Read The Invention of Ancient Israel Online
Authors: Keith W. Whitelam
He stresses the âmere formal continuities' with âthe old pre- Yahwistic “Canaanite” and Anatolian cultures which characterized the Palestinian scene' but this is prior to âthe socio-religious unification' (1973: 25, n. 93). The emphasis here is on the fact that it was only due to this external input that unification was achieved, something of which the indigenous population and systems were incapable without external direction. Thus Mendenhall, rather than shaking the very foundations of biblical discourse and providing a
voice for Palestinian history, invents an ancient Israel which continues to deny value to Palestinian society and history.
What is potentially much more important for the development of Palestinian history in its own right is his questioning of the causal connection between the growth of highland settlements and the urban collapse:
The destruction levels revealed by archaeology in Palestine would have been caused not by the Israelites, but rather are part of the common experience of the population that made vivid the desirability and need for a new community. This could bring about the peace and secure a new cooperation for rebuilding a shattered society and economy.
(Mendenhall 1973: 23)
Thus the shift in settlement is understood as a result of the urban collapse rather than its cause (Mendenhall 1973: 63â4). Although his conclusions are tied to his theological scheme, his analysis of the archaeological data provides a very important starting point for the history of ancient Palestine as a study of the processes which brought about social change in the region. If we remove the distraction of the search for Israel and think more in terms of trying to explain the processes involved in the political and social upheavals of the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition and the accompanying settlement shift, then Mendenhall's analysis has much to commend it. The focus of attention is then switched to trying to investigate and understand the processes which contributed to this settlement shift and the accompanying economic decline throughout the region at the end of the Late Bronze Age. It is this type of approach which holds out the promise of the realization of the study of Palestinian history as a subject in its own right rather than as the backdrop for the theologically and politically motivated search for ancient Israel. The paradox embedded in Mendenhall's analysis offers an instructive analogy with a great deal of subsequent research, to be discussed in
chapter 5
, whereby the accumulating data from archaeological excavations and surveys which offer a voice to Palestinian history have been side-tracked by the discourse of biblical studies in its continued and forlorn search for ancient Israel.
Norman Gottwald developed many of Mendenhall's basic ideas in an expressly political formulation of early Israelite origins in his massive
The Tribes of Yahweh. A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250â1050 B.C.E.
The title reveals the explicitly
political nature of Gottwald's work, something which he has continued to develop in a series of studies. This is signalled by the dedication of his study âto the memory and to the honor of the first Israelites' followed by an anonymous tribute to the people of Vietnam in which love and power are deemed necessary to destroy power without love. His preface opens with three quotations, including one from Marx and Engels and one from Mendenhall (1973: 12), which stress the importance of revolutionary movements for social change. He then explicitly states one of the major influences on his work:
Two decades of involvement in civil rights struggles, in opposition to the war in Vietnam, in anti-imperialist efforts, in analysis of North American capitalism, and in the rough-and- tumble of ecclesial and educational politics have continued an ever-informative âliving laboratory' for discerning related social struggles in ancient Israel.
(Gottwald 1979: xxv)
It is quite clear that Gottwald was well aware of the subjective influences of current politics in shaping a construction of the Israelite past.
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The preface concludes with the oft-quoted line that âonly as the full
materiality
of ancient Israel is more securely grasped will we be able to make proper sense of its
spirituality
' (1979: xxv). His professed aim was to view Israelite religion as a part of a total social system by assembling âthe most reliable information about
the rise of Israel
as determined by the recognized methods of biblical science' (1979: xxii).
It is striking that given the expressly political nature of Gottwald's work, his Marxist-materialist analysis of history and explicit acknowledgement of his part in the anti-Vietnam movement, he never mentions the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. In one of the most radical and controversial works of twentieth-century biblical studies, the question of Palestine remains unspoken. Similarly, Silberman can state, in his review of the hypotheses of Mendenhall and Gottwald, that: âThe “peasant revolt” theory of Israelite origins had obvious rhetorical power in the 1970s, a time of modern national liberation movements and Third World insurgency' (Silberman 1992: 29). Yet Silberman, attuned as he is to the political construction of the past, makes no attempt to connect this theory of Israelite origins with the most obvious of national liberation movements, the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. The problem
remains unspoken because the dominant discourse of biblical studies has silenced any notion of Palestinian history or expression of self-determination so thoroughly. Even though Gottwald in his radical critique, and Silberman in his acknowledgement of the wider political setting of such an hypothesis, see the connection with other struggles for national liberation, they are unable to draw out the implications of this construction of the past for understanding the contemporary struggle for Palestinian self-determination.
Gottwald's opening chapter, entitled âObstacles to a comprehensive understanding of early Israel', focuses upon Israel as âa radical socio-religious mutation' (1979: 3). The obstacles, however, in achieving this comprehensive understanding are not due to any lack of industry or ingenuity in scholarly investigation but stem from the nature of the sources and a scholarly and religious aversion and hesitancy in conceiving ancient Israel as a social totality. In addressing this issue of the appeal to social scientific data and theories for understanding ancient Israel, he identifies a key problem:
One root of this inhibition is the canonical sanctity that still surrounds ancient Israel as the forerunner of Judaism and Christianity. The very patterns of our thinking about Israel have been imbued with religiosity, or with its defensive counterpart, anti-religiosity. It is difficult not to think of Israel as a people wholly apart from the rest of humanity. While our scholarly or secular minds may know better, our psychosocial milieu impels us to look for abstract religious phenomena and for all-encompassing theological explanations as indices to the meaning of Israel. As a result, the radical historical mutation of Israel in human history is accounted for by the supernatural, or by retrojected theological meanings from later Israel, or simply not accounted for at all.
(Gottwald 1979: 5)
The paradox of this is that while Gottwald eschews the key notion of the uniqueness of ancient Israel which has been central to the exclusion of Palestinian history from academic discourse, he refers to Israel as a âradical historical mutation', picking up the key terminology used by George Ernest Wright which set Israel apart as unique from its environment. The overspecialization of biblical studies is condemned as contributing to the failure to conceive of Israel as a total social system which he traces back to intellectual, cultural, and sociological factors. His analysis represents a very
strong attack upon the dead hand of theology in the study of Israelite history while decrying the failure of biblical studies to articulate and investigate the social, economic, and political factors which affect its scholarship. The key for Gottwald was âthe crucial factor of the social-class identity of the biblical scholar' (1979: 10): the location of biblical scholars within a capitalist middle class, espousing scholarly humanistic ideals, has produced a vision of society which has excluded many of its members (1979: 11). He acknowledges the subjectivity and limitations of the discourse of biblical studies, yet he does not go on to develop the way in which the domination of theology has constrained the study of the ancient Palestinian past; it is only perceived as an obstacle to a clear understanding of ancient Israel. His whole focus is upon Israelite society, particularly the role of religion in Israelite society, and remains firmly rooted to the discourse which has silenced Palestinian history. The influence of Alt's analysis of the political situation in Palestine prior to the so-called emergence of Israel is evident throughout, particularly in his identification of the settlement shift to the Palestinian highlands with Israel. He is reliant upon the analyses of Albright for the various material aspects of this âIsraelite culture', as identified in its ceramic and architectural traditions, unlike Mendenhall who had strongly denied the ethnic labelling of such material culture. Furthermore, Gottwald's analysis of the biblical traditions themselves is firmly rooted in the dominant discourse of biblical studies.
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He is able to refer to Israel as âa recognizably novel and coherent system in Canaan' (1979: 34), stressing the relationship between âIsrael as a total social system and the prehistories of its component peoples' (1979: 34). The history of Palestine, either prior to or contemporary with the so-called emergence of Israel, is thereby reduced to the role of âprehistory' for this later all-encompassing reality. Israel is allowed to dominate and exclude Palestinian history through his continual references to âproto-Israelites' or âIsraelite prehistory' which claim Palestinian time for Israel. However, he offers a greater understanding of the value and worth of the history of the region with the recognition that âIsrael's origins are positioned in the midst of an ancient and highly developed arena of self-conscious civilization' (1979: 43). But the negative assessment of this internal history ultimately prevails since Israel is distinctive in its egalitarian social experiment and âmanages to do this in the face of the most serious threats from powerful surrounding systems of domination determined to prevent its liberation' (1979: 43). In
essence, the reader is presented with a model of Israel as the carrier of traditions of liberation and democracy surrounded by powerful forces which seek to destroy it.
In his review and critique of the three standard models of Israelite origins, Gottwald (1979: 191â227) makes it clear that the identification of material culture is a key aspect of his understanding of the location of Israel in Palestine. He criticizes the Albrightian conclusion that the cumulative evidence of the destruction of many Late Bronze urban sites and the spread of poor, rural settlements
points to a culturally less advanced population living in temporary encampments or in poorly constructed houses without fortifications. Assuming the new residents to have been the destroyers of the Late Bronze cities on whose ruins they settled, it is easy to see them as the technically impoverished, âsemi-nomadic' Israelites.
(Gottwald 1979:195)
However, although he recognizes that there are many possible explanations for the urban destructions, it is the identification of a distinct material culture associated with the increase in rural sites in the early Iron Age that remains important for his understanding of early Israel. He proposes an equally sharp distinction between Israel, as a socio-religious mutation, and the politically and economically oppressive Canaanite regimes. Indigenous Palestinian culture is denuded of any value and is seen as being transformed by Israel into something it was unable to become by itself.
The distinctive element of Gottwald's formulation of a revolt hypothesis is his stress upon the socio-political aspects of the model. As with Mendenhall's formulation, it would appear that this stress upon the socio-political conditions of Late Bronze Age Palestine offers a voice to Palestinian history. However, once again this voice is effectively excluded by the concentration upon Israel and the presentation of a corrupt indigenous socio-political system devoid of value:
When the exodus Israelites entered Canaan they encountered this stress-torn Canaanite society, which was in still further decline a century after the Amarna Age. Population in the hill country seems to have tapered off in the Late Bronze period, and the city-state units seem to have been reduced in number and size from the preceding century. The advocates of the
revolt model for Israelite origins picture these Israelite tribes as immediate allies of the Canaanite lower classes. Both groups shared a lower-class identity. The former slaves from Egypt, now autonomous, presented an immediate appeal to the restive serfs and peasants of Canaan. The attraction of Israelite Yahwism for these oppressed Canaanites may be readily located in the central feature of the religion of the entering tribes: Yahwism celebrated the actuality of deliverance from socio-political bondage, and it promised continuing deliverance whenever Yahweh's autonomous people were threatened.
(Gottwald 1979: 214)
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Despite the common assumption that both Mendenhall and Gottwald stress an
internal
revolt, the domain assumption is that the indigenous system is corrupt or deficient in some significant way, that it can only be transformed by Israel and its religious and political ideology which comes from
outside
. While extending and altering Mendenhall's original formulation of what came to be known as the revolt hypothesis, he was greatly influenced by the assumption shared with Alt and Albright that the settlement growth and shift to small rural sites in the marginal areas of Palestine was to be identified with Israel. His explanation of the nature and origins of Israel as largely internal has tended to mask this fundamental shared assumption of the dominant discourse of biblical studies. It is this domain assumption which remains at the heart of the failure to give Palestinian history a voice during a time when the search for ancient Israel has been all-consuming.