The Invention of Ancient Israel (10 page)

Rainey, one of the leading contemporary authorities on historical geography, and the person who revised the second edition of Aharoni's classic work, has described the importance of the subject in the following terms:

The political implications of the choice of nomenclature become much clearer in this passage: the possession and naming of the land, both past and present, is of vital importance. The interrelationships of past and present are made explicit in this conception of the nature of Israel and its possession of the land. Israel is conceived here in terms of the nation state, which is inextricably linked to national territory by right of ‘occupation'. The rationale for historical geography is given as the historical and religious interests of the Judaeo– Christian tradition. No mention is made of any interest in Palestinian history: it is silenced by the concern for Israel's historical and religious experience ‘in a specific geographical context'.

These points can be illustrated further from Aharoni's (1982) other classic work,
The Archaeology of the Land of Israel
. The way in which the search for ‘ancient Israel' has obscured and silenced Palestinian history is brought out in Rainey's preface to the second edition:

The appeal to the boundaries of the Davidic–Solomonic kingdom, ‘from Dan to Beersheba', as a definition of the geographical extent of Eretz Israel, a claim that will need to be examined in later chapters,
betrays that it is the biblical perception of the past which is dominant. Rainey's claim, made in such a reasonable and matter-of-fact manner, that the term Eretz Israel is not just non-political but is the
only
non-political term for the region, is astounding in the context. The terms ‘Palestine' and ‘Eretz Israel' are not interchangeable but are in competition given the contemporary struggle for Palestine. The political nature of the term ‘Eretz Israel',
contra
Rainey, is evident from the fact that it opens and is used throughout the Proclamation of Independence of the State of Israel issued in May 1948 (Laqueur and Rubin 1984: 125–8). The implications of the choice of terminology to define space become more obvious when it is learned that Aharoni's monograph was designed to replace W.F. Albright's classic treatment of thirty years earlier,
The Archaeology of Palestine
(1949). Just as the prehistoric and Canaanite periods have been superseded by the Israelite era, so Palestine has been supplanted and replaced by Israel.

Rainey acknowledges that the phrase Eretz Israel is anachronistic when applied to what he terms the ‘prehistoric' and ‘Canaanite' periods since it is the ‘biblical period' and the ‘Israelite period' which are the focus of attention.
⁸
This is revealing in light of the title of the work,
The Archaeology of the Land of Israel
, compared with the scope of the work which covers the Chalcolithic to the Persian periods. Thus a vast expanse of time before the appearance of any entity called Israel or the formation of an Israelite state is subsumed under the term ‘the Land of Israel'. Aharoni (1982: 90) describes the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, his Middle Canaanite II and Late Canaanite (c. 2000–1200 BCE), as the first historical period for which there are documents preserved. However, he goes on to add that ‘this is also the period in which the Hebrew tribes penetrated into various districts of the country and finally crystallized into the people of Israel,
the first and only people to make the country its natural homeland
' (Aharoni 1982: 90; emphasis added). While his view of the origins or emergence of Israel in the Late Bronze Age is now outdated in comparison with much recent research, as will be shown below, the significant fact is that he gives no justification for his view that it is ‘the people of Israel' who are ‘the first and only people to make the country its natural homeland'. The reader is given no explanation as to why it is Israel alone that can claim the territory as its ‘natural' homeland. It is significant that the language Rainey chooses closely mirrors the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 which committed the British government to viewing ‘with favour the
establishment in Palestine of a natural home for the Jewish people'. However much the discourse of biblical studies might profess its objectivity, it is easy to see that it is implicated in contemporary political struggles.
⁹
The claims of the modern state to the region as its ‘natural homeland' are mirrored in a projection of the past in which Israel replaces Palestine and Israelite history supersedes prehistory and Canaanite history. Once again there are no ancient Palestinians, only prehistoric inhabitants or Canaanites, therefore there can be no such thing as Palestinian history.

The essence to the claim on the land and therefore the right to name it, which is to possess it, is made on the basis of nationhood and statehood. It is at this point that the modern struggle for Palestine coincides with the representation of the past in biblical studies. The choice of language, the naming of the land, is part of the manipulation of power in which relationship to the land is affirmed or denied. The political ramifications and problematic nature of the naming of space emerges in the discussion of nomenclature which took place at the Congress of Archaeology in Jerusalem in 1984. Moshe Dothan (1985: 136), responsible with his wife Trade Dothan for so much of the discovery and clarification of Philistine culture, rejected the term ‘Holy Land' as too narrow in its application to biblical aspects of the past and a study of holy places. He rejected the use of the term ‘Palestine' on the grounds that it was the official name for the country ‘for only a mere thirty years under the British Mandate' (1985: 137), arguing that its origins in the fifth century BCE were restricted to a designation for the southern coast: he refers to it as a Greek simplification and generalization found in Herodotus. It was replaced by Yehud and Yehudah but reinstated in the Roman period and used after the Arab conquest. After the eleventh century CE, the term, according to Dothan, was almost forgotten, allowing him to conclude that:

This denial of continuity between the use of the term Palestine and any past reality thereby denies any claims to a Palestinian history. Yet this is a denial of a use of a term which appears in Assyrian and Hellenistic sources, becomes the designation for the region in the Roman period, and was then used extensively in Arabic sources from the tenth century onward (Davies 1992: 23; Said 1992: 10). Once again the controlling factor is the nation state since it is the ‘local national entity' which defines the space. Since the modern state of Israel is such a ‘local national entity' it follows that ‘Israel' is the appropriate label for the area. Dothan went on to argue that:

Nation and land become synonymous in this analysis since the territory belongs to and is identified with the nation. Here it should be noted that once again it is the nation state, Israel, which has replaced Canaanite culture characterized as merely a loose conglomeration of city-states. Israel represents the ultimate in political evolution, the European nation state, and the pinnacle of civilization which surpasses and replaces that which is primitive and incapable of transformation. Thus Israel has replaced Palestine, and Israelite history thereby silences any Palestinian past. Dothan goes on to claim that the only terms that can be ‘correctly applied' are ‘the archaeology of Israel' or ‘the archaeology of the Land of Israel'. He rejects the former on the grounds that it excludes areas outside the borders of the modern state of Israel, thereby concluding that ‘the archaeology of the Land of Israel' is the most appropriate term. The existence of the modern state and its claims to continuity with some earlier state of the Iron Age is the determining factor in the choice of terminology. The claim to continuity means that other claims to existence, other perceptions of the past, are effectively silenced. We are left with the history of Israel, past and present. There is no Palestine and therefore there cannot be a history of Palestine.
¹⁰

The term ‘Palestine' has been divested of any inherent meaning of its own in biblical scholarship: it can only be understood when it is redefined by some other theological or political term such as ‘Holy Land' or ‘Eretz Israel'. But what is even more striking is that while the use of the term ‘Palestine' might be widespread, albeit divested
of any meaning of its own, the term ‘Palestinians' as inhabitants of the land very rarely occurs in biblical scholarship. If we have a land called Palestine, why are its inhabitants not called Palestinians?
¹¹
For the so-called prehistoric periods, the inhabitants are nameless except for designation by archaeological period: Neolithic, Chalcolithic, or possibly Ghassulian culture. There are no written sources by which to identify the inhabitants. But they are not ‘Palestinians' or even ‘Neolithic Palestinians', ‘Chalcolithic Palestinians', or ‘Palestinians of the Neolithic or Chalcolithic periods'. In the Bronze Age, it is the ‘Canaanites' who become the inhabitants of the land. Archaeologists recognize the achievements of their culture, particularly for the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Yet they are never said to have a national consciousness and their religion is presented, of course, as a degenerate fertility cult, lacking in the overarching ethical impulse of Yahwism, and therefore immoral. Such a presentation also draws a sharp contrast with the national consciousness and moral monotheism of Western civilization. They are replaced by the Israelites who are a ‘nation' or incipient nation who, according to Aharoni, are only claiming their ‘natural homeland'. We have the paradox that ‘Canaanite' culture was more advanced, as many archaeologists acknowledge, but their religion is portrayed as far inferior to the supreme religion which is the foundation of Judaeo–Christian tradition and thereby Western civilization. In the same way, Israel as a nation state is at the pinnacle of political evolution in contrast to a conglomeration of city-states in the region.

Palestine may exist, in name only, but it has no reality in terms of its history or inhabitants being Palestinian. Those inhabitants who are acknowledged before the beginning of the Iron Age are only temporary, mostly anonymous, awaiting Israel's arrival to claim its national heritage. Since it is difficult to deny the existence of inhabitants prior to the ‘emergence' of Israel, the standard approach has been to denigrate their achievements or their right to exist. So the Bishop of Salisbury could address members of the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1903 with the following words:

The situation in antiquity as presented by biblical scholarship is remarkably similar to the modern period leading up to the foundation of the modern state of Israel. Scholarship seems to mirror the late nineteenth-century Zionist slogan for Palestine: ‘a land without people, for a people without land.' What we have in biblical scholarship from its inception to the present day is the presentation of a land, ‘Palestine', without inhabitants, or at the most simply temporary, ephemeral inhabitants, awaiting a people without a land. This has been reinforced by a reading of the biblical traditions and archaeological findings, interpreted on the basis of a prior understanding of a reading of the Bible, which helps to confirm this understanding. The foundation of the modern state has dominated scholarship to such an extent that the retrojection of the nation state into antiquity has provided the vital continuity which helps to justify and legitimize both. The effect has been to deny any continuity or legitimacy to Palestinian history. If there were no Palestinians in antiquity then there could not be a Palestinian history. The notion of continuity is reinforced by the assumption that European civilization, the pinnacle of human achievement, has its roots in this Judaeo-Christian tradition. Europe has retrojected the nation state into antiquity in order to discover its own roots while at the same time giving birth to the Zionist movement which has established a ‘civilized' state in the alien Orient thereby helping to confirm this continuity in culture and civilization. The irony of this situation is that for the past there is a Palestine but no Palestinians, yet for the present there are Palestinians but no Palestine.
¹³
The politics of scholarship is brought home by the remark of Menachem Begin in 1969: ‘If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came' (cited by Said 1988: 241). In the scholarship of the past and in the reality of the present, Palestine has become ‘the land of Israel' and the history of Israel is the only legitimate subject of study. All else is subsumed in providing background and understanding for the history of ancient Israel which has continuity with the present state and provides the roots and impulse of European civilization.