The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (51 page)

Mazar was right in his claim that the reality behind the stories in the book of Genesis cannot be understood on the background of the Middle Bronze Age but should rather be tracked along the realities of the Iron Age. Yet he was wrong because his preferred date in the Iron Age was much too early. Modern archaeological research has shown that Judah, where the important J source was apparently written, was very sparsely inhabited until the late eighth century
BCE
. Likewise, a century of archaeological excavations
in Jerusalem has indicated that the capital of Judah grew to become a significant city at about the same time; in the tenth century
BCE
, Jerusalem was no more than a small village. And the results of decades of excavations have shown that Judah did not reach a significant level of literacy before the late eight century
BCE
. Finally, and no less important, the patriarchal narratives are filled with references to late monarchic realities, mainly from the seventh century
BCE
.

At least on the basis of modern tourist maps of the Sinai peninsula, there seems to be no special difficulty in identifying the most important places mentioned in the biblical stories of the wandering and the giving of the Law. Mount Sinai and other biblical places have been readily identified and visited since medieval times and even earlier, in the Byzantine period. In fact, the first full-fledged archaeological theory on the route of the wandering in the desert and the location of Mount Sinai is about fifteen hundred years old. It goes back to early Christian traditions related to the monastic movement, and to pilgrimage to the holy sites in the desert, in the fourth–sixth centuries
CE
. These traditions are still venerated today by tourists and pilgrims to Mount Sinai and the site of the burning bush.

In the heart of the mountainous region of southern Sinai, surrounded by awe-inspiring granite peaks, stands the Saint Catherine Monastery. Built in the sixth century
CE
by the Byzantine emperor Justinian to memorialize the supposed site of the burning bush (which is still shown today to visitors), the monastery acquired its present name in medieval times. Surrounded by high walls to protect it from marauders, the monastery evokes images of bygone ages. Its magnificent church and much of its fortifications
belong to the original sixth century construction. Towering over the monastery is the peak of Jebel Musa (“the Mountain of Moses” in Arabic), which was identified, as early as the Byzantine period, with Mount Sinai. On this peak, which commands one of the most spectacular views of the desert, one can still identify the ruins of a sixth century chapel. And in the mountains around Jebel Musa and the Saint Catherine monastery there are other remains, of ancient, isolated monasteries with churches, hermit cells, and water installations.

References to some of these sites can be found in contemporary texts. A relatively large number of Byzantine sources describe the life of the Sinai monks and the construction of the monastery of the burning bush. No less interesting are texts related to the pilgrimage to the mount of God. The most detailed of these is the description of a late fourth century pilgrim named Egeria, who relates how she and her companions climbed the mount of God and how the monks living there showed her each of the places mentioned in the biblical accounts of Mount Sinai.

The historical reliability of these traditions, however, is open to question. While it is possible that the Byzantine monks preserved even more ancient traditions, there is no way to verify them, since there are absolutely no early remains from biblical times in this region. The most plausible explanation for the origins of the early Christian traditions in southern Sinai is their general location and environmental characteristics. The monastery of the burning bush and Mount Sinai of the Byzantine monks are located in a region of exceptional beauty, in the midst of great mountain scenery that could easily trigger veneration by monks and pilgrims. Moreover, continuous occupation of these sites was possible. The area around the monastery presented the monks with unique advantages, due to the particular combination of microclimate and geological formations. The high mountains of southern Sinai receive substantially more precipitation than the surrounding areas, and the red granite of the region is impermeable. The runoff of rainwater can therefore be collected in pools and cisterns. In addition, the wadis contain a large quantity of water in their subsoil, which can be reached in shallow wells. As a result, the Byzantine monks were able to cultivate fields and orchards in the small wadis between the mountains (as bedouin groups have continued to do up to present times).

It seems, therefore, that this combination of awe-inspiring scenery and relatively friendly environmental conditions encouraged pilgrimage and continuous veneration of sites in this part of the Sinai Peninsula. The power of the biblical story of Mount Sinai has always encouraged attempts to identify particular localities. Yet these remain in the realm of folklore and geographical speculation—not archaeology.

In the 1920s and the 1930s, while Albright and his students were becoming increasingly convinced that they had found archaeological evidence for Joshua’s conquest, a German biblical scholar named Albrecht Alt developed a very different hypothesis. Alt, a professor at the University of Leipzig, was highly skeptical that the book of Joshua could be read as history; like many of his German academic colleagues, he was a strong supporter of a critical approach to the Bible. He was convinced that the biblical account was compiled centuries after the alleged events took place and must be regarded as a heroic national myth. Yet Alt was not ready to conclude that an historical explanation of the origins of the Israelites was utterly beyond reach. While he discounted the narrative in Joshua, he was ready to accept the possibility of historical realities in the competing source—the first chapter of the book of Judges. In the course of his travels through Palestine in the early years of the twentieth century, Alt became fascinated with the lifeways and settlement patterns of the bedouin in the steppe regions of the Negev and in the Judean desert. And on the basis of his knowledge of ancient texts and his extensive ethnographic observations of bedouin life, especially their relationship with rural communities, he formulated a dramatic new theory of Israelite origins.

At the core of this new theory was the understanding that Middle Eastern
pastoral nomads do not wander aimlessly but move with their herds in a fixed seasonal routine. Their complex movements are based on a precise understanding of seasonal climatic change. Since rain comes only in the winter and green pasture is a scarce resource through the long, dry summer, bedouin shepherds are forced to manage their flocks in a very careful way.

Alt observed that during the rainy winter seasons, when there was extensive pastureland even in relatively arid areas of steppe and desert, the bedouin moved far from the settled areas, establishing camps on desert fringe. When the dry season arrived and the winter pasturelands vanished, the bedouin groups moved their flocks closer to the greener, settled agricultural regions of the country, where grazing land could be found. The bedouin were hardly strangers to this region. Over the centuries they had established a customary and mutually beneficial arrangement with the inhabitants of the farming communities. They were allowed to let their animals roam in the recently harvested fields of the permanent villages, to graze in the stubble and manure the land. Yet at the height of summer, even this source of pasture was exhausted, with several months remaining until the arrival of the first winter rain. This was the most crucial time for the survival of the herds. And at this point the bedouin turned to the green pasture of the highlands, moving with their flocks between and among settled villages until the rainy season finally came and they moved out to the desert fringe again.

This annual routine was dependent on fluctuations in the timing and quantity of winter rainfall, and Alt also noted how drastic changes in climate or political conditions could influence the bedouin to give up their old way of life and settle down. This was a change in lifestyle that took a long time to accomplish; the pastoral way of life, with its customs, rhythms, and enormous flexibility, is in many ways a safer strategy for survival than farming a single plot of land. But the process was nevertheless observable as small seasonal plots began to appear in certain specific areas of summer pasture where bedouin groups had become accustomed to return year after year. After sowing wheat or barley in the small plots, they left with their flocks, to return late the following spring, in time to harvest the crop.

At first, small groups cultivated isolated plots, while they still continued
to herd their flocks. Part of the family could stay behind near the fields, while the rest continued to move with the animals. These seasonal plots gradually grew larger and the bedouin cultivators became more dependent on them for grain, which they would otherwise have to obtain in trade from villagers. And as the time and effort devoted to farming gradually increased, the size of their flocks decreased, since they were compelled to stay near their fields and could no longer engage in long-range migration. The last stage in the process was permanent settlement, with the construction of permanent houses and the abandonment of herding except in the immediate vicinity of the fields. Alt noted that this was a gradual and largely peaceful process—at least in the beginning—since the bedouin initially settled in sparsely inhabited regions, where land and water were in relative abundance and ownership of the land was not carefully controlled. It was only at a later stage, when the newly settled bedouin began to compete for land and water with the inhabitants of nearby villages, that conflict—sometimes violent conflict—began.

In his observations of this process of settling down, or sedentarization, of pastoral nomads, Alt believed that he understood the situation described in the book of Judges. In time, he formulated what came to be known as the peaceful-infiltration theory of Israelite origins. According to Alt, the Israelites were originally pastoral nomads who routinely wandered with their flocks between the steppe regions in the east in the winter and, in the summer, in the highlands of western Canaan. Both areas were described by ancient Egyptian sources as sparsely settled. Even though the heavily wooded land was difficult to clear and the topography rugged, there was much free land for cultivation. Hence Alt believed that at the end of the Late Bronze Age, certain groups of pastoral nomads began to practice seasonal farming near their summer pasturelands in the highlands of Canaan. And the process of permanent settlement began.

As in modern times, this process was gradual and peaceful at the beginning. Yet Alt suggested that when the new settlers’ numbers grew and their need of ever more land and water increased, they started having problems with their Canaanite neighbors, especially those who lived in the remote and isolated towns in the highlands, such as Jerusalem and Luz (Bethel). These conflicts over land and water rights—Alt hypothesized—eventually led to the local skirmishes and prolonged conflict that were the background
to the struggles between Israelites and their Canaanite and Philistine neighbors in the book of Judges.

Though the peaceful-infiltration hypothesis was completely theoretical, it was a tempting proposal. It was logical, it fit the demographic and economic background of the country, and it fit the stories in Judges, which in any case looked more historical than the epic battle accounts of the book of Joshua. It had one more big advantage: it seemed to be backed by the ancient Egyptian texts. An Egyptian papyrus from the days of Ramesses II in the thirteenth century
BCE
, which recorded a contest between two scribes on the geography of Canaan, described the hill country as a rugged, wooded, almost empty region, inhabited by Shosu bedouin. Thus Alt believed that the Israelites could indeed be identified with these Shosu. Their initial stages of sedentarization in the highlands did not attract Egyptian hostility, because Egypt was concerned mainly with the fertile areas along the coast and in the northern valleys, close to the strategic international overland routes of trade.

In the early 1950s, Yohanan Aharoni, one of the most fervent supporters of Alt among Israeli archaeologists, believed that he had found conclusive evidence in upper Galilee. Aharoni explored this hilly and heavily wooded region in the north of the country to find that in the Late Bronze Age the area was almost empty of Canaanite settlements. In the succeeding period—Iron Age I—a relatively large number of small, isolated, poor settlements were established there. Aharoni identified the settlers with the early Israelites, more precisely with the people of the tribes of Naphtali and Asher, who were reported in the geographic chapters of the book of Joshua to have settled in mountainous Galilee.

Not unexpectedly, Aharoni’s conclusions were bitterly contested by Yigael Yadin, who believed that the evidence of a massive conflagration of the Late Bronze city at Hazor—the city described by the book of Joshua as “the head of all those kingdoms”—precluded any theory of peaceful infiltration of any kind. Yadin, who adhered to the unified conquest theory, argued that as long as the city of Hazor was still powerful, the Israelites could not have settled in Galilee. In his view, the first act in this story must have been the destruction of Hazor by the Israelites in the late thirteenth century
BCE
. Only when Hazor lay in ruins did the door open for the Israelites
to settle in upper Galilee and, in fact, also on the ruins of Hazor itself.

Aharoni’s reconstruction of the events was less heroic, though no less romantic. In his opinion, the Israelites appeared in the region when Hazor was still a powerful city. But they did not opt for confrontation. Rather than settle in the vicinity of Hazor and attract the hostility of its inhabitants, the arriving Israelites gradually and peacefully settled in isolated, empty, wooded upper Galilee. There they chose a struggle with the harsh environment and the risks of highland farming rather than a conflict with mighty Hazor. The final showdown came later, according to Aharoni, when the Israelites gained enough strength to mount an attack on Hazor. Only after the city was destroyed did the Israelites expand into the richer and more fertile areas of the north, including the northern tip of the Jordan valley.