, 144. 170 Schmidt, “Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 91–125. 171 Schmidt, 94; For fuller discussion of this set of issues, see Christoph Uehlinger, “Anthropomorphic Cult Statuary in Iron Age Palestine and the Search for Yahweh’s Cult Images,” in The Image and the Book: Iconic Cult, Aniconism, and the Rise of Book Religion in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. Karel van der Toorn (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 97–155. 172 Schmidt, “Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 91. 173 Schmidt, Materiality of Power, 16–122. 174 Schmidt, 35. 175 Schmidt, 23, 35. 176 Jennifer B. Saunders, et al., “Introduction: Articulating Intersections at the Global Crossroads of Religion and Migration,” in Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads. eds. Jennifer B. Saunders, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, and Susanna Snyder (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–46. 177 Holly Straut Eppsteiner and Jacqueline Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support in the Migration Undertaking,” in Intersections of Religion and Migration: Issues at the Global Crossroads, eds. Jennifer B. Saunders, Elena FiddianQasmiyeh, and Susanna Snyder (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 49–70, 52, 57; Jacqueline Maria Hagan, Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 126; Soto, “Migrant Memento Mori,” 335-58; Yi-Fu Tuan, Religion: From Place to Placelessness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 84–88. 178 “Here a God, There a God: An Examination of the Divine in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Altorientalische Forschungen 40 (2013): 68–107. 179 Jorge Durand and Douglas S. Massey, “Miracles on the Border: The Votive Art of Mexican Migrants to the United States,” in Art in the Lives of Immigrant Communities in the United States, eds. Paul DiMaggio and Patricia Fernández-Kelly (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 214-28, 214-15. See also, Gloria Giffords, Mexican Folk Retablos: Masterpieces on Tin (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1974); Octavio Solis, Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border (San Francisco: City Light, 2018). 180 Cf. Pierre Schwartz, et al., Infinitas Gracias: Contemporary Mexican Votive Painting (San Francisco: Chronicle, 2004); Edward Arredondo and Rubén Orozco, Exvotos, Artes de Mexico 53 (Ciudad de México: Artes de México y del Mundo, 2000); Rosangela Briscese and Joseph Sciorra, eds. Graces Received: Painted and Metal Ex-votos from Italy (New York: John D. Calandra Italian-American Institute, Queens College, 2012). 181 Durand and Massey, “Miracles on the Border,” 216. 182 Durand and Massey, 226. 183 Another inscribed blessing related to travel, though from a later period, has been found on the walls of the El-Kanais temple in the Sinai. It reads, “Bless God. Theodotos son of Dorion the Ιουδαῖος, returned safely from the sea.” William Horbury and David Noy, trans., Jewish Inscriptions of Greco-Roman Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), no. 121 [CIJ ii 1537]. Cf. Karen B. Stern, “Vandals or Pilgrims? Jews, Travel Culture, and Devotional Practice in the Pan Temple of Egyptian El-Kanais,” in “The One Who Sows Bountifully”: Essays in Honor of Stanley K. Stowers eds. Caroline Johnson Hodge et al. (Atlanta: SBL, 2013), 177–88. 184 Durand and Massey, “Miracles on the Border,” 228. 185 Juan Manuel Tebes, “Investigating the Painted Pottery Traditions of the First Millennium BCE Northwestern Arabia and Southern Levant: Contexts of Discovery and Painted Decorative Motives,” ARAM 27 (2015): 255–82. 186 Durand and Massey, 217.

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187 Susan Niditch, The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the NeoBabylonian and Persian Periods (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 91. 188 See Macdonald who demonstrates the literacy of certain social groups in contexts of ancient Arabian nomadic non-literate societies. Michael C.A. Macdonald, “Tweets from Antiquity: Literacy, Graffiti, and Their Uses in the Towns and Deserts of Ancient Arabia,” in Scribbling through History: Graffiti, Places and People from Antiquity to Modernity, eds. Chloé Ragazzoli, et al. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 65–81. See also, Juan Manuel Thebes, “Iconographies of the Sacred and Power of the Desert Nomads: A Reappraisal of the Desert Rock Art of the Late Bronze/Iron Age Southern Levant and Northwestern Arabia,” Die Welt des Orients 47 (2017): 4–24. 189 Robert A. Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2016), 113–61. 190 Theodore J. Lewis, The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 325–30. 191 Theodore J. Lewis, “Art and Iconography: Representing Yahwistic Divinity,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Israel, ed. Susan Niditch (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 510–33. See also, Origin and Character of God, 313–22; Keel and Uehlinger have traced the general decline in anthropomorphic iconographic representations in the Levant during the Iron IIa period. Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 173–75. 192 For examples of Judean leonine artifacts/imagery see, Keel and Uehlinger, 186–91. 193 Nakhai, “Varieties of Religious Expression,” 359–60. 194 Cf. Avraham Faust, “Household Economies in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 255–73. 195 Rainer Albertz, “Israel” in Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 429-30; Cf. Karel van der Toorn, “Syria-Canaan,” in Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, ed. Sarah Iles Johnston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 427–29. 196 Beth Alpert Nakhai, “The Household as Sacred Space,” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 53–71; “Varieties of Religious Expression,” 347–60. See also, Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 224–28, 239; Aaron A. Burke, “The Archaeology of Ritual and Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant, and the Origins of Judaism,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 895–907; Chalmers, Exploring the Religion of Ancient Israel, 115–17; Avraham Faust and Shlomo Bunimovitz, “The House and the World: The Israelite House as a Microcosm,” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 143–63; Carol Meyers, “Household Religion,” in Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, eds. Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 118–34. 197 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 57–219; Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 118–25; Hess, Israelite Religions, 308–12; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 175–76. 198 Louise A. Hitchcock, “Cult Corners in the Aegean and the Levant,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 321–45; Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 175–80, 252–54. 199 Miller, “Shamanism and Totemism in Early Israel,” 24. 200 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 227–28; Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 267–69; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land Bible, 338–45. 201 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 242–44. 202 Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Women in Israelite Religion: The State of the Research Is All New Research,” Religions 10 (2019) doi:10.3390/rel10020122; Phyllis A. Bird, Missing

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Israel’s Mobility‐Informed Religiosities Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 93–99. For a book-length treatment of the subject of female religious specialists see, Esther J. Hamori, Women’s Divination in Biblical Literature: Prophecy, Necromancy, and Other Arts of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, 81–102. Bird, 93, n. 34. Cf. Bird, 91–92; 96–97. As Bird notes, the function of qedēšôt (Deut. 23:18; Hos. 4:14) in cultic services remains unclear. See Susan Ackerman, “Women’s Rites of Passage in Ancient Israel: Three Case Studies (Birth, Coming of Age, and Death),” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 1–32; Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Women in Israelite Religion,” doi:10.3390/rel10020122; Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities; Mark Chavalas, ed., Women in the Ancient Near East (London: Routledge, 2013); Wilda C. Gafney, Daughters of Miriam: Women Prophets in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008); Carol Meyers, Households and Holiness: The Religious Culture of Israelite Women (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005); Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); “Material Remains and Social Relations: Women’s Culture in Agrarian Households of the Iron Age,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism and the Power of the Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age through Roman Palæstina, eds. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 425–43. Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities, 60, 62–63. Erhard S. Gerstenberger, “Healing Rituals at the Intersection of Family and Society,” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 165–81. Kristine Garroway, “Children and Religion in the Archaeological Record of Ancient Israel,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 17 (2017): 116–39. Joe Uziel and Rona S. Lewis, “The Tel Nagila Middle Bronze Age Homes: Studying Household Activities and Identifying Children in the Archaeological Record,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 145 (2013): 284–92. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 72–74, 242–44. Albertz and Schmitt, 80–82. Albertz and Schmitt, 221. Albertz and Schmitt, 224–27. Albertz and Schmitt, 171–75, 243–46. Albertz and Schmitt, 225. Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 169–73. Nathan MacDonald, What Did Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 32–38, 57–60. Brian Hesse, “Animal Use at Tel-Miqne-Ekron in the Bronze Age and Iron Age,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 264 (1986): 17–28; “Pig Lovers and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production,” Journal of Ethnobiology 10 (1990): 195–225. Avraham Faust, “Pigs in Space (and Time): Pork Consumption and Identity Negotiations in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages of Ancient Israel,” Near Eastern Archaeology 81 (2018): 276–99; Cf. Brian Hesse, “Pig Lovers and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production,” Journal of Ethnobiology 10 (1990): 195–225. Brian Hesse and Paula Wapnish, “Can Pig Remains Be Used for Ethnic Diagnosis in the Ancient Near East?” in The Archaeology of Israel: Constructing the Past, Interpreting the Present. eds. Neil A. Silberman and David Small, JSOT Supp. 237, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 238–70.

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221 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Praeger, 1966); Marvin Harris, Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture (Prospect Heights: Waveland, 1998); Richard W. Redding, “The Pig and the Chicken in the Middle East: Modeling Human Subsistence Behavior in the Archaeological Record Using Historical and Animal Husbandry Data,” Journal of Archaeological Research 23 (2015): 325–68. 222 Carolina A.N. Pereira, Nicolette Larder, and Shawn Somerset, “Food Acquisition Habits in a Group of African Refugees Recently Settled in Australia,” Health & Place 16 (2010): 934-41; Psyche Williams-Forso, “‘I Haven’t Eaten if I Don’t Have My Soup and Fufu’: Cultural Preservation through Food and Foodways among Ghanaian Migrants in the United States,” Africa Today 61 (2014): 69–87. 223 Jennifer Sweeney Tookes, “‘The Food Represents’: Barbadian Foodways in the Diaspora,” Appetite 90 (2015): 65–73. 224 Meirav Meiri, et al., “Eastern Mediterranean Mobility in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages: Inferences from Ancient DNA of Pigs and Cattle,” Scientific Reports 7 (2017): doi:10.1038/s41598-017-00701-y. 225 Faust, “Pigs in Space,” 282. 226 Sweeney Tookes, “‘The Food Represents’,” 65–73. 227 Faust, “Pigs in Space,” 283. 228 Avraham Faust, “The Bible, Archaeology, and the Practice of Circumcision in Israelite and Philistine Societies,” Journal of Biblical Literature 134 (2015): 273–90. Worthy of special note is Exod 4:24-26, a mysterious passage in which Moses is saved from an attack by Yahweh while en-route to Egypt. The incident described may capture an apotropaic ritual associated with circumcision, perhaps as it relates to Midianite practice. Regardless, the text captures a religious response in a context of mobility, much like the account of Jacob’s attack experience in Genesis 32. 229 Hess, Israelite Religions, 308; Meyers, Households and Holiness, 33–34. 230 Meyers, 30–31. 231 The most recent and robust among these is Erin Darby, Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). See also, Raz Kletter, Judean Pillar Figurines and the Archaeology of Asherah (Oxford: Tempus Repartum, 1996). A helpful brief treatment can be found in William G. Dever, “The Judean ‘Pillar-Base Figurines’: Mothers or ‘Mother Goddesses’?” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 129–41. 232 Meyers, Households and Holiness, 28–29. 233 Meyers, 29; Cf. Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 278–81. 234 Shawna Dolansky, “Re-Figuring Judean “Fertility” Figurines: Fetishistic Functions of the Feminine Form,” in Between Israelite Religion and Old Testament Theology: Essays on Archaeology, History, and Hermeneutics, ed. Robert D. Miller II (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 5–30. 235 Dolansky, 16–17. 236 Meyers, Households and Holiness, 38, 52, 54. 237 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 281; Meyers, Households and Holiness, 39–40, 53. 238 Meyers, Households and Holiness, 43, 51–52. 239 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 283. 240 Meyers, Households and Holiness, 53. 241 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 281. 242 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 247, n. 6, n. 7. Albertz and Schmitt show that the incidences of mothers naming children outpace fathers doing so to the tune of 25 to 15 occurrences. Cf. Meyers, Households and Holiness, 42.

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243 For a wholistic assessment of Iron II inscriptional data see, Mitka R. Golub, “Aniconism and Theophoric Names in Inscribed Seals from Judah, Israel, and Neighboring Kingdoms,” Tel Aviv 45 (2018): 157–69; “The Distribution of Personal Names in the Land of Israel and Transjordan during the Iron II Period,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 134 (2014) 621–42; “Personal Names in Judah in the Iron Age II,” Journal of Semitic Studies 62 (2017): 19–58. While Golub’s work is on-the-whole solid, it does fall victim at times to common outcomes of onomastic overanalysis. 244 Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 246. 245 Cf. Michael Aceto, “Ethnic Personal Names and Multiple Identities in Anglophone Caribbean Speech Communities in Latin America,” Language in Society 31 (2002): 577–608; M. Arai and P. Skogman Thoursie, “Renouncing Personal Names: An Empirical Examination of Surname Change and Earnings,” Journal of Labor and Economics 27 (2009): 127–47; Shahram Khosravi, “White Masks/Muslim Names: Immigrants and Name-changing in Sweden,” Race and Class 53 (2012): 65–80; Leo Spitzer, “A Name Give, A Name Taken: Camouflaging, Resistance, and Diasporic Social Identity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 30 (2010): 21–31. 246 Cf. Richard S. Hess, “Israelite Identity and Personal Names from the Book of Judges,” Hebrew Studies 44 (2003): 25–39. 247 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “From Womb to Tomb: The Israelite Family in Death as in Life,” in The Family in Life and in Death: The Family in Ancient Israel, Sociological and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Patricia Dutcher-Walls, LHBOTS 504 (London: T & T Clark, 2009), 122–31; Saul M. Olyan, “The Roles of Kin and Fictive Kinship in Biblical Representations of Death Ritual,” in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, eds. Rainer Albertz, et al. (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 251–63; Matthew J. Suriano, A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 40. 248 Bloch-Smith, “From Womb to Tomb,” 127–29. 249 See Joseph Blenkinsopp, “Deuteronomy and the Politics of Post-Mortem Existence,” Vetus Testamentum (1995): 1–16. For extended discussions of biblical material see, Rachel Nabulsi, Death and Burial in Iron Age Israel, Aram, and Phoenicia (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2017), 103–62; Suriano, History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. 250 Cf. Niditch, Responsive Self, 97. 251 Cf. Rachel Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices, and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 94, 148–50. 252 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead, JSOT Supp. 123, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992), 25–54. 253 Bloch-Smith, 55. 254 Bloch-Smith, 55–56. 255 Bloch-Smith, 55. 256 Bloch-Smith and Nakhai, “A Landscape Comes to Life,” 77. See also, Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 55, 134. 257 Bloch-Smith, 58. 258 Bloch-Smith, “From Womb to Tomb,” 123; Nabulsi, Death and Burial in Iron Age Israel, 19–21. 259 Suriano, History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, 43. 260 Suriano, 43–45, 50–51. 261 Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 63–108, 140–41; Suriano, History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, 47–53. 262 Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 281. 263 Smith, Early History of God, 43–46. 264 Zuzanna Wygnańska, “Burial in the Time of the Amorites. The Middle Bronze Age Burial Customs from a Mesopotamian Perspective,” Ägypten und Levante 29 (2019): 381–422.

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274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281

282 283 284 285 286 287

288 289 290 291

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Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 137. Bloch-Smith, 81–86; Dever, Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel, 286. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 80–81. Bloch-Smith, 55, 138–39. Bloch-Smith, 55; Cf. Jeffery Zorn, “More on Mesopotamian Burial Practices in Israel,” Israel Exploration Journal 47 (1997): 214–19. Katy Gardener, “Death of a Migrant: Transnational Death Rituals and Gender among British Sylhetis,” Global Networks 2 (2003): 191–204; Yasmin Gunaratnam, Death and the Migrant: Bodies, Borders, and Care (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 115–32, 141–42. Cf. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 70. Bloch-Smith, 75. Timothy Insoll, “Ancestor Cults,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 1043–58. See also, Christopher B. Hays, Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 166–75. Seth L. Sanders, “Words, Things, and Death: The Rise of Iron Age Literary Monuments,” in Language and Religion, eds. Robert Yelle, Christopher Lehrich, and Courtney Handman (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2019), 327–49. Jeremy D. Smoak, “Wearing Divine Words in Life and Death,” Material Religion 15 (2019): 433–55. “The Khirbet Beit Lei Cave Inscriptions,” trans. P. Kyle McCarter (COS 2.53: 179–80). “The Khirbet Beit Lei Cave Inscriptions,” COS 2.53: 180. Cf. Niditich, Responsive Self, 98–99. Suriano, History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, 119. For an extensive critique of the traditional refugee hypothesis see, Alice Mandell and Jeremy D. Smoak, “Reconsidering the Function of Tomb Inscriptions in Iron Age Judah: Khirbet Beit Lei as a Test Case,” JANER 16 (2016): 192–245. For commentary on role of teraphim, see Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 60–61; Cf. Susan Ackerman, “Household Religion, Family Religion, and Women’s Religion in Ancient Israel,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, eds. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2012), 127–58. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 67; Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 95–96. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 127–29; Cf. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 336. Lawrence Stager, “The Archaeology of the Family in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260 (1985): 1–35. Cf. Hess, “Israelite Identity and Personal Names from the Book of Judges,” 36. Biblical passages deriding the use of images include Isa 2:8, 10:10, 30:22, 31:7, 40:19, 42:19; Jer 1:16, 8:19, Mic 1:7, Nah 1:14. Cf. William G. Dever, “Archaeology and Ancient Israelite Iconography: Did Yahweh Have a Face?” in I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, eds. Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 461–75; Uehlinger, “Anthropomorphic Cult Statuary,” 97–155. Michael B. Hundley, “What is the Golden Calf?,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 79 (2017): 559–79. Mazar, “The ‘Bull Site’,” 27–42. Hundley, “What is the Golden Calf?,” 571. Smith, Early History of God, 83–85.

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292 Judges specifies that by this point in Israel’s history, the people of Dan have yet to receive a land that is their own and are thus on the move looking for a home. This may be the case in the narrative because the Danites’ coastal origins mark them as anomalous among the other tribes. Some have posited that Dan is related to the coastal dwelling Denyen residing in “the land of Dananu.” For discussion of the larger scholarly conversation on this issue see, Carl S. Ehrlich, The Philistines in Transition: A History from ca 1000-730 B.C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 7–8, n. 35. In the Phoenician Kulamuwa Inscription from the 9th century, Kulamuwa admits that the Dananu king was more powerful than himself. “The Kulamuwa Inscription,” trans. K. Lawson Younger, (COS 2.30, 147–48). It may also be the case that Dan is landless because they are one of the tribes who was not born directly to Rachel or Leah, but through Rachel’s maidservant Bilhah (Gen 30:1–8). 293 Just as Aaron clarifies that the calf is an image of/image for accessing Yahweh (Exod 32:5), the Levite clarifies the source of the Danites’ success as Yahweh. 294 Hundley, “What is the Golden Calf?,” 567. 295 Ibrahim Sirkeci, et al., “Introduction,” in Conflict, Insecurity and Mobility, eds. Ibrahim Sirkeci, Jeffrey H. Cohen, and Pinar Yazgan (London: Transnational, 2016), 1–7. 296 Nadav Na’aman, “‘The Conquest of Canaan,’ in the Book of Joshua and in History,” in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects of Early Israel, eds. Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na’aman (Jerusalem: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994), 218–81. 297 Straut Eppsteiner and Hagan, “Religion as Psychosocial, Spiritual, and Social Support,” 47–60. 298 Jacqueline Maria Hagan, “Faith for the Journey,” 3–19; Migration Miracle, 20–58; Jacqueline Hagan and Helen Rose Ebaugh, “Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants’ Use of Religion in the Migration Process,” The International Migration Review 37 (2003): 1145–62; Leah Sarat, Fire in the Canyon: Religion, Migration, and the Mexican Dream (New York: New York University Press, 2013); “Religion and the Process of Migration: A Case Study of a Maya Transnational Community,” in Religion Across Borders: Transnational Immigrant Networks, eds. Helen Rose Ebaugh and Janet Saltzman Chafetz (Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2002), 75–92; Straut Eppsteiner and Hagan, “Religion as Psychological, Spiritual, and Social Support,” 52; Rijk A. Van Dijik, “From Camp to Encompassment: Discourses on Transsubjectivity in the Ghanaian Pentecostal Diaspora,” Journal of Religion in Africa 27 (1997): 35–59. 299 Tom Kiefer’s work documents the wide array of objects, some of which are religious, such as pocket New Testaments, statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries, and other items that migrants travel with which are sometimes lost, left behind, or confiscated at various points of their journeys. Cf. “El Sueño Americano,” http://www.tomkiefer.com. See also, Straut Eppsteiner and Hagan, “Religion as Psychosocial, Spiritual, and Social Support,” 57. 300 Interestingly, in the Judges passage, the father of Jonathan is named as Menasseh, not Moses, though most English translations opt to replace it with Moses instead in order to maintain continuity. (‫)ויהונתן בן־גרשׁם בן־מנשׁה‬. 301 Soto, “Migrant Memento Mori,” 335–58. 302 Saunders, et al., “Introduction,” 1–4. 303 Other texts mention the Gershonites as a class of Levitical priests (Numbers 3, 4, 7, 10; Joshua 21; 1 Chr 26:21; 2 Chr 29:12), but they are the descendants of Gershon who is a son of Levi, not of Moses (Num 3:21).

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Conclusion: Final Reflections on Divinity and Religiosities in Contexts of Mobility

Once one recognizes the many mobilities that created and sustained the societies of the ancient Near East, other paradigms for studying the people and places of these periods must be put to work. This volume has applied a mobility-centric methodology to the study of religion and religiosity in Israel, Judah, and their worlds. Despite the difficulties of reconstructing the history of early Israel and Judah, we can observe that the peoples of both regions, whatever their disparate political arrangements and despite their internal tensions, shared a common socio-cultural repertoire that included the worship of Yahweh, among other gods, and collective memories of past experiences of mobility in which Yahweh was a primary actor. Although not likely an impetus of migration, religion attended the migration process for those who resettled in the Central Highlands and Judean hill country in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages. As different social groups amalgamated, Yahweh-centric religiosities became a force of continued social cohesion and a means of emic/etic differentiation. What final reflections can be offered regarding the intersections of mobility and religion in ancient Israel, Judah, and the broader ancient Near East? At the outset of this project, I acknowledged that Anne Porter’s work first caused me to wonder whether the experience of mobility/movement instigates unique understandings or representations of divinity. I also asked how the religious composition of a society like ancient Israel, which came to exist in a geographic zone of extensive trans-regional movement, was affected? This volume has presented a framework to approach the task of answering these questions. I have clarified the ways modern migration/mobility studies can be helpfully employed in interdisciplinary investigations and enumerated the key frameworks of mobility in the ancient Near East that formed the bases of social life there. I have also presented readers with an in-depth analysis of Israel and Judah’s mobile worlds that included explorations of Yahweh’s mobility and of Israel and Judah’s mobility-informed religiosities that have been preserved in text and artifact. Having completed these tasks, it remains for us to address the initial question of uniquely mobile religion/religiosities raised through my reading of Porter’s work. More specifically, the question of whether Yahwsim, as it was known and lived in Israel and Judah, was a sui generis type of mobile religion requires an answer. DOI: 10.4324/9781003215813-8

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In the past, it was common to identify the contents of Israelite ancestral religion as that which was specific to nomadic life. Albrecht Alt was one of the most influential proponents of this perspective.1 In his now renowned essay, “Der Gott der Väter,” Alt articulated several perspectives on the nature of Israel’s ancestral deity(ies) that, for a time, came to dominate investigations of Israel’s religious history.2 Based on his interpretation of (much later) Nabatean inscriptions, Alt claimed that the biblical traditions surrounding the God of the ancestors were rooted in a nomadic religious archetype. Following Alt, Liverani explores what he calls the “nomadic religion” of the Late Bronze Age. He associates this religious phenomenon with its Amorite origins, citing continuity via shared focus on kinship ties and expressions of deity. Of this “nomadic religion,” Liverani writes, “[El] was the clearest expression of the religious beliefs of pastoral and nomadic groups. Regarding the religious beliefs of these groups, there is little evidence … Nonetheless it is clear that pastoral religion was different from agrarian religion.”3 Scholars of Israelite religion have maintained similarly unsubstantiated claims and often presented Israel’s patrimonial religion in conflict with the religious ideals of sedentary peoples.4 Liverani continues, Despite being both concerned with fertility, farmers focused more on the dualistic unity of land and water, symbolized by the reproduction of humans and animals. On the contrary, shepherds focused on the reproductive cycles of herds and the ideology of kinship, a core concept in their social organization … This type of religion was more abstract, less concerned with rituals, myths and depictions, but far more interested in sacred locations, such as tombs of ancestors, sacred areas for seasonal meetings, temples located outside city. This preference was a clear consequence of the transhumant nature of these communities, providing sacred meeting points for the various tribal groups living in the area.5 Unfortunately, his attempts to illuminate the facets of this so-called pastoralist religion strain at the seams and promote an outdated dimorphic social framework. Even van der Toorn wanders dangerously into similar territory when he writes, “People with a background in pastoral nomadism tended to worship family gods from tribal sanctuaries in the land of their ancestors.”6 What exactly counts as having “a background in pastoral nomadism” is ambiguous. Moreover, while persons may have traveled to shrines associated with ancestral lands, the data explored throughout this book shows that it was not only those of pastoral heritage that made pilgrimage to shrines. Explorations of Israel’s pastoralist history have often included investigations of Amorite religion, particularly the worship of the moon god Sîn who is pitched as a god of nomads. However, present evidence indicates that worship of Sîn was not an exclusively “nomadic” enterprise.7 Additionally, while Liverani’s association of some pastoralists with Amorites is sound, it is troubling to assume that all pastoralists or nomads maintain religiosities composed

Conclusion 247

primarily of abstract belief rather than concrete practices. Such a claim stands in direct contrast to the data we have showing that regardless of religious affiliation, embodied praxis is a common element of religiosities in contexts of mobility. Rosen’s research on cultic sites in the Negev demonstrates the materiality that attended religious belief and expression among pastoral populations from very early times.8 Scholars of family and household religion have also shown that ancestral veneration, pilgrimage, and season-specific festivals are shared religious phenomena across the mobility spectrum. Humans conceive of divine personhood and mobility along the patterns by which they most commonly experience those things. There is, however, no credible evidence that persons on the move maintain more abstract theological conceptions, tend toward aniconism, or picture their gods as more transcendent than sedentary populations. Ecology and geography influence cultural outcomes and patterned behaviors, though not deterministically.9 In all of this, perceptions of superhuman powers as mobile, spatially or geographically transcendent are shaped by personal experiences of mobility and broader cultures of mobility. We find in the ancient Near East that deities’ modes and range of movement generally mirror those of kings and other urban elites who are the most extensively mobile subset of ancient Near Eastern populations. They are carried in litters, ride in chariots and have boats constructed for them. Their itineraries are recorded and include mention of the places they stop, the food they eat, the care they receive, the events they witness (and their responses to them), and the people or things – including other deities – that they interact with. Conceptions of mobility for those groups that were not primarily associated with urban settings would have differed in some respects from their urban counterparts, but not entirely. Yaweh’s modes of travel often reflect elite forms of mobility. He walks in the garden in the evening as a king might (Gen 3:8) and leads his people like a ruler in battle at various points. At other times, Yahweh’s movement takes on more common forms, as when he meets Abraham and Sarah as a traveler (Gen 18:1-21). The trope of Yahweh as a shepherd builds on the common trope of kingship and shepherdom, but also interestingly bridges the gap between kingly and common modes of movement (Ps 23; 78:52). Perhaps the most important element of religiosities associated with non-sedentary populations is the attribution of greater volitional agency they attributed to deities. Put simply, people who are on the move require gods that can move. Therefore, as populations become more mobile, so do their deities. To recognize this is not the same as arguing that there is a definable type of mobile religion. While we can conclude that the cognitive and practical religious repertoires of persons on the move are marked by elasticity and expansiveness, no strict boundary can be identified between exclusively “mobile” or “sedentary” religion as such. Lived religiosity is responsive to contexts of mobility and religiosities responsively shape cultures of mobility. Movement necessitates cultural ingenuity and often leads to expanding religious repertoires oriented toward comprehensiveness and efficacy for experiences of life on the move. In

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all of this, however, one cannot identify a distinct migrant or nomadic religious archetype. Rather we ought to simply speak of migrants’ religiosities. A similar word of counsel can be offered to those who wish to compare “Bedouin religion” or “desert religion” with the religiosities of ancient Israelites.10 Any assumption that pristine archaic forms of religiosity have been preserved among what some might count as pre-modern peoples must be tempered with the reality that religion, especially religion in contexts of mobility, is always changing. Thus, while careful ethnographic comparison might reveal patterns of religiosity shared across time and space, facile correlations and categorizations of the data must be avoided. Internal religious pluralism results from many stimuli, among which are increased contacts with different ethnocultural groups through movement. Different members of the group inevitably gain additional elements of religious expression via contact with other persons. Although he makes no effort to specifically address ancient religiosities with modern migration data, Daniel Fleming maintains a far more accurate characterization of the function of religion in contexts of mobility than most scholars. Regarding Amorite populations of Mesopotamia and the Levant he writes, “The mobility of their active herding population would have made them natural carriers of religious customs to new regions, though ancient practice tended to adapt to the local landscape with its traditional attention to local powers and needs.”11 This set of observations captures dynamics of power and reciprocity that inform cultural outcomes in contexts of mobility, contact, and exchange. Deities were likely exchanged among various adherents who could recommend their efficacy to others in need. Cornelius documents the ubiquity of religious figurines among Phoenician shipwrecks from times when merchants set out to sea, not only with their personal gods, but with a cargo of gods to be delivered to trade colonies along the way.12 He also shows, through an extensive historical review of winged sun discs that, as such religious paraphernalia traveled via trade and exchange, the representative meaning of the symbols also typically changed.13 His work demonstrates not only the increase in religious pluralism throughout the ancient Near East vis à vis trade, but also the growth of internal religious pluralism as local religious repertoires expanded with the incorporation of additional practices, symbols, and beliefs. As in modern migrational contexts, religion is not “put on hold” by those on the move. On the contrary, it often plays a central role, albeit frequently in new ways, to acquire goods and avoid ills. Given that the exchange of family cult features through migration is an important factor in the growth of religious diversity in the ancient Near East, van der Toorn’s findings on family religion and migration require redress here.14 His assessment of the data points to an aspect of religiosity that continues to be observable among modern migrants. That is, that religious conversion – as an outcome of migration – is less common than often assumed.15 Instead, the evidence indicates that adoption and adaptation of other deities or practices while maintaining previous ones were far more common than

Conclusion 249 16

disposing of old gods or rituals in favor of new ones. Van der Toorn gives a great deal of credit for this outcome to the religious conservativism of Babylonians, but the truth is that the behavior of Babylonians on the move aligns with almost all other groups about which data has been collected on this topic.17 Across the board, religious practitioners expand their religious repertoires toward increasing efficacy without overtly discarding previous elements of their practical toolkit. Mobility can spur this expansion toward greater internal religious pluralism. Therefore, van der Toorn’s observation is true of most humans, who being “the ape that won’t commit,”18 maintain previous cultural elements while acquiring and developing new modes of existence to meet present demands. Even those migrants who officially convert and align themselves with a new religious community typically maintain practices from their previous tradition.19 While “nomad religion” and “migrant religion” are not defensible categories of analysis, Alt’s sensibilities were not entirely misguided. He was right to note the centrality of mobility in the life of early Israel and as an influence on the final forms of the biblical texts, albeit not in so many words. Having refuted the notion of a specific migratory religious type, I draw this volume to a close with a brief set of reflections on how the Judahite biblical corpus came to mirror cognitive and practical aspects of lived religiosity in contexts of mobility. I return to the notions of efficacy and comprehensiveness as characteristics of cultural production and ask how these are borne out in the history of scriptural production and representations of divine personhood. The biblical corpus maintains an abundance of disparate representations of Israel’s god, who, though assumed to be the same deity before and throughout Israel’s existence, is identified by different names, associated with different locations of origin, described as having multiple bodies of varying size and of maintaining different modes of and spectrums of mobility. Examined collectively, these textual representations of the divine border on incoherence. The biblical authors – who are by and large classifiable as religiously conservative tradents – preserve pluriformity of divine personhood despite their concerns to proscribe certain religious practices. Multiform portrayals of divinity persist despite the editorial activities of redactors who hoped to support the geographic and ideological centralization of Yahwism around Jerusalem/Judah.20 We have seen that the body of evidence on migrants’ religiosities indicates a pervasive tendency toward comprehensive religious tool kits that center efficacy rather than systematic coherence of belief or practice. We have also noted that while the same propensities toward efficacy are witnessed in sedentary settings, they are amplified in contexts of movement, with attributes of divine mobility being more prevalent among mobile populations. Textual depictions of divinity are, then, partially the result of the general human limits of language, and partially reflective of lived experience, mirroring the tendencies of lived religiosity in a range of contexts. Thus, in the biblical corpus, we find a God who moves and who is sedentary, who goes into exile and who stays behind, who dwells in heaven and walks on the earth.

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In this sense, the divine cultures of mobility represent the full spectrum of human mobility and immobility. This is not to slip into some simple Feuerbachian notion of self projection into the divine realm. Rather, it is to acknowledge that the lived experiences of biblical tradents spaned the spectrum of mobilities and, that in their desires to express the fullness of divinity, those same tradents preserved depictions of divine movement that demonstrate divine comprehensiveness. It is through the collective descriptions of divine mobility that the final form of the biblical corpus bridges questions of divine transcendence and immanence. The God who moves with his people is simultaneously present on the road and in heaven. He is in diaspora with his people and on the holy mountain in Zion. Perhaps even more paradoxically, he is understood by the texts’ tradents to be present in and through the text itself, which is immanently mobile as both written document and collective memory.

Notes 1 Albrecht Alt, “The God of the Fathers,” in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion, trans. R.A. Wilson (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1968), 4–100. 2 Albrecht Alt, “Der Gott der Väter,” Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament, ed. Rudolf Kittel (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1929). It is important to note that fundamental elements of Alt’s argument were questioned early on. See, Herbert G. May, “The God of My Father-a Study of Patriarchal Religion,” Journal of Bible and Religion 9 (1941): 155–58, 199–200. May critiques Alt for being a bit sloppy in his exegesis and argues that there is an important difference between the phrase “God of my father” which comes from the lips of Moses in Exod 3:6 (‫ )ֱאֹלֵהי אִָבי‬15:2 ,(‫)ֱאֹלֵהי אִָביָך‬, and 18:4 (‫—)ֱאֹלֵהי אִָבי‬and “the God of my fathers.” 3 Mario Liverani, The Ancient Near East: History, Society, and Economy, Translated by Soraia Tabatabai (New York: Routledge, 2014), 345. 4 Cf. Albertz’s presentation of the history of the research on this set of issues. Rainer Albertz, A History of Israelite Religion in the Old Testament Period, vol. 1, trans. John Bowden (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 34–38. 5 Liverani, Ancient Near East, 345–46. 6 Karel van der Toorn, “Family Religion in Second Millennium West Asia (Mesopotamia, Emar, Nuzi),” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, eds. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 20–36, 22. 7 See for example the various prayers to Sîn (from sedentary contexts) in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd ed. (Bethesda: CDL, 2005), 758–61. See also the veneration of Sîn and Shamash together in Foster, 762. 8 Steven A. Rosen, “Cult and the Rise of Desert Pastoralism: A Case Study from the Negev,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Havertown: Oxbow, 2015), 38–47. 9 Cf. John Berry, Acculturation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 4–16. 10 Clinton Bailey, Bedouin Culture in the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 139–66. 11 Daniel Fleming, “The Amorites,” in The World around the Old Testament: The People and Places of the Ancient Near East, eds. Bill T. Arnold and Brent A. Strawn (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 17–18. 12 Izak Cornelius, “‘Trading Religions’ and ‘visible religion’ in the Ancient Near East,” in Religions and Trade: Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange

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13 14 15 16 17

18

19 20

between East and West, eds. Peter Wick and Volker Rabens (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 141–66, 143–44. See also Walter Burkert, “Migrating Gods and Syncretisms: Forms of Cult Transfer in the Ancient Mediterranean,” in Kleine Schriften II, eds. Walter Burkert, Christoph Riedweg and M. Laura Gemelli Marciano (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 17–36. Cornelius, “‘Trading Religions’ and ‘visible religion’,” 144–55. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 142–47. Eric M. Trinka, “Migration and Internal Religious Pluralism: A Review of Present Findings,” Journal of Interreligious Studies 28 (2019): 3–26. van der Toorn, Family Religion, 146–47. Sebnem Koser Akcapar, “Conversion as a Migration Strategy in a Transit Country: Iranian Shiites Becoming Christians in Turkey,” International Migration Review 40 (2006): 817–53; Laurent Fouchard, André Mary, and René Otayek, eds., Entreprises Religieuses et Réseaux Transationaux en Afrique de l’Ouest (Ibadan and Paris: IFRA/ Karthala, 2005). Jonathon C.K. Wells and Jay T. Stock, “The Biology of Human Migration: The Ape That Won’t Commit?” in Causes and Consequences of Human Migration: An Evolutionary Perspective eds. Michael H. Crawford and Benjamin C. Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 21–44. For further discussion of the question of intentional religious change among migrants see the various essays in, Karen I. Leonard, et al., eds. Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America (Lanham: Altamira, 2005). (Gen 14:17-23; 31:41-42; 32:24-31; 49:22-25; Exod 6:2-3; 15:11; Deut 4:23, 6:4, 32:9, 33:2; Judg 5; Ps 18, 68, 74, 82, 89:5-18, 135:21; Amos 1:2; Joel 4:16; Hab 3:3-16; Isa 43:10, 44–46, 63:1-6).

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Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” refer to notes. Adebanwi, W. 40 Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage/Admonitions of Ipuwer 75 Aegean 2 Afghanistan: seafaring 60 agency 22–26 agrarian social revolution model 124 Aharoni, Y. 195 Ahaziah, king of Israel 61 alāku 3, 17 Albertz, R. 215, 217 Alt, A. 246 Altglas, V. 39 Amarna letters 6, 59–60 Amenemhat I 102n162 Amenhotep II 55 Amorites/Amurru 89–92, 106n263 Amun of Thebes 63; cult of 121n43 Arad 195–197 Arameans 92–93 Ark of the Covenant 183n84 Asherah 171 Assurbanipal II 7, 139 Assur-dan II 80 Assurnasirpal II 68 Assur-uballit I 7 Assyria: cultures of mobility 64 asylum seeker 19 Baal 162, 163, 168, 171–174, 230n12 Babylon: cultures of mobility 64 bāmot 189–191 Beersheva 197 birthing spaces 219–221 bodies of evidence 4–6

borders 73–77 boundaries 73–77; marking 75; stones 74–75 bricolage 38, 39 bricoleur 38–39 Bronze Age 3, 4, 6–8, 29, 55–57, 125; hospitality, ubiquitous code of 77; mobile functionaries 66; mobile pastoralism 69, 70; pilgrimage 71; seafaring 60; trade outposts 64 Broshi, M. 146 Bruce, S. 41 Bull Site 197–199 Bunimovitz, S. 202 burial practices 221–225 burial spaces 221–225 Canaan: cultures of mobility 55–93; patterns of mobility 64 Canaanites 123 caravanserai/guest houses 65 cavalry technology 56 children: role in household religion 216 civic religious participation 191–193 civic spaces of religiosity 184–214 cognitive environment 108 comprehensiveness 39 Connor, P. 130 conquest model 124 convergence 171 Craft of the Scribe, The 67, 68 Crete: material culture 59 critical realism 6, 46n61 cultural mutability 35–42 cultural progressivism 37

Index 293 cultures of mobility 1, 2, 4, 16, 24; in lands around Canaan 55–93; within processes of state formation 137–144 Cyprus: copper trade 59

forced migration 20–21; derivative 20; development induced 20; purposive 20; responsive 20 “frontier agrarian reform” model 127

Dan 199–200, 226–229, 244n292 decision-making 22–26 deities 29; on the move 109–115 deportations 21 derivative forced migration 20 destination models 22 Deuteronomy 162, 169–170 development induced forced migration 20 Dever, W. G. 125–129, 132, 142 dietary habits 217–218 differentiation 171, 173 Divine Council 176 divine-human relationships 29 divinity 245–250; definition of 108–109; Mesopotamian and Egyptian modes of 176 Dolansky, S. 219 dominance 37 duration dependence 23, 147

Gottwald, N. 124, 127

Early Iron Age Central Highlands 175 Ebaugh, H. R. 40 ebēru/ebāru 17 economic structure 97n107 Egypt 4; Amun, cult of 121n43; and Hatti, treaty between 73; Instructions of Any 29; material culture 59; migration 63; mobile functionaries 67–68; mobile persons, perceptions of 83; mobility, controlling 72; mobility and religiosities in 115–118; momentary resurgence 7–8; national culture of mobility 61; river travel 58, 59; two- and four-wheeled carts 56; Wenamun travels 63–64 El 171–173, 227 El-Amarna archive 78, 83, 173 emergent social structures 131–134 entanglement 46n61 environmental determinism 37 epistemology (ways of knowing) 3 ethnogenesis 135–137 exchange economy 65 Faust, A 142, 144, 189 Finkelstein, I. 126, 132, 146–148, 151, 175, 202 Fleming, D. 248 fluidity 39 food preparation 217–218

Habiru 87–88 Hadad 175 Hardin, J. 143 Hatti: and Egypt, treaty between 73 Hatushilli III 62 Hesse, B. 217 Hittite treaty 74 hlḵ 17 Hodos 7 homebuilding 25 Homo sapiens sapiens 36 hospitality, ubiquitous code of 77–80 household 22–26; in ancient Near East 28–30; spaces of religiosity 214–229 human trafficking 20 Huntington, E. 37 hybridity 38, 39, 53n140 independent assortment 37 insecurity 22–26, 57 Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School 66 Instructions of Any 29, 111 internally displaced persons 19 internal nomadic settlement model 124 internal religious pluralism 35–42 International Organization for Migration 19 interregional competition and exchange 61–66 involuntary migration 20 Iran: seafaring 60 Iraq: mobile functionaries 68 Iron Age 3, 4, 6–8, 55; inter-regional elite movers in 129; mobile pastoralism 69, 70; mobility and migration between Israel and Judah in 144–151; pilgrimage 71; road building and maintenance 57–58 Israel 4, 20, 21, 29; emergence in light of migration studies 123–137; ethnogenesis 124; and Judah, mobility and migration between 144–151; migrants’ religiosities 42; mobility-informed religiosity in 184–229; question of temples in 185–189 Israelite household 140–144 Judah 4, 20, 21, 29; and Israel, mobility and migration between 144–151; migrants’

294

Index

religiosities 42; mobility-informed religiosity in 184–229; question of temples in 185–189 kārum 64, 65 KASKAL 3 Keel, O. 165 Killebrew, A. 124 King Artaxerxes 77 King David 175 King Jehoshaphat 60–61 King Sehetepibre (Amenemhet I.) 81 Kong, L. 37 Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) 205–214 LaBianca, Ø 69, 98n107 Lachish 202 Lahun: Minoan pottery at 61 Lederman, Z. 202 Lemche, N. P. 126 Leuenberger, M. 164 Levantine 2, 4, 7, 56, 124; copper trade 59; migration 63; mobile pastoralism 69, 70; river travel 58; road building and maintenance 58 Levi-Strauss, C. 39; Savage Mind, The 38 Liverani, M. 246 Mandell, A. 208, 212 material cultural production 136 Mazar, A. 204 Melander, E. 147–148 Mendenhall, G. 124, 127 Mesha Stelae 162 Mesopotamia 4, 29; mobile functionaries 68; mobile persons, perceptions of 83, 84; mobility and religiosities in 115–118; patterns of mobility 64; river travel 59; seafaring 60; two- and four-wheeled carts 56 Middle Kingdom period: royally-sponsored travel 61 migrant religion 249 migrants’ religiosities 31–35 migration 16, 23, 78, 135–137; forced 20–21; involuntary 20; memories, and household religiosities 225–229; past and present terminology for 16–21 Miller, R. D. 170–171 “mixed multitude” theory 124, 149 mobile functionaries 66–69 mobile pastoralism 69–71, 98–99n107

Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilization (Porter) 2 mobile persons, perceptions of 82–84 mobile religious specialists 193–195 mobility 3, 5, 15, 245–250; controlling 72–93; cultural mutability and 35–42; cultures of see cultures of mobility; divine 108–109; in Egypt 115–118; gradients of 191–193; internal religious pluralism and 35–42; in Mesopotamia 115–118, Yahweh and 164–178 Montesquieu 37 motility 16 movement 14–15; past and present terminology for 16–21 Mt. Ebal 200–201 Mursili II 69 Na’aman, N. 146–151 Nabopolassar 74 Nakhai, B. A. 214 naming practices 219–221 Nebuchadnezzar II 58 Neo-Assyrians 8, 58, 65, 76, 80, 82, 175 Neo-Babylonia 8 networks of connectivity 131–134 niche construction 36 nomad religion 249 Obadare, E. 40 Öberg, M. 147–148 Oded, B. 159n157 Old Testament: maritime travel 61; roadways in 57; seafaring 60; shipbuilding 60 Oman: seafaring 60 ontology (ways of being) 3, 26 Orsi, R. 34, 38 overland movement 56–58 peaceful infiltration model 124 peaceful transition 124 Pew Research Center: Religious Landscape Study 49n100 Pharaoh Amenophis III 109, 165 Pharaoh Ramses 68 Pharaoh Seti I 62 Pharaoh Shishak 157n105 Pharaoh Shoshenq I 139 pilgrimage 71 Pitkänen, P. 128 place utility 23, 147

Index 295 plasticity 39 population displacement 80–82 pork consumption 218 Porter, A. 4, 5; Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilization 2 Porter, B. 47n68 power 108 priests 193–195 prophets 193–195 purposive forced migration 20 Qurayyah-type pottery 165 Rameses II 62 Rameses III 88–89 Rameses III 62 refugees 19, 20 religion: definition of 26–27, 46n56; migrant 249; nomad 249 religiosity 2, 5, 8, 9, 108–118, 245–250; in ancient Near East 28–30; civic spaces of 184–214; definition of 27–28; in Egypt 115–118; household spaces of 214–229; in Mesopotamia 115–118; migrants’ 31–35; mobility-informed 184–229 religious belonging 41 religious identity 9 religious socialization 30 relocation 80–82 Report of Wenamun 63, 112, 114 responsive forced migration 20 Richmond, A. H. 20 river Travel 58–61 road building and maintenance 57–58 Road to Emar, The 68 Sargon II 80, 139, 146, 148 Satire on the Trades, The see Instruction for Little Pepi on His Way to School Savage Mind, The (Levi-Strauss) 38 Schmidt, B. B. 208, 211, 212 Schmidt, R. 215, 217 seafaring 48–61 Sea Peoples 88–89, 139, 152n9, 228 secularization 8 segregation 37 Semple, E. 37 Senusret III 76 Shalmaneser V 145 Shalmaneser III 7, 139 Shasu 87 shatter zones 76 Shiloh 202–204

Shipwrecked Sailor, The 60 Silberman, N. A. 175 Siloam Tunnel inscription 146 Smith, M. 170 Smith, T. L. 31 Smoak, J. 208, 212 smuggling 20 social control 15 social dimorphism 3 sovereignty 74 spaces of religious life, identifying 184 stateless persons 19 St. Michael’s Church 212 Stock, J. T. 36 Stripling, S. 203 Stump, R. 46n56 superhuman power 118–119n3 symbiosis model see internal nomadic settlement model Syria: mobile functionaries 68; patterns of mobility 64 Taanach 204 Teachings for King Merikare 110 territoriality 73, 74 Thomas, R. 210 ʿ3mu (ʿamu) 84–87 Thutmosis III 62–63 Tiglath-pileser I 7 Tiglath-pileser III 7, 139 trade outposts 64 transformation model 124 translation 171 transnational(ism) 20 Tukulti-Ninurta I 7 Tukulti-Ninurta II 68 Turkey: mobile functionaries 68 Tweed, T. 4, 38 Ugarit: records of landholdings 74 Uluburun 60 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 19 United Nations Population Division 19 Ur III 76 van der Toorn, K. 248, 249 veneration, domestic spaces of 214–217 Voltaire 37 Wells, J. C. K. 36 Wisdom of Amenemopet 75 Wolf, E. 128

296

Index

Yahweh 162–178; emergence 162–164; mobility 164–178; mountains and 164–170; personhood in Judah’s Bible 176–178; personhood of 42; rise to the head of the pantheon 170–176

Yahwism 39, 170, 175, 176, 185, 194, 245 Yang, F. 40 yrḏ 17 Zev Meshel 205