Israel's Ethnogenesis
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Israel's Ethnogenesis

Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance

Avraham Faust

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eBook - ePub

Israel's Ethnogenesis

Settlement, Interaction, Expansion and Resistance

Avraham Faust

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About This Book

Winner (for best semi-popular book) of the 2008 Irene Levi-Sala Prize for publications on the archaeology of Israel. The emergence of Israel in Canaan is a central topic in biblical/Syro-Palestinian archaeology. However, the archaeology of ancient Israel has rarely been subject to in-depth anthropological analysis until now. 'Israel's Ethnogenesis' offers an anthropological framework to the archaeological data and textual sources. Examining archaeological finds from thousands of excavations, the book presents a theoretical approach to Israel's ethnogenesis that draws on the work of recent critics. The book examines Israelite ethnicity - ranging from meat consumption, decorated and imported pottery, Israelite houses, circumcision, and hierarchy - and traces the complex ethnic negotiations that accompanied Israel's ethnogenesis. Israel's Ethnogenesis is unique in its contribution to the archaeology of ethnicity, offering an anthropological study that will be of interest to students of history, Israelite culture and religion, and the evolution of ethnic groups.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2016
ISBN
9781134942152
Subtopic
Archeologia
Edition
1
Part I
Introduction

1
Introduction

The question of Israel's origins has been discussed intensively in biblical-historical and archaeological research. Many studies have questioned the foreign origin of the Israelites, or have been devoted, as of recent, to the issue of when the inhabitants of the highland of ancient Israel began to see themselves as Israelite. Much has also been written on the possible contribution of archaeological research to this discussion.
Until recently, it had been taken for granted in most studies that the Israelites were in existence during the Iron Age I, The hundreds of sites identified in the central highlands of ancient Israel—mainly in the region stretching from the southern Hebron hill country to northern Samaria, but also in the Galilee—were assumed to be Israelite, as was their material culture. For various reasons discussed below, this view is no longer widely accepted, and today scholars use caution when referring to the identity of the settlers in the highlands during the Iron Age I. Consequently, one of the most interesting and hotly debated issues today is identifying when the Israelites came into being as an ethnic group, and thus at which point, if at all, it is justified to refer to sites as 'Israelite'. These questions are at the heart of this study.1

Ethnicity and the Study of Society

As ethnicity is but one aspect of social life, and probably the most illusive of them (see Renfrew 1993: 20), it cannot be studied separately from other aspects of society. Likewise, it should only be tackled after such issues as economic structure, inequality, class, gender, social organization, cosmology, and worldviews have been adequately dealt with. Unfortunately, much of the study of Israelite ethnicity has been conducted only as a by-product of studies by scholars more focused on the reconstruction (or deconstruction) of political, or biblical, history. Whereas they correctly understood that the general history of ancient Israel is inseparable from the issue of ethnicity, many of these scholars did not pay attention to other aspects of Israelite society and thus did not have a good chance of gaining a real insight into Israelite ethnicity.
The present study deals with ethnicity as part of a more comprehensive look at Israelite society, of which ethnicity is but one aspect (e.g. Faust 2005b). While this monograph is not intended to treat all aspects of the society—only those of the Israelite social and cognitive life that are of importance for the study of ethnicity will be discussed in detail—the examination is carried out within the framework of a larger study of the Israelite society, hence providing a context against which to examine the interpretations suggested.

The Study of Ancient Israel: Current Approaches

All studies of ancient Israel are based to some extent on two types of data: historical, which is mainly biblical, and archaeological. In an approach typical of most studies conducted until the 1970s, the biblical-historical data were given a prominent position while the archaeological finds were used mainly to supplement a historically based reconstruction, or, in other words, to 'illustrate' the texts. Several archaeologists, most notably W.G. Dever, have become frustrated by this approach to the archaeological record and called for a full separation, even 'liberation', of the archaeological discussion from that of the texts. Influenced by the advances of New Archaeology, they objected to the methods and approaches of traditional Biblical Archaeology, and called for the foundation of a secular 'Syro-Palestinian Archaeology'.2 During the 1970s and the 1980s these two distinct approaches coexisted.
In the 1990s, however, Dever modified his approach. Realizing that the texts, as problematic as they are, still give a wealth of information regarding various aspects of Israelite life, he called for a new approach to the study of ancient Israel, which he termed 'New Biblical Archaeology' (1993a). Unlike the older methods of Biblical Archaeology that 'preferred' the texts over the finds, his new approach gives equal weight to both types of data. With some modifications, the present work aims at developing the research of Israelite ethnicity in this spirit.

Archaeology and Israelite Society: The Way Forward

A similar situation exists regarding the state of research of the archaeology of society in ancient Israel, particularly of the Iron Age II, which has not received a great deal of scholarly attention at all (e.g. Bunimovitz 2001). While Israelite society was discussed by many, in this area also the vast majority of scholars have used the written sources, mainly the Bible, as their guide, with the archaeological finds functioning usually only as an illustration to a textually derived analysis (e.g. de Vaux 1961; Reviv 1993). Moreover, the relatively few studies that did pay close attention to the material record had at their base an agenda derived from presupposed textually supported knowledge.
Archaeology, however, is well equipped to deal with ancient society, as can be seen in most archaeological studies in other parts of the world. The present study proposes an approach to the study of the Iron Age society where the archaeological record will, in most cases, be examined by itself. This will result in an agenda uninfluenced by the written sources.3
There are several clear advantages in using the archaeological record in place of historical sources as the principal database (cf. McGuire 1982: 161-62). The texts we have are extremely problematic on issues of dating and redaction, and therefore cannot be easily used. They also demonstrate, as with all written sources, extreme partiality and bias. Archaeological finds, however, in addition to providing a fresh look at the problems at hand, can reflect the entire society with all its sub-groups; while these finds are also partial in the sense that they only represent the part of a society's material culture that survived, they are much less biased.
The main research questions should be delineated based on an exhaustive examination of patterns in the material record.4 The attempt to find answers to these questions should proceed using all evidence possible: archaeological finds should be scrutinized for similar patterns, and anthropological methods should be used to explain them. Only then can the data provided by the written sources come into consideration.5 These sources are of major importance in examining a period that is, after all, historical, and they can provide significant insights into the society that produced them, 'Written sources' in this context and for our purposes refer mainly not to grand historical narratives, but rather to more mundane information that can be learned from the texts. It is worth quoting King and Stager, although the historical texts will be used much less frequently in this work then in theirs:
For our purposes, then, it matters little whether the biblical accounts are 'true' in the positivistic sense of some historians and biblical scholars. It is enough to know that the ancient Israelites believed them to be so. The stories must have passed some test of verisimilitude, that is, having the appearance of being true or real. In this sense the biblical account and many other ancient accounts, however, self-serving and tendentious, become grist for the cultural historian's mill. (2001: 7)
The texts' value lies not in their being 'true' in an absolute sense, but in what they can tell about the society that, in the words of Murray, 'believed them to be true' (1998: xxxi). Burckhardt applied a similar approach to the Greeks in the nineteenth century (1998: 5). Much insight can also be gained even by the society's spoken language, the knowledge of which is an important step in understanding its world, material and spiritual alike (see also Faust 2001a).
As an instructive example of this approach, we can outline here issues surrounding the four-room house, a plan identified archaeologically and to be discussed at length in Chapter 9 of this volume. The house can be interpreted by archaeological and anthropological analysis as reflecting, for example, maximal privacy and/or an egalitarian ethos. Texts seem to indicate that this was indeed the case in the society under discussion. They are used here as no more than an illustration of the reality reflected in the archaeological record, and while they should be examined critically, findings of biblical criticism regarding dating of texts cannot be used to discredit the archaeologically derived conclusions.
Historical archaeologists such as James Deetz (1996), Henry Glassie (1976), Ann Yentsch (1991), and Randall H. McGuire (1982) have combined the archaeological record with texts in such a manner. It seems that historical archaeology is thus the closest sub-field to Dever's New Biblical Archaeology. In a study of ethnicity, McGuire sees the use of documentary and archaeological data together as a means of overcoming the limitations of both (1982: 162). It is this approach that will be adopted in most chapters of the present book.
Admittedly, the textual sources are underused in most parts of the present work, for two reasons. First, the use of the texts as a main source for our research questions and agenda has proven somewhat futile over the years. An emphasis of archaeology, even at the expense of other sources of information, is therefore required in order to bring fresh insights and move research forward. Only after this is established can the texts receive, again, a primary role in the discussion. Second, the current debate on the emergence of Israel is interwined with the debate on the historicity of the Bible. Relying too heavily on the latter will result in many scholars doubting the existence of the former. In the present scholarly atmosphere (cf. Chapter 3) it is therefore better to 'err on the side of caution', and to use the Bible only as a secondary source—one that is not crucial for the arguments raised—otherwise those who doubt the historicity of the various texts will a priori disregard the conclusions of such a study.

The Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Anthropology

There is hardly another region in the world that has been excavated and surveyed so intensively as the Land of Israel. The thousands of salvage excavations and probably hundreds of planned excavations along with extensive surveys that have taken place in this small area have provided the basis for a very strong foundation for archaeological inquiry. Combine this with the large amount of texts available for the Iron Age onward and the wealth of data is immense, and could have led to exceptionally detailed anthropological studies of the ancient human societies of the region. Due to historical reasons, however, Near Eastern Archaeology developed a different agenda, and the region with so much potential was left almost completely outside the realm of anthropology.
The study of ethnogenesis, the formation of ethnic groups, can serve as an example. This is an important issue, one that has generally not received a great deal of attention due to the fact that the nature of pre-ethnic grouping is difficult to decipher, as discussed below. With regard to ancient Israel, however, we possess a huge body of archaeological data regarding both the periods before and after that in which there is a consensus regarding Israel's existence. This abundance of material, combined with at least a number of texts pertaining to the period, present us with a database large enough to tackle the question of Israel's ethnogenesis.
It is my hope that the present monograph will contribute both to the study of ancient Israel in the spirit of the New Biblical Archaeology and to the study of ethnogenesis in general, if only in exemplifying the importance and potential of the archaeology of ancient Israel to such a study.

The Structure of the Book

The book has five major parts, each composed of several chapters. Part I includes introductory and summarizing chapters. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 presents a brief overview of the study of ethnicity in general archaeological and anthropological literature, and the advances made in scholarship regarding this complex issue. Chapter 3 critically summarizes past research on Israelite ethnicity.
Part II investigates Israelite ethnicity through an analysis of specific features, primarily archaeological. Chapter 4 presents an overview and explication of the research methodology. Archaeological means (based on the discussion in Chapter 2) are employed to identify specific traits that appear to reflect Israelite ethnicity, or have emerged as a result of ethnically specific behaviors. The study focuses on the Iron Age II, when it is agreed that there was an Israelite ethnicity. The relevant traits are traced back in time, in order to identify the context in which they became meaningful. Chapter 5 discusses pork consumption and avoidance, a feature that seems to have had particular significance during the Iron Age I, emerging from interactions with the Philistines. Chapter 6 discusses the absence of decoration on Israelite pottery during the Iron Age II, apparently a function of both an ethos of egalitarianism and simplicity, whose roots may be traced to the Iron I, and of ethnic negotiations with other contemporaneous groups that used highly decorated pottery. Chapter 7 examines the absence of imported ceramics in most Iron II Israelite sites, the complex explanation of which may be partially traced to the aforementioned ethos, with apparent roots in the Iron I, or perhaps as a result of interactions with the Philistines and/or Canaanites and their pottery. Chapter 8 draws attention to the fact that although Iron I pottery forms show significant continuity with Late Bronze Age forms, the repertoire is much more limited, which too may be interpreted as representing an egalitarian ideology and ethos. Chapter 9 discusses the complex design of the four-room house. An analysis of the movement within these structures, the perception of space they reflect, and their status in Israelite society shed light on several societal values, including conceptions of order, privacy, and egalitarianism. The house seems to have embodied the Israelite ethos and way of life. Chapter 10, unique in this section in its discussion of non-archaeological finds, focuses on another emblem of Israelite ethnicity: circumcision. Although the custom cannot be identified archaeologically, its discussion in the context of other archaeological traits, juxtaposed with ethnographical data, is illuminating. While circumcision was practiced by many Near Eastern societies prior to Iron Age I, it apparently developed as an ethnic marker as a consequence of the interaction of the highlanders with the Philistines at the time, and is therefore consistent with the aforementioned archaeological traits in terms of its timing and the factors underlying its emergence as an ethnic marker. Chapter 11, the last chapter of Part II, discusses the ethos of egalitarianism and simplicity, one of the basic characteristics of Israelite identity as emerging from the previous discussion. This ethos, ostensibly reflected in many traits, seems to be the product of interactions and negotiations with other more hierarchical groups.
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