Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology: Integrating Text and Artefact 9781472550736, 9780567415639, 9780567191892

Citation preview

To my beloved wife Lillian—for her loving patience

PREFACE This book was originally conceived as an attempt to draw up a comprehensive study about the thorny problem of the emergence of ancient Israel, which I had already outlined in a former discussion of the subject.1 However, it soon became apparent that the real crux of the problem of the emergence of ancient Israel lay not so much in adducing some new datum or in drawing up a solid synthesis of the puzzle, but in the various presuppositions (often diametrically opposed) with which scholars approached the subject. In other words, it soon became clear that the crux of the whole matter lay in the rst principles, assumptions, axioms, and pre-understanding with which scholars approached both the relevant archaeological and biblical data. It was therefore also a problem of how to correlate textual and archaeological evidence in a methodical manner. This led me to investigate also the nature of archaeological and historical research with a view to trying to understand the aims and methods of both the archaeologist and the historian. In its own turn, all this inevitably led to an examination of the principles which underlie the current intellectual climate, namely that of postmodernism. Hence, one reasonable theory of knowledge had to be presented and endorsed if further progress was to be made; indeed, the issue of epistemology is crucial to this study, for beyond it there is nothing further to “excavate” as far as assumptions are concerned. The foregoing points could lead readers to believe that this book is a rehash of some current theoretical issues which are dealt with by various scholars working in different elds. They could think that they will have to plough their way through a hazy maze of obscure and often abstract terms, terms which are seldom understood even by those who use them. They can rest assured that such is not the case. My aim is to write an introduction to the difcult but crucial problem of how to relate archaeological and historical evidence with special reference to pre-exilic Israel. Indeed, most of the examples refer to the period of the emergence of ancient Israel, with one case study (dealt with in Chapter 7) focusing on the information relative to the location of 1. Frendo 2004. 1

x

Preface

Rahab’s house as reported in Josh 2:15. This case study is intended to function as one very particular illustration of the basic rules and rudimentary elements that are involved in the correlation of archaeological and biblical research. Although this book is mainly intended for colleagues and students working in the eld of historical archaeology, especially for those with an interest in biblical archaeology, the wider public is certainly not excluded. Hence, bibliographical references are given according to the Author–Date system2 within a framework of footnotes. In this manner, the notes and references will not get in the way of those who are not interested in consulting them. I have tried to keep the text as jargon-free as possible, and this for two reasons: rst, because I am convinced that clarity is of the essence of scholarship,3 and secondly, so as to be able to reach all those included in the aforementioned target audience. Whenever technical terms are unavoidable, they will be claried. Despite all this, readers will probably nd some points that are still rather obscure; this is inevitable, since, as Aristotle stated, “when our subjects and our premises are merely generalities, it is enough if we arrive at generally valid conclusions. Accordingly we may ask the student also to accept the various views we put forward in the same spirit; for it is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.”4 I have done my utmost to keep the general thread, which runs through the various chapters, as simple as possible and to provide concrete examples for each major issue which is discussed.

2. For one explanation of the Author–Date system, see Ritter 2002, 566-72. Note, however, that biblical references will be given by quoting book, chapter and verse, whereas references to classical authors will be made by quoting author, where necessary the title of the work, and book, chapter, and/or verses/sections. 3. As Martinich (1989, xiv) wrote: “Since language is the expression of thought, clear language is the expression of clear thought. Writing style should facilitate the comprehension of philosophy. Style should enhance clarity.” See also Evans (2000, 67), who says: “Clarity of presentation, after all, is a necessary part of intellectual precision: there is nothing necessarily ‘unscientic’ or sloppy about it, quite the reverse.” 4. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1.3.4. 1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is long overdue, and I admit that I am partly to blame for the delay in its publication. In the rst instance, I wanted to be sure that I had given sufcient thought to a subject that is both difcult and controversial—the existence or otherwise of pre-exilic Israel. Secondly, I wanted to make certain that I was fair to the schools of thought that are entrenched on what seem to be two opposing sides of a battleeld. Thirdly, the delay in publication was also caused by other factors that were out of my control—including new administrative tasks assigned to me at the University of Malta, as well as the pressure of deadlines linked with the publication of academic papers. All of this means that a fair amount of time has passed since I rst started my research—in the spring of 2004(!)—on the subject that is the focus of the present work. I am indebted to many for their help in bringing this book to publication. As is customary in such situations, my aim is to thank all those who helped me. However, memory being what it is, I apologize in advance to those I should thank but whose names I have omitted. For over twenty years I have been teaching study-units on the subject of early Israel, and so I rst want to acknowledge the input of my students, both past and present. Their questions and interest have always stimulated further thoughts and reection. I also owe a debt of gratitude to a number of scholars at the University of Oxford, to where, since 1998, I have made brief annual research visits. Indeed, I consider myself fortunate to have enjoyed two longer periods in Oxford (in 2004 and 2005). I consider it an honour that on both occasions I was elected as a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, with membership of the common room. In this regard, I am especially indebted to the late Dr Jeremy Black and the late Dr Roger Moorey, as well as to Professor Jeremy Jones and the late President of Wolfson College, Professor Sir Gareth Roberts. My links with Oxford remind me of the late Dr Noah Lucas, whom I rst met in Israel in 1994. Noah and I were both Visiting Scholars at the Jacob Blaustein Centre for Desert Studies at Sde Boqer (University of Beersheba), and it was he who rst encouraged me to go to Oxford. Noah made the necessary arrangements for me to be invited as a Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in Yarnton in May 1998. This was an 1

xii

Acknowledgments

amazing experience for me, and it was this visit that inspired me to make my annual trips to Oxford. On most occasions I have stayed at Campion Hall, and so I wish to thank the Masters and members of the Hall for their hospitality over the years. Most of the research for this book was carried out at Oxford—that most wonderful oasis of pure scholarship. I am indebted to so many in Oxford, not least the librarians of the various libraries I have frequented. Of these librarians, I must single out Dr. John Taylor, former librarian of the Ashmolean Library, as well as Ms. Diane Bergman of the Sackler Library. And there are numerous scholars at Oxford whose help I must acknowledge. Of these, I am obliged to single out Professor Hugh G. M. Williamson, Professor Kevin Cathcart of University College, Dublin and a perennial visitor at Oxford University, Dr. Christopher Melchert, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, and Professor John Day. The latter very kindly invited me to prepare a paper on the emergence of ancient Israel for the Oxford Old Testament Seminar in 2002. Presenting a paper in so prestigious a forum obviously involved a lot of research, a good deal of which helped me in the preparation for the present book. Professor Day also made a point of inviting me each year since 1998 to visit his immense personal library. I am grateful to Professor Day’s generosity in loaning me books, several of which are cited in my bibliography. The scholars mentioned in the preceding paragraphs all offered useful advice and warm hospitality which helped me in my preparation of this book. I offer them my sincere thanks. I would also like to thank T&T Clark International for agreeing to publish my work. In this regard, I would like to single out Dr. Andrew Mein, whose suggestions and recommendations helped me to improve the present volume. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reader whose advice for improvement I treasured, as well as to Ms Katie Gallof at the ofces of T&T Clark in New York. I also owe a lot to Dr. Duncan Burns, my copy-editor, who also very generously prepared the indexes. I cannot forget my friends and colleagues at the University of Malta who showed an interest in my research. In particular, I would like to thank the Academic Work Resources Fund Committee—without their help I would not have been able to nance my visits to Oxford over the years. Last but not least, I offer my heartfelt thanks to my dear wife Lillian, who has always stood by me, patiently endured my bouts of absence from home, and listened with interest to what I have had to say. To her I therefore dedicate this labour of love. Tal-Qroqq, Msida, Malta September 2010 1

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

I had originally planned this book as an investigation into the thorny problems besetting the study of pre-exilic Israel with the more precise aim of essentially concentrating on the vexed question of the emergence of ancient Israel. However, the problems involved in this topic led me to study much more in depth the methodological issues concerning the relationship of textual and non-written archaeological evidence. The upshot was that the book was turning into a sort of elementary grammar on the methodology of how one could go about relating, without confusing, written and non-written evidence, with illustrations from the archaeology and history of pre-exilic Israel with a focus on the period of the emergence of ancient Israel on Canaanite soil. I hope to ground and illustrate sufciently the fact that archaeological and historical evidence constitute two distinct but intrinsically related pathways to gain a better picture of the human past. Indeed, archaeologists can really best get at the meaning of artefacts if archaeology is viewed as a contextual discipline in the sense that “if it is the case that material culture should be seen as a product of human creativity, as an active intervention in the social production of reality, then it must follow that this applies to all human creations—including written sources…”1 Chapter 2 is where I show that archaeology and history are two sides of the same coin: the ultimate aim of both is to attempt a reconstruction of past human societies. In Chapter 3 it is argued that the relationship between archaeology and history is one which indicates that they are distinct and yet indivisible, and that therefore their correlation has to be approached in a highly methodical manner. The following chapter provides a survey of what the ancients, mainly of the classical world, teach us about the relationship between archaeological and historical data and the inferences which one can draw from it with respect to the 1. Moreland 2001, 83. 1

2

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

reconstruction of historical events on the basis of a methodically sound correlation of written and non-written evidence from the past. Clearly all this applies as well to the history of pre-exilic Israel. In Chapter 62 it will be shown that one can speak of stratication both with reference to archaeology as well as to the Hebrew Bible. This chapter underscores the role which stratigraphy plays both in archaeological excavation and in a critical reading of the Bible: it appears that in both instances one is dealing with a vast accumulation of layers (of soil and text), each of which has to be disentangled in the reverse order to that in which it was laid down. In reality, both disciplines stand in need of excavation; unless one is dealing with one-period sites or with a biblical text which was written in its extant form at one go, one discovers that the stratigraphic excavation of texts and archaeological sites is inevitable. Biblical stratigraphy turns out to be very similar to archaeological stratigraphy when it is realized, for example, that biblical texts can indeed have more than one ideology, namely when “the ideological remains are multivalent and represent multiple social and historical contexts.”3 Such a holistic approach to studying the past from both the textual and archaeological point of view strengthens our possibilities of attaining a better picture of human history. In Chapter 7 it becomes clear that at a certain point, archaeological and textual evidence must be conjoined without being confused. In such a process it is very important to keep in mind that a solid literary appreciation of the pertinent biblical texts will protect scholars from misreading them and thus from expecting the results of archaeology to bear upon a ghost problem. This is the case, for example, with the book of Joshua which has featured amply in the discussion of the emergence of ancient Israel and which has also created many problems with respect to the injunction made by God to the Israelites that they exterminate all the Canaanites whom they encountered as they settled in Canaan. A careful literary appreciation of this book reveals that it is possible to view the aforementioned order (as well as the two other main points of the book of Joshua, namely the possession of the land and obedience to Moses’ commands) within the context that the only real identifying character of the Israelites is that they are the people of the covenant. As Hawk aptly points out, “understood in this way, Joshua does not legitimize religious and ethnic violence, but rather undercuts claims of divine sanction for such agendas.”4

2. For my discussion of Chapter 5 in this introduction, see pp. 4–5 below. 3. Carter 2003, 317. 4. Hawk 2005, 573. 1

1. Introduction

3

The clear corollary of the main points to be discussed in this book is that ultimately, as far as written evidence is concerned, what we commonly call knowledge of the past turns out to be faith in the testimony offered by other people which is based on the fact that we consider them to be worthy of our trust.5 Indeed, our testimonies of the past are often indirect. Such, for example, is the case with Napoleon, for whom “we have no explicit testimonies that indeed” he “did exist and was not, say, a brilliantly sustained invention of French politicians.”6 The very validity of our witnesses leads us to realize that past events for which we can nd no analogy in the present, could very well turn out to be true. It would thus be incorrect and even dangerous to dismiss something which has been reported purely because we can nd no analogy to it in our normal experience, namely simply because it is “unusual” or “unexpected.”7 It will be shown that those biblical texts which were edited rather late in the history of Israel could indeed contain information from earlier periods which was authentic. Thus, for example, it is interesting to note the case of the Midianites, who according to Judg 6 were the great enemies of the Israelites ca. 1100 B.C.E. By the tenth century B.C.E., they, together with the Kenites, the Amalekites, and the Ishmaelites, vanish from Israelite history, and this makes it illogical to think that the traditions regarding Moses who had married the daughter of a Midianite would have been invented in either of the periods just mentioned.8 Although the biblical information regarding the Midianites and the Ishmaelites is found in texts which had a “quite late redaction,”9 archaeology “conrms the basic accuracy” of the picture of these tribes which can be gleaned from the relevant biblical data.10 Although I shall argue that archaeology and history are two separate and distinct, yet intrinsically related disciplines, which should be practised according to their respective rules, there is one point which needs to be underscored. In the course of this study, it will be often pointed out 5. Provan, Long, and Longman 2003, 37. 6. Coady 1992, 51. Note Coady’s interesting comment that it is “clear that we are greatly indebted to testimony at the level of both common sense and theory for much of what we usually regard as knowledge” (p. 3). 7. Coady (1992, 91) relates that the British Admiralty had dismissed an intelligence report before World War I to the effect that “German naval gunnery at long ranges was astonishingly good,” simply because it had thought that the “reported results were ‘impossible.’ ” In fact, this meant that the Admiralty had not trusted whoever had drawn up the report. 8. Stager 1998, 143. 9. Liverani 2005, 81. 10. Liverani 2005, 83. 1

4

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

that quite a substantial amount of biblical material which turns out to be historically useful was given a theological interpretation by the biblical authors. It is commonly accepted that such theological interpretation is not always given its due weight when it comes to the historical reconstruction of ancient Israel—especially pre-exilic Israel. It is commonly accepted that the theological viewpoint of the biblical authors and/or editors constitutes a superstructure which is not that relevant. This is correct, but only up to a certain point. If modern archaeologists and historians of ancient Israel wholly eliminate the divine sphere from their consideration, they should remember that to do this is tantamount to endorsing a different type of theological viewpoint.11 Indeed, “by trying, like Livy and his successors, totally to exclude the ‘divine’ or religious, historians must stand in danger of excluding a whole range of human experience; and when secularisation is taken as a goal, the development of secularisation itself becomes the organising principle or ‘direction’ in terms of which history is made to seem meaningful.”12 All this is obviously linked to the assumptions which archaeologists and historians carry with them when they reconstruct the past, and as it is pointed out in Chapter 5 it is “the self-correcting process of learning” which turns out to be the antidote against the negative aspects of our assumptions. In Chapter 5 I deal with certain issues of epistemology in the context of the current intellectual climate of postmodernism. It is upheld that it is possible to attain knowledge (even of the past), notwithstanding the fact that the results of scholarship are often tentative and that all scholars have their own presuppositions. In other words, we need to be openminded when it comes to assessing the archaeological and textual data relative to a given period of the history of ancient Israel. The discussion about epistemology and postmodernism also shows that relativism and wholesale scepticism are ultimately self-defeating. The current debate between the so-called maximalists and minimalists as to whether we can really know anything about pre-exilic Israel boils down to whether we endorse relativism and scepticism, or whether we accept that, despite the fact that we make mistakes, we can still know the truth, precisely through the “self-correcting process of learning.” Labels often do tend to mislead us; such, for example, is the case with the word “postmodernism.” Indeed, its tenets have been around for quite some time. Thus, for example, nearly a hundred years ago it had already been 11. As Southgate (1996, 47) said: “Secularisation in fact becomes a theological standpoint, from which to view the course of history and to determine what should or should not be included.” 12. Southgate 1996, 47. 1

1. Introduction

5

claimed that “the ‘facts’ of history do not exist for any historian until he creates them,”13 and in the fourth century B.C.E. Plato had Socrates rebut Protagoras’ “postmodernist” type of relativism by showing very clearly that it was indeed self-contradictory.14 It will be shown that, when scholars consciously endorse critical realism whereby they know that despite all errors and mistakes they can still attain truth (including historical knowledge about pre-exilic Israel), they can then examine the available archaeological and textual data more open-mindedly. The issues discussed in this book are ultimately linked to the assumptions, rst principles, and axioms which scholars uphold. Chapter 5 also reminds readers that it is important to be more conscious of our assumptions, because it is the latter that will determine whether or not one upholds that it is possible to attain knowledge (no matter how sketchy it might be) about pre-exilic Israel. One important assumption which will determine our approach to the study of pre-exilic Israel and whether we accept that it is possible to gain any knowledge thereof concerns our standpoint regarding the nature of historical testimony. If we choose to always employ the principle of verication and thus to wait for the biblical texts to prove themselves correct, then we shall most probably end up by saying that it is virtually impossible to gain any knowledge of preexilic Israel. However, it is important to remember that we have another option, namely to endorse the principle of falsication whereby the burden of proof would then lie with those “who question their [the texts’] value,” and thus they would be the ones who must prove the text wrong. If we claim that the text must always prove itself true before we accept it, then we would eliminate a good deal of the historical knowledge which we have about the ancient world.15 The foregoing points indicate that in the last analysis the assumptions we opt for depend on our personal perspective. Research into the history of pre-exilic Israel (just like any other type of historical investigation) is linked to the notion of perspective in two senses, namely in the sense that 13. Becker 1910, 528. 14. Socrates says that Protagoras’ position “involves this very subtle implication. Protagoras agrees that everyone has in his judgements the things which are. In doing that, he’s surely conceding that the opinion of those who make opposing judgements about his own opinion—that is, their opinion that what he thinks is false—is true” (Plato, Theaetetus 171). 15. Provan, Long, and Longman 2003, 55, where they also write “how much history, ancient or otherwise, would we ‘know’ about if the verication principle were consistently applied to all testimony about it—for example, to the testimony of Julius Caesar about his invasion of Britain in 55–54 B.C.E., which we know about only because Caesar himself tells us of it?” 1

6

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

ultimately we all choose our own assumptions according to our viewpoints, as well as in that other sense of perspective which is analogical to the meaning and function which it has in painting. Indeed, Leonardo da Vinci was clear about the fact that the farther away an object is from us, the greater is the role played by perspective.16 He distinguished three types of perspective, namely “Linear Perspective,” which seeks to explain why objects seem smaller the farther away they are from us; “the Perspective of Colour,” which accounts for the fact that colours vary as they recede from our eyes; and nally “the Perspective of Disappearance,” which “is concerned with the explanation of how the objects [in a picture] ought to be less nished in proportion as they are remote.”17 Such a notion of perspective can probably help us to account for the fact as to why our picture of pre-exilic Israel is indeed true, but “less nished” than other historical epochs which are later and therefore closer to us in time. Just as this notion of perspective plays a crucial role in drawing, so should it do in the historical reconstruction of pre-exilic Israel. Leonardo da Vinci claims that without the idea of perspective “nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing,”18 and I think that this applies equally well to the historical reconstruction of the distant past, such as that of preexilic Israel. When I had virtually nished writing this study, a number of important works about the history of early ancient Israel were published which I had no time to peruse properly in the manner which they deserve. I single out three such books, since I believe that they all need to be examined very closely. The three of them appeared in the same year, 2007, and they all lead the reader to realize that methodological issues19 are crucial to the study of the history of ancient Israel. This goes to show that at least we can all agree that there indeed is a grave problem of method when it comes to the reconstruction of pre-exilic Israel and that we must do something about it as thoroughly as possible. The discussions dealt with in this book offer one possible approach to the problem, and it is hoped that the whole issue is presented in a manner which functions analogously to that which a grammar has in the study of a language. The three publications mentioned in n. 19 are not identical to this book; the main difference lies in the fact that this study concentrates 16. Da Vinci 1970, 33. 17. Da Vinci 1970, 16. 18. Da Vinci 1970, 18. 19. P. R. Davies 2007; Grabbe 2007; and Williamson 2007b. Williamson starts the preface of the work he edited by stating very clearly that “no one familiar with the literature can doubt that there is currently a problem of method in the academic study of the history of ancient Israel” (p. xiii). 1

1. Introduction

7

explicitly on methodological issues to the extent that it virtually turns out to be an elementary grammar on the principles which are employed in joining, without confusing, written and non-written evidence pertinent to the history of pre-exilic Israel. I hope to have dug deep enough through the problems which beset the historical reconstruction of pre-exilic Israel and that I shall succeed in showing that the crux seems to lie in methodically relating textual and artefactual evidence; in short, I hope to have drawn up an elementary grammar of the relationship between text and artefact, with the examples being drawn from the history of ancient Israel, especially of pre-exilic Israel. The case-study presented in Chapter 7 about the location of the house of Rahab is meant to provide one concrete illustration of how to relate textual and artefactual evidence (in this case of the relevant biblical and Palestinian late Bronze and Iron Age archaeological evidence). Indeed, the reader will see that the attempt to relate both types of evidence without confusing one with the other is a must even in those cases where the textual data do not purport to present a historical event. Perhaps the time has come when we should pull down the articial boundaries we have created in our universities, and start thinking in broader terms. In practice, this means that it would be good for those students studying history to be also be taught how to “read” artefacts, whilst it would benet those learning archaeology to be trained how to read texts critically. Nothing short of all the available evidence must be seriously taken into account when attempting a historical reconstruction of any given period, including that of pre-exilic Israel. We would do well to keep in mind the fact that history (and in this context it should be remembered that, as it will be shown in this book, archaeology too purports to “narrate” a story about the human past) can only turn out to be a true story when all the available evidence has been taken into serious account, whether the data happen to be textual or artefactual. Indeed, one of the best illustrations which helps us to understand in what sense history can be a true story is the one which shows that “the true story told by history is not that of the witnesses, and not of the attorneys, but that of the judge after the trial is over,” since judges can then reach a historical conclusion which is different from a legal one, because they can even “weigh hearsay disallowed as evidence” during the trial.20 In the last analysis, it can be claimed that historians are the ones who re-create the past—however, not in the sense of inventing it, but in the sense that they are the only ones who can bring it back to life. This is 20. Zevit 2001, 27. 1

8

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

valid for every historical period, including that of pre-exilic Israel. The “self-correcting process of learning” which will be discussed in Chapter 5 seems to be one good guarantee which protects historians from falling into sheer subjectivism. The principles discussed in this book together with the examples provided, such as that of the location of the house of Rahab, which is dealt with in Chapter 7, show that, although our knowledge about pre-exilic Israel is often sketchy at best, still the two-pronged approach which uses both textual and archaeological evidence and which gives equal weight to both reveals that the little knowledge that we have is not a projection of contemporary scholars into the distant past, but that it does indeed have a basis in reality. The more closely and critically we read the biblical texts and the more accurately we assess the artefactual evidence of the late Bronze and Iron Ages of Palestine, the more condent can we be that our knowledge about pre-exilic Israel is true despite the fact that we are aware that it can be neither great nor detailed owing to the principles of perspective discussed above—just like the objects in a drawing which “ought to be less nished in proportion as they are remote.”21 It is hoped that this book will not only serve as an elementary “grammar” of the methodological issues involved in relating text and artefact with special reference to pre-exilic Israel, but that it will also show that ultimately the whole discussion about the history of ancient Israel would be enhanced if those involved in researching it were to be truly aware of the fact that ultimately “genuine objectivity is the fruit of authentic subjectivity.”22 Such awareness might help us bridge the chasm which currently separates the so-called maximalists from the minimalists, and to realize that progress in the study of ancient Israel depends on getting on with the job by being seriously attentive to both the textual and artefactual data, as well as by exercising in a genuine manner our intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility.23 The “self-correcting process of learning” discussed in Chapter 5 will ensure that we spot our errors on the way to a partial, sketchy, opaque, but true knowledge about ancient Israel in the hope that new discoveries will be able to ll in some more details of our overall picture of this remote but vibrant period of our human past. To attain this goal, we need to be ever more aware of our own assumptions and to attain an ever clearer idea of what history and history-writing are all about. As one scholar put it: “All too often in Near 21. Da Vinci 1970, 16. 22. Lonergan 1972, 292. 23. Lonergan 1972, 265. 1

1. Introduction

9

Eastern studies, certain theories or interpretations of history are based on assumptions that have never been thoroughly scrutinized. Then, as sometimes happens, the assumptions of one generation become the generally accepted view of the next. For this reason, academics involved in the study of the ancient Near East must constantly re-evaluate the present state of their discipline in light of new evidence and new models.”24 This book is an attempt to respond to such a call in the difcult but vibrant eld of biblical archaeology with special reference to pre-exilic Israel. The dilemma is that all along we have to reckon with the fact that “the uninvolved, disinterested observer has never existed, whether as Ideal Chronicler or as Ideal Historiographer.”25 Yet it will be shown that it is still possible to attain historical truth in this eld, basically in a twofold manner, namely on the basis of a critical analysis of both text and artefact via a constant appeal to our human dynamic cognitional structure, and by always trying to tackle problems from a fresh viewpoint.26

24. Hoffmeier 1990, 83. See also Miller 1992, 67 for the idea that both modern historiography and archaeology rest on subjective judgments because of “the unprovable assumptions and epistemological fallacies” in one case, and the dependence on the “analogy principle” with the exercise of “highly subjective judgments” in the other. 25. Provan 1995, 595. 26. It is important to approach problems in a fresh manner, because in this way one is more likely to make a contribution to knowledge. Note, for example, the stance taken by Ben Zvi (2003, 321): “It is my pleasure to dedicate this study to Professor Martin Buss. As one of his former students, I remember his stress on method, and, above all, on approaching matters from less than common perspectives.” Indeed, as James Barr (2002, 72–73) says: “But—and here is the difference— the essence of scholarship does not lie in brains or learning: it lies in ideas, in fresh analysis, in new perspectives.” The role of reection in serious scholarship cannot be stressed enough. 1

Chapter 2

TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN: ARCHAEOLOGY AS A SPECIALIZED FORM OF HISTORY

The disciplines of archaeology and history deal respectively with the critical analysis of artefact and text.1 It is well known that both archaeology and history are in fact a gateway to our past, and that the major difference between them lies in the sources which they use for the reconstruction of the story of our ancestors. I do not purport to provide an introduction to these two disciplines,2 but I shall limit myself to describing their main traits and methodologies whilst taking my examples from the period of pre-exilic Israel both from the textual and archaeological viewpoints. My main aim in this section is to show that in fact archaeology and history are two sides of the same coin and that they have to work hand in hand in order to shed light on our past. Archaeology could be dened as the methodical retrieval and analysis of humanity’s past material remains in order to reconstruct our human story. This indicates that the source material for the archaeologist is physical, and that it could thus include such mundane things as pottery vessels, golden artifacts, architectural structures, layers of soil, and inscriptions.3 The methodical retrieval of man’s past material remains is tantamount to stratigraphic excavation, which is basically the peeling off of the layers of soil deposited on a site in exactly the reverse order to that in which they were laid down.4 Hence the nd-spot, namely the threedimensional archaeological context of a material nd, is crucial for archaeologists because it is only when such a context is known that they can reconstruct the history of the site being excavated. 1. For a splendid treatment of the close relationship between archaeology and history, see Dymond 1974 (especially p. 10). 2. There are many introductions to the two disciplines; see, for example, Kenyon 1961; Carr 1962; Fischer 1971; Southgate 1996; Renfrew and Bahn 2004. 3. Inscriptions (as will be shown later on) constitute a special archaeological artefact in that they are material archaeological remains, whilst being also textual, and therefore written evidence. 4. Kenyon 1961, 103; Chapman 1986, 14; Harris 1989. 1

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

11

It is important to remember that archaeological evidence is characterized by its randomness and its fragmentary nature.5 Indeed, the situation becomes much more delicate when we are dealing with conclusions which are based on surface surveys, the results of which could be really tenuous.6 One can never be critical enough when assessing archaeological reports. A major difculty arises when archaeologists try to extract ethnic information from the material remains which they examine. Unless extreme caution is exercised, they can draw many a false conclusion in this area. Indeed, ethnicity is not identical with culture, and one society could have one culture whilst having multiple ethnic groups—as is the case in the U.S.A. today.7 It is well known that the Philistines of early Iron Age Palestine provide an example of an ethnic group, whose material culture can be discerned as specically “Philistine” in the rst instance, but which later became assimilated to the overall local Canaanite culture, thereby precluding them from being any longer perceived as a specic ethnic group on the basis of the material culture. One of the relief sculptures of Pharaoh Merneptah at Karnak provides a very interesting example of the complex relationship between ethnicity and culture, whilst at the same time yielding interesting results with respect to the problem of the emergence of ancient Israel. The artists of Merneptah depicted Israel with Canaanite clothes besides presenting it as driving at least one chariot, and this means that for them Israel was a Canaanite group which must have lived in the lowlands.8 Barring the extreme unlikelihood of there having been a later Israel wholly unrelated to the Israel of Merneptah’s time, one highly probable scenario is that of Merneptah’s Israel retreating to the central highlands of Palestine after its defeat by the Pharaoh where (on being joined by other groups) it had a new perception of itself on the basis of which it emerged as a new ethnic group, namely as the Israel of the Old Testament. Indeed, it is important to keep in mind that “essentially, any clustering of people who take an interest in one another and perceive themselves to be a people are an ethnic group,”9 and that the ethnographer cannot interview the groups whose material remains are examined by the archaeologist. If ethnographers were to do that, it would be likely that their ethnic identication 5. Millard 1991, 21. 6. Bienkowski points out that “…out-of-context pottery can be extremely difcult to date: survey pottery from Khirbet Dubab, originally dated to the Middle Bronze Age, was found on re-examination after excavation to be Roman!” (1998, 164). 7. Noll 2001, 144–45. 8. Noll 2001, 164. 9. Noll 2001, 141. 1

12

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

would be different to that of archaeologists,10 and this means that it is virtually impossible for the latter to draw any ethnic conclusions regarding the Israel depicted in the Old Testament.11 It is well known that the material culture of early ancient Israel is basically Canaanite. Unfortunately, it is therefore commonly concluded that early ancient Israel was essentially Canaanite. However, this conclusion turns out to be unfounded, if the foregoing points on the relationship between ethnicity and material culture are kept in mind. Pitkänen has shown that early Israel has all the necessary traits which are a requirement for there to be an ethnic group, namely it has a proper name, a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, the elements of a common culture (such as the belief in Yahweh brought by an Exodus group), the links with a homeland, and last but not least a sense of solidarity.12 Some might object that Pitkänen’s claim is not demonstrable. However, it is important to highlight the fact that it is practically common practice that all the characteristics, which he mentions as an indicator of the fact that ancient Israel did make up an ethnic group, are scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible. Such, for example, is the case with the historical memory of the exodus. The eighth-century B.C.E. prophet Hosea underscores the importance which the memory of the exodus experience held for the people of northern Israel in his time. We might never be able to reconstruct historically what that experience actually was13—however, the evidence shows that it became one of the most basic shared historical memories in ancient Israel. The fact that we have no extra-biblical evidence corroborating this experience, whatever form it took, does not militate against its historicity, since it is clear that logic demands that we cannot deny that something is historical for the simple reason that there is only one type of witness for it which is extant, in this case the Hebrew Bible. Indeed for Hosea the exodus turned out to be the most important historical tradition in northern Israel,14 and he appears to 10. Buminowitz 1990, 217. Ethnic identications based on material remains are often fraught with circular arguments; see p. 214. 11. Recently, Faust argued that research into the ethnicity of ancient Israel can make progress if equal weight is given to both the biblical and the archaeological evidence, on condition, however, that in the rst instance priority is given to the archaeological record. This is the only way whereby fresh insights can be gained, and it is only thereafter that the texts can “receive, again, a primary role in the discussion” (Faust 2006, 7; see also 4, 5). 12. Pitkänen 2004, 173–75. 13. See p. 23 below. 14. As Hoffman (1989, 170) says: “The exodus is mentioned explicitly ve times in the book of Hosea: ii 15 (Heb. 17), xii 9 (10), 13 (14), xiii 4. It is also hinted at in 1

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

13

have also developed this historical tradition into a typological myth, since by his time this tradition had already been granted a “special elevated theological status”15 in the northern kingdom of Israel. Shared historical memories, like that of the exodus in the northern kingdom of Israel, constitute one crucial element for there to be an ethnic group. It is well known that the tradition of the exodus, which originated in the northern kingdom, was later on endorsed by the southern kingdom, and that it thus eventually became a hallmark of all Israel. It is also very important to remember that when it comes to the membership of an ethnic group one could have more than one identity. Indeed, an Asian immigrant to the U.S.A. could view himself either as belonging to his “original” ethnic group, or as an American;16 Pitkänen also provides one such good example from the Old Testament, namely that of Caleb who was a Kenizzite, but who was also “grafted” into Judah.17 Such is the process whereby early Israel could have been formed from a variegated group of people. The majority of those scholars who believe that ancient Israel was essentially Canaanite in origin, still hold that there was an Exodus group, albeit small, who brought the faith in Yahweh into Canaan. In view of the aforementioned points, Pitkänen argues that the immigrant Hebrews (whom he calls Israelites) were more numerous than the Canaanites in the highland area which they penetrated, and that gradually it was the Canaanites who assimilated into Hebrew society and that in the process, the founding stories of the immigrants such as those of the Patriarchs and the Exodus became the stories of the assimilated Canaanites too.18 This latter point seems to be true; however, the fact that the name of the new ethnic group emerging in the central highlands of Canaan in the early Iron Age was Israel, indicates that very probably the majority making up this new society was Canaanite. In this case, the incoming Hebrews would have been “grafted” into a group of Canaanites called Israel, but they would have inuenced them with their founding stories of the Patriarchs and the Exodus.19 xi 1, as well as in three verses dealing with a ‘return’ to Egypt where the root used is šûb, viii 13, ix 3, xi 5. This high concentration of references to the exodus cannot be a mere coincidence; it rather represents the central position of this tradition in Hosea’s view. Indeed, a close inspection proves that Hosea regarded the exodus as the most important event in the history of the covenant between Yahweh and his people.” 15. Hoffman 1989, 176. 16. Pitkänen 2004, 168. 17. Pitkänen 2004, 175. See also Num 13:6. 18. Pitkänen 2004, 180–81. 19. Stiebing 1989, 198–99. 1

14

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

An important trait of archaeology is that it “looks not for objects but material processes in order to gain insight.”20 It was precisely when the archaeologists of the Levant started looking at processes over a broad time span, rather than at single archaeological artefacts, that a major breakthrough was made in the archaeology of the emergence of ancient Israel. Indeed, this occurred when attention was shifted from simply looking at certain types of house plans and collar-rim jars of early Iron Age Palestine with the aim of giving them an ethnic tag, to concentrating on settlement patterns in the central highlands of Canaan across the millennia and on the environmental and economic aspect of certain ceramic assemblages.21 As far as history is concerned, one has to bear in mind that, just like archaeology, it too is random, and “fragmentary” in the sense that some historical documents could be incomplete. It is commonly upheld that the main differences between the nature of archaeological and historical evidence lie in the fact that historical documents are generally drafted from the viewpoint of the ruling classes and that they are “biased” in the sense that they tend to portray the ideology of their authors or of those who commissioned the writing of such documents. On the other hand, whilst archaeology (inasmuch as its non-written evidence is concerned and which in fact constitutes the vast majority of archaeological nds) is anonymous, historical evidence speaks to us in terms of particular people whose names and characters are known to us. However, there is one point which needs to be looked at more closely, namely the distinction between history and historiography which is held by some scholars. The latter group claims that history can be viewed as the knowledge of the past, or as a report of the “actual events and facts”22 of this past, something which is essentially always incomplete anyway, whilst historiography could be seen as a reconstructed presentation of the past.23 Other scholars, however, do not see the necessity of making such a distinction; indeed, they claim that it would be much better to speak simply of history and understand it as meaning two things, namely past events, and the record of these events.24 This latter position has the merit 20. Wallace 2004, 174. 21. Israel Finkelstein is certainly one of those archaeologists to whom much is owed for such a breakthrough; see, for example, Finkelstein 1988 and 1995. 22. Ahlström 1991, 116. 23. Ahlström 1991, 116. 24. Thus, for example, Brettler writes that “using ‘history’ and ‘historiography’ as distinct terms may incorrectly imply that the actual events are perceived in some objective way that the ‘historiographers’ either consciously or subconsciously bend 1

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

15

of realizing that in fact the only way that we can know past events is through the medium of the record of such events—it is then up to critical scholars to sift through the evidence presented and to make up their mind on what really happened in the past. In this sense, together with Brettler one can speak of “creating” the past but not of “inventing” it.25 Indeed, “ ‘creation’ ts a range of situations, from creatio ex nihilo to the reworking of an event into a relatively faithful narrative by the historian who is interested in depicting the past as he or she perceives it.”26 When dealing with historical narratives, it would be good to remember that there are three very useful concepts to keep in mind, namely that of “history telling,” which is the claim to truth made by a text, “historicity,” which is the historical truth that can be gleaned from a text, and nally “historylikeness,” which is tantamount to ction.27 It should be made very clear that the points mentioned in the foregoing paragraph do not mean to imply in any way that it is that easy for scholars of the Hebrew Bible to glean fact from ction. Such a process is very difcult and there are quite a number of problems which crop up along the way. One major issue is the question of genre. It is a well-known fact that a good deal of the Hebrew Bible is drafted in the overall literary genre of historical narrative, which includes within it very different types of literature acting as sub-genres, such as myth, saga, legend, and historical texts. The crux of the matter is that is difcult to distinguish clearly between these various types of literature; there does not seem to be clearcut markers between the various sub-genres present within an overall historical narrative. Thus, for example, it is not easy to say why the many legends present in Judges are not like the stories about many kings of Israel and Judah found in the books of Kings, which show that whoever wrote or edited them “did have a realistic sense of historical perspective.”28 The point is that the meaning of a text depends on its literary genre, and yet we can only establish what genre we are dealing with after having read a text—and this is something which “must involve decisions about meaning.”29 It is true that such a situation does lead us into a circle, but the result is not a “vicious circularity”; indeed, “our initial judgment or pervert” (Brettler 1995, 153 n. 43). This standpoint is based on certain assumptions, which I happen to endorse and which will be discussed below in Chapter 5. 25. Brettler 1995, 218 n. 5. 26. Brettler 1995, 218. 27. Sternberg 1985, 82. 28. Bartlett 2004, 188. 29. J. Barton 1996, 18. 1

16

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

about genre and our initial attempt at exegesis play back and forth on each other and are mutually corrective.”30 This is ultimately due to the “self-correcting process of learning” to be discussed below in Chapter 5. It is such an interplay between the reading of a text, our preliminary understanding of it, and the establishment of its genre which allows us to know, although we cannot easily pin down precisely what the different genre markers are, that the legends in Judges belong to a different genre from that of the stories in Kings which do betray a sense of history and the information of which can often be checked and conrmed in extrabiblical Near Eastern sources. Thus, with respect to the narrative about the fall of Samaria in 2 Kgs 17 one could ask whether we have here a novel, a historical novel, or “a novelistic piece of history writing.”31 The overall literary genre of the legends in Judges and that of the stories in the books of Kings are the same, namely that of historical narrative, but “there are passages in the books of Kings which seem to be excerpts from ofcial documents” and which therefore are closer to what we would call “history.”32 This shows that the fact that you narrate a story in a rened literary manner “does not necessarily mean that you have told it falsely, or indeed that you have invented it at all.”33 The example just mentioned that there are some sections in Kings which show that they stem from ofcial documents and that, as shown above, a good deal, or at least some, of the information there can be conrmed by extra-biblical ancient Near Eastern documents, is a signal that when we talk about literary genres we would do well to distinguish as clearly as possible between an overall literary genre and a sub-genre contained within it. Such a distinction would help us to pin down the necessary genre markers which allow us to nd some historical information within the overall genre of historical narrative. Although the distinction between the German words “Gattung” and “Form” is not crystal clear, still scholars generally use “Gattung” to refer to the literary genre of a large text unit (such as the literary genre “Gospel”) and “Form” to indicate a sub-genre within it (such as the sub-genre “Parable”).34 When we apply such a distinction to the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible we realize that there are cases where different genre markers exist which allow us to distinguish between, say, legend and “history.” Thus, for example, there are those markers which indicate the use of ofcial 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 1

J. Barton 1996, 18. Bartlett 2004, 187, 188 and reference there. J. Barton 2001, 8. Bartlett 2004, 191. Ernst 2008, 210.

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

17

documents in the book of Kings, within the “Gattung” of historical narrative. This means that we have to examine each particular case on its own merits. Moreover, it is also important to remember that, as will be explained in more detail below, besides getting at historical information on the basis of genre markers, such as those signalling the use of ofcial documents, scholars can also glean historical information from the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible in an oblique manner within the context of their reading the relevant texts critically. Ultimately, all stories stem from somewhere and it is generally accepted that even legends could contain some historical reminiscence even if it were to be only relevant to the period of when they were committed to writing. In the aforementioned process of sifting between fact and ction, one has to keep in mind the fact that history is not an exact science and that it is a eld where one works with probabilities rather than with absolute certainty. Indeed, one can only make “intelligent guesses”35 when assessing historical evidence, and in so doing one has to keep in mind the fact that historical research includes concentrating on events, structures, groups, collectivities, as well as on individuals. Thus, there can be no place for laws of history which know of no exception, but at the most of generalizations which indicate a general pattern to which there can be an exception.36 Hence, history cannot repeat itself and therefore, for example, the emergence of ancient Israel has to be examined not so much on the basis of theoretical models as on its own merits after all the evidence has been examined critically. When examining documents which purport to be historical with a view to determining whether they are historically reliable or not, it is useful to remember that the principle of verisimilitude cannot be appealed to. To say that something is plausible is not the same as stating that it is historically true; in fact, “plausibility or verisimilitude is the hallmark equally of the story teller.”37 Indeed, the principle of verisimilitude is very weak when it is applied to the origins of early Israel. In this case, those who uphold such a principle claim that a biblical text which exhibits a likeness to reality is historically true unless the contrary is proven through external evidence; however, the point is that there is virtually a total lack of external evidence for the period during which early Israel emerged in Canaan.38 As far as the Hebrew Bible is concerned, one good way of getting at ancient traditions which are historically reliable is to distinguish 35. 36. 37. 38. 1

Grabbe 1997a, 29. Evans 2000, 57–59. Whitelam 1998, 59. Lemaire (1982, 12) holds the same position. Lemaire 1982, 11–12.

18

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

them from any later editorial work done upon and in contradiction to them.39 However, this does not mean that the events which make up the “original tradition” have not themselves been immediately passed on as perceived and interpreted by the original actors of the historical events in question; as it was shown above, it is always a question of there being no real divorce between history and historiography. Historical evidence does not necessarily have to stem from a context where eye-witnesses immediately write down their memoirs or impressions of events; that would be the ideal situation for history writing. But this is not the only possible scenario. Indeed, it often happens that historical traditions are at rst transmitted orally and then only later on are they written down—sometimes much later. This means that an old historical tradition can appear for the rst time in a very late document without losing its historical value.40 Driver put this very aptly when he wrote that “the date at which an event, or institution, is rst mentioned in writing, must not, however, be confused with that at which it occurred, or originated: in the early stages of a nation’s history the memory of the past is preserved habitually by oral tradition; and the Jews, long after they were possessed of a literature, were still apt to depend upon much [oral] tradition.”41 Thus there is a sense in which oral tradition can be viewed as historical evidence seeing that it can even echo “original persons and events.”42 Just like historical documents, it too can be either reliable or unreliable, and it is worthwhile remembering that informal traditions lacking a formal structure are generally found amongst smaller groups of families, towns and districts and that they “do not have any obvious purpose which would work against the preservation of historical information.”43 On the contrary, the general weakness of oral tradition is that names, dates and places are frequently confused,44 and that therefore we should not be surprised to nd such confusions originally stemming from oral traditions and which eventually found their way in the biblical traditions of early Israel; however, such confusions (about which much ink is too frequently spilt) do not of themselves make a document essentially unhistorical. Indeed, oral tradition (despite its weaknesses) has been known

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 1

Lemaire 1982, 17. Lemaire 1982, 15. Driver 1913, 125. Culley 1972, 109. Culley 1972, 113. Culley 1972, 113.

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

19

to be absolutely correct historically with respect to certain information which it had been passing on for one thousand years;45 this should make us very wary about dismissing the oral traditions lying behind the biblical documents referring to the formation of early Israel in Canaan. It seems to be a normal thing for oral cultures to preserve their information in stories,46 and therefore the fact that the information regarding the emergence of ancient Israel has come down to us in the stories of the Hebrew Bible should cause us no surprise at all. The foregoing observations regarding the nature of archaeology, history, historiography, and oral tradition and their relationship lead to one question which is quite important for the investigation at hand, namely: In what sense is the Old Testament historical? Although it is a commonplace that the Old Testament is literature (in fact, religious literature), this does not mean that it has nothing to do with history. There are many literary genres in the Old Testament and one of them is the historical genre; indeed, the Old Testament narratives could be ctional, historical, or they could contain historical information even when they are essentially ctional.47 In fact, legends primarily witness to the sociological, cultural-historical, religious-historical, and world view (geistesgeschichtliche) relationships of the historical framework within which they are embedded; hence, it is only after gaining historical knowledge of the period when the legends were drafted that researchers can hope to inquire about the possibility of a historical kernel lying behind them. In this process they should keep in mind that in fact such a historical kernel runs counter to the thrust of the story under scrutiny, since the latter is not trying to communicate or practice history.48 Moreover, the ancient Israelite historian could even take over the legendary stories about heroes and insert them in his own account; such was the case with the story of the emergence of David’s kingship.49 It is important to

45. Culley 1972, 112 and references there. This case refers to a story that peasants in Norway told an archaeologist in 1876 with reference to the whereabouts of a knight and his horse and weapons. 46. As Ong (1986, 25) says, “primary oral culture also keeps its thinking close to the human life world, personalizing things and issues, and storing knowledge in stories. Categories are unstable mnemonically. Stories you can remember.” 47. Japhet 1998, 223. Note that “even within the limited category of ‘narrative’ one cannot compare the story of the ood with the lists of unconquered territories in the rst chapter of Judges, or the administrative structure of Judah (Joshua 15) with the story of the conquest of Jericho” (p. 223). 48. Koch 1964, 174. 49. Koch 1964, 163. 1

20

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

remember that the Old Testament narrative does have “some contact with history, but that contact is tangential and partial rather than systematic and complete.”50 Indeed, the Old Testament narrative differs from history in various ways. Thus, we nd that (as already pointed out above) it contains mythical and legendary elements and that it switches backwards and forwards between human and divine causation. It contains nonhistorical forms of motivation, such as “aetiological” and “paradigmatic” ones,51 and above all it lacks even a modicum of “critical evaluation of sources and reports.”52 Such factors preclude us from viewing the Old Testament story as history, apart from the fact that “we do not apply the term “history” to a form of investigation which resorts to divine agency as a mode of explanation.”53 The foregoing points are not tantamount to saying that the Old Testament story does not contain historical information, but they do teach us that such information can be generally gleaned only obliquely after a critical reading of the texts, despite the fact that the Old Testament is certainly not a history book. Thus it is important to remember that in contrast to other “historical” accounts of the ancient Near East, there is one important feature of the book of Kings and the Old Testament in general, namely that the Old Testament authors do not glory in their past; on the contrary, they very candidly report the shame of their own ancestors.54 Moreover, despite all the ideological framework of the Old Testament narratives, the authors of these texts did not fabricate or misrepresent the “statements of fact to such an extent as to distort them beyond recognition.”55 In fact we can distinguish three basic levels of “history” in the Old Testament, namely what the story as presented to us by the biblical writers means, what meaning it had to the protagonists concerned in antiquity, and what in fact actually happened.56 When reading the Old Testament narratives we have to work our way backwards from its latest to its earliest forms. In this way, we rst read the story presented to us, thereby being able to detect the history of its transmission until we can nally get at the history of the society, culture, and politics of past times.57 Wheeler Robinson had already stated that the

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 1

Barr 1976, 8. Barr 1976, 7–8. Barr 1976, 8. Barr 1976, 8. Whybray 1996, 73. Whybray 1996, 72. Dever 1991, 197–98. Barr 1976, 16.

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

21

“Old Testament is formally a history, into which other kinds of literature have been incorporated”58 but that, for example, both the Pentateuch as well as the narratives running from Joshua up to 2 Kings are not history in our sense of the word simply because they contain no criticism of the sources, they do not document their statements, and also because they present no analysis of the causative factors of historical events.59 The foregoing presentation of the main features of the nature of archaeological and historical evidence as well as of the basic aims and methodology of each, leads to the conclusion that both archaeology and history are in fact purporting to tell the past story of humankind and that they are in fact two sides of the same coin to such an extent that archaeologists can be viewed as historians who make use of special methods and sources and whose closest links lie with history.60 When this scenario is applied to the eld of biblical studies, and specically to the eld of biblical archaeology, one has to realize that it would thus be futile and most strange if one were to try and work out the story of ancient Israel purely on the basis of archaeology. To write the history of ancient Israel on the basis of archaeology alone is to practice prehistory, but one would do well to remember that “prehistorians are prehistorians by necessity, not by choice.”61 This means that as far as ancient Israel is concerned, since biblical texts referring to its past happen to exist, therefore its story simply cannot be based on archaeology alone. The textual material, in this case the Old Testament, should be taken into consideration, albeit it has to be read critically. Indeed, in view of the abovementioned points, it should be remembered that no matter what the literary genre of a particular biblical text is, and thus no matter what the intent of such a text is, the critical scholar can—and should—glean any available historical information. As it was already shown above, though not historical documents in the modern sense of the word, biblical texts do contain historical information which is often gleaned by reading them obliquely.62 Apart from this, it is now becoming also clearer that there is no contradiction at all between literature and history; indeed, one could say that narrative

58. Robinson 1946, 123. 59. Robinson 1946, 123. The book of Judges, for example, “presents stories of early heroes told for their own sake originally, but now set in a framework of doctrinal writing which enforces the divine retribution of evil” (p. 123). 60. Woodhead 1985, 10. See also Dymond 1974, 10, 21. 61. Grabbe 1997a, 22. Grabbe also aptly says: “So would it not seem strange to most if some historians decided that they would act only as prehistorians even though written material was available?” (p. 22). 62. Zevit 2001, 39. See also Grabbe 1997a, 32. 1

22

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

stands to reality in the Hebrew Bible just as it does in novels. It is now acknowledged that literary texts can refer to a reality outside their own world.63 Thus, for example, the narratives in the Hebrew Bible are drawn up according to “highly schematized forms,”64 but this does not mean that they are devoid of historical information, and in this sense there is no valid reason to doubt that there was a king Solomon who had built a temple in ancient Israel. Although the narrative is drawn up according to specic literary genres, this is done in such a manner that at one and the same time the narrative is literature and it echoes historical reality. Hence, the Deuteronomistic History does not allow us to know how things stood exactly in pre-exilic Israel, but this does not preclude that “it is possible to know something.”65 The upshot is that the story of ancient Israel has to be painstakingly constructed on the basis of a critical reading of all the relevant textual material from the ancient Near East (including the Old Testament), as well as on the basis of good archaeological practice and interpretation. Text and artefact are thus two gateways to the human past, even in the case of ancient Israel. Thus, when one looks critically at the earlier traditions of ancient Israel, it becomes apparent that they were not reproduced but re-actualized in later times. Such, for example, is the case of the book of Chronicles vis-à-vis the earlier traditions contained in the books of Samuel–Kings. These traditions have a new context in Chronicles, and this explains why it is now the historical teaching of the Chronicler which is what matters.66 Indeed, the earlier history of Israel is now read in the light of new circumstances and values.67 The foregoing conclusions can be reached only if one reads the Old Testament texts critically, carefully comparing the different versions of each tradition. In this respect, when all is said and done, one can come to the conclusion that something extraordinary did happen at the Sea of Reeds without being able to understand how such an event took place. The original tradition of what precisely happened when the Hebrew tribes went out of Egypt is no longer extant, and all that we have are later 63. Barstad 1997, 62–63 and references there. It is interesting to note that “it is mostly forgotten today that T. Mommsen in 1902, one year before his death, received the Nobel Prize in literature for his historical works!” (p. 43 n. 17). 64. Barstad 1997, 58. 65. Barstad 1997, 58; see also p. 60. 66. As Fishbane (1986, 416–17) says: “And this is altogether appropriate. For the tradents and teachers involved in aggadic exegesis are not concerned to reproduce the traditum, but to reactualize it in a new setting and a new way. Their aim is not to preset the traditum, but rather to represent it—and this is traditio.” 67. Fishbane 1986, 438. 1

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

23

and secondary clarications or explanations of what had originally occurred, namely that the Sea was cut into two (Exod 14:22), or that there was the aid of a strong eastern wind (Exod 14:21).68 The event of the Exodus (no matter how it had actually taken place) was of such importance in the early traditions of Israel that it had already become a typological model for other early traditions themselves, such as that of the crossing of the River Jordan under the leadership of Joshua. A close reading of Josh 3–5 indicates that the crossing of the River Jordan is typologically parallel to the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and that the historiographer of these chapters was more interested in underscoring the “re-manifestation of divine redemptive power” than in reporting precisely what had taken place; indeed, “the typological description of the ‘events’ is thus, at once, a recording of the facts at hand and an aggadic reinterpretation of them.”69 This parallelism between the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the River Jordan had led the psalmist to identify (in Ps 114:3) the two events which had originally been historically separate.70 A critical reading of the relevant Old Testament texts also indicates that Israel (in contrast to Sumer and Akkad, and somewhat also to Egypt) grew gradually over a very long period of time and that it was made up of variegated groups whose different ancient traditions were incorporated into the one common Israelite tradition. Such a scenario is also parallel to the originally independent Pre-Islamic tribes who were then unied and out of whose various original traditions a later common national tradition grew.71 Whilst it is a commonplace that historical research deals with particular people and places, archaeology has been thought of by some as largely concentrating on long stretches of time and mainly underscores general trends in human behaviour to such an extent that it deals primarily with generalities rather than with particular occurrences. However, such an understanding of archaeology is now deemed to be incorrect by some archaeologists themselves and the importance of historical processes in archaeology has been rehabilitated.72 This obviously leads to the fact that the reconstruction of one and the same past should be based 68. Noth 1954, 111. 69. Fishbane 1986, 360. 70. Fishbane 1986, 359. 71. Porter 1979, 131–32 and references there. 72. See, for example, Shanks and Tilley (1992, 260) who state explicitly that the new archaeology failed because it had tried “to reduce history to a set of ahistorical processes” and that “taking history seriously also requires that we recognize the importance of discontinuity. Such a recognition implies that representations of the social, in material or other forms, simply cannot be the same across time.” 1

24

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

on both archaeological and historical analyses (when written documents happen to be available). Such a task is not simple, for the critical evaluation of texts too is a complex matter which should, however, be undertaken. Thus, for example, the views of the past of the biblical authors and of Josephus very often reect the world of the authors themselves, with the result that the scholar realizes that “if we want to develop methodologically sound and critical history, we need to deal with texts in terms of what they imply, not of what they say. They are not the writings of colleagues, but remnants from the past. As such they are data, not evidence.”73 This is an exact parallel to what happens in archaeology; the archaeologist excavates data, which are random and very often fragmentary remains from the past. For there to be facts, the data (as will be shown below) need to be given a correct interpretation. When the observations made in this chapter are applied to the Bible, one should realize, as Grabbe points out, that it is important to remember that the texts should function as witnesses. He aptly says that, if we are to use the forensic model at all in the pursuit of the history of ancient Israel, we should remember that a text should be simply cross-examined so that its trustworthiness or otherwise be established and that we should not start out with the idea that it is innocent until proven guilty.74 Although Grabbe’s observation is correct (it being basically the application of the historical-critical method of reading the Bible), still we should remember that the so-called minimalists have bashed the Bible around so much that they give the impression that this witness is being treated as a prosecuted member of the court; hence, I think that there is a sense in which we can say that this particular witness, the text, is “innocent until proven guilty,” namely in that we should give it a fair hearing and not assume that it is an unreliable witness.75 In this chapter, I have tried to show that archaeological and historical research resemble each other much more than is usually thought and that archaeology is not more objective than history; as Snodgrass said: “in so far as the ideal of total objectivity can be pursued at all, it is no more at the command of the archaeologist than of the historian.”76 As already 73. Thompson 1997, 180. 74. Grabbe 1997b, 193. 75. This can be seen in the relationship between archaeological and Old Testament textual research, for example, with respect to the emergence of ancient Israel. As Long (2002, 13) wisely points out: “In a nutshell, poor literary understanding of the Joshua texts allows the emergence of a ‘straw man’ that liberals nd easy to destroy and conservatives nd difcult to defend.” 76. Snodgrass 1983, 137. 1

2. Two Sides of the Same Coin

25

mentioned above, and as I shall argue further below, both disciplines offer data to the scholar which need to be interpreted correctly for facts to be established. Hence, it does not seem proper to refuse to accept the Bible as a possible historical source, whilst viewing archaeology as the “almost exclusive source for the writing of history.”77 On the contrary, archaeology and history seem to be two sides of the same coin inasmuch as they both offer data which can—if correctly understood—open a window on our human past.

77. Japhet 1998, 222, where she also wisely asks: “Is a total rejection of the Bible on the one hand and an unqualied adoption of archeological interpretations on the other hand, methodologically sound?” 1

Chapter 3

AN INDISSOLUBLE UNITY IN DIVERSITY

Since archaeology and history constitute two sides of the same coin, then there must be an interface between them where they meet without getting confused with each other; indeed, they become one without losing their identity. As Dever had pointed out, “only in the correlation of texts and artefacts—each supplementing and correcting the partial view of the other—are we likely to nd a truly satisfying portrait of early Israel, one that does justice to its materiality and spirituality.”1 When studying the archaeology of a period for which written documentation exists, then our approach to the past must be holistic. In such an instance, it would be tragic if archaeology and history were to be divorced. There are elds of study (such as those of archaeology and the Bible) which of their very nature draw upon various disciplines;2 if this is true of archaeology and the Bible, it is much more so of the eld of Biblical Archaeology, which thus turns out to be an area of study consisting of other elds and disciplines. The adoption of a holistic approach is scientically sound as long as the canons of each discipline are respected. In this context it is interesting to note that the practice of obtaining a Ph.D. “in a specic discipline or area is of recent vintage.”3 Our current practice of specializing in one area or discipline has its advantages, such as those of “focus” and “concentration”—however, there is a price to pay for all this, since “the disadvantage is loss of focus at a different focal length.”4 It is precisely in order not to lose the latter type of focus that the study of ancient Israel must be holistic, giving both archaeology and historical analysis 1. Dever 1991, 207. 2. Thus, for example, as Zevit (2001, 9) notes, “the study of the Bible in the humanities is not a discipline as is often thought, but a eld of study that draws on various disciplines and other elds for its conceptual frameworks and methodologies.” 3. Zevit 2001, 74. 4. Zevit 2001, 75. 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

27

their due weight; such research is necessarily interdisciplinary,5 and neither archaeology nor history should be ignored. Such an interdisciplinary approach demands that there be a “methodically controlled correlation of archaeological nds and written sources (essentially the biblical text)” when it comes to investigating problems relative to ancient Israel.6 In practice this means that the biblical texts are analysed according to the rules pertaining to biblical exegesis (such as those of philology, textual criticism, literary appreciation, source analysis, historical-criticism, and tradition criticism), whereas the relevant archaeological investigations are carried out according to the rules of archaeology (such as those of stratigraphic excavation, ceramic typology, and sound critical report writing).7 It is only thereafter that the interpretation of one eld is compared with the interpretation of the other, namely that the results of biblical exegesis are compared with the results of archaeology when both relate to the same historical reality, and it is good to remember that “archaeology does not conrm the text, which is what it is, it can only conrm the interpretation we give it.”8 Although biblical exegesis and archaeological research are two distinct elds with their proper set of rules, they have a common basic method of arguing. 5. In practice this means that archaeology and history will each bring their specic contribution to the problem at hand for “interdisciplinary research and theory may be formalized as a Venn diagram. The relatively small domain in which two disciplines overlap or intersect is, to no small degree, a function of the larger spheres in which they remain different with respect to both data and theoretical interests. Interdisciplinary research is necessarily narrower than the total disciplinary domains that it brings into mutual intellectual relationship” (Smith 2002, 4). On the rarity of an overlap between archaeology and history see also Snodgrass 1983, 145–46; he speaks of archaeology’s backsliding into its “positivist fallacy” whenever it claims to have falsied historical accounts. Indeed, archaeological research at Naucratis and elsewhere in the Delta has not destroyed Herodotus’ account regarding this site since “it is not in the nature of archaeological evidence to do so. What it has rather done is to cast doubt on the chosen emphasis of the historian’s version” (p. 146). 6. Conrad 1993, 384. 7. Note de Vaux’s splendid viewpoint on this topic: “Texts and monuments are the two means of recovering historical actuality. They must be conjoined, but they must not be confused. The study of each is a distinct discipline which follows different methods that must be applied with equal rigor in both cases. There should be no conict between a well established archaeological fact and a critically examined text” (de Vaux 1970, 70). 8. De Vaux 1970, 78. Note that “if the results of archaeology seem to be opposed to the conclusions of text criticism, the reason may perhaps be that not enough archaeological facts are known or that they have not been rmly established; the reason also may be that the text has been wrongly interpreted” (p. 78). 1

28

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

Both the archaeologist and the biblical exegete make use of analogy in order to further their respective areas of research. When archaeologists examine the data retrieved in excavation, they make an analogy with their contemporary culture in order to start drawing inferences from their data;9 in the same way, the biblical exegete too makes use of analogy when translating texts, seeing that translation can be viewed as “an attempt to render the images of the text into images familiar to the reader.”10 On the basis of the foregoing points, it is easier to understand how archaeology and history often deal with related things despite the fact that they are rarely concerned with the same objects. Textual evidence is generally concerned with short-term events (such as battles), whereas archaeological data are usually ideal for helping us to trace long-term processes (such as those of farming and settlement patterns).11 Thus it comes as no surprise that, as pointed out above, the results of archaeology and history rarely provide a perfect match, although both of them can in fact “be used as independent sources of information to function in the accountability of the other as evidence,” with texts acting like the testimony provided in a court and with archaeology functioning like the material evidence presented there.12 This means that whenever there is a perfect match between an archaeological and an historical interpretation of past events, it should be viewed as something which cannot be simply ascribed to chance.13 The crucial point is that the archaeological and textual analyses are conducted separately with the issuing interpretations being compared only afterwards; such a manner of proceeding seems to be one of the best antidotes to the many circular arguments which are unfortunately often employed in the eld of Biblical Archaeology. Such 9. Archaeologists can nd the “appropriate” analogues, if they make good use of ethno-archaeology (see Dever 1994, 116). Hogarth (1899, viii) had already correctly realized that the archaeologists’ reconstructions are based on the analogy of their own subjective experience, whilst wrongly assuming that it is not employed by historians in their reconstructions. If analogy is seen for what it is, any errors in reconstructing the past can be detected and corrected through a constant critical reevaluation of the data—whether archaeological or historical; it is always possible to correct and rene any preliminary inferences which in fact constitute a good point of departure in any investigation. 10. Dever 1994, 116. 11. Kosso 1995, 182–83. 12. Kosso 1995, 182. 13. In fact, as Kosso (1995, 188) says: “With these differences of emphasis and perspectives, differences in the type of things referred to, textual and archaeological evidence show a kind of independence such that when they agree, when they add up to a coherent account, it seems to be more than a chance coincidence.” 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

29

arguments can also be kept at bay, if the reasons for evaluating each piece of evidence (whether textual or archaeological) as being trustworthy are kept separate for each piece, namely if one has “epistemic independence.”14 The foregoing considerations remind us that when comparing an archaeological and an historical interpretation bearing on an historical event, it is very important to keep the nature of the evidence always clearly in mind. One would think that warfare would have left a good deal of archaeological evidence in the ground; however, the case of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480/479 B.C.E. indicates that no real positive evidence for such an invasion is available. Indeed, an important and a large-scale offensive such as this invasion of Greece could be carried out “without leaving any permanent and positive (as distinct from destructive) physical trace. This is partly because of its short duration, partly because of incidental factors like the relatively backward development of ancient siege-craft. As a result, excavation has not much light to throw on the great wars of the ancient world; a destruction-level here, a monument there, a communal grave elsewhere, are the most that can be produced.”15 The points discussed so far show that archaeology and history are indissoluble and that both are necessary for a reconstruction of the past, with the result that the ideal situation is when both types of evidence are available. In fact, when textual evidence is not available, we cannot expect to get anything “beyond the most nebulous outline” of the past— no matter how abundant the non-written material remains may be.16 As already pointed out, some are currently claiming that archaeology is more reliable than the Bible when it comes to the history of early Israel. Such a claim is to be refuted, also because Syro-Palestinian archaeology itself is riddled “with assumptions derived from the Bible.”17 Rather than 14. Kosso 1995, 191. “Epistemic independence” is so important that, if it is lacking, “two pieces of evidence are no better than one” (p. 192). 15. Snodgrass 1983, 166. 16. Hogarth 1899, xiv. Hogarth thinks that if all material remains were to vanish and if we were to be left with only literary evidence for the past, we would still be able to “construct a living and just, though imperfect, picture of antiquity” (p. xiv). 17. Miller (1991, 101) also reminds us that Albright had dated the famous “collar-rim” jar to the twelfth century B.C.E. because he had found it at Tell el-Ful, which he believed to be identical to Gibeah of Benjamin. Hence Miller correctly asks the following question regarding this jar: “Is there anything about its shape or form that cries out 12th–11th century BCE? Of course not” (p. 101). In reality, it is now a well-known fact that such a jar predates the emergence of ancient Israel and that it has been found outside ancient Israel’s territory. 1

30

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

playing archaeology against history, it is better to remember that both types of data stem from one and the same culture for any given period of our human past; it is not a question of favouring one or the other, but of appreciating both as a gateway to the past.18 It is self-evident that we only have a partial picture of the past. Archaeology (as shown above) is random and fragmentary, whereas historical documents are based on the recording of select events of the past. In this context, it is important to be aware that since archaeology deals with material remains, we can get the (incorrect) impression that what is not tangible via the remains of excavation did not exist. This is obviously a fallacy, namely that of the argument from silence, which is false for the simple reason of the well-known observation that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Indeed, archaeology can be prone to what has been called its “positivist fallacy” which “holds that archaeological prominence and historical importance are much the same thing; that the observable phenomena are by denition the signicant phenomena.”19 It is clear that important events could have taken place without leaving any trace in the archaeological record.20 Examples for such a state of affairs could be multiplied even on the basis of the comparison between different sets of archaeological data; thus, for example, the archaeology of the countryside of Judaea during the time of King Herod the Great could lead one to “argue that King Herod did not exist, and never had a kingdom. But archaeological remains from sites all over the country (e.g., Caesarea, Sebastia, Herodion, Masada and Jerusalem itself) belie such an assumption.”21 The site of Byblos provides another excellent example of how fallacious it is to argue that something had not existed in the past on the basis of the absence of evidence. A substantial number of letters found at Tell el-Amarna had been written at Byblos, “but the excavations found no Amarna Age stratum”22 here! Indeed the non-written archaeological evidence at this site shows that the Roman period layers stood directly above the Middle Bronze Age ones; 18. As Hoffmeier (1990, 87) said: “Archaeological data and literary materials are not enemies of each other. After all, the literature emerges from the same cultures that produced the pottery, houses, and temples furnished by the excavator. When the literature is properly interpreted and the archaeological materials are rightly understood, the two branches of ancient studies converge, producing an accurate, truthful picture.” 19. Snodgrass 1983, 142. 20. Such as “some purely institutional change of the kind that leaves no material trace” (Snodgrass 1983, 145). 21. Rainey 2001, 142. 22. Rainey 2001, 143. 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

31

however, the written archaeological data from and relative to this site (such as the aforementioned Amarna letters, the Tale of Wenamun and the Royal Inscriptions of Ahiram, Yehimilk, Abibaal, and Elibaal) indicate otherwise, namely that “Byblos was a thriving city with major buildings during the fourteenth, eleventh and tenth/ninth centuries. The absence of stratied archaeological remains from those periods is indeed regrettable but not determinative for the occupation history of the site.”23 When guarding themselves against the argument from silence, both archaeologists and historians should also be on the lookout for a chronological fallacy embedded in it when reconstructing the past. Thus, for example, “none of the four Gospels yields any hint of the existence of the letters of St Paul, but manifestly this cannot be interpreted as meaning that St Paul’s letters post-date them.”24 Examples from our contemporary history illustrate how fallacious and utterly erroneous the argument from silence can be when it comes to our reconstructing the past. Every adult knows that on Ground Zero in southern Manhattan in New York there had once stood the mighty Twin Towers which were annihilated on September 11th 2001. However, hardly any material evidence survived to allow any archaeologist to reconstruct what there had once actually been. The following description by Jennifer Wallace of what Michael Mucci (Deputy Director, Bureau of Waste Disposal in New York’s Sanitation Department, who supervised 23. Rainey 2001, 143, and 141, where Rainey quotes Hamalakis (1999, 60) to this effect, namely that “there is no archaeological record as such, only fragmented material traces of the past.” This is clearly borne out at Byblos where the stratication is notoriously difcult, with particular problems surrounding the chronology of “Bâtiment II,” which is “a twin sanctuary of the megaron type” dated by Saghieh (1983, 55) to the late Akkad/Ur III period and which she claims to have been wrongly dated by Dunand to the Early Bronze Age (p. 131). This latter assertion is very strange indeed, seeing that Dunand himself had said that the agstone pavements associated with “Bâtiment II” lay immediately over the Middle Kingdom strata (Dunand 1939, 79), whereas elsewhere (Dunand 1937, pl. XVII, 2) his caption of the relevant Plate describes “Bâtiment II” as a temple of the Middle Kingdom. The confusion gets even worse when one reads that this building had formed part of a Roman temple (Jidejian 1968, 57). Despite all these difculties surrounding the stratigraphy and chronology at Byblos, the evidence just marshalled shows that there are no Amarna levels here, notwithstanding the fact that we have Amarna letters hailing from this site. Dunand’s own report (Dunand 1939, 64) would not allow more than a mere trace of any levels between the Middle Bronze Age and the Hellenistic period at Byblos (see also Jidejian 1968, 57)—certainly not enough to match the information about this site that can be gleaned from the Amarna letters which were written there. 24. Nicholson 1998, 158. 1

32

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

the disposal of the debris from Manhattan to Fresh Kills in Staten Island) told her is most revealing: “It was just a load of pulverized rock and stone,” he tells me, back at the Sanitation ofces in downtown Manhattan. “It didn’t look like anything recognisable. There were no computers, no telephones. Just rock.”25

Indeed, the tragedy of the Twin Towers has also revealed that out of 2,752 victims there was “the complete vaporisation of nearly 2,000 people.”26 Wallace has also reected on the fact that there is a gap between our desire to nd what we know for certain to have once existed, and the lack of any relevant evidence stemming from archaeological excavation. Once again, the excavations of Ground Zero provide an excellent lesson about which Wallace wrote: “Archaeological excavation highlights this gulf all too vividly. It measures it literally, comparing the absence of evidence with the pressing compulsion to nd it.”27 In fact, contemporary and past history both teach us that there are times when great events have not left a single piece of evidence on the ground.28 All this should make it clear that it would be foolish for the archaeologist or historian to argue that something had never existed simply on the basis of there being no relevant material evidence whatsoever for it. The foregoing points should thus make us wary before dismissing as unreliable any textual historical information for which there happens to be no supporting material evidence, such as is the case with the ancient site of Dibon in Moab. There seem to be no Late Bronze and Early Iron Age I–IIA remains from this site, which, however, features in the topographical list of Ramses II in the thirteenth century B.C.E. When he mentions Moab, Ramses II claims to have captured ve forts in this region, the third of which is precisely that of Dibon! We are assured that the reading of Dibon is certain and that in this case, “our explicit, rsthand inscriptional evidence shows, bluntly, that there was a place Dibon in Moab in about 1270. The archaeology is badly incomplete (as it currently stands), and stands supplemented and corrected by the texts, as in other clear cases (e.g., Jerusalem).”29 Our obsession with wanting to obtain material evidence for our stories (as is the above-mentioned case 25. Wallace 2004, 146. 26. Wallace 2004, 149; see also 148. 27. Wallace 2004, 149. 28. It is interesting to note that in 1607 C.E. John Oglander dug the cornelds of the Isle of Wight where there had once stood the Abbey of Quarr so as to locate its foundations. But his men “found nothing, so absolute had been the destruction of the abbey” (Wallace 2004, 133). 29. Kitchen 2003, 195, 546 n. 99. 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

33

of those biblical historians who want to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel purely on the basis of archaeology), could lead us to a type of “fundamentalism in terms of methodology” which is tantamount to “an obsession with grounding narrative and hypothesis in scientic fact.”30 In the last analysis, archaeological data often simply consist of “the imprints and traces of that evidence now vanished.”31 Moreover, when we insist on having material evidence in support of a story before we can bring ourselves to accept it as true, then we can more easily fall prey to believing in forged material.32 As shown above, archaeological evidence is what it is, namely random and fragmentary, and we should not expect of it that which it cannot yield. When it is not available to support a story, it does not follow that the latter is untrue, for it is the task of historical criticism to sift the element of fact from ction present in a story. After all, it is archaeological imagination which helps us to understand that which once was, but which could have hardly left any trace whatsoever in the ground, as is the case with the above-mentioned excavations at Ground Zero in New York.33 The points discussed so far in this chapter can be illustrated by the problems involved in correlating the relevant archaeological and historical evidence relative to the problem of the origins and emergence of ancient Israel. Lemaire has shown that some of the traditional approaches to the problem have practically failed. He reminds us that the archaeological approach (as advocated by Albright) did not work out, and that in order to reconstruct the history of early Israel we need to go back to the 30. Wallace 2004, 125. 31. Wallace 2004, 81. Wallace (p. 55) also underscores the role that is played by archaeological imagination, which helps us to reconstruct what has in fact vanished. She reminds us that in his poem “The Brothers,” Wordsworth shows us that one can talk about the dead even if their graves do not have gravestones; indeed, she quotes the following lines from this poem: “We have no need of names and epitaphs, / we talk about the dead by our re-sides” (as quoted on p. 49). 32. Indeed, Wallace (2004, 108–9) rightly points out that “a culture which puts great emphasis upon material evidence nds difculty in maintaining belief. It falls prey to the possibility of forgery and hoaxes… If people think that a story must have evidence, they will be more likely to believe the forger once he produces these things [relics which are produced to substantiate stories]. But once these objects are seriously questioned and debunked, then the whole story collapses. There is no alternative notion of truth or authenticity for the forger to fall back upon.” 33. The role of archaeological imagination is very important indeed, for it is what actually “returns us to the depths, to what is lost or recovered or merely imprinted in the strata as it disappears, reminds us of matter, of the heavy, material signicance of the ground beneath our feet. And it reminds us why it matters” (Wallace 2004, 204). 1

34

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

texts. However, the traditional/fundamentalist approach to the texts also fails, mainly for the reason that the principle of verisimilitude (which in fact assumes that something is historically true unless it is proven otherwise via external evidence) does not really work seeing that we have virtually no external evidence anyway for the origins of Israel. Lemaire then goes on to show that the poetic approach (which advocates that the archaic poetic passages of the Hebrew Bible portray the early traditions of the origins of early Israel) founders because the early dates which are proposed for the relevant poetic pieces are simply hypothetical. However, literary criticism (in the sense of source criticism), tradition criticism and the sociological approach all had some contribution to make to the problem at hand.34 In fact, Lemaire himself reconstructs the origins and emergence of early Israel on the basis of source criticism, tradition criticism, and a good use of sociology together with a well-balanced correlation of the relevant archaeological and historical evidence. Amongst other things he thereby concludes that there was an exodus group (made up of “habiru” or “shasu” elements) which had left Egypt under the guidance of Moses, and eventually under that of Joshua, in the time of Ramses II. This exodus group joined the tribe of the Bene-Israel of Canaan which eventually settled around Shilo and which had met the tribe of the Bene-Jacob near Shechem towards the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. This alliance of various groups of people formed a confederation of tribes that had Yahweh as its protector. The confederation eventually expanded when a group of “habiru” from the Galilee had called on its aid.35 Since this confederation designated itself as “Israel,” we are allowed to use this name for it both in the thirteenth as well as in the tenth centuries B.C.E.36 The foregoing scenario correctly underscores the fact that early Israel emerged peacefully in Canaan. However, this does not militate against the fact that there could very well have also been an element of military conquest involved—at least on a small scale—despite the scarcity or indeed absence of any archaeological evidence to back this up. We do not have a clear idea of how the aforementioned confederation of Israelite tribes was established, and nothing excludes the possibility that some of the constituent tribes of this confederation clashed militarily with 34. Lemaire 1982, 6–20. 35. Lemaire 1982, 20–23. 36. Dever (1991, 206) explicitly states: “Such an entity may be legitimately designated ‘Israel’ by us, on the ground that ‘ethnicity’ is simply the consensus of what people think and say about themselves; and furthermore on the witness of the well-known ‘Victory Stela’ of Merneptah…” See also p. 204. 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

35

some of the long-established Canaanite population. In reality this seems to be a concrete probability, if one appeals to certain principles and adduces some relevant historical analogies when trying to correlate the relevant archaeological and historical evidence. Thus, for example, the fact that there are no Israelite weapons, tools, ornaments or cemeteries from the time of the emergence of Israel in Canaan does not mean that no invasion whatsoever from outside had taken place.37 Isserlin has also reminded us of three historically ascertained events—namely the Norman conquest of England, the Anglo-Saxon settlement there and the Muslim Arab conquest of the Levant—for which the expected archaeological evidence of destruction does not constitute “an archaeologically signicant feature.”38 Indeed, had there been no historical records about the Norman conquest of England in 1066, it is doubtful whether archaeologists would have been able to postulate such a conquest. The material evidence available for this period does not of itself lead one to conclude that a conquest had taken place.39 The Muslim conquest of the Levant provides a particularly signicant parallel to the emergence of ancient Israel, when one considers that there are no destruction layers to back it up (although slow depopulation of certain areas can be detected) and that the pottery from the Arabian homeland of the conquerors does not seem to have “made a signicant contribution to the repertoire”40 of the pottery in the Levant for the period relevant to this conquest. In fact, “without historical sources, a slow inltration rather than a conquest would perhaps have been assumed on the basis of the evidence available” for this Islamic conquest.41 Isserlin has reminded us of the importance of the study of both place and personal names when dealing with the problem of the emergence of 37. The presence of new groups who have come into a territory from outside is not always reected in the material remains retrieved in archaeological research. Thus, for example, special types of weapons, tools and ornaments indicate the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain whilst no such evidence is available for the Norman conquest of Britain and the Muslim conquest of the Levant. Therefore, it is possible that the absence of such items “from the early Israelite period need not gure as a negative argument” (Isserlin 1983, 88). 38. Isserlin 1983, 87. 39. Isserlin 1982, 12. It is especially important to note that there is no break in the pottery and that only exceptionally do we nd “Norman” type wares; there is no hard and fast rule when one considers that the Anglo-Saxons had brought new pottery with them in England whilst the Muslim conquerors of the Levant did not do likewise with their own pottery made in Arabia (Isserlin 1983, 89). 40. Isserlin 1982, 16. 41. Isserlin 1982, 18. 1

36

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

ancient Israel. Once again, he provides very interesting parallels from the above-mentioned Norman invasion of England and the Anglo-Saxon settlement there, as well as of the Muslim conquest of the Levant. These parallels helped him to understand more clearly that the place names in Israel at the time of its emergence in Canaan “would seem to hint at the entry of a population element of limited size, rather than a vast multitude of migrating folk (unless more such names can be identied).”42 As far as personal names go, there is a strong parallel between what happened at the time of the Muslim conquest of the Levant and when Israel emerged in Canaan: just as Arabic personal names with “Muslim religious connotations” increased in the Levant after the Muslim conquest, so in the same manner those with the “Yahu” element and which had been used by some “quite early” eventually became ever more popular.43 The foregoing studies by Isserlin show that out of four case studies (the Norman conquest of England, the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons there, the Muslim conquest of the Levant and the emergence of ancient Israel in Canaan), “on the basis of archaeological evidence alone such deductions [regarding the invasion and settlement of a new people in a country] must remain hypothetical even in the most favourable circumstances; and in less favoured cases archaeology might give us no clue that an invasion has taken place, even when it has.”44

42. Isserlin 1983, 91 (my italics). 43. Isserlin 1983, 91. See also Hess (1994, 350), who states: “If we are prepared to accept the antiquity of the personal names found in biblical narratives which describe events before the time of the Israelite Monarchy, then one cannot claim that no feature distinguished Israelites from their neighbours.” 44. Isserlin 1982, 23; hence, the following corollary is of great importance, namely that “the historical record is thus irreplaceable, and an absence of proper archaeological backing need not necessarily invalidate it” (p. 23). Isserlin does accept that there was an invasion from outside by the early Israelites, but on a small scale. Indeed, his studies show that the proportion of the Israelite invaders to those invaded in Canaan was well below 1 in 10 and that therefore the number of incoming Israelites must have been quite small (pp. 19, 24 nn. 31, 32). See also de Moor 1990, 108 and references there, as well as what I wrote elsewhere with reference to the fact that Ps 105:12–13 was aware that the Hebrew tribes in Canaan had not been that numerous (Frendo 2004, 61 and references there). Isserlin (1998, 20) has also shown that the ethnographic parallels relevant to ancient Israel and the history of the Arabs are very useful for the student of ancient Israel not only for the period of the latter’s emergence, but also for the later conict between traditional lifestyles and political practices and the “stringent and revolutionary demands of religion,” such as was the case with Jehu, who overturned an “insufciently ‘orthodox’ ” dynasty. This situation parallels that of the downfall of the rst !Umayyad dynasty. 1

3. An Indissoluble Unity in Diversity

37

As has already been noted,45 it is highly probable that the Hebrews coming into Canaan from outside were few in number. This is corroborated by the fact that “where the language of early Israel is concerned, it is generally agreed that it was much indebted to the Canaanite spoken or written in the country before the conquest.”46 Moreover, ancient Israel provides another example of how difcult it is to establish ethnicity on the basis of material culture.47 Indeed, Hess cites Judg 3:5–6 to show how the early Israelites themselves “were determined to make themselves indistinguishable from the other inhabitants of the hill country.”48 It is thus clear that the material evidence unearthed by archaeologists can very rarely (if ever at all) be used to pin down the early ancient Israelites who were settling down in Canaan. Moreover, when attempting to make a methodical correlation between the biblical and archaeological evidence, the scholar will discover that the results of biblical criticism are not at variance with those of archaeology.49 It is true that the biblical texts are literature, but this does not preclude them from imparting information which pertains to the world outside the text, and therefore from having a “referential content.”50 45. See the previous note. 46. Isserlin 1983, 92. In this context it is useful to remember that with respect to a new people entering a land, we do not know “what factors determine whether the language of immigrants will be adopted by natives or that of natives by immigrants, in particular circumstances, when linguistically different communities have amalgamated or come to live in close contact; or indeed whether there is likely to be any regularity in human behaviour in such situations, though impressionistic conclusions about it are current” (Crossland 1973, 8). 47. Hess 1994, 347, where he also expressly states that “indeed, ethnicity often is impossible to determine from material culture because this reects the challenges of the environment and coping strategies, rather than one particular lineage as opposed to another.” 48. Hess 1994, 347. 49. Driver (1913, xxi) had already pointed out this nearly a century ago when he aptly wrote that “the fact is, while archaeology has frequently corroborated Biblical statements, of the truth of which critics never doubted, such as Shisak’s invasion of Judah, the existence of kings such as Omri, Ahab, Jehu, and Sargon, and Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah, it has overthrown no conclusion, at variance with tradition, which has met with the general acceptance of critics: the cases in which it is alleged to have done so, will be found, if examined, to depend simply on a misapprehension of the facts: either the argument, or conclusion, which has been overthrown by archaeology has not be used, or held, by critics, or, if it has been used, or held, by critics, it has not in reality been overthrown by archaeology.” 50. J. Barton (1996, 165). He also explicitly states (pp. 164–65) that “after all, very much historical writing has traditionally been narrative in form, but it has clearly been meant to convey information.” 1

38

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

The points raised in this chapter indicate that in order to appreciate a historical period better, the scholar has to try and make a methodical correlation between the written and archaeological evidence obtaining for the period in question. The crucial point is to remember that text and archaeology stand to each other just as apples and oranges do, namely that they are clearly distinct. Indeed, the correlation is only made possible through the historian’s hypotheses. In this process archaeological evidence is such that it can refute a historian’s hypothesis, but it can never prove it. Thus, archaeological data function like compatible circumstantial evidence regarding a theory, and therefore, for example, it is reasonable to say that Judah was destroyed by the Assyrians in 701 B.C.E. However, in this particular instance one should also remember that “Sennacherib’s signature never appears on the ruins of Judah, and the precise year-date derives from inscriptions, not potsherds. So the hypothesis is not proven, although it is reasonable to view it as an accurate theory.”51 The upshot is that archaeology and history are in reality two sides of the same coin, and that in our quest to understand the human past they should be clearly kept distinct and yet viewed as being indivisible.52

51. Noll 2001, 49, 50. He also reminds us (p. 50) that “in each case the data either refute or support a hypothesis—not the ancient text. Thus, the data suggest that king Sennacherib devastated Judah and the Shephelah—but this does not prove that Sennacherib’s representation of each aspect of the event is accurate. Sennacherib’s inscriptions remain political propaganda representing a true event; the inscriptions are not identical to the event, and might misrepresent it in some ways.” 52. For this concept, I made use—mutatis mutandis—of the formula which the Council of Chalcedon used in 451 C.E. to account for the one person of Jesus Christ as having two natures (human and divine) which were inseparable and yet not confused, and thus they were distinct; see Denzinger and Schönmetzer 1965, 108. 1

Chapter 4

SOME HISTORIOGRAPHIC INSIGHTS: MAINLY CLASSICAL

The foregoing chapters indicate that archaeology and history could be viewed as two sides of the same coin and that both disciplines need to be studied in order to gain a correct insight into the past—indeed, archaeology and history have to be correlated in a methodical manner so that we can catch a better glimpse of our human past. At this point it is useful to see what people in antiquity (mainly in classical antiquity) had thought about the issue of the relationship between textual and non-written archaeological evidence, in order to appreciate better the principles which they employed in reconstructing the past. I have chosen to concentrate on the classical world in order to elucidate such a relationship because it provides the scholar with a clearer methodological tool for the purposes of the discussion which I make about history and historywriting in this book. This is not to deny that the ancient Hebrews and their neighbours in the Near Eastern world had no idea of historiography, but simply to afrm that the historiographers of the classical world reected more explicitly on what is involved in history writing, and that their reection included the issue of relating textual and non-written evidence. My aim is not so much to describe that which people in classical antiquity thought about this matter, but rather to adduce and underscore the principles involved in their reection on history-writing since this can help the on-going debate about pre-exilic Israel. Notwithstanding this, I shall rst deal rather briey with the historiography of the ancient Near East (with special reference to ancient Israel), before actually concentrating on the classical world. In this manner, the reader can better appreciate the contribution made by the classical historiographers to the contemporary biblical scholar interested in the methodology employed in the study of the history of pre-exilic Israel. The general view about the historiography of the ancient Near East is that there are “king-lists, chronicles, annals and (auto)biographical 1

40

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

texts” on the basis of which we can “reconstruct the history and chronology of some regions at some periods”; however, there is no “narrative history” like there is in the Hebrew Bible, and the late historical works by Berossus of Babylon and by Manetho in Egypt, which were written in Greek in the early third century B.C.E., are extant only “in tiny fragments.”1 Thus, for example, an Assyrian chronicle dating to the eighth century B.C.E. and the Babylonian Chronicles2 are deemed to “offer merely the raw materials for an actual historiography,”3 and this means that there was no real reconstruction of the history of the ancient Near East which was presented in a narrative sequence by those interested in their past in this region. However, the case of the Hittites is somewhat different in that it seems they had some real concern for history.4 And yet, on closer analysis there is not that much difference to the type of historiography common to the ancient Near East.5 Annals constituted the most common type of historical record of the Hittites, despite the fact that historical sections can be found in “prologues to treaties and edicts, and sections of royal prayers.”6 No matter what type of genre the Hittites employed to transmit their past, their “primary use of historiography was for propagandistic purposes, although didactic purposes may also be identied in some works.”7 It is only in ancient Israel that we nd the rst clear-cut instances of historical narratives in the ancient Near East. Historians of ancient Israel are very much aware that history itself, inasmuch as it is the past which is now dead, is in fact silent, and that it is only historiography understood as “writing about the past” which allows history to speak via interpretation and “narrative reconstruction.” This is valid both for biblical as well as for modern historiography, the only difference being that in the former there is no critical use of sources, and different presuppositions to ours are at work.8 Thus the biblical descriptions of the past do qualify as 1. Kuhrt 1995, 7, 8. 2. The Babylonian Chronicles cover events from the reign of King Nabu-Nasir (747–734 B.C.E.) in the eighth century B.C.E. up to the second century B.C.E., being rst put together in the sixth century B.C.E. (Khurt 2000, 266). It is well known that they kept being written up to the Parthian period in the third century C.E. 3. Von Soden 1994, 159. 4. Mayes 2002, 68 and references there. 5. As C. A. Burney (2004, 121) states: “Causality was scarcely understood by the Hittite historians, though frequent reference was made to past events by way of precedents for the future.” 6. Walton 1990, 126; see also 125. 7. Walton 1990, 126, and references there. 8. Mayes 2003, 306. 1

4. Some Historiographic Insights

41

historiography, since “to qualify as a historiographic work it is only necessary for the author to be consciously seeking to describe the past.”9 Indeed, in this sense it can be claimed that the earliest historiography is to be attributed to ancient Israel.10 However, the foregoing statement needs to be qualied, since on closer analysis it becomes apparent that there are historiographic works in the Bible which in fact drew up a type of historical record which turns out to be very different from that found in Herodotus and amongst modern historians. Thus, for example, whilst Herodotus sought to draw up a historical record of past events based on enquiry, research, travel, and a critical assessment of his sources, “neither the Deuteronomist nor the Yahwist can be seriously considered as having sought to compose an accurate ‘record’ of past events.”11 One of the greatest differences between ancient Israelite historiography on one hand, and classical and modern historiography on the other, is the fact that in ancient Israel the historian often attributed his contemporary viewpoint to past ages “both in the sphere of political organization (the union of the twelve tribes) and in that of institutional religion (the single sanctuary, the laws regulating sacrice, priesthood, etc.).”12 Thus Israel’s historical reality must be gleaned from the extant biblical traditions, and one reason which could account for the fact that this reality could be blurred in the texts is that two processes were working upon the received text: that of “reection” on the events and that of the telescoping of events, which was in fact “the compression of a chain of historical events into a simplied, articial account. Later redactors would, in retrospect, compress a complex of events into a severely curtailed time-span”—such is the case of the long process of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, which is attributed in the Bible to a single national hero, namely Joshua.13

9. Amit 1999, 14. 10. As Amit (1999, 22) says: “While chronicles are known from the Hittite, Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures, the only known continuous and systematic historical composition from the ancient Near East is the Israelite one. Greek and Roman historiography was written some time later.” 11. Nicholson 1998, 151–52. In the case of the Yahwist and the Deuteronomist, one should also note that “their writings are not the result of historia [enquiry],” and that “it does not seem that the past was the motivation for their endeavours, even in those narratives which may be regarded as providing historically useful information” (p. 152). 12. C. F. Burney 1921, 7. 13. Malamat 2001, 9, 10. 1

42

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

The foregoing points show that the Hebrew Bible contains authentic historical traditions mixed with later untrustworthy elements and that it is up to the scholar to glean that which is authentic from that which is not, primarily by viewing as authentic a tradition which stands in opposition to the systematic presentation made by the later biblical historians.14 Moreover, the scholar must also keep in mind the fact that the Hebrew Bible has many variant sources which are not presented as such but which are joined together “into continuous action”; indeed, “if the account of the conquest in Judges varies from that in Joshua, it formally appears not as a corrective or alternative but as an overture to the record of the next period.”15 It is interesting to note that, although, as it was already pointed out above, ancient Israelite historiography differs rather substantially from that of classical and modern times, still “a historian like Herodotus also makes a point of juxtaposing variant accounts between the covers of a single work.”16 Thus, although ancient Israelite historiography is pre-modern, it still qualies as historiography, and just as in modern times it is basically “an interpretative approach to the past from the standpoint of contemporary culture.”17 However, there are two very important differences between the historiography found in the Hebrew Bible and that of classical and consequently of modern times, namely that the historiographers of the classical world were explicitly reecting on history-writing and that in this process some of them also took into account the very important relationship between textual and material evidence in the sense of noninscriptional archaeological evidence. These two points alone make it worthwhile to try and nd out what principles the classical authors were using to draw up their historiographic works. It is well known that some contemporary archaeologists choose to “read” the material objects of the past, and it is interesting to note that in doing this, they underscore the fact that “the salient feature of archaeological interpretation is that it regards things as a kind of writing, a hybrid, which combines certain commonly recognized qualities of objects with those of words. So conceived, it becomes possible for objects to communicate originary meanings independent of the uctuating, evanescent, living consciousness of a community.”18 Thucydides had viewed writing as something which enabled human beings to distinguish between 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 1

Lemaire 1982, 18. Sternberg 1985, 127. Sternberg 1985, 127. Mayes 2002, 68. Hedrick 1995, 46.

4. Some Historiographic Insights

43

consciousness and things, between the reader and what is read,19 thus paving the way for a modern understanding of history and archaeology in the sense that both these disciplines “exist only by virtue of their reliance on the logic of writing: a separation of thing and consciousness, a conict between observed and observer, subject and object.”20 Herodotus and Thucydides do not say quite the same thing regarding this matter. For Herodotus, monuments are “reminders” of a story which is already known, whilst Thucydides “conceives of things as a kind of writing, which can yield up their originary meanings to those who examine them independent of any oral explanation.”21 Thucydides’ position lies at the basis of modern archaeological understanding; however, he also reminds us that things can act as a witness for the past and even contradict or disprove “explanatory verbal accounts.”22 There is one very important difference between the manner in which Herodotus and Thucydides view words and things. Herodotus thinks that words are referential but ambiguous, whereas for him deeds and monuments are true and nal. On the other hand, Thucydides applies these two opposing qualities to things themselves, with the result that monuments too could be ambiguous; indeed, they could even be deceptive and utter lies. Thucydides reached this conclusion because he distinguished between the predetermined function of things and the value which humans attach to things when they actually use them: the former cannot lie, whereas the latter do.23 Indeed, “to the historian or archaeologist (unlike the improvisational artisan) useful things are as ambiguous and problematic as any other sign.”24 The implications of such a state of affairs for archaeological research in general and for the investigation of the emergence of ancient Israel in particular is interesting, once we realize that, as Thucydides claims, we must distinguish between the use of material things and their exploitation for the sake of ostentation.25 Thus, for example, city walls are used for power, but when unearthed in 19. Hedrick 1995, 66. This stance is not always very popular in a postmodern world, but it constitutes a useful concept, seeing that the following observation by Hedrick (p. 88) still rings true: “the ability to discriminate between consciousness and thing, between reader and what is read, is dependent on the creation of some thing which has the apparent ability to sustain meaning outside of consciousness: a thing like writing.” 20. Hedrick 1995, 88. 21. Hedrick 1995, 66. 22. Hedrick 1995, 66, and references there. 23. Hedrick 1995, 68–69. 24. Hedrick 1995, 73. 25. Thucydides 2.62.3. 1

44

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

archaeology, what they mean in a particular case should remain open until careful analysis leads us to establish whether they truly indicated power or whether they were in fact simply used for showing off.26 The foregoing points lead us to consider once again to what extent the results of ancient history can be reasonably precise. Thucydides explicitly states that one “should regard the facts as having been made out with sufcient accuracy, on the basis of the clearest indications, considering that they have to do with early times.”27 It is worth quoting at length what he has to say with respect to the reporting of speeches (something which is also applicable to many texts in the Hebrew Bible): As to the speeches that were made by different men, either when they were about to begin the war or when they were already engaged therein, it has been difcult to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken, both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and for those who from various other sources have brought me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most betting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.28

In historical research it is a commonplace that not all sources are reliable. Indeed, at times there are what appear to be contradictory sources with respect to what allegedly had occurred in past times. Thucydides also helps the modern historian (including the biblical historian) in such matters when he says that “the endeavour to ascertain these facts [of the occurrences of the war] was a laborious task, because those who were eye-witnesses of the several events did not give the same reports about the same things, but reports varying according to their championship of one side or the other, or according to their recollection.”29 Thus the evidence from Thucydides shows that certain texts which purport to contain historical information could still be regarded as reasonably accurate, despite certain inaccuracies which they might contain and some conicting sources which they might have used. The foregoing points are still valid for the study of all kinds of historical research in the contemporary world. Indeed, classical scholars teach us that in the anonymous work entitled Rhetorica ad Herennium, we nd 26. As Hedrick (1995, 85) aptly pointed out: “Athens has walls and Sparta does not. This difference does not mean that Sparta is weaker than Athens. As Thucydides specically says, the appearance of things, even of what are by his own standards the most useful things, can lie” (my italics). 27. Thucydides 1.21. 28. Thucydides 1.22. 29. Thucydides 1.22. 1

4. Some Historiographic Insights

45

the following three important distinctions which can help those biblical historians interested in their search of early ancient Israel: (1) true narrative (found in historical works); (2) narrative which is false and unlike the truth (this is virtually myth and tragedy, namely neque veras neque veri similes continent res, that is to say that narrative which “comprises events neither true nor like the truth”30); and (3) that narrative which contains “made-up events which nevertheless could have happened” (= cta res quae tamen eri potuit).31 It is clear that the biblical historian would do well to keep these distinctions in mind, especially in view of the fact that they seem to have been common in antiquity and that they have such an important bearing on the contemporary quest for early Israel. Quintilian too made three distinctions which overlap (at least somewhat) with those found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, namely: (1) fabula (which is practically ction), (2) argumentum which stands for a narrative story, especially a ctitious narrative, and (3) historia, which can be dened as “an exposition of actual fact.”32 Such important distinctions were even further rened by Cicero, who discussed various types of narrative which can in fact be linked with the scholarly exercise of historical research. Indeed, Cicero says that “the narrative is an exposition of events that have occurred or are supposed to have occurred.”33 In reality, Cicero distinguishes three forms of narrative, all of which are therefore somehow connected with the exposition of events. Fabula indicates events which are not true and which are not even characterized by verisimilitude; argumentum is ctional narrative which deals with those events that could have occurred, and which is thus characterized by verisimilitude. Finally, there is historia which is that type of narrative which deals with actual remote occurrences.34 When applied to the historical quest for the emergence of ancient Israel, it becomes clear that the crux of the whole problem does not lie in the fact that the contemporary biblical historian is confronted with narratives, but in determining precisely whether in any given text he is actually dealing with argumentum or with historia. Thus the issue boils down to whether the biblical historian is dealing with something which actually happened or simply with something which could have happened but in fact did not. 30. Rhetorica ad Herennium (1.13) as reported in Morgan 1993, 189. 31. Rhetorica ad Herennium (1.13) as reported in Morgan 1993, 189. 32. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 2.4.2. 33. Cicero, De Inventione 1.27, where he spelt out this idea as follows: “Narratio est rerum gestarum aut ut gestarum expositio.” 34. Cicero, De Inventione 1.27. 1

46

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

The issue of verisimilitude is of great importance, not only because it is extremely pertinent in today’s historical quest of ancient Israel, but also in view of the fact that in antiquity it had already been appreciated as something which could be exploited in the service of untruth. Thus, Polybius contrasts his information based on contemporary documents with that of other historians who invented details to make a story look more true to life. Polybius calls such historians “plausible liars,” whilst he correctly realizes that detailed information can be true for “very recent history” and not for the distant past.35 If this important observation is applied to the historical quest of ancient Israel, then it immediately becomes apparent that the lack of detail in a narrative which purports to be historically true is precisely one aspect which could very well guarantee the authenticity of the historical tradition contained in such a narrative. For Polybius, the authenticity of historical sources is ultimately based on the experience of the historian who draws up an account and thus also on his participation in the events which he describes. Lived experience thus provides the authentic basis of historical accounts, and Polybius contrasts “an account founded on participation, active or passive, in the occurrences” with “one composed from report and the narrative of others.”36 However, the crucial point is that even in this latter instance, experience is still essential in the sense that “even in this task men of no experience are such to be frequently deceived. For how is it possible to examine a person properly about a battle, a siege, or a sea-ght, or to understand the details of his narrative, if one has no clear ideas about these matters?”37 Polybius does not mean to say that it is simply the historian’s physical presence in the events which he describes that is essential; the historian must above all else understand what is going on: his experience and understanding must go hand in hand. Indeed, “these are matters in which a man of no experience is neither competent to question those who were present at an action, nor when present himself to understand what is going on, but even if present he is in a sense not present.”38 In The Histories, Polybius also underscores the fact that historical information is gleaned via the exercise of historical criticism rather than by simply following the ow of a historical narrative. He advocates the practice of something which is normal practice for many a modern biblical scholar when he writes: 35. 36. 37. 38. 1

Wiseman 1993, 141–43 (especially his comments on Polybius 3.33.17). Polybius 12.28a.6. Polybius 12.28a.8. Polybius 12.28a.10.

4. Some Historiographic Insights

47

therefore both writers and readers of history should not pay so much attention to the actual narrative of events, as to what precedes, what accompanies, and what follows each. For if we take from history the discussion of why, how, and wherefore each thing was done, and whether the result was what we should have reasonably expected, what is left is a clever essay but not a lesson, and while pleasing for the moment of no possible benet for the future.39

The contemporary discussion of whether the history of ancient Israel is to be viewed from a long-range perspective or whether it has to rather concentrate on particular people and places can be appreciated better, if we try to understand what Cicero thought about the various types of inquiry that exist. He holds that there are two types of inquiry, one dealing with that which is particular (and this “involves denite persons, places, times, actions, or affairs, either all or most of these”), and another one which is concerned with what is general (which involves “one or several” of the above items, “but not the most important”). The former type of inquiry is concerned with particular cases and it purports to determine the causes of events, whereas the latter type deals with the enunciation of propositions thus functioning as a theory.40 Indeed, the rst type of inquiry is the one generally undertaken by biblical historians who try to glean the reliable historical information which is embedded in the Hebrew Bible, whereas the second type of inquiry mentioned by Cicero smacks of models and of the stance taken by those scholars who view the past from the viewpoint of “la longue durée.” It is clear that in order to make progress in the historical quest of ancient Israel the two types of inquiry must be employed. The way the classical authors mentioned thus far viewed historical research indicates that, short of our being eye-witnesses capable of understanding well the events which we experience, historical truth can be reached after the relevant reports have been assessed critically and facts thereby established. However, the classical world was also aware that historical truth could be tampered with in the course of time, and Homer had already aptly pointed out how the desire of novelty rather than of truth can lead one to alter the stories handed down from age to age. He says that Telemachus told his mother: “With this man [the minstrel] no one can be angry if he sings the evil doom of the Danaans; for men praise that song the most that comes the newest to their ears.”41 39. Polybius 3.31.11–13. 40. Cicero, Topica 80. 41. Homer, Odyssey I.350–52. Bowie (1993, 39) shows how it was already claimed in antiquity that Stesichorus had actually changed the story of Helen of Troy: “It is improbable that these changes are the result of some critic saying that the 1

48

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

Seneca is even more blatant. He claims that some historians actively seek falsehood; indeed, he discredits them as a group, saying that “they do not think their works can be approved and become popular unless they sprinkle them with lies.”42 This is clearly something much more serious than the various renditions of Israel’s early history which are found in the Hebrew Bible, such as, for example, the well-known version of this history which the Chronicler drew up. The foregoing points show that one can—despite all difculties— glean fact from ction in ancient historiography. And yet, the classical world did not simply oppose these two things. Thus, for example, for Plato most Greek poetry is false not in the sense that it is ctional, but in the sense that it imparts false beliefs in the listener, namely that it does not lead one to a knowledge of ethical truth; however, this does not mean that Plato ignored or blurred “a recognized distinction between factual and ctional discourse.”43 For him, it is not a question of choosing between fact and ction, but between truth and falsehood. Aristotle follows suit. Indeed, he compares poetry with philosophy, contrasting it with history, not because history is identical with what is factual and poetry with what is non-factual, but because poetry and philosophy both make general statements, whereas history deals with that which is particular.44 In short, ancient romances (just like historiography, rhetoric, and narrative ction) included ctionalizing; indeed, they are presented “not so much as pure “ction” but as a more heavily ctionalized version of other genres which were conceived as having some kind of veridical content.”45 This is all so similar to the issues involved in the contemporary debate regarding the fact that narrative is not identical to ction, and that historical works are not to be simply linked with what is factual. Both genres contain fact and ction, and it is up to the reader to disentangle the former from the latter; thus, for example, “even though Ajax or Achilles may have been thought of as actual people who had once lived, even receiving hero-cult in historical times, the acts and speech posited of such characters in epic or tragedy were openly regarded as ctitious…”46 This is all so similar to the multiple speeches and dialogues found in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, such as those traditional version was either false or disreputable and Stesichorus then scurrying to put it right. Rather they are to be seen as resulting from the attractions of innovation, attractions already registered in Telemachus’ remark at Odyssey I.351–52…” 42. Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones 7.16.1–2. 43. Gill 1993, 73; see also 43–44. 44. Gill 1993, 76 and references there. 45. Gill 1993, 81. 46. Feeney 1993, 233. 1

4. Some Historiographic Insights

49

present in the books of Samuel or Kings. In the end, it is always up to the critical reader to discern in any narrative between that which is factual and that which is ctional. Thus, we should not be surprised when Feeney reminds us that Herodotus did not believe that Helen had ever been at Troy, since he (Herodotus) claims that Homer knew that all along she had been in Egypt.47 It is important for scholars of pre-exilic Israel to keep in mind the main tenets of classical historiography also when they deal with basic methodological issues. Indeed, it is important to underscore the fact that the perusal of the essential characteristics of classical historiography could turn out to be quite benecial to those scholars who study preexilic Israel, at least for the simple reason that it makes them more conscious of the most important principles involved in the reconstruction of the difcult historical period they deal with. As shown above, the historiography of the classical world teaches us that narratives could be false, true to life but ctitious, or indeed true. The classical world shows us very clearly that the fact that an event is drafted in narrative form does not per se allow us automatically to classify that event as being historically untrue. We learn explicitly that we have to examine very carefully whether we are dealing with texts which are ctional narrative, or with ones which are historical in that they relay actual remote occurrences, albeit in narrative form. Moreover, it was also shown that the scholar of pre-exilic Israel can learn a lot from the point made in classical historiography that the lack of much detail in a narrative is generally indicative of a text which recounts past events, whereas “embellished” texts tend to be less historically reliable. It is clear that such principles are general and that they have to be applied to each individual case, which should therefore be studied on its own merits. However, there is one basic crucial lesson which scholars of pre-exilic Israel can learn from a study of classical historiography, and this is that in the last analysis the question of historical truth is indeed an issue, and that the use of narrative in relaying historical events does not allow us to claim that all history writing is simply ctional. Although the cultural context of the ancient Near East and that of the classical world are clearly different, still it seems that the basic principles involved in history writing are quite similar and that the scholar of the ancient Near East, and of pre-exilic Israel in particular, could learn quite a lot from 47. Feeney 1993, 233; Herodotus relates how Helen was taken to Egypt (2.113) and that “Homer too knew this story; but seeing that it suited not so well with epic poetry as the tale of which he made use, he rejected it of set purpose, showing withal that he knew it” (see Herodotus 2.116). 1

50

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

those who were not only involved in history writing, but who were also explicitly conscious of the basic principles inherent in their activity. Indeed, the difference between the historians of the classical world and those of ancient Israel does not seem to be that great after all, especially when we consider that history in the classical world “was understood not as history, according to our meaning of the word, but as literature.”48 However, in no way does this mean that “in our search for information about the ancient world we should neglect the classical historians.”49 Mutatis mutandis, this could also be said with reference to the writing of history in ancient Israel; indeed, both in the classical world and in ancient Israel there are instances when the literary edice evident in history writing is actually built on the foundation of historical reminiscence. The points just mentioned, together with the evidence discussed in this chapter, show that a look at the manner in which history was written in the classical world can be a very useful eye-opener for those scholars engaged in the study of pre-exilic Israel. This is especially so when we consider that historical events were normally transmitted in a literary manner which included the use of narrative. In this process, it is clear that literary techniques and artistic devices were very much at work. In this context, Cicero’s comments on oratory are very apt, especially since they seem to be applicable to historiography, both classical and Israelite. Indeed, despite the importance which he gives to the literary aspect and play on words in public speaking, he emphasizes the importance of facts: “for the joke which still remains witty, in whatever words it is couched, has its germ in the facts; that which loses its pungency, as soon as it is differently worded, owes all its humour to the language.”50 The issues discussed in this chapter indicate that the historians of the ancient Near East, including those of ancient Israel, did produce works of historiography, which were however not really based on the critical assessment of the sources used and which do not seem to have included works on the methodology of history-writing. Moreover, there does not seem to be any evidence which shows that these historians left us any reections on how to relate textual and non-written material evidence in order to attain knowledge of the past. On the contrary, the classical

48. M. Grant 1995, 99. 49. M. Grant 1995, 98. 50. Cicero, De Oratore 2.62. In the original Latin version, Cicero states: “Nam quod, quibuscumque verbis dixeris, facetum tamen est, re continetur; quod mutatis verbis salem amittit, in verbis habet leporem omnem.” 1

4. Some Historiographic Insights

51

authors reected and wrote explicitly on the methodology of historiography, and they were also very much aware of the problems involved in the relationship between textual and non-written archaeological evidence. For them, both types of evidence had to be used in order to reconstruct the past. Moreover, the classical world also teaches us explicitly that texts cannot be simply labelled as either factual or ctitious; indeed, there were various types of literature which leaned more towards one or the other of these two categories, but in the end—just as in the historical quest for pre-exilic Israel, it was up to the critical scholar to unravel the complex texts, thereby obtaining a knowledge of the past, although this was incomplete and rather hazy at times, and all the while making use also of the relevant information from the non-written archaeological evidence. As Grant said, “we ought to be cautious, but at the same time not too pessimistic, about the reconstruction of the Greek and Roman past.”51 It seems that the evidence discussed in this chapter would allow us to make similar claims about Israelite historiography.

51. M. Grant 1995, 126. 1

Chapter 5

TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW

The condence which the classical authors had in knowing (no matter how incompletely) the past is no longer shared by many today. It is well known that our contemporary world is labelled as postmodern (although it is unclear how postmodernism is really to be dened) and that under this label many claim that truth cannot be known with the inevitable result that any historical quest, including the search for pre-exilic Israel, is ultimately futile.1 In this climate of extreme scepticism it is hardly surprising that much ink is being spilt on whether we can ever hope to obtain true historical knowledge. In the past, theoretical matters were the domain of the philosophers, but nowadays they have become the daily bread and butter of many a historian and archaeologist. Hence, it comes as no surprise at all that the eld of biblical history (especially the one dealing with the early periods of ancient Israel) is dominated by much theoretical discourse. Barstad is correct when he claims that we all practise “some sort of philosophy” and that it would therefore do us good to be conscious of this.2 However, this should not lead us to forget the fact that although history is interested in narrating a story, it purports to relate only the most likely story about the past.3 This leaves the historians and the archaeologist with two tasks, namely that of getting on with their job, whilst trying at the same time to be aware of the assumptions under which they labour, including the issues involved in whether truth can be attained at all. The foregoing points indicate that the student of early ancient Israel too must grapple with the problems involved in cognitional theory, 1. For a concise, lucid, and comprehensive critical introduction to postmodernism, see C. Butler 2002. I think that his most poignant criticism of postmodernism can be very clearly seen when he writes (p. 39): “Aspirin works everywhere. It is one of the things that they [empirical scientists] are not willing to be (politically or culturally) relativist about.” 2. Barstad 1997, 48. 3. Barstad 1997, 44. 1

5. To Know or Not to Know

53

namely epistemology, which sets out to investigate what human knowing is all about and thus also whether truth can be known at all. For it is selfevident that, if it is impossible for us to know truth, then it is useless to even start searching for early ancient Israel. Dever had lamented that “there is virtually no bibliography on basic questions of epistemology in the elds of biblical and Syro-Palestinian archaeology,”4 and although it is now commonly believed that theory plays a great role both in archaeology and history, Dever’s plea to deal with “basic questions of epistemology” (my italics) is still valid precisely because of the issues raised by postmodernism. It is indeed such issues which should provide the springboard for a deeper reection on what knowing is all about and whether truth can be attained or not. Such problems which may at rst sight appear to be so far removed from the historical problems involved in the reconstruction of early Israel, turn out to be the heart of the matter, for if truth cannot be known, then it would be idle to even start a search of ancient Israel. The rst point to keep in mind is that in our quest for truth, in fact we all appeal to rational argument and to the evidence in support of an argument. Hence Evans is correct when he writes that “if he [David Andress, an extreme postmodernist] actually believes that rational argument is so irrelevant, what is he doing teaching in a university? If somebody tells him he or she doesn’t accept an argument, why doesn’t he challenge him to disprove it rationally?”5 Indeed, we have to distinguish between unconscious and conscious reasoning; the former is tantamount to having a reason for something, whereas the latter means adducing a reason for one’s statements.6 Such a distinction is essential, since it is only when we try to reect on our own reasons that we become aware of the assumptions which guide our arguments; if our assumptions are unsound, then our conclusions are bound to be awed. If we work on the assumption that it is impossible to know the past with condence, then it becomes a forgone conclusion that we can never gain any certain knowledge about ancient Israel, let alone about how it emerged in Canaan.

4. Dever 1991, 344 n. 1, where in his references, however, he fails to mention the very important contribution which Roland de Vaux had made with respect to how archaeology can be used in the historical quest of early ancient Israel (de Vaux 1970, 69–70). 5. Evans 2000, 300. 6. With reference to John Henry Newman’s viewpoint, Ker (1985, xxvi and reference there) has very aptly written that “ ‘explicit’ or conscious reasoning is the analysis or investigation of ‘implicit’ or unconscious reasoning: it means arguing as opposed to reasoning, it involves the giving rather than the having a reason.” 1

54

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

It is only the “conscious” reasoning just mentioned which can guard us against falling prey to the many pitfalls in our textual and archaeological interpretations, seeing that in reality both archaeological and textual data need to be interpreted7 in order to reconstruct the human past. The above-mentioned appeal to the evidence, namely the data, and to rational argument is what can ultimately help us to distinguish between false and correct interpretations. To claim that it is impossible to distinguish between true and false interpretations is to contradict oneself, just as the postmodern deconstructors do when they claim that language cannot portray reality. Indeed, this stance implies that no text can ever contain any reference to any true historical events, and logically it would also entrap the postmodern deconstructors themselves in that they would not even be able to propose their own system; their premises will not allow them to do that.8 Even the most extreme of sceptics will have to accept that somehow we can know the truth, otherwise they would not be able to present their own position.9 In reality, “no man is free from the logic of his own rational assumptions—unless he wishes to be free from rationality itself.”10 The forgoing references to the relationship between language and reality are important in view of the fact that, for the postmodernists, history (short of our current situation) is not real: indeed, “it has become a text. Documents are the texts through which we apprehend the past, and there is no reality beyond them except other texts.”11 The implication of this is that history and historiography are confused and viewed as one and the same thing, since no proper distinction is made between the object of the primary sources, namely history, and that of the secondary ones, namely historiography.12 Postmodernists seem to be viewing 7. Dever (1991, 199 and references there) is correct when he states that “the fact is that one category of information no more constitutes realia than the other; both texts and artefacts are symbolic expressions, encoded messages about the past. And both require cautious and similar interpretation before they can become true “data,” meaningful in context.” 8. C. Butler 2002, 27. 9. See also C. Butler (2002, 18) who says: “it is logically obvious that you can’t demonstrate how language always “goes astray” without at the same time having a secret and contradictory trust in it.” 10. Fischer 1971, xvi. Indeed, no one is free from philosophy; to imagine such a situation is tantamount to being “the slaves of some defunct philosopher” (p. xii). This is so because of what was pointed out above, namely that it is not sufcient to have a reason, we should also be able to adduce one. 11. Evans 2000, 96. 12. As Evans (2000, 126) writes: “The past does speak through the sources, and is recoverable through them. There is a qualitative difference between documents 1

5. To Know or Not to Know

55

history and historiography as one and the same thing, not in the sense which was explained above in Chapter 2 that we can only infer historical events through texts, but in the sense that we cannot even hope to reach historical truth through an analysis of the relevant texts. The self-contradictory traits of postmodernism have also been critically evaluated by biblical scholars, such as James Barr and Ziony Zevit, both of whom show how the postmodernists cannot really defend their position.13 In short, as the foregoing points have indicated, there still are scholars in the elds of Syro-Palestinian archaeology, history, and biblical studies who work on the assumption that truth can be known and that it is also possible to get a real (no matter how imperfect) glimpse of the past. The issues discussed here become even more complicated when one considers that at times some biblical scholars seem to draw on the latest fashion in theoretical matters without having really worked through the relevant sources. This leads to a situation where the so-called minimalists in the eld of biblical history run the risk of relaying the latest philosophical fads, rather than coming to grips with their own sources (both archaeological and textual) whilst keeping in mind that we all work under some sort of assumption.14 In other words, they run the risk of giving up on critical realism. The postmodernist view of history described in the foregoing paragraph could deect the historian’s attention from the proper object of his written in the past, by living people, for their own purposes, and interpretations advanced about the past by historians living at a later date.” See also p. 110. 13. Thus, for example, Barr (2000, 140) says that “the postmodernist has no defence to offer. He cannot appeal to truth or rationality. He cannot say that he is not swayed by unconscious ideological drives, because his whole case is that everyone is so swayed, all the time.” Zevit (2001, 54) reminds the reader that the postmodernist deconstruction of texts includes taking into account those things which are not mentioned in a particular text; however, he wonders how Derrida would apply such an approach “to a manual instructing one how to assemble a bookcase or repair a car,” adding, “…I hope that he [Derrida] would not encourage a surgeon to read a medical paper as he does philosophy and then so to perform the procedure on a patient.” Even those involved in the eld of English language and literature have levelled the same type of criticism at postmodernism; see, for example, C. Butler 2002, 118. 14. Barr (2000, 158) is very explicit about such a situation when he asks “among biblical scholars concerned…, how many of them have really worked through the philosophers and critical theorists whom they quote from time to time? Have they really read Derrida or Foucault and considered whether their arguments are valid or not? Or, by contrast, are their convictions simply expressions of popular trends of present-day fashion, which are then conrmed by occasional quotations from the great names?” 1

56

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

inquiry, namely the study of the past.15 A similar situation had obtained earlier on in a different context, when archaeological research was experiencing a period of sterile “irtation” with the theories and methods used by social scientists.16 Unfortunately, archaeology still runs the risk of not focussing on its proper object; indeed, postmodernism has practically reduced the scope of archaeology to that of a virtual reality—the branch of forensic archaeology seems to be the only exception because it is a crucial reminder of the fact that history deals with the particular. In this sense, it is important to keep in mind the fact that there is a signicant difference between bio-archaeology and forensic archaeology in that “forensic archaeologists differ from bio-archaeologists precisely in this respect, that they are interested in the individual rather than in the group or general class.”17 Postmodernism underscores the archaeology of rubbish precisely because it is largely interested in that which is general rather than in the particular. Hence it does not concentrate on stratigraphic sequences, thereby blurring the distinction between the past, the present and the future.18 Such a type of archaeology “celebrates rubble without organizing narratives,”19 and therefore it does not draw up any historical narratives which are built on the blending of fact and ction. The points discussed thus far in this chapter show that the basic issue revolves on whether the archaeologist and the historian can ever hope to know the past. This in turn begs another question, namely on whether it is possible for us to know the truth. The postmodernist view does not seem to uphold such a possibility, and when it comes to historical writing it underscores the role played by the political and moral aims which individual historians have. As already shown above, this is a self-contradictory and untenable position.20 The whole issue has also been debated in 15. Evans (2000, 201) correctly points out that “the prioritizing of historical debate and prescriptive writings about the study of history over the study of the past itself also encourages a self-regarding obsession with where the historian stands on these issues, at the expense of the issues themselves.” 16. Zevit 2001, 79 and references there. 17. Wallace 2004, 200. 18. Wallace 2004, 180. 19. Wallace 2004, 180. Wallace (p. 202) underscores even the fact that forensic archaeology “also highlights the recalcitrant nature of history, which resists postmodern or totalitarian attempts to erase it.” Indeed, “while subsequent governments might try to deny the past and, in the case of Argentina, even issue amnesties to those responsible for thousands of deaths and acts of torture, still, in many cases thankfully, the evidence of what was done remains below the ground, in mass graves, waiting to be excavated and analysed.” 20. Evans (2000, 219) correctly points out that “if historians are not engaged in the pursuit of truth, if the idea of objectivity is merely a concept designed to repress 1

5. To Know or Not to Know

57

the eld of biblical history, and the challenge posed by Knauf has to be taken seriously when he writes that “the remnants of the past, texts and artefacts alike, are not identical with the past. History is not identical with the sources. History is not even in the sources, which was a sound insight of the 19th century. If history does not exist except in our minds, the creation of history raises a moral issue, for we alone are responsible of the kind of history that we construct.”21 It is clear that the “remnants of the past” are not identical to the past. However, it does not follow that there is no real basis to the past as we attempt to extract it from the available sources. Indeed, as will be shown below, the data (in this case “the remnants of the past”) are not facts—they are there to be understood and thus to provide the basis for the establishment of facts. Hence, although it is fair to say that history is not the sources, it would be unfair to deny that it is nevertheless based on the sources. The crux of the whole problem is thus linked to the question raised in the foregoing paragraph, namely on whether it is at all possible to know the truth. This question is the domain of the philosophers; however this does not relieve us of the duty to consider the basic issues which are at stake, since we are all obliged to provide reasons for the answers which we propose to particular questions in all elds of research including that of biblical history and archaeology. It was already shown earlier in this chapter that the position of relativism proposed by postmodernism is a self-defeating and a self-contradictory one. However, it is worth dwelling somewhat more at length on the basic issues linked to the problem of human knowledge. Bernard Lonergan, a Canadian philosopher, proposes that the human mind functions according to its inbuilt dynamic cognitional structure.22 No matter what its eld of research happens to be, the human mind starts out with some inevitable assumption or theory and studies the available data with a view to understanding them. However, this is not sufcient for it to reach the truth; in order to do this it must check whether its own insight is correct, and if it turns out to be so, then truth is reached. A judgment must be made as to whether there is sufcient evidence for a statement to be maintained or not. Thus, the human mind turns out as having a dynamic cognitional structure which passes through three stages: data, insight, and judgment.23 In fact, the rst stage alternative points of view, then scholarly criteria become irrelevant in assessing the merits of a particular historical argument.” 21. Knauf 1991, 27 and references there. 22. For Bernard Lonergan’s cognitional theory see two of his major works, namely Insight (Lonergan 1958) and Method in Theology (Lonergan 1972). 23. Lonergan (1972, 157) underscores the fact that the interpreter never starts with an “empty head” and that when he attempts to interpret something, such as a 1

58

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

lies on the level of experience, the second one is tantamount to an understanding of the data, whereas the third stage is the one where facts are established. Lonergan views a fact as a conclusion which cannot simply be equated with the data.24 The human mind attains fact by passing through the “self-correcting process of learning”25 in such a way that the original assumptions themselves are duly scrutinized before facts are established. Such a theory of human knowledge is applicable to all elds of research, including those of biblical history and archaeology, and in this context the basic question would be on how we could really know the past. Such a viewpoint indicates that it is possible for us to know the truth and thus also to gain a true knowledge of the past.26 Indeed, there are really only two options:

text, what he sees are “just a series of signs”; indeed, “anything over and above a reissue of the same signs in the same order will be mediated by the experience, intelligence, and judgment of the interpreter. The less that experience, the less cultivated that intelligence, the less formed that judgment, the greater the likelihood that the interpreter will impute to the author an opinion that the author never entertained.” 24. Lonergan 1958, 331, 347, 653. For Lonergan, fact constitutes the terminus of the human cognitional structure; indeed, “fact, then, combines the concreteness of experience, the determinateness of accurate intelligence, and the absoluteness of rational judgment. It is the natural objective of human cognitional process” (p. 331). Many scholars do accept the distinction between the data and their interpretation; unfortunately, however, they often confuse the issue by equating the data with facts. Thus, for example, Brandfon (1987, 32) writes: “Facts are thought of as empirical and theories as hypothetical. Facts are thought of as experience and theories as statements about experience.” 25. Lonergan (1972, 159) views the human act of understanding as the “selfcorrecting process of learning” which is capable of breaking the hermeneutic circle; indeed, this process “spirals into the meaning of the whole by using each new part to ll out and qualify and correct the understanding reached in reading the earlier parts.” See also Lonergan 1958, 174–75. To say that it is possible to know the truth does not mean that no mistakes are made along the way; in fact, “it is quite clear that I can be mistaken. But that truth presupposes that I am not making a further mistake in acknowledging a past mistake as a mistake,” and that is why “errors are just as much facts as are correct judgments” (p. 347). This is so because “judgments of fact are correct or incorrect, not of necessity, but merely in fact” (p. 347), which is tantamount to saying that they could have been otherwise. 26. Where the knowledge of ancient history is concerned, such as the quest for early ancient Israel, it is important to keep in mind that “there is no veriable cinema of the past nor any veriable sound-track of its speech. The available evidence lies in spatially ordered marks in documents and on monuments, and the interpreter’s business is not to create non-existent evidence but to understand the evidence that exists” (Lonergan 1958, 582). 1

5. To Know or Not to Know

59

either to endorse the self-defeating position that we cannot really know anything, or to opt for an approach which is empirical, but which does admit that one’s starting point is not an empty head. If we have a well stocked mind (and this is where critical theory comes in), then through the self-correcting process of understanding we will be able to understand the data better and verify (by referring back to them) whether we have understood correctly or not… If so, then we would have established facts.27

The issues discussed thus far make it clear that in the above-mentioned “self-correcting process of learning” no stone should be left unturned, not least the assumptions or the unproven starting-points which each scholar inevitably has. Scholars in search of ancient Israel are certainly no exception; indeed, Lemaire correctly points out that the origins of Israel in the pre-Davidic period “reste enveloppée de brumes et laisse donc beaucoup de place aux hypotheses et aux divergences d’analyse suivant les a priori ou la méthode de travail de chaque historien.”28 Hence the multiple theories surrounding the issue of whether we can ever hope to know anything about early Israel which stem from the different assumptions which different scholars bring to this quest. It is therefore important to dwell somewhat more in depth on the nature and role of such assumptions. Assumptions can be viewed as “opinions which are held without proof as if self-evident” and which Newman had labelled “First Principles.”29 They are in fact those things which we take for granted whenever we discuss or research some matter, and it is clear that they stand in need of scrutiny so that it can be determined whether they are true or false, seeing that not all of them are equally true.30 That is why they are in fact only opinions until they are proven to be true. Unfortunately, however, a problem arises when many hold to be true that which has not yet been proven to be so—in such a case, we run the risk of being stied by “popular dogma.”31 This seems to be the case with those who hold that 27. Frendo 2003, 608. See also the references therein to Lonergan’s cognitional theory, namely Lonergan 1958, 252, 273–74, 286, 300. 28. Lemaire 1982, 6. Schloen too is explicit about the need to examine one’s assumptions when he writes (2001, 8) that “it is worth belaboring the point that no scholarly interpretation of past social phenomena is free of debatable presuppositions.” 29. Newman 1851, 279. 30. Newman 1851, 297. 31. Newman 1851, 288, where he also writes that in such instances a rst principle is “held in common by many at once” and that it then “ceases to be an opinion; it is at once taken for truth; it is looked upon as plain common sense; the opposite opinions are thought impossible; they are absurdities and nonentities, and have no rights whatsoever.” 1

60

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

we cannot attain truth and that neither can we ever hope to know anything about pre-exilic Israel since—as was already pointed out above— they claim that it is historians who fabricate history. It is important to remember that historical research, such as the quest for pre-exilic Israel, deals with particular matters and issues, and that therefore, as Ian Ker has very aptly said, “logical inference cannot produce proof in concrete matters because its premises are assumed and ultimately depend upon rst principles, wherein lies the real problem of attaining to truth.. For logic cannot prove the rst principles which it assumes.”32 Indeed, historical research (which includes archaeological investigation where relevant) progresses by convergence of evidence and thus by the addition of one probability to another.33 It thus becomes clear why there are so many theories with respect to the nature of the emergence of ancient Israel. Different views are inevitable, and it is up to us to examine carefully the truth or otherwise of the “rst principles” or assumptions which lie behind each of these theories so as to determine which of the latter are the more probable.34 The points discussed in this chapter indicate that it is possible for us to know the truth, even about the past; indeed, if one chooses to deny such a possibility (no matter how painstaking that is), one still has to appeal to the yardstick of truth in order to sustain one’s own stance. It seems that in the end it is the above-mentioned “self-correcting process of learning,” which also carefully examines the assumptions lying behind each theory proposed, which allows us to gain a true knowledge of the past—no matter how sketchy it might be.

32. Ker 1985, xviii. 33. As Ker (1985, xviii) says, “it is rather the cumulation of probabilities, which cannot be reduced to syllogism, which leads to certainty in the concrete.” 34. For a brilliant sketch as to why three particular historians each give a different evaluation of the sources and facts which they encountered in their research, see Newman 1889, 235. 1

Chapter 6

SOUNDING THE DEPTHS: ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND TEXTUAL STRATIGRAPHY

The presuppositions discussed in the previous chapter are so pervasive that they can also be found in the work of those scholars who adopt the most scientic approaches to reading the biblical text, such as when they practice source criticism, which is in fact tantamount to “literary excavation.”1 This accounts for the fact already discussed in the foregoing chapter that all assumptions or “First Principles” need to be examined before they can be taken as true. Thus, Williamson aptly pointed out with respect to the source criticism employed by Van Seters that “this looks like a return to the kind of detailed dissection of a particular passage consequent upon a wider presupposition about composition about which Van Seters is elsewhere so critical, and it serves as a reminder that in the case of so complex a work as the Pentateuch we cannot always escape such consequences, whichever side of D we date J.”2 The same holds good—mutatis mutandis—for archaeological excavation. It was already pointed out above in Chapter 2 that stratigraphic excavation constitutes the backbone of serious archaeological research. As far as biblical scholarship is concerned, it is a well-known fact that various approaches of the historical-critical method involve the above-mentioned “literary excavation.” The latter includes things like source criticism and redaction criticism whereby the scholar of the biblical text excavates the latter starting from its nal canonical edition back to its original form so as to understand better its growth and meaning. Thus, stratigraphy is common to the study of both non-written archaeological evidence as well as to much literary evidence (as in the case of the biblical text), and one must take it into account when trying to study the relationship between text and artefact. However, there are some differences too between archaeological and literary excavation; thus, for example, it is selfevident that whilst archaeological layers can actually be seen and touched 1. G. I. Davies 1982, 213. 2. Williamson 1995, 432. 1

62

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

on a site, the various literary layers are largely inferred from certain clues found in the text, and very rarely is it easy to make such inferences. In this chapter, I shall focus my attention on the similarities and differences between archaeological and literary excavation whilst underscoring the fact that in both instances one is indeed sounding the depths in order to appreciate better the literary and material evidence at hand. As far as archaeology is concerned, an excavation must be a stratigraphic one for it to be worthy of being termed “scientic.”3 Such an excavation of a site involves peeling off the soil layers in the reverse order to that in which they were laid down, all the while keeping each layer separate (viewed as such on the basis of texture and colour) from another.4 Indeed, stratigraphic excavation has now become a universal rule in serious archaeological research, and the few references given here and in Chapter 2 should serve the reader well to grasp what it basically entails. What perhaps needs some more elucidation is the above-mentioned “literary excavation,” which in the context of this book is made with reference to the Hebrew Bible. It is commonly accepted that the textual stratigraphy of the Old Testament refers to the fact that a particular text can be composite, which practically means that it is either a conate, namely that it is made up as a result of two or more pre-existing texts having been joined together, or that it is supplemented by a later author. Such things as repetitions, contradictions and inconsistencies all go to show that a text is composite, whereas unity of style and content point towards its being a unity.5 It is clear that a large literary block having a “single narrative thread,” such as the Pentateuch, is not easy to unravel, although close analysis still supports the view that this long narrative is made up of various sources, none of which “contains every stage in the narrative thread.” Indeed, all of these sources assume that “Israel from early times had a narrative account of its origins which was consecutive, and which contained stories of the patriarchs, the exodus, and the settlement in the land of promise.”6 It has been shown that there are examples from ancient sources showing that redactors did conate texts from different sources whilst keeping duplicate narratives, including the resultant inconsistencies. Thus, for example, Nicholson points out that the Samaritan text of Exod 18 turns out to be a conation of Exod 18:13–21 with Deut 1:9–18 issuing in three discernible layers, namely these two sources 3. 4. 5. 6. 1

Chapman 1986, 8, 15. For a superb explanation of stratigraphic excavation, see Kenyon 1961, 103. Rofé 1985, 132. Nicholson 1998, 130.

6. Sounding the Depths

63

and the resultant conated text; it is interesting to note that in some instances the redactor adds his own words in all these three blocks.7 Since textual stratigraphy is not as easily visible as the different layers of soil encountered in archaeological research are, it is well worth giving some examples of the intricacies involved in the former. The examples which follow are simply adduced to underscore such intricacies; in no way are they meant to be an endorsement or otherwise of the results actually mentioned—one could argue about the validity of some of these results, but what turns out to be incontrovertible is the fact that textual layers do exist in the Hebrew Bible. With respect to the conquest story relayed in the book of Joshua, Driver, for example, practiced textual stratigraphy when he concluded that chs. 1–12 are to be largely attributed to the JE stratum, whereas chs. 13–24 largely stem from P (the Priestly source); indeed, the JE layer of Joshua had been expanded by Dtr before being joined to the P layer of this book.8 With respect to the conquest story in the book of Judges, Simpson reconstructed a very rened stratigraphy to the point of actually seeing two different phases of J, namely what he called J1 and J2. Indeed, he concluded that the pre-deuteronomistic stratication of the conquest story was made up of the J stratum (made up of the aforementioned two phases) which was conated with the Elohist one. According to him, J1, which depended on the historical and legendary traditions of the southern tribes, was elaborated by J2, which largely depended on the northern traditions; the Elohist stratum indicates a rewriting and revision of Israel’s early history similar to that of J but it was dependent on northern traditions different to those used by J2.9 It was already pointed out above that textual stratigraphy is not simply tantamount to the conation of different sources. It is important to underscore the fact that a source can very well be “changed” in its transmission over the centuries through further editorial work and the insertion of glosses. Such a scenario is amply borne out by the cuneiform literature of the ancient Near East.10 Although the detection of the various literary strata in the Hebrew Bible is not that easy, one should not give up and it is important to underscore that one can argue about the 7. Nicholson 1998, 225. 8. Driver 1913, 104. 9. Simpson 1957, 2–3. 10. Tigay (1985a, 7) points out that “since cuneiform material was written on durable materials (unlike the perishable materials on which Israelite texts were written), earlier versions of these compositions also survived and were subsequently unearthed by archaeologists. It soon became possible to trace the history of some cuneiform compositions through several documented stages over a span of nearly two millennia.” 1

64

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

identication of these strata and about the related details, but not about the fact that they exist. Thus, for example, Nicholson points out that not everybody agrees that the Priestly source had existed as an independent separate narrative account and that some hold that “the Priestly material, which is more expansive then E, is likewise regarded as the work of an editor or editors of an already formed Pentateuch or Hexateuch. That is, Wellhausen’s ‘work of the four covenants’ (Q), or, as others termed it, the Priestly Grundschrift (PG), never existed.”11 This means that what turns out to be a moot question is not whether different literary strata exist, but how to account for their origin. Difculties such as these, which characterize the “literary excavation” of the Hebrew Bible, led to the discussion of whether one should continue to concentrate on the stratication of the biblical text (the diachronic approach) rather than on its nal form (the synchronic approach), irrespective of the latter’s genesis. The discussion is endless,12 although it should be pointed out that in reality the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, and even if one is bound to account for the nal form of a given text, one cannot escape the necessity of studying its background and genesis so as to be able to provide such an explanation.13 Indeed, the diachronic analysis of a text is indispensable, and it should lead to a better synchronic understanding of it.14 This is so similar to what obtains 11. Nicholson 1998, 196. 12. See, for example, the debate in de Moor 1995. 13. Barr already spelt out the fact that the two approaches are in fact complementary when he wrote (Barr 1995, 10) that “traditional “historical criticism” was never purely “diachronic”; indeed, it is probably impossible with texts to be purely diachronic. The historical critic started from the evidence of the existing text and used that evidence, “synchronic” evidence therefore, as evidence for the preferability of a reading that involved composition from different versions, redactions etc.” Brett (1991, 44) has shown that in fact even the “canonical criticism” of Brevard Childs, which is commonly viewed as a “synchronic” analysis of scripture entails, “recourse to diachronic reconstruction.” 14. As Nicholson (1998, 258) says: “What is required is rather a detailed study of the interweaving of the sources to determine what the redactor sought to achieve. We have to enquire how stories or literary complexes from originally discrete sources were intended to be read and understood when combined with one another. What signicance do passages newly acquire when juxtaposed with each other in the larger context created by the combination of the sources?” Although historical criticism is crucial, it should not get bogged down in the level of the origins of texts but it should move on to “an understanding of effects” (Barr 2002, 47). This parallels the situation in Hebrew philology, which used to be bogged down in etymology rather than in results; indeed, “things were explained if you knew what their origins were, and the origins were more important than the results” (p. 47). 1

6. Sounding the Depths

65

in the study of personality, where in the discussion about the role played by nature and nurture, the most reasonable solution seems to be that of giving equal weight to both; indeed, if one multiplies environment and heredity to obtain personality, it immediately becomes clear that if one gives the value of zero to one of these two variables the result would be zero.15 This means that environment and heredity play an equal role in accounting for our personality, and similarly the diachronic and synchronic appreciation of a text are equally important for it to be correctly appreciated. One very important but oft-forgotten principle in archaeological stratigraphy is known as “inverted stratigraphy” which helps to account for the origin of a layer, by trying to answer the question of how it came to be where it actually happens to be found. This also means that there could be a situation where—contrary to the general rule—a layer lying above another one could be earlier than the latter.16 If such an archaeological scenario is applied to the above-mentioned “literary excavation,” it becomes clear that even certain problems raised by the transmission and development of biblical texts can be much more easily appreciated. This means that besides applying the general and well-known rules of archaeological stratigraphy to the “literary excavation” of the Bible, the biblical scholar would also benet a great deal by keeping in mind the fact that a biblical text which lies “stratigraphically above” (namely, which—in literary terms—appears before) another one could actually be earlier than the latter. Such a state of affairs is very clearly illustrated by the well-known case of the rst two chapters of Genesis: it is common knowledge that Gen 1 (stemming from P) is in fact later than Gen 2 (stemming from J). Then there is also the situation of “possible traditional elements preserved within literary documents of a much later period.”17 There is one special point which needs some elucidation both with respect to archaeological and literary excavation, namely that, although it is an indisputable fact that layers do exist both in the ground and in a text, there are times when it is virtually impossible to disentangle the various minute pieces from each other. Such a situation obtains in archaeology when a particular layer actually contains small particles (such as pieces of charcoal) which are different from the main body of the layer, 15. Allport (1961, 68) writes: “Personality—or any of its subsystems, such as habit, trait, sentiment = f (heredity) × (environment). The two causal factors are not added together, but are related as multiplier and multiplicand. If either were zero there could be no personality.” 16. Franken (1976, 9) has admirably explained and illustrated this point. 17. Nicholson 1998, 35. 1

66

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

but which actually form part of it. This is clearly exemplied by the case when a large layer of debris consists of broken baked clay bricks, parts of smashed wooden beams, and pieces of charcoal. One can say that this one archaeological layer is like porridge: it is a single indivisible unit which is made up of different items having a different origin but which can now no longer be separated.18 The same situation is found in textual stratication. Thus, for example, the narrative of David’s unication of Judah and Israel “was inuenced by contemporary anti-Saul and antiBenjamin controversies, but also by later debates at the end of Solomon’s reign (during the ‘division’) and in the time of Josiah (during his ‘unication’). One can identify a number of elements, but the stratication and the weaving of traditions are such that analysis becomes extremely difcult.”19 The points discussed in this chapter show that it is a fact beyond any reasonable doubt that both archaeological and biblical research proceed via the unravelling of various layers. As far as textual stratigraphy is concerned, it is important to note two special hallmarks which do not obtain in the case of archaeology. First, there is the fact that although virtually all scholars accept that there is such a thing as “literary excavation,” the methods of viewing the literary layers vary quite considerably. Thus, for example, a particular biblical text could be seen as either stemming from two originally independent documents, or as one independent document which was later expanded by an editor. Such is the case with Josh 20, the critical analysis of which has led some to conclude that one original document (reected in the Septuagint version of this chapter) was later supplemented by an editor whose work gave rise to the Masoretic text of the chapter.20 Secondly, literary scholars leave the layers they study “undisturbed for others to nd and reinterpret.”21 This clearly constitutes a great advantage in that the data are always preserved in their pristine condition, contrary to the archaeological scenario where 18. I owe the “porridge” analogy to Mr Peter J. Parr, director of the excavations at Tell Nebi Mendu in Syria. 19. Liverani 2005, 317. See also Williamson (1998, 149), who had already said with respect to the “national” account of the emergence of Israel which was drawn up on the basis of various oral and written sources in the monarchic period that “the difculties of unpicking what belongs where will continue to be the subject of debate.” 20. Rofé (1985, 144) aptly writes: “In this respect, Joshua 20 actually supports the supplementary hypothesis, which prefers to see the formation of biblical literature as a gradual developmental process: layer on layer, stratum on stratum, continuing until the works reached their canonical form.” 21. P. R. Davies 2005, 123. 1

6. Sounding the Depths

67

the researcher must generally disturb (indeed destroy) the upper layers of soil so that those lying below may be found. Before concluding this chapter, it is worthwhile to present the main stratigraphic terms and/or concepts in archaeology with their corresponding literary ones: x The superimposed layers correspond to the additions/supplements made to an existing text. x The lls in pits correspond to the glosses in a text. x The phases of archaeological stratigraphy correspond to a second (or even further) edition of a source (for example, J1 and J2, mentioned above). x The inverted stratigraphy on a site parallels the situation where a text is physically located before another one, but it actually turns out to be later (thus, for example, Gen 1 is later than Gen 2) x A “porridge” type of layer corresponds to the various items in one textual layer which must have originally had a different source but which are now inextricably embedded in the given layer in such a way that the unevenness in it can no longer be adequately accounted for. This is a case when an author draws up a text relying on different bits and pieces of information which originally stem from different sources. This chapter should have made it clear that both text and artefact are to be seen in a developmental context. This inevitably implies that both the biblical and the archaeological scholar must be on the look-out for layers, so that these can be unravelled, thereby yielding a coherent story. Since each case must be studied on its own merits, in the next chapter an example of micro-biblical archaeology will be presented in order to illustrate in more detail the methodological issues dealt with thus far.

1

Chapter 7

MICRO-BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: A CLOSER “READING” OF TEXT AND ARTEFACT

The foregoing chapters show that the methodological issues involved in the relationship between textual and non-written archaeological evidence constitute a complex and unresolved problem, and that if justice is to be done to any historical reconstruction, both types of evidence must be taken into account after each one is assessed separately. In this chapter, I shall focus my attention on Josh 2:15 purporting to show how text and artefact can be made to work hand in hand without losing their identity— they turn out to be undivided and yet distinct. However, before discussing this text, I shall mention in a general way some more examples of biblical archaeology further to those provided elsewhere thus far in this book. I purport to show how archaeology (including inscriptional evidence as far as these general examples are concerned) can help us understand better various difcult sections of the Hebrew Bible, especially when scholars try to get at the historical information found there. A critical reading of the biblical text shows that there are discrepancies between a surface reading of the Bible and a close reading of it. Indeed, the difference between the surface account of the biblical text and “the events as they really happened”1 is sometimes great, and archaeological research can help us to appreciate better such a state of affairs and to get at the relevant historical events. It has become somewhat of a cliché to claim that the Early Iron Age highland villages of Palestine linked with the emergence of ancient Israel there were populated by local pastoral nomads. However, this is highly 1. Barr 2002, 41, where he also very aptly states that “the biblical narrative account is of the greatest importance, but it belongs to story, to literary form, it is the story as told in the text, whether true or not, ction or fact, reliable or unreliable, legend, myth or history. History is about what really happened. It may not be able to tell us precisely, denitively or incontrovertibly what really happened; but what really happened is the assumed standard by which it operates.” 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

69

improbable because an archaeological understanding based on the relevant anthropological knowledge shows that “in symbiotic relations the pastoral component rarely exceeds 10 to 15 per cent of the total population. Given the decline of sedentarists in Canaan throughout the Late Bronze Age, it seems unlikely that most of the Iron Age settlers came from indigenous pastoralist backgrounds.”2 The numbers simply do not square. On the contrary, the population estimates for the highlands of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age, the twelfth century B.C.E., and the eleventh century B.C.E., demonstrate that “there is no way that natural increase alone could account for the ten-fold growth in population in Iron I—not even if every family produced 50 surviving children! There must have been a very sizeable population increment from somewhere else, and early on.”3 Admittedly, this population could have largely come from elsewhere in Canaan. However, the scenario just described could also perhaps help us to understand better the claims of the Hebrew Bible that Israelite tribes settled in Canaan after having lived as nomads in the deserts around this region. Noth thinks that Israel’s point of origin before entering Canaan lay in the southern part of east Jordan.4 Obviously, all this does not militate against the probability, mentioned above in Chapter 2, that the majority of those forming part of ancient Israel were autochthonous to the land of Canaan. Archaeology also helps us to understand better the overall route mentioned in the biblical texts with reference to those Hebrew groups who entered Canaan from outside this region. Midianite pottery had its centre of production in north-west Arabia, and it was distributed in the Negeb, in the Arabah Valley, as well as in Khirbet Feinan (namely Punon, which is mentioned in Num 33:42), a copper mining centre in the Jordanian Arabah. This “ts rather nicely” with the place and the route of movement of a group of itinerant metal smiths,5 whom one could link with the Kenites, who seem to have been related to the Midianites, and both of whom were associated with the Hebrews. Indeed, Jethro/Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law, is called “the priest of Midian” in Exod 3:1, whilst he is identied as a Kenite in Judg 1:16 and 4:11. Now, the Kenites seem to have been somehow linked with nomadic or semi-nomadic metal smiths, and this is supported by their well-known marginal status in Israel. Indeed, “the marginal status of the Kenites also supports this hypothesis [that the Kenites were connected with metalworking], as marginality 2. 3. 4. 5. 1

Stager 1998, 139. Dever 2003, 157. Noth 1954, 74; see also p. 54. Stager 1998, 148.

70

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

is characteristic of metalworking groups in many traditional societies throughout the Middle East and Africa.”6 Moreover, the Midianite pottery just mentioned ts the trail of the exodus from Egypt and entry into Canaan of the Hebrews very well, and it is interesting to note that its oruit falls exactly in the period when biblical scholars date these events.7 All this could hardly be coincidental, and thus Midianite pottery provides another example of how archaeology can help us to appreciate better certain historical claims of the Hebrew Bible which might have otherwise been too easily dismissed as pure ction. The biblical texts which mention Jabin, the king of Hazor, can now be elucidated better thanks to archaeological research. The discovery of a cuneiform text in Old Babylonian which was unearthed at the site of Hazor shows that the mention of Jabin in the Bible “can now be seen as a possible historical memory of Canaanite kings at Hazor in the Middle– Late Bronze Age.”8 Various inscriptions which were retrieved in archaeological excavations in the Near East also help us to appreciate the fact that the biblical texts are probably referring to two and not to one king named Jabin. The name Jabin in Josh 11:1 and Judg 4:1 does not seem to constitute a doublet; indeed, most probably we are dealing with Jabin I and Jabin II respectively, and this can be better understood in the light of the many inscriptions of the ancient Near East. It was common practice in the ancient Near East to nd different kings with the same name. Thus, for example, there were Niqmad I and Niqmad II, and Ammishtamru I and Ammishtamru II at Ugarit, whilst at Hatti there were Suppiluliumas I and Suppiluliumas II, as well as Mursili I and Mursili II.9 In the Bible, Josh 11:1 very probably refers to Jabin I when Hazor was “head of all those kingdoms.” On the other hand, the mention of Jabin in the book of Judges seems to indicate a different Jabin, namely Jabin II who is variously described as “king of Canaan, who reigned at Hazor” (Judg 4:2), as “king of Hazor” in Judg 4:17, and as “king of Canaan” in Judg 4:23–24. Such a scenario could be accounted for by viewing Jabin II as having had to rule from elsewhere in the Galilee after Joshua had destroyed Jabin I’s Hazor. Indeed, Jabin II would have “kept 6. McNutt 1993. 7. Stager 1998, 148. 8. Dever 1998, 244, and references there. It is interesting to note that “the Mari letters of the Old Babylonian period mention an “Ibni-addu, king of Hazor,” possibly the same king as that mentioned on the Hazor tablet. Whether the biblical writers and editors knew either the Mari or Hazor Bronze Age literary traditions directly is beside the point; they knew something genuinely historical” (p. 244 n. 10). 9. Kitchen 2003, 184–85. 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

71

the style of king of the territory and kingdom of Hazor, and used mainly the wider title “king of Canaan” to emphasize the continuance of their [Jabin I and Jabin II] former historic role.”10 The text in 1 Sam 13:21 contains a hapax, namely the word pîm, which was not understood by biblical scholars until archaeology came to their rescue. The note in the margin in the Jewish Study Bible with reference to this word aptly points out that “the word pim occurs only here. Its meaning became clear when stone weights inscribed with this word were unearthed,” and in the relevant footnote we are told that a pîm is the equivalent of “two-thirds of a shekel,” which turns out to be 0.667 shekels or 7.61 grams.11 In this particular case, archaeology has also helped scholars with dating problems of the text in question, since we know that the pîm stone weights came into use in the eighth century B.C.E. and that they disappeared in 586/587 B.C.E. at the latest.12 This means that as a source for the later redactors, 1 Sam 13:21 cannot predate the eighth century B.C.E., and that since it purports to describe matters relative to the Early Iron Age we are probably dealing with an anachronism in the sense that the author of this text called a weight of the Early Iron Age by the name of a weight which came into use only in the eighth century B.C.E. The examples mentioned above show how archaeology can help us to understand better, or indeed even to unravel, some difcult biblical texts. I shall now focus on Josh 2:15 to show in detail how text and artefact can throw light on each other provided that each of them is rst critically analysed separately. Joshua 2:15 forms part of the well-known story of Rahab the prostitute, describing how she let down through the window of her house the spies whom Joshua had sent to Jericho, thus allowing them to make their escape. At rst sight this text seems to be straightforward, but a close reading of it shows that this is not so. Indeed, the more one tries to unravel this text, the more one realizes that the results of both textual and archaeological research must be taken into account, if any proper understanding of it is to be gained. According to the Masoretic text, Josh 2:15 reads: 10. Kitchen 2003, 213, where he also points out a parallel with the case of Assurballit II who was known as king of Assyria even after he had lost Assyria’s heartland and retreated to Harran, as well as a parallel with the kings of the Intermediate periods in Egypt who ruled only either in the North or in the South but who kept the title “lord of both lands” and “king of south and north Egypt.” 11. Berlin and Brettler 2004, 585, 2105. 12. Dever 1998, 245. 1

72

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology wattôridm baÜebel be!ad haÜallôn kî bêth beqîr haÜômh ûbaÜômh hî  yôšbet

The New Revised Standard Version translates this verse thus: “Then she let them down by a rope through the window, for her house was on the outer side of the city wall and she resided within the wall itself.” The rst stich of the Hebrew text is clear, but the second one is problematic. To start with, there is the fact that in this second stich two different Hebrew words are used for “wall,” namely qîr and Üômh; indeed the real crux lies in the phrase beqîr haÜômh, and it is precisely this phrase which various translators render quite differently. As just pointed out, the New Revised Standard Version translates it as “on the outer side of the city wall,” whilst other translators provide a version which at times is totally different. The following eight different translations of the phrase in question differ considerably from the rendering of the New Revised Standard Version: …on the surface of the wall…13 …in der Wand der Stadtmauer…14 …into the city wall…15 …on an angle of the wall…16 …between the double walls…17 …in the city wall…18 13. Friedeberg 1913, 39. Friedeberg reminds us that Üômh is the term generally used for a city wall, but with respect to qîr he writes that it indicates a “wall especially as at surface, and more usually for wall of house or chamber.” At Josh 2:15 Friedeberg translates beqîr haÜômh as “on the surface of the wall,” referring to “the custom of building houses on the walls of the city,” a custom which “still obtains in the East” (p. 39). 14. Noth 1952, 24; Noth provides no explanation for this translation. 15. Soggin 1972, 35; Soggin offers no explanation for this translation. 16. Miller and Tucker 1974, 26. The only comment on the translation offered is that “her [Rahab’s] house apparently was built against the wall of the city, since she could let them escape on a rope through her window” (p. 32), but no explanation is offered as to why qîr should be rendered by “angle.” 17. Boling 1982, 148, where he also reminds us that literally the phrase in question means “in the wall of the wall.” Boling offers no philological explanation for his translation, but he does propose one archaeological solution, namely that “the expression seems to refer to defensive fortications of the casemate type…” (p. 148). 18. T. Butler 1983, 25. Butler offers no philological or archaeological explanation for his translation of the phrase under examination; indeed, his rendering of the whole second stich of Josh 2:15, namely “…because her house was in the city wall. Thus she was living in the wall,” is virtually pleonastic (p. 25; see also pp. 27, 65, 66). 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

73

…part of the city wall.19 …on the face of the wall…20

The differences between the foregoing eight translations of the phrase beqîr haÜômh, as well as that of the New Revised Standard Version, need to be accounted for. The word Üômh presents no problem at all; it normally signies a defensive wall, whether around a building, a vineyard, a temple, or a city; indeed, it often denotes a city wall.21 It is the word qîr that is problematic. Generally, it refers to the wall of the rooms of a building; however, in Middle Hebrew this word could mean “hem,” “edge,” or “edging.”22 Indeed, Jastrow provides two basic groups of meanings for qîr I, namely “1) wall, recess, chamber” and “2) rim, border of mats.”23 Indeed, Levy explicitly states that even in Biblical Hebrew qîr II means “Saum, Rand, eig. Umzäunung.”24 Thus, two of the basic meanings of qîr are linked to the idea of an edge and to that of a hollow. With respect to this latter meaning, the Hebrew verb qûr I, meaning “to dig,” can be linked to the Arabic qra (qwr) II, which means “to make a circular hole,” “to hollow out”; indeed, Ugaritic qr meaning “a well or a spring”25 is not that far removed from the aforementioned meaning of qîr in the sense of “recess, chamber.” It is highly probable that this is what led Fuerst to list “depth of walls” as one of the meanings of qîr, precisely with reference to Josh 2:15.26 The depth of a wall could very well signify a hollow between the two faces of a wall. The foregoing survey of the possible meanings of the word qîr allows the translator various options when it comes to rendering it in English; in Josh 2:15 the option seems to lie between two basic meanings, namely that of “edge” and that of “hollow/chamber”; it is self-evident that in this context the meaning of “wall” is to be excluded. However, the textual student has no means of deciding which one of the two meaningful translations is to be preferred. It is in this context that it would be helpful to refer to the relevant results of Palestinian archaeology in order to 19. Madvig 1992, 261. Madvig offers no philological explanation for his translation; however, he provides an archaeological comment when he says that “houses, such as Rahab’s constructed within the wall have been discovered by archaeologists in the ruins of ancient Jericho” (p. 263 and reference there). 20. Nelson 1997, 37. Nelson offers no explanation for his translation. 21. Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm 1994, 298. 22. Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm 1996, 1099. 23. Jastrow 1950, 1368. 24. Levy 1889, 302. 25. Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm 1996, 1090. 26. Fuerst 1867, 1236. 1

74

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

establish what type of fortied walls the text of Josh 2:15 could be referring to and thereby to be able to understand better what the meaning of qîr is in this text. For the purposes of this study it is not relevant to investigate whether the story in Josh 2 is historically true or not, since the main point at issue is that textual and archaeological evidence should work hand in hand even when a story is ctional, since in this manner it would be understood better. However, this does not mean that there could not be any historical elements in Josh 2.27 Be that as it may, it is certainly necessary to know which period the story is referring to. Joshua 2:15 deals with events that are alleged to have taken place in the period of the “Conquest,” which is commonly ascribed to the end of the thirteenth or to the beginning of the twelfth century B.C.E. As far as the complex problem of the date of the composition of the book of Joshua is concerned, it is generally agreed that its nal edition took place in the sixth century B.C.E. This means that Josh 2:15 could either be referring to those fortied walls obtaining in Palestine towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, or it could be anachronistically reecting those in use some time during the Iron Age, but not later than the sixth century B.C.E. There are three important types of fortication walls to take note of with reference to the aforementioned span of time and in connection with Josh 2:15. The rst point which needs to be underscored is the fact that frequently during the Late Bronze Age, “the fortications of the previous period were reused after being repaired.”28 Such fortications did not necessarily imply the presence of a solid wall; indeed, it often happened that some of the buildings were laid at the edge of a tell with their outer walls running around the mound and thereby constituting the defensive system of a city or town.29 This system is exemplied at Tell Beit Mirsim, 27. It is interesting to note that with reference to Josh 2:15, Noth came to the conclusion that the “house of Rahab” stood either for a family thus named which carried on prostitution from generation to generation, or for the name of a brothel which later became a personal name. He argues that the historical information about Rahab’s house is established aetiologically in Josh 2 and 6; indeed, “jenes Haus [of Rahab] in einem noch stehendend Stück der Stadtmauer des ehemaligen Jericho mit einem Fenester nach außen” would have been known to the author of the story in Josh 1:16:27 (Noth 1952, 23; see also 29, 31, 41, 43). 28. Baumgarten 1992, 145. 29. Baumgarten 1992, 145. It is important to note that “in the Egyptian monuments showing Canaanite cities we can identify windows—in a solid wall there are no windows!” (p. 145 n. 15 and references there). Thus the windows were located in the rear walls of the houses built at the edge of the Late Bronze Age mounds in Palestine, but one need not thereby conclude, as Fritz (1994, 37) does, that the 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

75

where Stratum C, dating to the Late Bronze Age, yielded only a small length of wall ca. 2.5 m wide just SW of the east gate; otherwise the old Middle Bronze Age wall was cleared and then above it there was “a defense line consisting chiey of the outer walls of houses built along the edge of the summit. But the massive battered wall of the Middle Bronze Age could have served as a defense wall once it had been cleared of debris and repaired.”30 An even clearer example occurs at Tell Batash, where the N. Wall of Building 315, which was in use also in the fourteenth century B.C.E., was found on the edge of the mound providing the outer defence of the town;31 indeed, “no space was left for a city wall, nor was such a wall discovered in the sections along the slope of the mound.”32 Another type of fortication wall in Palestine which could throw light on the comprehension of Josh 2:15 is the one which incorporates the broad room at the back of the well known “Israelite House,”33 which is a hallmark of the Iron Age domestic architecture. At certain sites, as in Beersheba for example, there are domestic buildings of the ninth/eighth century B.C.E. which are set against the wall of the city in such a way that “the broad room at the end of the house”34 in fact constitutes the empty space of a casemate wall. The latter is commonly taken to mean a wall which is made up of two parallel walls with a hollow space between them. However, it is important to distinguish carefully between a casemate and a caisson. The latter is a box or a compartment which is found with a ll in it, and therefore the chamber between the parallel walls is not used for anything for the simple reason that a caisson is geared to strengthen a mention of a window in Josh 2:15 necessarily implies that the narrator must have had the Monarchic period in mind, a time when casemate walls were popular with their cubicles actually being used as the rear broad room of the houses. As already mentioned, a window could be located in the rear wall of a house built at the edge of a tell and overlying a wall from an earlier period (see below for a more detailed discussion of this point). 30. Albright 1993, 179. 31. Mazar 1997a, 59. 32. Mazar 1997a, 66. It is important to note that the northern end of a street at the edge of the mound was blocked by a wall which was in fact the continuation (westwards) of the northern wall of Building 315 and which closed the gap between this building and another one to its west with the result that it created “a continuous solid constructional line in lieu of a fortication wall” (p. 71; see also Mazar 1997b, plan P/S 15). 33. This is also commonly known as the four-room or three-room house. 34. Wright 1985a, 72; 1985b, 74 g. 226. Tell Beit Mirsim provides a similar example (Wright 1985b, g. 59 A). 1

76

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

wall for defensive/military purposes. On the other hand, excavations have shown that in a casemate wall the space between the two parallel walls is not lled in so that this hollow can be used for storage and domestic installations.35 The example just mentioned from Iron Age Beersheba constitutes one example of how the cubicle of a casemate wall was “incorporated into the rear section of a residence,”36 although one should not forget the straightforward cases of casemate walls which stand on their own as independent structures, as at Hazor where a street lay between a casemate wall and the nearby houses.37 Besides the aforementioned examples from Beersheba and Tell Beit Mirsim where the broad room at the rear of the “Israelite House” constitutes the cubicle of a casemate wall, there are also cases of Iron Age houses which are not built into this type of wall but against it, as is the case of the early tenth-century B.C.E. houses at Beth Shemesh.38 Although in Palestine casemate walls were introduced at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.E.,39 this does not alter the fact that such walls became popular only from the tenth century B.C.E. onwards.40 At this point it is important to link the points discussed thus far with Josh 2:15, keeping in mind that the basic question is whether the author of this text was relaying architectural information which was handed over to him from times past in the Late Bronze Age, or whether he was actually projecting back into this period the defensive type of walls with 35. Aurenche 1977, 43, 46. However, caissons can also be used as “structural foundations,” as in Samaria (Herzog 1997, 320). 36. King and Stager 2001, 232. 37. Herzog 1997, 320. 38. Wright 1985b, g. 59 B. Unfortunately, the example from Beth Shemesh is fraught with difculties and when one examines carefully the illustration just referred to as well as the original reports, one realizes that the evidence is not that clear. Shiloh produces an illustration with reference to the early tenth-century B.C.E. complex at Beth Shemesh (Shiloh 1978, 40 g. 4); however, he himself says in connection with this latter illustration that “an examination of the plan of Beth Shemesh is even more difcult” (p. 40). In his n. 8, Shiloh (p. 40) refers to a map in E. Grant’s Ain Shems Excavations (Grant 1931–32, map, Areas S/V–26/29; cf. also Grant and Wright 1939, g. 1; 23–26). However, the aforementioned map is nowhere to be found in Grant 1931–32 and the folder of maps for this publication (Parts I–II combined) does not seem to exist—at least not in the copies I inspected at the Sackler Library (University of Oxford)! As far as the reference to g. 1 in Grant and Wright 1939 is concerned, it hardly has any bearing at all to the map presented by Shiloh (1978, g. 4). The basis of g. 4 in Shiloh’s study (1978) is thus unclear. 39. Hazor and Shechem have both produced casemate walls dating to between 2000 B.C.E. and 1550 B.C.E. (Weippert 1977, 212). 40. Weippert 1977, 212. 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

77

which he was familiar during the Iron Age. The events narrated in Josh 2 refer to the “Conquest” period and they are therefore usually viewed (whether they are historically true or not41) as reecting the culture which obtained in Palestine towards the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. This would lead one to think that the wall referred to in the text would be of the type common on those mounds where the walls of the houses built at the edge of the towns or cities constituted the defensive city wall. However the answer is not that simple, since it is equally possible for the Iron Age author and/or editor to have had in mind the defensive systems obtaining in his day which he would have anachronistically projected onto a narrative which dealt with events which were alleged to have taken place in much earlier times, namely towards the end of the Late Bronze Age. The answer to this question is important because it would lead one to decide whether Josh 2:15 is saying that Rahab’s house was built on or within the city wall. One way to decide which of the two foregoing options is the more probable is to ascertain whether the Masoretic text of Josh 2:15 contains any glosses with reference to Rahab’s house indicating that a later copyist and/or editor felt the need to specify certain issues regarding this matter. It so happens that the whole of Josh 2:15b is missing in the Septuagint and it turns out to be a gloss which purports to explain to the reader why Rahab could have let down the spies through her window so that they make their escape from the city unnoticed. This fact had led Holmes to conclude that Josh 2:15b functions as a gloss to Josh 2:15a and that as far as the words it contains are concerned, “no satisfactory reason can be offered for the omission of them by LXX if they were before the translator.”42 This also means that the Hebrew Vorlage used by the Septuagint translators was different from and shorter than the Hebrew text transmitted by the Masoretes.43 The overall upshot is that a later copyist and/or editor felt the need to explain to his Iron Age readers something about the houses and city walls of Late Bronze Age Canaan as described in some earlier copy of Josh 2:15. Furthermore, the phrase baÜebel is missing in the Septuagint version of Josh 2:15a and it too could have functioned as an explanatory note for later readers.44 Thus 41. Narratives can be ctional or historical. See p. 68 and n. 1 there. 42. Holmes 1914, 10. 43. Holmes 1914, 14. 44. The omission of baÜebel in the Septuagint version of Josh 2:15a is taken by Holmes (1914, 21) to be the result of an “accident.” Nelson (1997, 37, 39), however, sees the presence of this phrase in the Masoretic text version as a gloss stemming from this version itself. Be this as it may, it does not alter the fact that Josh 2:15b is almost certainly a gloss added by a later copyist/editor, as shown above. 1

78

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

originally, Josh 2:15 would have simply read “Then she let them down through the window.” Possibly the phrase “by a rope” in Josh 2:15a, and most probably all of Josh 2:15b, were meant as explanatory notes for later readers45 who had no knowledge of the defensive system of cities and towns and of the location of houses near the defensive walls which obtained in Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. Out of those mentioned above, which type of city walls and houses nearby would have been foreign to an Iron Age audience in Palestine? In view of the evidence marshalled above, it seems that the Iron Age inhabitants of Palestine would not have been acquainted with those cities whose walls were made up (at least partially) of the back walls of houses built at the edge of the city mounds. Indeed, the aforementioned evidence also shows that from the tenth century B.C.E. onwards people in Palestine were familiar with houses whose rear broad room formed the cubicle of a casemate wall system. When all this is seen in the light of the aforementioned gloss in Josh 2:15b, it becomes clear that the earliest version of Josh 2:15 (namely Josh 2:15a), which says that Rahab let down the spies through the window of her house, would have been easily understood by the original readers. However, the gloss also indicates that this fact needed to be explained to a later audience living during the Iron Age, and specically at any time between the tenth century B.C.E. (when casemate walls became the popular type of city wall in Palestine) and the sixth century B.C.E. (the probable period when the book of Joshua received its current draft). In view of this, it becomes clear that the gloss purports to provide information that was unknown to people living in the period just mentioned. If the window mentioned in Josh 2:15a was to be found in the wall of the rear room of the second oor of a four-room house located above the broad room at the back of the house on the ground oor, with this latter room forming the cubicle of the casemate city wall, the readers of this text would not have needed any gloss to make the meaning clear. This means the Josh 2:15a must have implied a defensive system and house construction that had been forgotten by the tenth century B.C.E., namely that the outer wall of Rahab’s house (which had a window in it) formed part of the defensive belt at the edge of the city mound and that it was built on the reused wall (of the Middle Bronze Age), as was com45. However, this fact does not warrant the conclusion that the Masoretic text offers “a conated doublet of two alternate explanations: ‘for her house was on the face of the wall’ and ‘for she was living inside the wall’ ” (Nelson 1997, 39). The translation of Josh 2:15 presented later on in this chapter shows that there is no need to postulate “a conated doublet” as far as the gloss in Josh 2:15b is concerned. 1

7. Micro-Biblical Archaeology

79

mon practice during the Late Bronze Age in Palestine, as already shown above. It has been claimed that it is “extremely unlikely” that Jericho had any town walls during the Late Bronze Age.46 However, it is important to note that the domestic structure known as the “Middle Building,” which was found above a “streak” dating from the end of the Middle Bronze Age, was associated with pottery dating from about the fourteenth/early thirteenth century B.C.E. and that stratigraphically it was in the same position as a nearby structure “rmly dated to the second half of the Late Bronze Age, which was also associated with LBIIA pottery.”47 Moreover, this “Middle Building” was located at the edge of the tell and it had thick walls indicating that “it could be defended if necessary.”48 All this evidence, albeit paltry, shows two things about Late Bronze Age Jericho: (1) that in fact it had thick-walled houses built at the edge of the mound with the walls of their rear rooms functioning also as a defensive wall, and (2) that it is probable that the outer walls of such houses were built on the defensive walls stemming from the previous period, namely the Middle Bronze Age.49 It is clear that it has to remain an open question as to whether these houses had one or two stories. 46. Bienkowski 1986, 124. 47. Bienkowski 1986, 117. 48. Bienkowski 1986, 118. 49. The issue of the extent of habitation at Jericho during the Late Bronze Age is a complex and debatable question, and the same is true with respect to the problem of whether the town had a defensive wall at this time. The fact that a modern surface was found lying below the level of a oor of a Late Bronze Age structure provided sufcient evidence that Late Bronze Age houses must have been eroded (Kenyon 1957, 261). The erosion must have been quite extensive in view of the fact that “over most of the tell even the houses of the certainly popular Middle Bronze Age town have vanished, and only levels of the Early Bronze Age remain” (p. 261). This clearly leaves open the question as to whether there was any defensive wall at Jericho during the Late Bronze Age. Bienkowski (1986, 124–25) opts for an “unwalled” Jericho in view of the fact that the majority of Late Bronze Age settlements in Palestine were unfortied. However, this is not a cogent argument, especially when one considers how extensive the erosion at Jericho was; indeed, “it will be remembered that the summit of the Middle Bronze Age rampart only survives in one place. The Late Bronze Age town must either have re-used this, or a new wall may have been built above it, so nothing remains of it” (Kenyon 1957, 262). Although there is no hard evidence for this latter statement, the aforementioned erosion does seem to support it. Moreover, the above-mentioned information about the “Middle Building” is a further indication that most probably the town of Jericho during the Late Bronze Age had a belt of houses at the edge of the mound built on top of the walls of the previous period. 1

80

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

The archaeological and textual evidence marshalled in this chapter shows that it is probable that Josh 2:15 is referring to Rahab’s house as a typical Late Bronze Age house, the outer wall of which was built at the edge of the mound and directly above the wall of the Middle Bronze Age. This means that out of all the possible translations mentioned above for the Hebrew word qîr, that of “edge” is the most likely one. In this case, Josh 2:15 could be translated as follows: Then she let them down by a rope50 through the window (because her house was at the edge of the city wall—indeed,51 she used to dwell on the city wall).

The issues discussed in this chapter have provided some examples of “Biblical Archaeology,” with a focus on the problem of the location of the house of Rahab in Josh 2:15. “Biblical Archaeology” is still a viable discipline, provided that the archaeological and biblical evidence is rst separately analyzed according to the established rules of the respective eld of study. However, the discussion about Josh 2:15 has also shown that at some point the results of textual analysis must be brought to bear on the archaeological conclusions relative to the problem at hand and vice-versa within the context of the “self-correcting process of learning” mentioned in Chapter 5. This is what guarantees the most likely interpretation of a text and the best choice out of the various possibilities offered by the results of archaeological and textual analyses, each of which should be carried out separately in the rst instance.

50. Literally “with the rope.” 51. Analyzing the ww before baÜômh as an emphatic particle. For the use of ww as an emphatic particle, see, for example, Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1906, 252; Waltke and O’Connor 1990, 649, 652, 653; Koehler, Baumgartner, and Stamm 1994, 258, and Joüon and Muraoka 2006, 613. 1

Chapter 8

MACRO-BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: EARLY TRADITIONS IN LATER COMPOSITIONS

The example of Josh 2:15 discussed in the previous chapter is an illustration of what one could term a case of biblical archaeology at the micro level. The discussion brought the relevant textual and artefactual evidence to bear on just one biblical verse, showing how the two different types of evidence are rst analyzed separately and how the interpretations of each type might then be correlated with each other to provide an interpretation of the text which turns out to be more probable. However, it is clear that biblical archaeology, which can be explained as one particular case of the methodical correlation between textual and artefactual evidence, cannot be restricted to the micro level. There are many cases where the correlation between text and artefact occurs on a wider and larger plane. In this chapter, I shall focus my attention on a number of such cases. However, in the rst instance it is important to recall the well-known challenge posed by those who claim that there is no historical evidence for pre-exilic Israel and to realize that such a challenge should not be taken lightly. In this context, one cannot ignore the claims made by P. Davies especially when he proposes that there were no pre-exilic traditions which could be developed in ancient Israel.1 Indeed, for Davies, tradition in ancient Israel is all post-exilic, its development taking place “over a matter of a few generations, and more or less simultaneously.” 1. With reference to the post-exilic society of Yehud, P. R. Davies writes that “there was no pre-existent history to be written about, no ‘tradition,’ and so various accounts had at rst to be invented, and only at a secondary stage were they reconciled and combined into a fairly coherent sequence of scrolls. This is not a trivial point. That there was no ‘national tradition’ to begin with is extremely important to understand. Such an absence follows from what I have said about the non-existence of ‘ancient Israel’ and explains many of the features of the biblical historiographical narrative that resulted” (P. R. Davies 1992, 132–33 [my italics]). 1

82

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

For Davies, this “is a model to which I hope scholars will devote…much attention in future.”2 Despite this, Davies does accept the fact that in our extant biblical texts there could be “older relics,” though for him such relics which stem from a period predating the biblical texts in which they are found are not an indication of “historical value or authenticity.”3 He correctly nds fault with those who impute to such relics the meaning that the later biblical writers had invested on them; however, I cannot see why Davies does not appreciate the fact that through the correct application of the historical-critical method scholars are able to distinguish various layers in any given biblical text and to pin down their corresponding social and religious contexts. Indeed, as was shown above in Chapter 6, the latest stratum in a biblical text has its own social and religious context, one that overlies the earlier strata, which had their own corresponding social and religious contexts. It is interesting to note that recently Davies wrote that it is only “some mischievous critics” who understand him as “denying that there ever was an ‘ancient Israel’.”4 And yet, even the critic who is not “mischievous” cannot help seeing a tension, if not a contradiction, with what Davies had written earlier on about the non-existence of ancient Israel.5 Be that as it may, I wholly agree with him when he writes “I hope that the ridiculous polarization of ‘minimalism’ and ‘maximalism’ can be forgotten.”6 Indeed, each case should be taken on its own merits, and this applies also to the appreciation of scholars and to the different claims which each of them makes. In the light of all this, I aim to present in this chapter various elements which show how biblical archaeology can also operate at the macro level. I intend to do this with special reference to the fact that various archaeological and biblical pieces of evidence indicate that post-exilic Israel did have a past before 586 B.C.E., and that in fact it treasured the memories it had of the story of its people before the exile. Different examples referring to various periods will be marshalled so that it can be seen more clearly that there is a convergence of evidence which indicates that at least a few traditions which were assembled in the post-exilic period had their origins before the exile. It is an established fact that the so-called minimalists view the stories about pre-exilic Israel as stemming from the Persian period at the earliest.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1

P. R. Davies 1992, 130. P. R. Davies 1992, 94, 95. P. R. Davies 2007, ix. See the reference in n. 1 above. P. R. Davies 2007, 176.

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

83

It is also a well-known fact that these scholars think that biblical literature intends to portray the rulers of Judah in this period as hailing from within this region, that is, as being indigenous. However, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction, for as Zevit rightly claims it is only in Chronicles that such an idea is prevalent. Indeed, “if the policy of biblical literature was to indigenize the ruling caste of Yehud and to provide them with an autochthonous identity, why is it that throughout the Bible, the non-autochthonous theme predominates, except in Chronicles, a book all scholars grant was written in the Persian period?”7 Admittedly, one is also faced with a text like that of Ezek 16:3, which provides a biography of Jerusalem and which underscores the fact that the origins of this city lie from within the land of Canaan. However, this text should be placed alongside the majority of the biblical texts which place Israel’s origins from outside Canaan and which in fact distinguish the Israelites from the local Canaanites.8 This problem is extremely complex and I have already shown elsewhere that it is possible to conclude that it seems that early Israel was mainly made up of various groups of hill country villagers originally indigenous to Canaan. However, the evidence also indicates that a small group of Hebrews joined these villagers after having been freed from slavery in Egypt and after having picked up Yahwism in the desert areas to the south-east of Canaan. They entered the land (bringing the Yahwistic faith with them) mainly in a peaceful manner, though at times they took part in military attacks.9

The non-indigenous origins of Israel are generally underscored in the Hebrew Bible, and a book like that of Hosea shows clearly that by the eighth century B.C.E.10 the theme of the bondage of the ancestors of the later biblical Israel and the freedom from such slavery by Yahweh was already an established tradition. Hosea 11:1 can be translated with Macintosh as follows: “When Israel was a lad, I loved him; and I called my son from Egypt.”11 The tradition of the freedom from bondage in Egypt echoes an original historical tradition stemming from the pre-exilic period, and in this context it is important to remember that in antiquity it was odd for a nation to proclaim the fact that its ancestors had been

7. Zevit 2001, 62. 8. See, for example, Deut 20:16–19. 9. Frendo 2004, 61. 10. The book of Hosea is dated to the eighth century B.C.E. See, for example, Macintosh 1997, lxxxiii. 11. Macintosh 1997, 436; see also 436–39. 1

84

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

slaves. This detail thus speaks on behalf of the historicity of the tradition of the bondage of the ancestors of Israel in Egypt. The distinction between pre- and post-exilic traditions in ancient Israel is also borne out by the works of Ezra–Nehemiah and the Chronicler. Williamson has shown clearly that such a distinction is upheld by the post-exilic view of the Law as being authoritative, which in fact means that it must have had some time of existence before it could have been thus considered. Indeed, in Ezra–Nehemiah we can already see a difference between “text and interpretation” to the extent that in this later postexilic phase we can already speak of “the use of Scripture.”12 It is useful to underscore the fact that the Chronicler treated his biblical and extrabiblical sources differently; indeed, he exercised “less freedom” when it came to making use of Samuel–Kings than when he drew upon extrabiblical sources. This could be viewed as a hint that for the Chronicler, Samuel–Kings “was in some way ‘more authoritative’ in his estimation, if only because it was undoubtedly the familiar version of his people’s history.”13 The same situation holds good for the Prophets and this shows that by the time of Ezra–Nehemiah and the Chronicler the bulk of scripture must have already been in circulation. Thus it is logical to assume that since this could not have happened overnight, the origins of the majority of the biblical traditions—at least orally—must have lain in the pre-exilic period. It is not only the larger post-exilic biblical corpora like the ones just mentioned which point towards the fact that there were biblical traditions that had their roots in the pre-exilic period. Indeed, sometimes even single verses from one of the post-exilic biblical texts can provide interesting evidence. Such is the case with Ezra 9:1 where we are told that Ezra is faced with a crisis which consisted of the fact that the people who had returned to Jerusalem had “not separated themselves from the peoples of the land” who had abhorrent practices which resembled “those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.” It is clear that a comparison is being drawn between the “peoples of the land” in the time of Ezra and those of the time of Joshua. The identity of the “peoples of the land” in the time of Ezra is an undecided question and it could very well be the case that this phrase is referring both to non-ethnic Hebrews as well as to those Jews who did not form part of the returnees.14 Be that as it may, the point that I would like to underscore here is the fact that a 12. Williamson 1988, 29. 13. Williamson 1988, 33. 14. Smith-Christopher 1994, 257. 1

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

85

parallelism is being drawn between the situation of the chosen people in the time of Ezra and the time of Joshua. Many of the people mentioned in Ezra 9:1 were no longer in existence in the time of Ezra, and there is no doubt that the mention of the Jebusites and the Perizzites constitutes one such example of anachronism. As Williamson aptly pointed out, the anachronistic list of the indigenous inhabitants of the land in Ezra 9:1 indicates that this verse seeks to present the community in Ezra’s time on lines which are parallel to those of the much earlier Israelite community in Joshua’s period. Indeed, this is a clear indication that the post-exilic community that had just returned to Jerusalem had a past to look up to,15 and that this past belonged to pre-exilic times, as is borne out by the fact that most of the people mentioned in Ezra 9:1 were no longer around in post-exilic times. Another interesting post-exilic biblical text which shows that the Jewish post-exilic community looked up to pre-exilic traditions is that of the well-known confession of the Israelites in Neh 9. As in Ezra 9:1, there is in Neh 9:8 a list of people, most of whom were no longer in existence after the exile, such as the Hittites, the Amorites, the Jebusites, the Perizzites, and the Girghashites. Moreover, this long confession also refers to the theme of the land, which had been promised to Abraham and which was to be inherited by his descendants.16 After retelling the story of the people, Nehemiah turns his attention from the past to the present, namely to the time of the communal confession, and in this context the nal verses of Neh 9, namely vv. 32–37, are very interesting. This section shows that at the time that this prayer was written in the early postexilic period the land was not lost but that it was still dominated by foreigners, and in this sense the “restoration” was not complete.17 Indeed, as Williamson has wisely said “it is precisely in the political realm that the greatest contrast with the pre-exilic period is to be found.”18 In other words, once again we can see that the post-exilic community had a history of its ancestors during the pre-exilic period and that ancient Israel cannot be viewed simply as a construct that was invented during the time of the Persian Empire. Second Maccabees 2:13–15 provides another interesting piece of textual evidence from Jewish literature which could have important chronological implications that go to show that the traditions of the Jewish community during the Persian and Hellenistic periods were in 15. 16. 17. 18. 1

Williamson 2007b. Neh 9:7–8. Williamson 2007b. Williamson 2007b, 168.

86

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

fact grounded in pre-exilic times. The precise date of the second book of Maccabees is not known; however, there is evidence which indicates that it could not have been complied before the second century B.C.E. This is so in view of the fact that the epitome of a ve-volume work by Jason of Cyrene, which constitutes one of the sources for this book, can be dated to anywhere from “around 124 to 63 BCE.”19 It has in fact been estimated that 2 Macc 2:13–15, which forms part of a letter that the residents of Judaea wrote to a certain Aristobulus and to the Jews in Egypt, was written shortly after 100 B.C.E.20 Verse 13 specically says that Nehemiah had founded “a library and collected the books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offerings.” Although the author of 2 Maccabees is not explicit about the books that he specically had in mind, this verse shows that such a collection of writings by Nehemiah had already been accomplished during the fth century B.C.E. Moreover, as VanderKam says, “it is tempting to see in these groupings” of books three important collections: (a) The historical and prophetic books; (b) the Psalms; and (c) Ezra. The reason for assuming that 2 Macc 2:13 could also be referring to Ezra is because it mentions the “royal letters having to do with offerings in the temple.”21 The upshot of all this is that since Nehemiah is credited with having founded a library in Jerusalem and with having collected the aforementioned books in the fth century B.C.E., it is highly unlikely that there would have been enough time for anybody to have composed all these books between the exile and Nehemiah’s time. On the contrary, it is more logical to infer that the very traditions relative to the early period of ancient Israel present in the historical and prophetic books had their origins prior to 587/586 B.C.E. On the literary level, it is also important to keep in mind the fact that the eighth-century B.C.E. prophets, such as Isaiah, were already acquainted with the Zion traditions, which were a theological motif that they did not construct but which they assumed and presupposed. Indeed, in Isaiah we nd the theme of “the house of David and other historical allusions that suggest an acquaintance with just such historical traditions as are found in the books of Samuel and Kings.”22 Although the historical books of the Hebrew Bible as well as the prophets and the psalms were written after the time of David and after Zion had been conquered by him, they dealt with the well-known Zion traditions differently. The prophetic 19. 20. 21. 22. 1

Doran 2001, 735. VanderKam 1994, 144. VanderKam 1994, 144. Roberts 2003, 170; see also 169.

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

87

books and the psalms took the choice of Zion/Jerusalem by Yahweh for granted, whereas the historical books, such as Samuel and Kings, incorporated the Zion traditions within the context of a very strong antiCanaanite polemic based on the theology present in Deuteronomy. The name “Zion” was Canaanite in origin and this is probably why this particular name, which refers to Jerusalem, is rarely found in the historical books, that is, in works that are imbued with the anti-Canaanite polemic of Deuteronomy. Books such as Samuel and Kings “were shaped by their commitment to guard Yahweh’s position as king of Israel by arguing that Yahweh was the one who chose David, and through David he chose Jerusalem.”23 The Zion traditions appeared and emerged in connection with four important events that are linked with David, namely his capturing Zion/Jerusalem,24 his bringing the ark of the covenant over there,25 his projecting to build a temple of Yahweh in this city,26 and nally, later on in his life, his buying the land where the temple would be sited.27 The important point to underscore is that the Zion traditions of the historical books which underlined Yahweh’s kingship over Israel through his having chosen David and Zion were very probably pre-exilic, since the idea of Yahweh as an imperial God is linked with the ancient customs found in the Near East, such as the elevation of Marduk which was associated with the elevation of Hammurabi and Babylon, which indicates “a linkage between the rise of the deity to divine kingship, the election of his human king, and the elevation of his royal city.”28 This Babylonian practice emerged prior to the time of Solomon and David and provides a suitable background for the Zion traditions found in the historical books, whilst making it highly probable that these traditions were of pre-exilic origin, indeed that they stemmed from the tenth century B.C.E.29 Besides the textual examples given above that indicate that various traditions in ancient Israel stemmed from the pre-exilic period, there are 23. Groves 2005, 1023; see also p. 1022. 24. 2 Sam 5:6–10; 1 Chr 11:4–9. 25. 2 Sam 6; 1 Chr 13; 1516. 26. 2 Sam 7; 1 Chr 17. 27. 2 Sam 24; 1 Chr 21. See Groves 2005, 1023. 28. Roberts 2003, 169. 29. As Roberts (2003, 169) says: “The most likely period for the creation of such an imperial ideology in Israelite history would be in the time of imperial expansion and consolidation under David and Solomon, when, if the Israelite accounts of this period in the books of Samuel and Kings have any merit, Yahweh did appear to dominate the gods of the surrounding nations and when the surrounding nations did in fact pay tribute to the Davidic king and his God.” 1

88

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

also various pieces of archaeological evidence which point in the same direction. In Exod 1:11, the name of the city Rameses without the use of “Pi” at the beginning of this place name is supported by the fact that there are various examples from New Kingdom Egypt where the writing of the name of the capital city is rendered without employing the initial “Pi.”30 Moreover, the site of Pi-Ramesses, namely of the Rameses of Exod 1:11, had been in use from ca. 1300 B.C.E. to 1100 B.C.E. and it was later replaced by nearby Tanis. It is important to keep in mind the fact that in Egyptian texts Tanis is never called Pi-Ramesses, and in practice this means that “if the writer of Exodus truly understood Raamses of Exod. 1:11 to refer to Tanis (as author [sic] of Ps. 78 thought), then why did he not simply write the Hebrew equivalent, Zoan?”31 This piece of evidence from Egyptian archaeology may be very small, but it is of great importance since it indicates very clearly that the tradition behind Exod 1:11 must have stemmed from the period when the Ramesside capital ourished, namely that it would have originated at some time between 1270 B.C.E. and 1100 B.C.E., making it virtually certain that this tradition is pre-exilic.32 The foregoing piece of evidence from Egyptian archaeology is not the only archaeological evidence which ies in the face of those who claim that ancient Israel had been an invention of the Persian period. The archaeology of Egypt, as well as that of the ancient Near East in general, including that of ancient Palestine in particular, indicate that ancient Israel could not have been invented in the post-exilic period. Thus, for example, Japhet reminds us of four basic archaeological artefacts which show that Israel was indeed an entity to be reckoned with before 587/ 586 B.C.E.33 By that time, Israel had already been referred to in four important sources of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Although each of these sources would deserve a discussion in its own merits for various reasons relative to the overall internal evidence of each of them, the basic and indisputable fact which needs to be mentioned here is that Israel was an entity known in the world of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East in pre-exilic times. Thus, sufce it here to mention the Merneptah Stele of 1207 B.C.E., the Tel Dan inscription of the ninth century B.C.E.,34 the inscription of 854 B.C.E. of Shalmaneser III, which 30. Hoffmeier 1999, 117–18, 130–31 n. 102. 31. Hoffmeier 1999, 118. 32. Hoffmeier 1999, 119. 33. Japhet 1998, 231. 34. When one does not depend on purely epigraphic considerations but also takes into account the general archaeological context, one is led to conclude that the Tel 1

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

89

knows of “Ahab the Israelite,” and last but not least the famous Mesha inscription of ca. 840 B.C.E. This means that by around the middle of the ninth century B.C.E. at the latest Israel had already been known and spoken of in Egypt, in Syria, in Assyria, and in Transjordan. The archaeology of the ancient Near East also helps us to understand better the models used to indicate the political relations between various sovereigns during the Bronze Age and to compare these models with those in use during the Iron Age. This helps us to appreciate the fact that the biblical authors, who could not have been active before the Iron Age, at the earliest, were aware of the ancient traditions of the Bronze Age which had been handed down to them and which lingered somewhat during the Iron Age. The Bronze Age people of the Levant made use of a familial model to describe political relations. Hence, “father” stood for someone politically superior, “son” indicated a sovereign who was politically inferior to another king; and nally the term “brother” was used to show that a king was the equal of another one. This familial model of the Bronze Age seems to have been no longer popular in the Levant during the Iron Age, when a “master–servant terminology” came into use; although this is still a “household-based” model, it is certainly “less vividly personal.”35 Thus, the old Bronze Age model was not very popular during the Iron Age, but echoes of it can still be found in the Hebrew Bible, where, for example, in 1 Kgs 9:13 Hiram addresses Solomon as “my brother.”36 This shows clearly beyond any reasonable doubt that we are once again dealing with a pre-exilic tradition that is embedded in narratives which were drawn up later on. It has become somewhat of a commonplace in biblical studies for scholars to be ever more conscious of the fact that early traditions can be worked on in later narratives, just like the aforementioned example in 1 Kgs 9:13. At this point it is interesting to note that this custom was also common in ancient Egypt and in the ancient Near East. Thus, for example, the famous story of Sinuhe, which is often quoted, is also found in duplicate texts on ostraca at Deir el-Medineh.37 And, as Richardson says, Dan inscription had better be dated to ca. 800 B.C.E.; indeed, more precisely one could even say that this inscription had “a display life between 796–791 BCE before it was broken down and recycled as building material during the Israelite renaissance at Dan” (Athas 2003, 317). 35. Schloen 2001, 262. 36. Schloen 2001, 262 n. 9. 37. As Wilson (1969, 18) points out, this story is found in multiple copies, and that “manuscripts are plentiful and run from the late Twelfth Dynasty (1800 B.C.) to the Twenty-First Dynasty (about 1000 B.C.). There are ve papyri and at least seventeen ostraca.” 1

90

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

“these show that there were attempts to set Sinuhe within the context of a later world and to resolve grammatical cruces, aims which feature prominently within biblical exegesis.”38 This aspect of placing an early tradition or literary work in the context of a later period is of importance when it comes to making historical considerations. A duplicate copy of the Merneptah stela39 shows that this literary piece had originated as a religious hymn and this very fact should make us wary when it comes to drawing historical conclusions with respect to the emergence of ancient Israel.40 In this particular instance, this does not mean that there is no historical kernel regarding the fact that there was an Israel to be reckoned with during the late thirteenth century B.C.E., but it certainly shows us that we might have to be content with only bits and pieces of evidence which act as pointers to the fact that there was a pre-exilic Israel with its own traditions which were then integrated into longer narratives in later periods. The main point is the fact that archaeology shows that in Egypt, in Israel, and in the rest of the ancient Near East it was common practice for early traditions to be re-worked in narratives which were drawn up later. When this phenomenon is applied to ancient Israel it becomes clearer that artefacts like the Tel Dan inscription, the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III, and the Mesha inscription, which were mentioned above, as well as the Merneptah stele itself, all show that we have evidence that, no matter how small, testies to the fact that ancient Israel is not an invention of the Persian period and that there was such a thing as a pre-exilic Israel.41 38. Richardson 2003. With respect to the ancient Near East, Richardson (2003, 3–4) says that “there are several Hittite and Akkadian texts which also show the range of change a literary narrative undergoes when evolving into traditional literature. Such examples, may well provide the context in which the scriptural narrative as we know it evolved.” 39. This stele commemorating Merneptah’s victory over the Libyans had been “discovered by Petrie in the ruins of Mer-ne-Ptah’s mortuary temple at Thebes. There is also a fragmentary duplicate in the Temple of Karnak” (Wilson 1969, 376). Wilson too is of the opinion that we should take into account the fact that the hymn on this stele “is rather a poetic eulogy of a universally victorious pharaoh. Thus it was not out of place to introduce his real or gurative triumph over Asiatic peoples in the last poem of the hymn. In that context we meet the only instance of the name ‘Israel’ in ancient Egyptian writing” (Wilson 1969, 376). Wilson’s observation is very important; however, it does not militate against the fact that there already was an entity called “Israel” in the late thirteenth century B.C.E. which was somewhere in Western Asia. 40. Richardson 2003. 41. Various scholars from different parts of the world dealt amply with this point in their contributions to the Oxford Old Testament seminar held between January 1

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

91

This conclusion is reinforced by the information which readers of the books of Judges, Samuel, and Kings gain about the Philistines and which tallies well with the results which the archaeology of the Levant yields with respect to this group of Sea People. The biblical books in question give us “a composite picture of the Philistines.”42 We do know from the Hebrew Bible that they came from the Aegean43 and that their culture and language were non-Semitic. Thus, for example, the word seren meaning “tyrant, lord,” which is used in the Hebrew Bible (see, for example, Judg 3:3; 16:30; 1 Sam 6:4), turns out to be a Philistine loanword.44 However, it should be pointed out that as far as this word is concerned, it seems to have been taken over in the Hebrew Bible only in the seventh century B.C.E. Seren is generally taken to be the equivalent of tyrannos, which is a Lydian word that seems to have entered the Greek language in the seventh century B.C.E. Indeed, the linguistic sequence is best explained as a “direct link” between these three words: Luwian tarwanis (a NeoHittite title used for rulers in the early rst millennium B.C.E.), Lydian tyrannos (which emerged in western Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.E., or even earlier), and Philistine seren, which crops up in the Bible also in the seventh century B.C.E.45 This led Finkelstein to the conclusion that very probably West Anatolian tyrannos found its way to Philistia (in the form of seren) via “Carian and Ionian mercenaries” serving “in the Egyptian army in the days of Psammetichus I, who most probably deployed them, among other places, in Philistia.”46 The Bible also shows us that the Philistines had a superior technology,47 that they had expansionist aims,48 and that they were concentrated on the southwest coast of Palestine.49 Moreover, the pertinent biblical books also teach us that the 2001 and June 2003. The papers were edited by John Day and published in 2004; as Day himself says in the Preface, “the purpose of this volume is to offer a critique of various aspects of the ‘everything is late’ school of thought in Old Testament studies that has been fashionable in some circles in recent years, not from any reactionary standpoint but from a thoroughly reasoned, critical point of view” (Day 2004: vii). 42. Dever 1998, 244. 43. In Amos 9:7 it is clearly stated that the Philistines came from Caphtor, namely the island of Crete. See also Jer 47:4. The Hebrew Bible also claims that the Philistines came from Egypt (see Gen 10:13–14 and 1 Chr 1:11–12), probably in view of the possibility that Greek mercenaries went to Philistia from Egypt in the seventh century B.C.E. (see Finkelstein 2002, 152). 44. Brown, Driver, and Briggs 1906, 710. 45. Finkelstein 2002, 136–37, and references there. 46. Finkelstein 2002, 137, where he refers to Herodotus 2.152. 47. Judg 1:19; see also 1 Sam 13:19–22. 48. 1 Sam 4–6. 49. Josh 13:3. 1

92

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

Philistines had a general tendency to acculturate themselves with the local inhabitants50 and that their cultural identity persisted until the end of the Judaean monarchy in 587/586 B.C.E.51 Indeed, it is important to note that in general “the Philistines cease to be mentioned by this name after the time of the Assyrians” and that “it is probable that in the ebb and ow of the nations over this land they were gradually absorbed and lost their identity.”52 The information found in the book of 1 Maccabees throws some interesting light on this issue. During the Maccabean wars, the inhabitants dwelling in Philistia took a stand against the Jews; however, there is no mention of “the Philistines” as a people; rather, we nd references to “the Philistine country”53 and “Azotus, a Philistine district.”54 This could very well be an indication of the fact that by the early Hellenistic period of Palestine, the Philistines had been virtually absorbed into other ethnic groups and that by this time they had lost their identity, although the areas they had once inhabited were still known as “Philistine.” This biblical picture of the Philistines matches the overall results of the archaeology of the southern Levant relative to this group of Sea People,55 whilst indicating that the traditions regarding them were embedded in the pre-exilic traditions which the Israelites inherited.56 Each of the points mentioned in the foregoing paragraph has been corroborated by the results of the archaeology of the southern Levant and one can see this exemplied in the major works on the Philistines and their culture.57 However, it is important to single out one particular point, namely that of the Philistine language and script. Although these two important cultural traits of the Philistines have not yet been completely grasped by scholars, still they do provide us with a few very interesting and important facts, facts which throw important light on the conclusions drawn on the basis of the points discussed in the preceding paragraph, whilst at the same time providing a further conrmation for them. Excavations at the Philistine city of Gath have yielded an inscription showing that by the ninth century B.C.E. the Philistines at this city had already adopted a Canaanite script. The inscription consists of eight signs on one line with one or two 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 1

1 Sam 5:2–5. Jer 47:4. See also Dever 1998, 244. G. A. Barton 1963, 766. 1 Macc 3:41. 1 Macc 5:68. Azotus is the Greek name for Ashdod. Dever 1998, 244. Dever 1998, 244–45. See, for example, Dothan 1982.

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

93

additional signs at the other edge of the pottery sherd on which it was incised after ring.58 It appears that it was written from right to left59 and that its dating range is from the eleventh century B.C.E. to the rst half of the ninth century B.C.E. according to the “modied conventional chronology,” and from the mid-tenth century B.C.E. to the rst half of the ninth century B.C.E. according to the low chronology.60 This inscription shows that by the ninth century B.C.E. at the latest the Philistines had already replaced their non-alphabetic Aegean-style of writing with a Canaanite script whilst retaining the use of Greek or Anatolian names.61 One important by-product of this inscription is that it conrms the general picture of the Philistines and their culture; indeed, it “can be seen as yet another piece of evidence of the developmental trajectory of the Philistine culture. Although at rst (during the Iron Age I) it is of a primarily foreign-oriented nature, throughout the Iron Age the Philistine culture took on more and more Levantine characteristics, but continued to retain some of the original foreign aspects.”62 This picture becomes even clearer when one takes into consideration another interesting piece of archaeological evidence, namely the inscription known as the “Royal dedicatory inscription” which was found at Tel Miqne. This inscription provides clear-cut evidence that this site is to be identied with the Philistine city of Ekron.63 This “Philistine” inscription has some of its letters which are “clearly Hebrew in shape” whereas other letters in it echo the Phoenician script.64 However, it seems that overall its writing “belongs neither to the Phoenician series nor the Hebrew series, but rather to some peculiar local script.”65 Moreover, this inscription also teaches us that during the rst half of the seventh century B.C.E. the Philistines at Ekron were actually using a Canaanite language with the closest relation to Phoenician.66 The foregoing paragraphs show that the biblical and the archaeological evidence about the Philistines converge with respect to the fact that they both agree that the historical kernel of the Hebrew Bible regarding this group of Sea People can only be understood if it is placed in a pre-exilic context. It is common knowledge that archaeological research 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 1

Maeir et al. 2008, 48. Maeir et al. 2008, 50. Maeir et al. 2008, 48. Maeir et al. 2008, 62, 63. Maeir et al. 2008, 63. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh 1997, 9. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh 1997, 13. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh 1997, 13. Gitin, Dothan, and Naveh 1997, 15, 16.

94

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

shows that we should date the arrival of the Philistines in the southern Levant to the twelfth century B.C.E. What seems to be a moot question, however, is the date of the biblical narratives that deal with the Philistines and the issue of when the original traditions regarding them rst emerged. At rst sight it might appear as if Finkelstein thinks that the Hebrew Bible hardly contains any original material regarding the Philistines which stems from the early Iron I period. He clearly states that “most of the Philistine material, even if historically stratied and containing seeds of early tales as well as evidence for more than one redaction, is based on the geographical, historical and ideological background of late-monarchic times.”67 Although in the abstract of his article regarding the Philistines in the Bible Finkelstein wrote that “the biblical references to the Philistines do not contain any memory of early Iron I events or cultural behaviour,”68 still he himself actually qualies this statement, as shown by my previous reference and as clearly indicated by a close reading of his own study. The actual overall picture which emerges from his work is that the Deuteronomistic Historian picked on early stories, such as that of David and Goliath, and dressed them up and reinterpreted them whilst rewriting them for a seventh-century B.C.E. readership.69 It is true that the elements which reveal a seventh-century B.C.E. date for the composition of most of the Philistine material in the Bible are predominant, but the fact remains that Finkelstein himself accepts that certain narratives reect only the Iron I period. Such, for example, is the case of the predominance of Shiloh in the early history of Israel, about which Finkelstein clearly states: “Therefore, the biblical memory on the prominence of Shiloh in early Israelite history must echo the importance of the site in the Iron I, no later than the tenth century BCE.”70 The same is valid for the Philistine cities mentioned in the Ark Narrative, namely Ashdod, Gath, and Ekron. Had this story been pure ction originating in the latemonarchic or even exilic period, Ashkelon or Gaza would have been mentioned “instead of Gath—in line with the information on the Philistine cities provided by the prophetic works of the time.”71 67. Finkelstein 2002, 156. 68. Finkelstein 2002, 131. 69. Finkelstein 2002, 147. 70. See Finkelstein 2002, 155, where he clearly points out that Shiloh was destroyed at the latest in the tenth century B.C.E. and that it was empty in the following century. Then in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. it was still devoid of inhabitants, although there was “an ephemeral” activity focussed near “the deserted water system.” 71. Finkelstein 2002, 155. 1

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

95

These points show that the overall picture drawn above with respect to the archaeological and biblical information about the Philistines in the Early Iron Age is essentially correct. However, Finkelstein’s study has made a great contribution to our appreciation of the fact that the Deuteronomistic Historian has taken over stories about the Philistines which had their origins in the early Iron Age, redrafting them according to the culture and ideas of the seventh century B.C.E., and at times even adding narrative sections which stemmed from his own time. It takes a lot of close reading of the texts to reach such conclusions and to learn how to distinguish between the original stories from the later form of their nal draft. Thus, for example, Finkelstein shows that Greek hoplites served in the Egyptian Saitic dynasty and that this fact was known to the Deuteronomistic Historian. Indeed, one good way of looking at this whole issue is, for example, to view the narrative about the contest between David and Goliath in the way Finkelstein does when he writes that “there is no reason to deny the possibility that there was an ancient tale of a duel between David and a Philistine warrior. But did the Deuteronomistic Historian try to convey a message to the reader of his own time by dressing Goliath as a Greek hoplite?”72 The implied answer is in the afrmative. But this does not deny the fact that both this story as well as other narratives about the Philistines could very well have their origin in the early Iron Age, and that, as shown above, various historical nuggets about them tally with the early Iron Age archaeology of the southern Levant. It is the craft of rewriting stories in the Hebrew Bible which we have to be constantly on the look-out for in order to avoid falling into the pitfall of either reading the biblical texts uncritically or of practically seeing every narrative of the Hebrew Bible as originating in the postexilic period. Stories which stem from an earlier period could indeed be rewritten in later times to suit the ideology of the later redactors, but this does not preclude the fact that the kernel of the younger narratives is ancient. Indeed, Finkelstein very aptly summarized this whole problem in connection with the biblical stories that deal with the Philistines when he wrote that “the Philistines of the Deuteronomistic History must reect therefore later Philistine history. This does not stop at telling ancient stories on a later background; most probably, the writers adapted the stories to serve their needs, that is, to enhance the ideology of the Deuteronomistic circles in seventh-century Jerusalem.”73

72. Finkelstein 2002, 147. 73. Finkelstein 2002, 133. 1

96

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

Once again we see that the later narratives which contain some information about the history of the people of Israel and their neighbours were founded on traditions that date from before 587/586 B.C.E. It is not always that easy to disentangle the various literary layers of the Hebrew Bible, but in the case of the Philistines it is a godsend that it is in fact established that the earliest Philistine pottery from Palestine dates to the twelfth century B.C.E., making it easier for us to understand that there could indeed have been very old stories that the Philistines and the Israelites told about these newcomers to the southern Levant, stories which were heavily reworked and redrafted in the seventh century B.C.E. Be that as it may, the fact is that as far as the Philistines are concerned, archaeology and a critical reading of the relevant biblical texts show that it is beyond any reasonable doubt that the stories about this group of people were certainly in circulation in the pre-exilic period. The latter point is further strengthened when one keeps in mind the fact that the Deuteronomistic History was drawn up in its extant form very probably “immediately after the Exile,” precisely at a time when the society of Israel was in danger of losing its own traditions and when it would therefore have followed the “tendency to reassert and preserve in writing the ancient national traditions”; indeed, this early phase during the exile is precisely “when many documents must have been destroyed and even the transmission of oral traditions would have been in danger of being broken in the prevailing disruption.”74 In the process of drafting the history of the people of Israel, the Deuteronomistic Historian kept some material for its own sake, simply because it was found in the written and oral sources that were available, and it is precisely this fact which helps to account for certain “inconsistencies” of outlook that appear in the Deuteronomistic History when one takes into consideration the general viewpoints of these historians.75 Archaeological research in Egypt and Palestine has also yielded one particular very interesting piece of evidence that has a bearing on the traditions found in the book of Exodus and which corroborates the claim that the Hebrews did sojourn in Egypt and that most probably they had left this country during the Late Bronze Age. I am referring to types of bowls with loops inside at the bottom, items which are generally known as “spinning bowls.” The examples that are of interest for the point I am trying to make were retrieved in Egypt and in Palestine, and the loops were worn to the extent that there were grooves on them. Such grooves

74. Porter 1979, 137, and references there. 75. Porter 1979, 138. 1

8. Macro Biblical Archaeology

97

were also present in some places on the rim of the bowls in areas which lay opposite to the loops. The logical conclusion seems to be that these grooves “would be hard to explain in such strange places except by threads constantly rubbing past as they were pulled from a ball inside the bowl.”76 It is of great interest to note that the Palestinian examples largely date to the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age, “exactly when inuence from Egypt is strongest in the archaeological and historical record.”77 It is virtually inevitable to conclude that the “spinners” of Palestine took the idea for such bowls from Egypt “along with the peculiar Egyptian method of adding twist to the ax after splicing it into thread.”78 In view of the fact that it is commonly agreed that the date of the Exodus is ca. 1250 B.C.E. and that it is well known that dates in antiquity are rarely absolutely precise in the earlier periods, it is very interesting to learn that the “spinning bowls” reached Palestine from Egypt during the middle of the Late Bronze Age and that this “accords well with what we now know of the date of the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt after their long sojourn there.”79 In fact, these bowls were better suited for “plying” wool or ax or to add “twist to spliced ax in the Egyptian fashion,”80 and on balance it appears that they were “specically suited to the art of twisting bast in the Egyptian fashion, and not well suited to the use of wool” and that the “term ‘spinning bowl’ is thus rather inappropriate.”81 Be that as it may, the fact is that these so-called ‘spinning bowls’ of Egyptian inspiration reached Palestine during the period of the Exodus and of the subsequent emergence of Israel in Canaan. Furthermore, they provide evidence for what many scholars still hold on to, namely that there must have been a group of Hebrews (no matter how small) that had left Egypt and had joined other groups who were emerging in the highland areas of Canaan, forming the society known as “Israel.” These bowls help us to 76. Barber 1991, 71. I am indebted to Ms Luisana D’Amato, a postgraduate student of mine, for referring me to Barber’s work and specically to the “spinning bowls” from Egypt and Palestine in connection with the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. 77. Barber 1991, 71. 78. Barber 1991, 71, and references there. 79. Barber 1991, 72. 80. Barber 1991, 72. 81. Barber 1991, 72, where she also notes that “a little water in the bottom of the looped bowls of the Egyptians would provide the ideal conditions for working with the linen yarns” and that the so-called spinning bowls were better suited for the production of linen. In view of the use of water at the bottom of these bowls to dampen the bast bres used for the production of textiles, Barber (1991, 73) prefers to call such bowls “ber-wetting bowls” rather than “spinning bowls.” 1

98

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

appreciate better the fact that one of the founding traditions of later Israel, namely the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt and the subsequent settlement in Canaan, had its origins in the pre-exilic period and specically some time during the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age. The biblical and archaeological evidence marshalled in this chapter provides various examples that show how the results of archaeological and biblical research, which were undertaken independently of each other in the rst instance, converge to show that many important traditions of ancient Israel were indeed historical and that they had their origins in the pre-exilic period. Many of the texts in which such traditions are found had been written or edited in the post-exilic period, but this does not militate against the fact that such traditions, as in the case of the exodus tradition, could very well stem from before the exile. In such a context, it is of great importance to underscore the fact that old traditions can indeed crop up in texts that were written much later and that, mutatis mutandis, “the concrete character of any passage and the fact that it reects an institution recognized as of great antiquity cannot be appealed to as evidence that the passage in question found a place in the earliest of the component documents of the Hexateuch.”82 Very late texts can very well contain very old and much earlier traditions.

82. Simpson 1957, 163. 1

Chapter 9

CONCLUSION

In this study I have attempted to ground the fact that archaeology and history are both a gateway to the past and that in reality they are two sides of the same coin. All along it has transpired that both disciplines deal with concrete matters, and that as far as they are concerned, general laws can only be viewed as pointers rather than as determinate rules which know of no exceptions or which can be used to forecast what one expects to nd. Indeed, when applied to archaeological and historical research, general laws turn out to be “arbitrary and fallacious, if we take them for more than broad views and aspects of things, serving as our notes and indications for judging of the particular, but not absolutely touching and determining facts.”1 History and archaeology, and therefore the analysis of textual and artefactual evidence which aim at a reconstruction of the human past, deal with concrete matters and consequently we make use not only of logic but also of prudence and common sense in order to reach truth in these elds.2 Indeed, in such cases a proof is best seen as “the limit of converging probabilities”3 and it is impossible to wholly eliminate the personal element. This is so, for the simple reason that in reality “a proof, except in abstract demonstration, has always in it, more or less, an element of the personal, because “prudence” is not a constituent part of

1. Newman 1889, 182. When making this statement, Newman was discussing an imaginary case about a man whom he called Fabricius to show that we have to experience him before we can claim that he has a conscience despite the general truth that “Men have a conscience”; indeed, “until we have actual experience of Fabricius, we can only say, that, since he is a man, perhaps he will take a bribe, and perhaps he will not” (p. 182). I nd that Newman’s observations can be applied to archaeological and historical research in view of the fact that history deals with the particular (see Chapter 5). 2. Newman 1889, 205. 3. Newman 1889, 208. 1

100

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

our nature, but a personal endowment.”4 This means that in historical and archaeological research we cannot have a proof in the same way that this obtains in the natural sciences since “inference comes short of proof in concrete matters, because it has not a full command over the objects to which it relates, but merely assumes its premises.”5 Logic alone cannot provide proof in concrete matters where we also need “the logic of good sense” which involves pre-existing “beliefs and views.”6 The examples mentioned or discussed in this book bear witness to this. Indeed, one overall conclusion of this study is that when we investigate the archaeological and biblical evidence pertinent to pre-exilic Israel we need to take into account both the nature of the evidence as well as the type of cognitional activity involved in such research. One important corollary of this is that in such a type of enquiry we should be ever more aware of the fact that every researcher starts off with an unproven assumption that needs to be carefully examined. It is clear that such conclusions also obtain in the eld of Biblical Archaeology. Indeed, the aforementioned point that history deals with concrete matters and that for it there is no such thing as a proof as commonly understood, is applicable to the study of biblical texts. In fact, it would be incorrect even to pursue a correct method of reading the Bible since “the pursuit of method assimilates reading a text to the procedures of technology”; instead “we should see each of our “methods” as a codication of intuitions about the text which may occur to intelligent readers.”7 Some archaeologists think along the same lines and most probably they do so since in reality the study of material remains is undertaken with a view to reconstructing the story of our human ancestors. Thus, for example, Shanks and Tilley reject the idea that there could be a “method” in archaeological research that resembles a recipe whereby we could automatically understand the past—indeed, the acquisition of such knowledge depends on an interpretative process which involves a fourfold hermeneutic, namely that of working in the contemporary discipline of archaeology, that of living in our contemporary society and thereby knowing what human living is about, that of trying to understand 4. Newman 1889, 205. 5. Newman 1889, 175. 6. Newman 1889, 180. 7. J. Barton 1996, 5. Barton’s approach is very similar to what was discussed above about the fact that logic alone does not sufce for the attainment of truth in those elds which deal with concrete matters. In fact he states explicitly that the intuitions of intelligent readers about a text “can well arrive at truth; but it will not be the kind of truth familiar in the natural sciences” (p. 5). 1

9. Conclusion

101

a foreign culture, and nally that of going beyond both the past and the present.8 This means that the stories about the past narrated by archaeologists include “the creation of a past in a present and its understanding” but it is important to remember that “this process is not free or creative in a ctional sense but involves the translation of the past in a delimited and specic manner.”9 The topics and examples discussed in this book also lead to another general conclusion, namely that when we relate textual and artefactual analyses, and thus also in our quest for pre-exilic Israel, we need to be ever more explicitly conscious of the fact that whether we like it or not, or whether we know it or not, as in any other area of research, we all approach this topic with our own “First Principles,” which are in fact those unproven assumptions with which we start our research and which we employ when we set out to “prove” something.10 Although it is inevitable to make use of “First Principles” in historical research, it is also clear that the unproven assumptions must at some point be examined in order that we may proceed correctly in our quest for historical truth. In any discussion on the historical understanding of ancient Israel we must discuss the different assumptions held by various scholars in order to get out of the current impasse, since “without assumptions no one can prove anything about anything,”11 especially in those areas that deal with concrete matters rather than abstract ones. If we do not discuss the unproven assumptions of all those concerned in the investigation on ancient Israel, we run the risk of actually building our historical reconstructions on false premises, which if unexamined could lead to bigotry12 rather than to a healthy view of Israel’s ancient past. 8. Shanks and Tilley 1992, 108, where they also explicitly state that “The fourfold hermeneutic in any and all forms of archaeology undermines any attempt to x for once and all the manner in which the past should be understood in terms of methodological rules for procedure.” 9. Shanks and Tilley 1992, 103–4. 10. Newman 1851, 284, where he states that “First Principles” are in fact “the conditions of our mental life; by them we form our view of events, of deeds, of persons, of lines of conduct, of aims, of moral qualities, of religions.” It is clear that a similar situation obtains for research into ancient Israel and specically for the investigation as to whether or not we have any evidence to conclude that there indeed was an Israel before the Exile and that this is not a ctional fabrication of the post-exilic period. 11. Newman 1889, 264. 12. Newman (1851, 278) had pointed out that “as Prejudice is the rejection of reason altogether, so Bigotry is the imposition of private reason—that is, of our own views and theories of our own First Principles, as if they were the absolute truth, and the standard of all argument, investigation, and judgment.” 1

102

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

The discussion about the location of Rahab’s house in Chapter 7 constitutes only one small example in this book which leads to the conclusion that some things about ancient Israel can be known with a high degree of probability and that therefore historical relativism is untenable. This is so since it does not follow that because an account is incomplete it must therefore be false; indeed, “an incomplete account can be an objectively true account; it cannot be the whole truth.”13 This conclusion itself leads to another conclusion, namely that we should be on our guard against what has been termed the fallacy of the “prevalent proof” which practically equates mass opinion with a method of verication.14 Thus, for example, the general opinion that ancient Israel is now known to have largely emerged from within Canaan itself makes it extremely difcult for students of ancient Israel to state that this conclusion should not be turned into a generalization and that it does not exclude the fact that some components of later Israel very probably came from outside this area, as shown in various examples discussed in this book. This makes it clear that the historian of ancient Israel should also be wary of falling into the fallacy of the “hypostatized proof,” which erroneously transforms a “historiographical interpretation” into “the actual historical event”15— such, for example, is the case with those who turn the interpretation of those who claim that there never was a pre-exilic Israel into a historical fact. Some of the examples discussed in this book dealt with the fact that the history of ancient Israel shows that time and time again many of its ancient historical traditions were later incorporated into historical accounts which certainly included elements of ideology and propaganda. The Deuteronomistic History provides one clear example of this. However, it is important to remember that this does not mean that we should conclude that wherever we nd elements of propaganda in the narratives of ancient Israel we are dealing with ction or with something which is necessarily bad. James Barr has rightly stated that “Germans in the 1930s pointed to the origin of the term ‘concentration camp’ in British practice in South Africa: it was propaganda, but the historical facts contained in it were more or less true.”16 This leads to another conclusion, namely that in our quest for ancient Israel we would do well to remember that ideology itself did not constitute the origin of Israel’s narratives. Indeed, “ideology is a set of ideas. It can affect historical narrative and bias it, 13. 14. 15. 16. 1

Fischer 1971, 42. Fischer 1971, 5. Fischer 1971, 56. Barr 2000, 117.

9. Conclusion

103

but it does not originate it. Ideology has characteristically non-story character. The story has to come from somewhere else—from memories, from traditions, from older books…”17 It was often pointed out in the course of this study, especially in Chapter 8, that later traditions can contain old and authentic historical information. In connection with this state of affairs it is important to underscore one particular conclusion, namely that historians of ancient Israel would do well to remember that those who drew up the historical narratives of ancient Israel at a date later than that of the original events had in fact an advantage in that they would have had a good chance of making an even better appreciation of the original events than those who had been directly involved in them and who were eyewitnesses.18 After all, even eyewitnesses have their own point of view regarding the events they talk about.19 This book has also corroborated the conclusion of those who insist that we should be extremely cautious about making any afrmations based on the absence of evidence. The various examples discussed show how unfounded arguments from silence can be. Quite some time ago Willis had implied that the fact that not a shred of extra-biblical evidence had been found for David and Solomon up to the time that he was writing was in fact one of the many endless problems in the eld of biblical history; indeed, he clearly implied that David and Solomon were not historical gures simply because no hard archaeological evidence for them was available.20 History has proven how wrong such an argument, which is based on the absence of evidence, can be; the Tel Dan inscription, which was mentioned in the preceding chapter, shows that Willis had drawn the wrong conclusions, ones which he had based on false premises. This indicates that the fact that no archaeological evidence supports a given biblical text does not mean that such a text is to be automatically viewed as untrustworthy. The reliability of a text should be established via other means, such as that of historical criticism. Various types of evidence were marshalled in this book to show that a critical reading of the Hebrew Bible is generally not falsied by the results of Near Eastern archaeology; indeed, there are examples which show that the Bible and archaeology can also very well tally with each other. Thus, for example, the results of the archaeology of the Levant which show that that ancient Israel now appears to have largely stemmed 17. 18. 19. 20. 1

Barr 2000, 88. Provan 1995, 598, and references there. Thucydides 1.20–22. Willis 1992, 93.

104

Pre-Exilic Israel, the Hebrew Bible, and Archaeology

from within Canaan and that most of those who formed early Israel were in fact related to the Canaanites, is in perfect harmony with the data contained in the Hebrew Bible. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Nowack had already very clearly stated about the Canaanites that they were indeed “zeweifellos mit den Israeliten und anderen Völkern dieser Gruppe [the Semites] nahe verwandt.”21 It is interesting to note that this scenario parallels that of the Philistines, who are seen by some scholars as being primarily Canaanites but who include some elements from outside Palestine. Indeed, the term “Philistine” could be viewed as being primarily a geographical one.22 The examples and themes dealt with in this book also lead to the conclusion, already anticipated in Chapter 1, that the debate between the so-called maximalists and minimalists centres on whether one accepts that we can know the truth and the past, albeit imperfectly, or whether one endorses the self-defeating assumption of relativism and scepticism. In fact, the position of those known as the “revisionists,” whose stance would also logically lead one practically to deny that there had ever been a historical pre-exilic Israel, is one that demands proof for the existence of, let us say, the Davidic and Solomonic empire without making the same demands for itself. Indeed, in such an instance one could speak of a “sort of residual logic: other explanations being without proof, nothing is left except to suppose an explanation through late ideology, fabrications of the literary élite, and other hypotheses.”23 It is clear that such assumptions are unfounded. This book turned out the way it did mainly in view of the debate between the “maximalists” and “minimalists” who engage with the history of ancient Israel. Originally, I had planned to write something with a view to making some contribution to our knowledge of the emergence of early Israel; yet the more I delved into the subject the more I realized that the real problems lay in the different assumptions of various scholars and that there was in fact a need to examine more closely how one could go about relating textual and artefactual evidence in a methodical manner in order to reconstruct past human history with special reference to pre-exilic Israel. I hope actually to have presented an elementary “grammar” of how one could go about relating methodically biblical and archaeological evidence. I also hope that the examples presented, especially the case study of the location of Rahab’s house in Chapter 7, have 21. Nowack 1894, 95. Canaan is the son of Ham and thus Noah’s grandson (see Gen 9:18). 22. Noort 1995, 427. 23. Barr 2000, 101. 1

9. Conclusion

105

also thrown some light on the study of the history and historiography of pre-exilic Israel. To relate methodically the relevant biblical and archaeological evidence does not mean that scholars will have to employ a general law of correlation that applies to each and every single case. Neither does it mean that they will actually always nd the necessary parallels between the biblical and the archaeological evidence. What it does mean is that the principle of contradiction24 must come into play, and that therefore if something did take place historically then the archaeological and biblical evidence bearing on the relative occurrence should point in the same direction. Indeed, as de Vaux says: “there should be no conict between a well established [sic] archaeological fact and a critically examined text.”25 One nal overall conclusion of this work is that, in fact, each case must be examined separately on its own merits and that name-calling will certainly not help us to advance in our quest of pre-exilic Israel. In the last analysis, in order to gain true, albeit imperfect and incomplete, knowledge of ancient Israel we need to make good use of the “selfcorrecting process of learning” discussed in Chapter 5. Name-calling will certainly not help us to advance in our quest for truth, and it would be good if we could even stop using terms like “maximalists” and “minimalists.” This is so since the real distinction does not lie between these two groups of scholars, but between “good and bad historians, and both kinds are to be found on either side of the scholarly debate.”26 So, it would be much better to proceed with our quest for ancient Israel, making good and proper use of all the available evidence, be it biblical or archaeological, than to waste time in setting up some grand general theory without having taken into sufcient consideration the fact that generalization cannot really cater for concrete matters and that its function is to act as a pointer in the right direction. It does also not behove us to try and t different scholars into the same basket by giving them general labels. One corollary of the conclusions reached in this book is that we would greatly enhance our quest for pre-exilic Israel if we were to oust generalizations both from our analysis of biblical and archaeological evidence and also from our debates with other scholars. Furthermore, we should keep in mind constantly the fact that latet dolus in generalibus. 24. The principle of contradiction teaches us that contradictory statements cannot both be true at the same time. Thus, if something really occurred then the pertinent archaeological and historical evidence cannot contradict each other. 25. De Vaux 1970, 70. Note also de Vaux’s wise remark that “Archaeology does not conrm the text, which is what it is, it can only conrm the interpretation which we give it” (p. 78). 26. Na’aman 2006, 10. 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY AÜituv, Shmuel, and Eliezer D. Oren, eds. 1998. The Origin of Early Israel: Current Debate: Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives: Irene Levi-Sala Seminar 1997. Beer-sheva: Ben Gurion University of the Negev jointly with Institute of Archaeology, Institute of Jewish Studies, University College, London. Ahlström, Gösta W. 1991. The Role of Archaeological and Literary Remains in Reconstructing Israel’s History. Pages 116–41 in Edelman 1991. Albright, William F. 1993. Beit Mirsim, Tell. Pages 177–80 in The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 1. Edited by Ephraim Stern Jerusalem: The Israel Exploration Society and Carta. Allport, Gordon W. 1961. Pattern and Growth in Personality. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Amit, Yairah. 1999. History and Ideology: An Introduction to Historiography in the Hebrew Bible. Translated by Yael Lotan. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Originally published in Hebrew in 1997. Aristotle. 1934. The Nichomachean Ethics. With an English translation by H. Rackham. London: Harvard University Press. Arnold, Bill T., and H. G. M. Williamson, eds. Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books. Downers Grove: InterVarsity. Athas, George. 2003. The Tel Dan Inscription: A Reappraisal and a New Interpretation. London: T&T Clark International. Aurenche, Oliver. Illustrations by Oliver Callot. 1977. Dictionnaire illustré multilingue de l’architecture de Proche Orient Ancien. Lyon: Maison de l’Orient. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard. Barber, E. J. W. 1991. Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Barr, James. 1976. Story and History in Biblical Theology. Journal of Religion 56:1–17. ———. 1995. The Synchronic, the Diachronic and the Historical: A Triangular Relationship? Pages 1–14 in de Moor 1995. ———. 2000. History and Ideology in the Old Testament: Biblical Studies at the End of a Millennium: The Hendley Henson Lectures for 1997 Delivered to the University of Oxford. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2002. The Scope and Authority of the Bible. With a Preface by John Barton. London: SCM. Originally published in 1980. Barstad, Hans M. 1997. History and the Hebrew Bible. Pages 37–64 in Grabbe 1997c. Bartlett, John R. 2004. Between Scylla and Charybdis: the Problem of Israelite Historiography. Pages 180–94 in Biblical and Near Eastern Essays: Studies in Honour of Kevin J. Cathcart. Edited by Carmel McCarthy and John F. Healey. London: T&T Clark International. 1

Bibliography

107

Barton, G. A. 1963. Philistines. Pages 765–66 in Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Frederick C. Grant and H. H. Rowley. 2d ed. Original ed. by James Hastings. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Barton, John. 1996. Reading the Old Testament: Method in Biblical Study. 2d ed. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. ———. 2001. Introduction to the Old Testament. Pages 5–12 in Barton and Muddiman 2001. Barton, John, and John Muddiman, eds. 2001. The Oxford Bible Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baumgarten, Jacob J. 1992. Urbanization in the Late Bronze Age. Pages 143–50 in The Architecture of Ancient Israel: From the Prehistoric to the Persian Periods. Edited by Aharon Kempinski and Ronnie Reich. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. Becker, Carl. 1910. Detachment and the Writing of History. Atlantic Monthly 106:524– 36. Ben Zvi, Ehud. 2003. Analogical Thinking and Ancient Israelite Intellectual History: The Case for an “Entropy Model” in the Study of Israelite Thought. Pages 321–32 in Relating to the Text: Interdisciplinary and Form-Critical Insights on the Bible. Edited by Timothy J. Sandoval and Carleen Mandolfo. London: T&T Clark International. Berlin, Adele, and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. 2004. The Jewish Study Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bienkowski, Piotr. 1986. Jericho: in the Late Bronze Age. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. ———. 1998. Comments on the Papers of Kitchen, Whitelam and Finkelstein. Pages 163–65 in AÜituv and Oren 1998. Boling, Robert, G. 1982. Joshua: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary. With an Introduction by G. Ernest Wright. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Bowie, E. L. 1993. Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry. Pages 1–37 in Gill and Wiseman 1993. Brandfon, Frederick. 1987. The Limits of Evidence: Archaeology and Objectivity. Maarav 4:5–43. Brett, Mark G. 1991. Biblical Criticism in Crisis? The Impact of the Canonical Approach on Old Testament Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brettler, Marc Zvi. 1995. The Creation of History in Ancient Israel. London: Routledge. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs. 1906. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic. Re-issue with corrections in 1951. Oxford: Clarendon. Bunimovitz, Shlomo. 1990. Problems in the “Ethnic” Identication of the Philistine Material Culture. Tel Aviv 17:210–22. Burney, C. F. 1921. Israel’s Settlement in Canaan: The Biblical Tradition and Its Historical Background. The Schweich Lectures 1917. 3d ed. London: Published for the British Academy by Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press. Burney, Charles A. 2004. Historical Dictionary of the Hittites. Lanham: Scarecrow. Butler, Christopher. 2002. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Butler, Trent. 1983. Joshua. Waco: Word. Carr, Eduard Hallett. 1962. What is History? The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, January–March 1961. London: Macmillan. 1

108

Bibliography

Carter, Charles E. 2003. Ideology and Archaeology in the Neo-Babylonian Period: Excavating Text and Tell. Pages 301–22 in Judah and the Judeans in the NeoBabylonian Period. Edited by Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Chapman, Rupert. 1986. Excavation Techniques and Recording Systems: A Theoretical Study. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 118:5–26. Charlesworth, James H., and Walter P. Weaver, eds. 1992. What has Archaeology to do with Faith? Philadelphia: Trinity Press International. Cicero. 1948. De Oratore, Books I–II. With an English translation and a Rev. ed. by E. W. Sutton and completed with an Introduction by R. Rackham. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. 1949. De Inventione. Pages 1–346 in De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica. With an English translation by H. M. Hubbell. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ———. Topica. Pages 375–459 in De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica. With an English translation by H. M. Hubbell. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Coady, C. A. J. 1992. Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Clarendon. Conrad, Diethelm. 1993. Appendix 1: An Introduction to the Archaeology of Syria and Palestine on the Basis of the Israelite Settlement. Pages 383–93 in An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah. By J. Alberto Soggin. 2d completely rev. and updated ed. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM. Originally published in Italian in 1993. Crossland, R. A. 1973. Linguistics and Archaeology in Aegean Prehistory. Pages 5–15 in Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean: Archaeological and Linguistic Problems in Greek Prehistory. Edited by R. A. Crossland and Ann Birchall. London: Duckworth. Culley, Robert C. 1972. Oral Tradition and Historicity. Pages 102–16 in Studies on the Ancient Palestinian World: Presented to Professor F. V. Winnett on the Occasion of his Retirement 1 July 1971. Edited by J. W. Wevers and D. B. Redford. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Davies, G. I. 1982. Review of A. Graeme Auld, Joshua, Moses and the Land: Tetrateuch– Pentateuch–Hexateuch in a Generation Since 1938. JTS 33:209–13. Davies, Philip R. 2005. Crypto-Minimalism. Journal of Semitic Studies 50:117–36. ———. 2007. The Origins of Biblical Israel. New York: T&T Clark International. Day, John, ed. 2004. In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar. London: T&T Clark International. Denzinger, Henricus, and Adolphus Schönmetzer. 1965. Enchiridion Symbolorum: Denitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum. 33d ed. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder. Dever, William G. 1991. Unresolved Issues in the Early History of Israel: Toward a Synthesis of Archaeological and Textual Reconstructions. Pages 195–208, 344–48 in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis: Essays in Honour of Norman K. Gottwald on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by David Jobling, Peggy L. Day, and Gerald T. Sheppard. Cleveland: Pilgrim. ———. 1994. Archaeology, Texts, and History-Writing: Toward an Epistemology. Pages 105–17 in Uncovering Ancient Stones: Essays in Memory of H. Neil Richardson. Edited by Lewis M. Hopfe. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. 1

Bibliography

109

———. 1998. What did the Biblical Writers know, and when did They know It? Pages 241–57 in Hesed VE-EMET. Edited by Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin. Atlanta: Scholars Press. ———. 2003. Who were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Doran, R. 2001. 2 Maccabees. Pages 734–50 in Barton and Muddiman 2001. Dothan, Trude. 1982. The Philistines and Their Material Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press. A revised translation of a work originally published in Hebrew. Driver, S. R. 1913. An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. 9th ed. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Dunand, Maurice. 1937. Fouilles de Byblos. Vol. 1, 1926–1932: Atlas. Paris: Libraire orientaliste Paul Geuthner. ———. 1939. Fouilles de Byblos. Vol. 1, 1926–1932: Texte. Paris: Libraire orientaliste Paul Geuthner. Dymond, D. P. 1974. Archaeology and History: A Plea for Reconciliation. London: Thames & Hudson. Edelman, Diana Vikander, ed. 1991. The Fabric of History: Text, Artefact and Israel’s Past. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Ernst, Michael. 2008. Formen und Gattungen. Pages 210–11 in Herders Neues Bibellexikon. Edited by Franz Kogler. Freiburg: Herder. Evans, Richard J. 2000. In Defence of History. New ed. with an Extensive New Afterword. London: Granta. Faust, Avraham. 2006. Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Introduction, Expansion and Resistance. London: Equinox. Feeney, D. C. 1993. Towards an Account of the Ancient World’s Concepts of Fictive Belief. Pages 230–44 in Gill and Wiseman 1993. Finkelstein, Israel. 1988. The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. ———. 1995. The Great Transformation: The “Conquest” of the Highlands [sic] Frontiers and the Rise of the Territorial States. Pages 349–65, 585–86 in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land. Edited by Thomas E. Levy. London: Leicester University Press. ———. 2002. The Philistines in the Bible: A Late-Monarchic Perspective. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 27:131–67. Fischer, David Heckett. 1971. Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought. New York: Harper & Row. Fishbane, Michael. 1986. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Repr. with corrections. Oxford: Clarendon. Franken, H. J. 1976. Archaeological Evidence Relating to the Interpretation of the Text. Pages 3–16 in Aramaic Texts from Deir Alla. Edited by J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij. Leiden: Brill. Frendo, Anthony, J. 2003. Bronze Age Urban Households of the Levant: How do we Really Know about the Past? Antiquity 77:604–8. ———. 2004. Back to Basics: A Holistic Approach to the Problem of the Emergence of Ancient Israel. Pages 41–64 in Day 2004. Friedeberg, S. 1913. Joshua: An Annotated Hebrew Text. London: William Heinemann. Fritz, Volkmar. 1994. Das Buch Josua. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1

110

Bibliography

Fuerst, Julius. 1867. A Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament with an Introduction Giving a Short History of Hebrew Lexicography. Translated by Samuel Davidson. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz. London: Williams & Norgate. Originally published in German in 1863. Gill, Christopher. 1993. Plato on Falsehood—not Fiction. Pages 38–87 in Gill and Wiseman 1993. Gill, Christopher, and T. P. Wiseman, eds. 1993. Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Gitin, Seymour, Trude Dothan, and Joseph Naveh. 1997. A Royal Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron. Israel Exploration Journal 47:1–16. Grabbe, Lester L. 1997a. Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures—or Different Animals? Pages 19–36 in Grabbe 1997c. ———. 1997b. Reections on the Discussion. Pages 188–96 in Grabbe 1997c. ———, ed. 1997c. Can a “History of Israel” be Written? Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. ———. 2007. Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It? London: T&T Clark International. Grant, Elihu. 1931–32. Ain Shems Excavations (Palestine), 1928–1929–1930–1931, Parts I–II. Haverford: Haverford College. Grant, Elihu, and E. Ernest Wright. 1939. Ain Shems Excavations (Palestine). Part V, Text. Haverford: Haverford College. Grant, Michael. 1995. Greek and Roman Historians: Information and Misinformation London: Routledge. Groves, J. Alan. 2005. Zion Traditions. Pages 1019–25 in Arnold and Williamson 2005. Hamalakis, Yannis. 1999. La Trahison des Archéologues? Archaeological Practice as Intellectual Activity in Postmodernity. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 12:60–79. Harris, Edward C. 1989. Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy. 2d ed. London: Academic. Hawk, L. D. 2005. Joshua, Book of. Pages 563–75 in Arnold and Williamson 2005. Hedrick, Charles W. Jr. 1995. Thucydides and the Beginnings of Archaeology. Pages 45–88 in Small 1995. Herodotus. 1926. The Persian Wars, vol. 1, Books I–II. With an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Herzog, Ze’ev. 1997. Fortications: an Overview. Pages 319–21 in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, vol. 2. Edited by Eric M. Meyers. New York: Oxford University Press. Hess, Richard S. 1994. Fallacies in the Study of Early Israel: An Onomastic Perspective. Tyndale Bulletin 45:339–54. Hoffman, Yair. 1989. A North Israelite Typological Myth and a Judaean Historical Tradition: The Exodus in Hosea and Amos. Vetus Testamentum 39:169–82. Hoffmeier, James K. 1990. Some Thoughts on William G. Dever’s “Hyksos,” Egyptian Destructions, and the End of the Palestinian Middle Bronze Age. Levant 2:83–89. ———. 1999. Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hogarth, David G. 1899. Prefatory [on the nature of Archaeology]. Pages v–xiv in Authority and Archaeology, Sacred and Profane: Essays on the Relation of Monuments to Biblical and Classical Literature. Edited by David G. Hogarth. London: John Murray. 1

Bibliography

111

Holmes, S. 1914. Joshua: The Hebrew and Greek Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Homer. 1995. The Odyssey, Books 1–12. With an English translation by A. T. Murray which was revised by George E. Dimock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Isserlin, B. S. J. 1982. Invasions and Cultural Change: A Comparative Study of Four Test Cases. Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Literary and Historical Section) 18 (Part I):9–24. ———. 1983. The Israelite Conquest of Canaan: A Comparative Review of the Arguments Applicable. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 115:85–94. ———. 1998. The Israelites. London: Thames & Hudson. Japhet, Sara. 1998. In Search of Ancient Israel: Revisionism at all Costs. Pages 212–33 in The Jewish Past Revisited: Reections on Modern Jewish Historians. Edited by David N. Myers and David B. Ruderman. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jastrow, Marcus. 1950. A Dictionary of Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. 2 vols. New York: Pardes. Jidejian, Nina. 1968. Byblos through the Ages. Foreword by Maurice Dunand. Beirut: Dar el-Machreq Publishers. Joüon, Paul, and T. Muraoka. 2006. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Rev. English ed. Translated by T. Muraoka. Roma: Ponticio Istituto Biblico Editrice. Originally published in France in 1923. Kenyon, Kathleen M. 1957. Digging up Jericho. Ernest Benn. ———. 1961. Beginning in Archaeology. 2d rev. ed. London: Phoenix House. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. Ker, I. T. 1985. Editor’s Introduction. Pages xi–lxx in John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 8th ed. 1889. Edited with and Introduction and Notes by I. T. Ker. Oxford: Clarendon. King, Philip J., and Lawrence E. Stager. 2001. Life in Biblical Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Kitchen, K. A. 2003. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Knauf, Ernst Axel. 1991. From History to Interpretation. Pages 26–64 in Edelman 1991. Koch, Klaus. 1964. Was ist Formgeschichte? Methoden der Bibelexegese. Neukirchen– Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag des Erziehungsvereins. Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm. 1994. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Vol. 1, -Ü. Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson in collaboration with G. J. Jongeling-Vos and L. J. de Regt. Leiden: Brill. Originally published in German in 1967. Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann Jakob Stamm. Assisted by Benedikt Hartmann, Ze’ev Ben-Ðayyim, Eduard Yechezkel Kutscher, and Philippe Reymond. 1996. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Vol. 3, p-. Translated and edited under the supervision of M. E. J. Richardson. Leiden: Brill. Originally published in German in 1983 and 1990. Kosso, Peter. 1995. Epistemic? Independence between Textual and Material Evidence. Pages 177–96 in Small 1995. Kuhrt, Amélie. 1995. The Ancient Near East: c. 3000–330BC. 2 vols. London: Routledge. ———. 2000. Israelite and Near Eastern Historiography. Pages 257–79 in Congress Volume, Oslo 1998: Papers Read at the 16th Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Held in Oslo from 2 to 7 August 1998. Edited by A. Lemaire and M. Saebø. Leiden: Brill. 1

112

Bibliography

Lemaire, André. 1982. Recherches actuelles sur les origines de l’ancien Israël. Journal asiatique 270:5–24. Levy, Jacob. 1889. With contributions by Heinrich Leberecht Fleischen. Neuhebräisches und chaldäisches Wörterbuch über die Talmudim und Midraschim. Vol. 4, A-E. Leipzig: F. A. Brochhaus. Liverani, Mario. 2005. Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Translated by Chiara Peri and Philip R. Davies. London: Equinox. Originally published in Italian in 2003. Lonergan, Bernard J. F. 1958. Insight: A Study of Human Understanding. Rev. ed. London: Longmans, Green. ———. 1972 [© 1971]. Method in Theology. London: Darton, Longman & Todd. Long, V. Philips. 2002. Minimalism, Maximalism, and the Crisis in Old Testament Studies. Pages 1–22 in Wisdom into Old Testament History: Evidence, Argument and the Crisis of “Biblical Israel”. Edited by V. Philips Long, David W. Baker, and Gordon J. Wenham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Macintosh, A. A. 1997. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Hosea. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. Madvig, Donald H. 1992. Joshua. Pages 237–371 in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 3, Deuteronomy and Samuel. Edited by Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Maier, Aren M., et al. 2008. A Late Iron Age I/Early Iron Age II Old Canaanite Inscription from Tell e‰-Ìâf/Gath, Israel: Palaeography, Dating, and HistoricalCultural Signicance. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 351: 39–71. Malamat, Abraham. 2001. History of Biblical Israel: Major Problems and Minor Issues. Leiden: Brill. Martinich A. P. 1989. Philosophical Writing: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall. Mayes, A. D. H. 2002. Historiography in the Old Testament. Pages 65–87 in The Biblical World, vol.1. Edited by John Barton. London: Routledge. ———. 2003. The Covenant People: Max Weber and the Historical Understanding of Ancient Israel. Pages 285–310 in Covenant as Context: Essays in Honour of E. W. Nicholson. Edited by A. D. H. Mayes and R. B. Salters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mazar, Amihai. 1997a. Timnah (Tel Batash). I, Stratigraphy and Architecture: Text. Jerusalem: The Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. ———. 1997b. Timnah (Tel Batash). I, Stratigraphy and Architecture: Plans and Sections. Jerusalem: The Institute of Archaeology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. McNutt, Paula M. 1993. Kenites. Page 407 in The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press. Millard, A. R. 1991. Texts and Archaeology: Weighing the Evidence: the Case for King Solomon. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 123:19–27. Miller, J. Maxwell. 1991. Is it Possible to Write a History of Israel Without Relying on the Hebrew Bible? Pages 93–102 in Edelman 1991. ———. 1992. Reections on the Study of Israelite History. Pages 60–74 in Charlesworth and Weaver 1992. 1

Bibliography

113

Miller, J. Maxwell, and Gene M. Tucker 1974. The Book of Joshua. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moor, Johannes C. de. 1990. The Rise of Yahwism: The Roots of Israelite Monotheism. Leuven: University Press and Peters, Uitgeverij. ———, ed. 1995. Synchronic or Diachronic? A Debate on Method in Old Testament Exegesis. Leiden: Brill. Moreland, John. 2001. Archaeology and Text. London: Duckworth. Morgan, J. R. 1993. Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels. Pages 175–229 in Gill and Wiseman 1993. Na’aman, Nadav. 2006. Review of Mario Liverani, Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Review of Biblical Literature 7:1–11. Nelson, Richard D. 1997. Joshua: A Commentary. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Newman, John Henry. 1851. Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England: Addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory in the Summer of 1851. Herefordshire: Gracewing. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Published in 2000 with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Nash. ———. 1889. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Edited with Introduction and Notes by I. T. Ker in 1985. 8th ed. Oxford: Clarendon. Nicholson, Ernest W. 1998. The Pentateuch in the Twentieth Century: The Legacy of Julius Wellhausen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noll, K. L. 2001. Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction. London: Shefeld Academic. Noort, Ed. 1995. Text und Archäologie: die Küstenregion Palästinas in der frühen Eisenzeit. Ugarit-Forschungen 27:403–28. Noth, Martin. 1952. Das Buch Josua. 2d rev. ed. Tübingen: J. B. C. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). ———. 1954. Geschichte Israels. 2d rev. ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Nowack, Wilhelm. 1894. Lehrbuch der Hebräischen Archäologie. Vol. 1, Privat- und Staatsalterthümer. Freiburg I. B.: Akademische Verlagsbuchhandlung von J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Ong, Walter J. 1986. Writing is a Technology that Restructures Thought. Pages 23–50 in The Written Word: Literacy in Transition: Wolfson College Lectures 1985. Edited by Gerd Baumann. Oxford: Clarendon. Pitkänen, Pekka. 2004. Ethnicity, Assimilation and the Israelite Settlement. Tyndale Bulletin 55:161–82. Plato. 1973. Theaetetus. With an English Translation and Notes by John McDowell. Oxford: Clarendon. Polybius. 1922. The Histories. Vol. 2, Books 3–4. With an English translation by W. R. Paton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ———. 1925. The Histories. Vol. 4, Books 9–15. With an English translation by W. R. Paton. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Porter, J. R. 1979. Old Testament Historiography. Pages 125–62 in Tradition and Interpretation: Essays by Members of the Society for Old Testament Study. Edited by G. W. Anderson. Oxford: Clarendon. Provan, Iain W. 1995. Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reections on Recent Writing on the History of Israel. Journal of Biblical Literature 114:585–606. Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman. 2003. A Biblical History of Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. 1

114

Bibliography

Quintilian. 1920. Institutio Oratoria. Vol. 1, Books I–III. With an English translation by H. E. Butler. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. London: William Heinemann. Rainey, Anson F. 2001. Stones for Bread: Archaeology versus History. Near Eastern Archaeology 64:140–49. Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn. 2004. Archaeology: Theory, Methods, and Practice. 4th ed. London: Thames & Hudson. Richardson, Mervyn. 2003. Characteristic Features of Peripherally Biblical Traditional Literature. Society for Old Testament Study: Bulletin for 2003: Winter Meeting: 3–4. Ritter, R. M. 2002. The Oxford Guide to Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roberts, J. J. M. 2003. Solomon’s Jerusalem and the Zion Tradition. Pages 163–70 in Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology: The First Temple Period. Edited by Andrew G. Vaughn and Ann E. Killebrew. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Robinson, H. Wheeler. 1946. Inspiration and Revelation in the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon. Rofé, Alexander. 1985. Joshua 20: Historico-Literary Criticism Illustrated. Pages 131–47 in Tigay 1985b. Saghieh, Muntaha. 1983. Byblos in the Third Millennium B.C.: A Reconstruction of the Stratigraphy and a Study of the Cultural Connections. Warminster: Aris & Phillips. Schloen, David J. 2001. The House of the Father as Fact and Symbol: Patrimonialism in Ugarit and the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Seneca. 1972. Naturales Quaestiones, vol. 2. With an English translation by Thomas H. Corcoran. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. London: William Heinemann. Shanks, Michael, and Christopher Tilley. 1992. Re-Constructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice. 2d ed. London: Routledge. Shiloh, Y. 1978. Elements in the Development of Town Planning in the Israelite City. Israel Exploration Journal 28:36–51. Simpson, Cuthbert Aikman. 1957. Composition of the Book of Judges. Oxford: Blackwell. Small, David B., ed. 1995. Methods in the Mediterranean: Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology. Leiden: Brill. Smith, Jonathan Z. 2002. Religion Up and Down, Out and In. Pages 3–10 in Sacred Time, Sacred Place: Archaeology and the Religion of Israel. Edited by Barry M. Gittlen. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Smith-Christopher, Daniel L. 1994. The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10 and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of the Post-exilic Judean Community. Pages 243–65 in Second Temple Studies. Vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period. Edited by Tamara C. Eskenazi and Kent H. Richards. Shefeld: Shefeld Academic. Snodgrass, Anthony. 1983. Archaeology. Pages 137–84 in Sources for Ancient History. Edited by Michael Crawford. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soden, Wolfram von. 1994. The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East. Translated by Donald G. Schley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Originally published in German in 1985. Soggin, J. Alberto. 1972. Joshua: A Commentary. Translated by R. A. Wilson. London: SCM. Originally published in French in 1970. 1

Bibliography

115

Southgate, Beverley. 1996. History: What and Why? Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives. London: Routledge. Stager, Lawrence E. 1998. Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel. Pages 120–75 in The Oxford History of the Biblical World. Edited by Michael D. Coogan. New York: Oxford University Press. Sternberg, Meir. 1985. The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stiebing, William H. 1989. Out of the Desert? Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives. Buffalo: Prometheus. Thompson, Thomas L. 1997. Dening History and Ethnicity in the South Levant. Pages 166–87 in Grabbe 1997c. Thucydides. 1928. History of the Peloponnesian War. Vol. 1, Books I and II. Rev. ed. With an English translation by Charles Forster Smith. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Tigay, Jeffrey H. 1985a. Introduction. Pages 1–20 in Tigay 1985c. ———, ed. 1985b. Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. VanderKam, James C. 1994. The Dead Sea Scrolls Today. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. SPCK: London. Vaux, Roland de. 1970. On Right and Wrong uses of Archaeology. Pages 64–80 in Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck: Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century. Edited by James A. Sanders. Garden City: Doubleday. Vinci, Leonardo da. 1970. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, vol. 1. Compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by Jean Paul Richter in two volumes. New York: Dover Publications. This is a corrected version of the original publication which appeared in London in 1883 published by Sampson Law, Marston, Searle, and Rivington with the title The Literacy Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Wallace, Jennifer. 2004. Digging the Dirt: The Archaeological Imagination. London: Duckworth. Waltke, Bruce K., and M. O’Connor. 1990. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. Walton, John H. 1990. Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context: A Survey of Parallels between Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts. 2d printing with corrections and additions. Grand Rapids: Zondervan. Weippert, H. 1977. Mauer und Mauertechnik. Pages 209–12 in Bibliches Reallexikon. Edited by Kurt Galling. 2d ed. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Whitelam, Keith W. 1998. The Search for Early Israel: Historical Perspective. Pages 41– 64 in AÜituv and Oren 1998. Whybray, R. N. 1996. What Do We Know About Ancient Israel? Expository Times 108:71–74. Williamson, H. G. M. 1988. History. Pages 25–38 in It is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture. Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars. Edited by D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1995. Review of J. Van Seters, The Life of Moses: The Yahwist as Historian in Exodus–Numbers. Vetus Testamentum 45:431–32. ———. 1998. The Origins of Israel: Can We Safely Ignore The [sic] Bible? Pages 141– 51 in AÜituv and Oren 1998. ———. 2004. Studies in Persian Period History and Historiography. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 38. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 1

116

Bibliography

———. 2007a. The Torah and History in Presentations of Restoration in Ezra– Nehemiah. Pages 156–95 in Reading the Law: Studies in Honour of Gordon J. Wenham. Edited by J. G. McConville and Karl Möller. Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies 461. New York: T&T Clark International. ———, ed. 2007b. Understanding the History of Ancient Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy. Willis, W. Waite. 1992. The Archaeology of Palestine and the Archaeology of Faith: Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Pages 75–111 in Charlesworth and Weaver 1992. Wilson, J. A. 1969. Egyptian Myths and Tales. Pages 1–24 in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. Wiseman, T. P. 1993. Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity. Pages 122–46 in Gill and Wiseman 1993. Woodhead, Peter. 1985. Keyguide to Information Sources in Archaeology. London: Mansell. Wright, G. R. H. 1985a. Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine. Vol. 1, Text. Leiden: Brill. ———. 1985b. Ancient Building in South Syria and Palestine. Vol. 2, Illustrations. Leiden: Brill. Zevit, Ziony. 2001. The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches. London: Continuum.

1

INDEX OF REFERENCES HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT Genesis 1 65, 67 2 65, 67 9:18 104 10:13–14 91 Exodus 1:11 3:1 14:21 14:22 18 18:13–21 Numbers 13:6 33:42

88 69 23 23 62 62

13 69

Deuteronomy 1:9–18 62 20:16–19 83 Joshua 1–12 1:1–6:27 2 2:15 3–5 6 11:1 13–24 13:3 20

63 74 74 68, 71–78, 80, 81 23 74 70 63 91 66

Judges 1:16 1:19

69 91

3:3 3:5–6 4:1 4:2 4:11 4:17 4:23–24 6 16:30 1 Samuel 4–6 5:2–5 6:4 13:19–22 13:21

91 37 70 70 69 70 70 3 91

91 92 91 91 71

2 Samuel 5:6–10 6 7 24

87 87 87 87

1 Kings 9:13

89

2 Kings 17

16

Nehemiah 9 9:7–8 9:32–37

85 85 85

Psalms 78 114:3

88 23

Jeremiah 47:4

91, 92

Ezekiel 16:3

83

Hosea 2:15 2:17 Heb. 8:13 9:3 11:1 11:5 12:9 12:10 Heb. 12:13 12:14 Heb. 13:4

12 12 13 13 13, 83 13 12 12 12 12 12

Amos 9:7

91

1 Chronicles 1:11–12 11:4–9 13 15–16 17 21

91 87 87 87 87 87

APOCRYPHA/DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS 1 Maccabees 3:41 92 5:68 92

Ezra 9:1 9:8

85 85

2 Maccabees 2:13–15 2:13

85, 86 86

Index of References

118 CLASSICAL Anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.13 45

Homer Odyssey I.350–52 I.351–52

Cicero De Inventione 1.27 45

Plato Theaetetus 171 5

De Oratore 2.62

50

Topica 80

47

Herodotus 2.113 2.116 2.152

49 49 91

47 48

Polybius 3.31.11–13 3.33.17 12.28a.10 12.28a.6 12.28a.8

47 46 46 46 46

Quintilian Institutio 2.4.2

45

Seneca Naturales Quaestiones 7.16.1–2 48 Thucydides 1.20–22 1.21 1.22

103 44 44

INDEX OF AUTHORS Ahlström, G. 14 Albright, W. F. 75 Allport, G. W. 65 Amit, Y. 41 Athas, G. 89 Aurenche, O. 76 Bahn, P. 10 Barber, E. J. W. 97 Barr, J. 9, 20, 55, 64, 68, 102–4 Barstad, H. M. 22, 52 Bartlett, J. R. 16 Barton, G. A. 16, 37, 92, 100 Baumgarten, J. J. 74 Baumgartner, W. 73, 80 Becker, C. 5 Ben Zvi, E. 9 Berlin, A. 71 Bienkowski, P. 11, 79 Boling, R. G. 72 Bowie, E. L. 47 Brandfon, F. 58 Brett, M. Z. 64 Brettler, M. G. 15, 71 Briggs, C. A. 80, 91 Brown, F. 80, 91 Bunimovitz, S. 12 Burney, C. 40, 41 Butler, C. 52, 54, 55 Butler, T. 72 Carr, E. H. 10 Carter, C. E. 2 Chapman, R. 10, 62 Coady, C. A. J. 3 Conrad, D. 27 Crossland, R. A. 37 Culley, R. C. 18, 19 Davies, G. I. 61 Davies, P. R. 6, 66, 81, 82 Day, J. 91 Denzinger, H. 38

Dever, W. G. 20, 26, 28, 34, 53, 54, 69–71, 91, 92 Doran, R. 86 Dothan, T. 92, 93 Driver, S. R. 18, 37, 63, 80, 91 Dunand, M. 31 Dymond, D. P. 10, 21 Ernst, M. 16 Evans, R. J. 17, 53, 54, 56 Faust, A. 12 Feeney, D. C. 48, 49 Finkelstein, I. 14, 91, 94, 95 Fischer, D. H. 10, 54, 102 Fishbane, M. 22, 23 Franken, H. J. 65 Frendo, A. 36, 59, 83 Friedeberg, S. 72 Fritz, V. 74 Fuerst, J. 73 Gill, C. 48 Gitin, S. 93 Grabbe, L. L. 6, 17, 21, 24 Grant, E. 76 Grant, M. 50, 51 Groves, J. A. 87 Hamalakis, Y. 31 Harris, E. C. 10 Hawk, L. D. 2 Hedrick, C. W., Jr. 42–44 Herzog, Z. 76 Hess, R. S. 36, 37 Hoffman, Y. 12, 13 Hoffmeier, J. K. 9, 30, 88 Hogarth, D. G. 28, 29 Holmes, S. 77 Isserlin, B. S. J. 35–37 Japhet, S. 19, 25, 88 Jastrow, M. 73

120 Jidejian, N. 31 Joüon, P. 80 Kenyon, K. 10, 62, 79 Ker, I. T. 53, 60 King, P. J. 76 Kitchen, K. A. 32, 70, 71 Knauf, E. A. 57 Koch, K. 19 Koehler, L. 73, 80 Kosso, P. 28, 29 Kuhrt, A. 40 Lemaire, A. 17, 18, 34, 42, 59 Levy, J. 73 Liverani, M. 3, 66 Lonergan, B. J. F. 8, 57–59 Long, V. P. 3, 5, 24 Longman, T. 3, 5 Macintosh, A. A. 83 Madvig, D. H. 73 Maeir, A. M. 93 Malamat, A. 41 Mayes, A. D. H. 40, 42 Mazar, A. 75 McNutt, P. M. 70 Millard, A. R. 11 Miller, J. M. 9, 29, 72 Moor, J. C. de 36, 64 Moreland, J. 1 Morgan, J. R. 45 Muraoka, T. 80 Na’aman, N. 105 Naveh, J. 93 Nelson, R. D. 73, 78 Newman, J. H. 59, 60, 99–101 Nicholson, E. W. 31, 41, 62–65 Noll, K. L. 11, 38 Noort, E. 104 Noth, M. 23, 69, 72, 74 Nowack, W. 104 O’Connor, M. 80 Ong, W. J. 19 Pitkänen, P. 12, 13 Porter, J. R. 23, 96 Provan, I. W. 3, 5, 9, 103

Index of Authors Rainey, A. F. 30, 31 Renfrew, C. 10 Richardson, M. 90 Roberts, J. J. M. 86, 87 Robinson, H. W. 21 Rofé, A. 62, 66 Saghieh, M. 31 Schloen, D. J. 59, 89 Schönmetzer, A. 38 Shanks, M. 23, 101 Shiloh, Y. 76 Simpson, C. A. 63, 98 Smith, J. Z. 27 Smith-Christopher, D. L. 84 Snodgrass, A. 24, 27, 29, 30 Soden, W. von 40 Soggin, J. A. 72 Southgate, B. 4, 10 Stager, L. E. 3, 69, 70, 76 Stamm, J. J. 73, 80 Sternberg, M. 15, 42 Stiebing, W. H. 13 Thompson, T. L. 24 Tigay, J. H. 63 Tilley, C. 23, 101 Tucker, G. M. 72 VanderKam, J. C. 86 Vaux, R. de 27, 53, 105 Vinci, L. da 6, 8 Wallace, J. 14, 32, 33, 56 Waltke, B. K. 80 Walton, J. H. 40 Weippert, H. 76 Whitelam, K. 17 Whybray, R. N. 20 Williamson, H. G. M. 6, 61, 66, 84, 85 Willis, W. W. 103 Wilson, J. A. 89, 90 Wiseman, T. P. 46 Woodhead, P. 21 Wright, E. E. 76 Wright, G. R. H. 75, 76 Zevit, Z. 7, 21, 26, 55, 56, 83