The Origin of Early Israel-Current Debate

Biblical, Historical and Archaeological Perspectives

Shmuel Ahituv, Eliezar Oren

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781598743913
• eBook ISBN: 9781315417677
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The origin of Israel, their settlement in the land of Canaan and transformation into an organized kingdom is one of the most stimulating and controversial chapters in the history of ancient Israel. In this volume, three of the researchers who have presented key models regarding this era—Finkelstein, Whitelam, and Kitchen—offer their latest thinking and are critiqued by a panel of other scholars, using biblical, historical, archaeological, anthropological and comparative Near Eastern data. An important introduction to the debate over this crucial question.

Keynote Lectures

The Rise of Early Israel Archaeology and Long-Term History

Israel Finkelstein

Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University

Introduction

The question of the emergence of Early Israel has been in the eye of the storm of biblical, historical and archaeological research for over a century. Theological and cultural motivations made it a principal theme in Judeo-Christian civilization. However, scholars could not reach consensus; theories shifted from complete reliance on the biblical text to total denial of its value as an historical record. Apart from the specific issue of the rise of Early Israel, it has become a debate over the historicity of the biblical text and the value of archaeology in historical research.

Consensus has not been reached; but the spectrum of views is narrowing. First and foremost, most scholars agree today on what cannot be accepted, and that is a remarkable achievement in historical research. Most scholars today will find it easy to unite behind a rejection of the three schools of scholarship which dominated the study of the rise of Early Israel until the late-1970s – the military conquest, peaceful infiltration and social revolution models.

A methodological note is in place here. A minimalist school of scholarship (from the biblical point of view) has recently stormed its way to the frontline of research. Davies (1992, and in different words also Thompson 1992, Whitelam 1996 and others) argue for a distinction between three Early Israels:

• Biblical Israel – mainly a literary, ideological construct, dating to post-exilic times;

• Historical Israel – the history of the people of Palestine in the Iron Age, as revealed mainly by archaeological research;

• Ancient Israel – the reconstruction of the sequential history of Early Israel according to the previous two, that is, the biblical narrative and the archaeological data – mainly a scholarly construct.

This is not the place to discuss the merits and deficiencies of this approach. I just wish to mention that I tend to agree on one principal item in their hypothesis – that all three ‘classic’ models describe the emergence of Early Israel as a unique event in the history of Palestine; consciously or unconsciously, all three followed the basic theological construct of the biblical narrative. In any event, dealing with the history of Palestine in the Iron I is a proto-historic, text-free task, and thus an archaeological endeavor. Therefore, what follows is mainly a treatment of Historical Israel, in the sense that I will describe the settlement patterns and material culture of the people of the highlands in antiquity. However, one should bear in mind that there is cultural and demographic continuity in the highlands from the Iron I to the Iron II. The decendants of the Iron I people were the inhabitants of the later kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and hence there can never be a complete separation between the three Israels.

In what follows I wish to present a model for understanding the emergence of Early Israel, which is based on two decades of intensive field work in the highlands in excavations and surveys alike. These undertakings have disqualified many of the past theories on the rise of Early Israel and have opened the way to a comprehensive understanding of the settlement history of the highlands in the entire Bronze and Iron Ages.

I wish to start with the main conclusions. As far as I can judge, the rise of Early Israel was not a unique event in the history of Palestine. Rather, it was one phase in long-term cyclic socio-economic and demographic processes that started in the 4th millennium BCE. The wave of settlement that took place in the highlands in the late second millennium BCE was no more than a chapter in alternating shifts along the typical Near Eastern socioeconomic continuum, between sedentary and pastoral modes of subsistence. The genuine change – the ground-breaking transformation in the history of Palestine – came with the rise of the territorial-national states in the first millennium BCE. I will argue that full-blown statehood was not achieved before the 9th century in Israel and the 8th century in Judah.

Setting the Stage

Geographically, this article deals first and foremost with the highlands of Palestine, mainly the area between the Beer-sheba Valley in the south and the Jezreel Valley in the north. Yet, it is impossible to separate between the emergence of Early Israel and the rise of the other territorial-national entities of the Iron II – Amon, Moab, Edom and the Aramaean states. Hence, the highlands of Transjordan must also be included in this discussion.

Chronologically, the article deals with the period of time which started with the collapse of the old order – the Late Bronze, Canaanite city-states under Egyptian domination. Excavations in major Bronze Age mounds, such as Megiddo, Hazor, Aphek and Lachish, indicate that this collapse was a gradual decline that started in the 13th century and lasted until the late 12th century BCE (e.g., Beck and Kochavi 1985; Ussishkin 1985; 1995). The period under discussion ends with the rise of the full-blown territorial states of the Iron II, in the 9th century BCE. The last sentence needs an explanation. The conventional wisdom places the rise of the national states in the 10th century. It is based on the biblical material on the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, and supposedly supported by finds at sites such as Megiddo and Hazor (e.g., Yadin 1970). But looking at the archaeological data on their own merits, that is, free of textual bias, seems to reveal a different picture: the crucial strata for this discussion, that have been dated to the 10th century, may in fact be assigned to the 9th century BCE (Finkelstein 1996). This is not to say that there was no David or Solomon, only that monumental architecture as well as official writing came only in the 9th century, and thus the first full-blown states cannot be dated before that time (later in Judah; Jamieson-Drake 1991).

Two main questions have dominated the study of the rise of Early Israel from the outset:

1. What was the origin of the Iron I villagers of the highlands of Cisjordan and the plateau of Transjordan – the proto-Israelites (Dever’s term), proto-Amonites, proto-Moabites and proto-Edomites?

2. What was the manner of their settlement process in these regions, what were the forces that stimulated the foundation of hundreds of small, isolated Iron I communities in the highlands frontier, and what were the circumstances that led these groups to establish the Iron II territorial states?

Theoretically speaking, scholars can use two tools to decipher these riddles: text and archaeology. The importance of the biblical source, which dominated past research on the rise of Early Israel, has been dramatically diminished in recent years. The relatively late date of the text and/or its compilation – in the 7th century BCE and later – and its theological/ideological/political agenda, make it irrelevant as direct historical testimony. Of course, though it reflects the religious convictions and interests of people who lived centuries after the alleged events took place, some historical germs may be disguised in it. But the extraction of these possible nuclei from the biblical text is a treacherous and Sisyphean task, if at all possible. Extra-biblical texts must not be ignored. The Merneptah Stele mentions a group of people named ‘Israel’ as early as the late-13th century BCE (see most recent summary in Hasel 1994); however, we do not know their exact location and their number. The Amarna letters shed light on the social and political background of Canaan in the Late Bronze Age. But they are two centuries earlier than the period under discussion.

We are left therefore with archaeology. Both branches of modern archaeological field research have been employed in the study of the emergence of Israel. For the first time, meticulous excavations have been carried out not only on the large mounds of the lowlands, but also in rural, highland sites. They shed new light on the material culture and economic strategies of the Iron I people. The most significant of these projects were undertaken at Giloh south of Jerusalem (Mazar 1981), at Mt. Ebal near Shechem (Zertal 1986–87, regardless of his disputed interpretation of the finds), at ‘Izbet Sartah in the western margin of the Samaria Hills (Finkelstein 1986) and at Shiloh between Jerusalem and Shechem (Finkelstein, Bunimovitz and Lederman 1993). But ‘the great leap forward’ in the study of the emergence of Early Israel has been the comprehensive surveys that have been carried out in the highlands. They enable an almost full reconstruction of the settlement patterns in antiquity. Most of the central hill country was fully combed in the course of regional surveys (Zertal 1988; 1992; 1996; Finkelstein, Lederman and Bunimovitz 1997; Finkelstein and Magen 1993; Ofer 1993). Intensive surveys have also been undertaken in the Transjordanian plateau, the most significant being the ones in the Gilead (Mittmann 1970), around Hesban (Ibach 1987), in the Kerak Plateau (Miller 1991) and in Wadi el-Hasa (MacDonald 1988). These surveys provide us with invaluable information on the number of sites, their size, the number of their inhabitants and their location, including the economic factors which dictated their distribution.

The Environment

From the points of view of the environment and economic potential, which have a decisive affect on the development of settlement systems and political formations, Palestine should be divided into three zones – lowlands, highlands and steppelands (Coote and Whitelam 1987). Its settlement and demographic history was shaped according to the ties between the inhabitants of these three niches. Special attention should be given to the dichotomy between the fertile, sedentary, but politically fragmented lowlands, and the topographical and lithological frontier of the highlands (for the entire Mediterannean basin see Braudel 1972:25–85).

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Opening Remarks
• Keynote Lectures
• Panel Discussion