The Invention of Ancient Israel (26 page)

The fact that he recognizes the artificiality of such an indigenous power points all the more to its uniqueness and the outstanding nature of its achievement. Although he refers to ‘a great kingdom' (1993: 470) rather than an ‘empire', his analysis is little different from that of the works he opposes.
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His description of David's achievement is broadly similar to those of standard ‘biblical histories':

He acknowledges that it was short-lived but unique as ‘an exception' in the region. Its importance, however, stretches far beyond this:

He might have added that it has also affected the ways in which the history of the region has been understood and presented: the kingdom or empire of David has become the dominant element in the history of the region, excluding any discussion of Palestinian history. For the Solomonic period, he argues (1993: 501) that because of the lack of extrabiblical materials it can ‘only be presented by use of the subjective opinion of the biblical writers combined with archaeological remains. The latter are impressive compared with the preceding period.' Although there is some typical royal hyperbole,
he believes (1993: 539) that a king would not have been built up to such an extent unless there was some basis for it, a remarkable statement given the history of hyperbole and propaganda in the ancient and modern worlds in service of ‘great men'. He describes Solomon (1993: 538) as ‘a king the likes of whom was produced neither before or after by that little country'. In short, it is difficult to distinguish Ahlström's narration from that of standard ‘biblical histories' despite his claim to represent the history of ancient Palestine. As with our standard histories of Israel and Judah, the history of Palestine is little more than the history of Israel as presented in the biblical traditions.

Questioning the Israelite State

Although the recent volume by Miller and Hayes (1986) represents the pinnacle of modern ‘biblical histories', it is interesting to note that their construction of this period is much more guarded than the presentations considered above. They accept that their attempts to understand the reign of Saul are highly speculative. They provide a much more critical attitude to the biblical text, questioning the historicity of the David narratives (1986: 152) to a much greater extent than Soggin or any of the standard ‘biblical histories' and particularly Meyers, for instance.
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Thus they provide an interesting contrast with the broad scholarly tradition that sees this as a critical period in the history of the region:

They do, however, question the notion that the reign of Solomon was a ‘golden age' (1986: 189). Although they note that archaeological evidence at Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer indicates Solomon's building activity, they qualify this by describing these achievements
as ‘rather modest' when compared to Mesopotamia and Egypt but also when compared with the Omrides (1986: 189–90). They provide a much more sober assessment of the reign of Solomon:

They describe Solomon's kingdom as having consisted of the bulk of western Palestine and a large part of northern Transjordan but excluding the bulk of the Mediterranean coast which would have been in the hands of the Philistines and Phoenicians (1986: 214). Although they still place an important emphasis upon the reigns of David and Solomon, they are much more tempered than many of the extravagant claims which we have seen above. They do not articulate an alternative history of Palestine, it is not part of their aim, but they do at least recognize that the Israel of David was not the sole entity in the region. The recognition of the possibility of alternative claims to the past, the Philistine and Phoenician possession of the ‘bulk of the Mediterranean coast', is at least implied. The fact that their work has been hailed as the pinnacle of ‘biblical histories' and that they perceive it to stand in the tradition of Alt–Noth–Albright–Bright indicates the extent to which the changed perceptions of and approaches to the biblical texts have begun to erode the confidence of the dominant discourse of biblical studies.
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The implications of this challenge will need to be considered later in the chapter. For the present, it is enough to concentrate upon a series of recent works which appear at first sight to offer a challenge to the dominant discourse but which in effect only serve to emphasize the silencing of Palestinian history.

One of the most distinctive treatments of the Israelite monarchy, as with the study of Israelite origins, has been supplied by Mendenhall. Once again in a seminal article (1975), he articulated a series of ideas which appear to challenge conventional understandings of the Israelite monarchy. He argues that the development of the Israelite monarchy followed the model of ‘a typical Syro–Hittite state' introducing ‘a paganization into the political and social history of Israel with fateful and lasting consequences' (Mendenhall 1975: 155). In effect, he pushes the notion of the paradox of the Israelite
monarchy as both alien but peculiarly Israelite to its logical conclusion by drawing a sharp distinction between the essential Israel of the ‘biblical revolution' and the reintroduction of Canaanite paganism through the monarchy of David and Solomon. Mendenhall suggests that the Davidic monarchy was a complex merging of ‘Canaanite, North Syrian, Anatolian and East Syrian cultural traditions of the Bronze Age' with a few features derived from Egypt. This corrupt ‘Canaanite paganism', it should be noticed, is internal and has to be contrasted with the purity of the biblical revolution of pre-monarchic Israel. He goes so far as to claim that ‘this new insight is not only revolutionary so far as biblical studies and theology are concerned, it is potentially of crucial importance to the survival of modern civilization and its dense population' (Mendenhall 1975: 155). He argues that there is ‘abundant evidence for a systematic reversion to Bronze Age paganism with the rapid evolution of the Jerusalem kingship, and that reversion took place in less than two generations' (Mendenhall 1975: 157). He sees this as a denial and reversal of the religious ethic of the Mosaic period to a system of the political monopoly of force which was subjected to critique by the prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The royal bureaucracy and its specialists, including religious specialists, were taken over from Canaanite states.

It is noticeable, however, that for Mendenhall such a bureaucracy was ‘essential to a large political state and empire like that of David' (Mendenhall 1975: 160). Whatever its origins, it is still conceived of as an ‘empire': it is the structure that dominates the history of Palestine, even though for Mendenhall it is judged negatively. In fact, he concludes that ‘the biblical narratives tell us that most of the old Palestinian power-centres (or what was left of them) were incorporated by military power into the kingdom of David' (Mendenhall 1975: 160). Notice that the kingdom of David supersedes and incorporates Palestinian history. The bureaucracy that David inherited did not have its ‘roots in the soil of ancient Israel, but rather in the impoverished regimes of Bronze Age Canaan' (Mendenhall 1975: 161). Yet it is important to make clear in what ways they could be considered to be impoverished. They provide the intellectual and literate elite to run David's kingdom, the Palestinian urban centres produced fine pottery and well-crafted artifacts, whereas the Israelites, according to most biblical specialists and archaeologists, lived in small rural sites with a poor, pragmatic material culture. The impoverishment can only be in terms of the religious system and
values which for Mendenhall are paramount. Interestingly, for him, the Israelite monarchy is corrupted by the indigenous culture just as for Alt the Philistines had failed to dominate the history of the region but for different reasons. The contrast here, however, is between the essential Israel and a paganization of the Davidic monarchy which denies this essential nature.

Mendenhall's condemnation of the politicization of religion, and implicitly, I suspect, a work such as this which argues that the political aspects of scholarship have to be recognized clearly for their influence upon results, is stark:

All except the truth claims of his own religious tradition are denounced as paganism. All indigenous religious developments are therefore inferior and to be replaced by this higher revelation which reaches its pinnacle in the Sermon on the Mount. Although Mendenhall provides a radically different appraisal of the reigns of David and Solomon from much of biblical scholarship, it is still the case that their reigns dominate the history of the region. They still remain the defining moment in the history of the region and of humankind, but for very different reasons from those traditionally advanced.

A series of works appeared in the 1980s which attempted to reevaluate the inauguration of the Israelite state. Most of these works appealed to social scientific studies of state formation (Cohen and Service 1978; Claessen and Skalnik 1978; 1981; Haas 1982) attempting to apply these findings to the fragmentary data available for understanding the move to statehood in ancient Israel. In particular, they questioned the historical reliability of the biblical traditions, the view that the monarchy was alien to Israel or inevitable, and the view that the Philistine threat was a sufficient cause to explain this move to statehood. Hauer (1986), Coote and Whitelam (1987), and Whitelam (1986) all appealed to Carneiro's (1970) theory of environmental and social circumscription in order to understand the
processes at work in the move to Israelite statehood. The Philistine threat is seen as no more than a catalyst to state formation (Coote and Whitelam 1987: 142; Frick 1985: 25–6). According to Coote and Whitelam (1987), Hauer (1986), and Frick (1985), it was the social and environmental factors of the hill-country settlements which led to a build-up of pressures which counteracted the natural tendencies of smaller polities to fission and led to increasing centralization and ultimately the development of an Israelite state. They argue for a complex feed-back process involving all forms of economic, social, political, and religious organization in contrast to standard interpretations which saw the Philistine threat as primary cause in the move to statehood (Frick 1985: 32; Coote and Whitelam 1987: 145). Whitelam (1986: 61) summarizes this as the social and geographical circumscription of the Palestinian highlands which places significant restraints upon the limits for expansion, increasing the competition for available land. The mechanisms which eventually led to the formation of the state were triggered once the dispersed rural settlements began to expand or multiply. In particular, the nature of farming strategies, devoted to terracing and commercial tree crops, required residential stability. This restriction on adaptability to increasing environmental and social pressures must have been an important factor in the move to centralization. They offered alternative explanations for the rise of the Israelite monarchy which challenged conventional understandings, stressing the combination of internal and external factors (Coote and Whitelam 1987: 142), questioning the oft-repeated notion that the monarchy is alien. Coote and Whitelam are able to conclude that: