The Invention of Ancient Israel (11 page)

Denying Time to Palestinian History

Time, like space, is a political concept, an ‘ideologically constructed instrument of power' (Fabian 1983: 144), which has been manipulated
in biblical studies to deny any temporal reality to Palestinian history. Fabian points to the common acknowledgement of the imperial construction of space, often as an ‘empty land' to be occupied for the good of humanity. However, as he notes, this concentration on the imperialistic and political constructions of space has led to a failure to concede that time is every bit as much controlled, measured, and allotted by dominant powers. The discovery of ‘deep time' has been at the heart of Western historiographical perceptions of the evolutionary development of culture and history. This emphasis on the inexorable progress of time's arrow has resulted in a perception of Israelite history, as the taproot of Western civilization, replacing all other aspects of historical reality in Palestine as part of the inevitable evolutionary process. The way in which this has been done is a further illustration of Césaire's dictum that Europe is the subject of all history.

Garbini (1988) has produced one of the most radical critiques of the historiographic perceptions of biblical studies in recent years. Nevertheless, he betrays the Eurocentrism of his own conceptions in the opening to his essay on the failings of standard biblical histories:

According to such a view, there is no history without Europe and the significance of the history that has been rescued from the oblivion of time is that it provides the roots of Western civilization. Garbini is able to go on to talk about ‘this now long past of ours' or claim ‘the creative force of this civilization as now passing from Asia to Europe'. Ancient Israel then becomes the fulcrum for this transfer of civilization as ‘the link between Asia and Europe'. The significance of Israel is ascribed to its mediation of Egyptian and Babylonian culture so that ‘Israel returned to Jerusalem enormously enriched and transformed. When Greek culture arrived there, Hebrew thought was in a stage of further revision, the final result of which was transmitted to Europe by some brilliant men. This was the historical function of Israel' (1988: 1). The evolutionary scheme which links Babylon, Egypt, and Greece through Israel culminating in the
triumph of Western civilization is so deeply ingrained that it pervades such a radical critique of recent histories of ancient Israel in biblical studies. Garbini's assertions are a perfect illustration of Asad's point (1993: 18) that the West's past becomes an organic continuity from the ancient Near East through Greece and Rome to the Renaissance and Reformation culminating in the universal civilization of modern Europe. From this perspective, there is no recognition that the history of the region, whether Israelite or Palestinian, might have a significance or value of its own. Europe is the subject of this history and it is Europe's conception of time which determines its course.

The entanglement of the disciplines of history and anthropology in the colonial enterprise has been instrumental in representing the triumph of the West and thereby silencing alternative claims to the past by indigenous cultures. Fabian's perceptive study of the way in which anthropology has defined time as part of the European representation of the Other exposes the role of the discipline in providing the intellectual justification for colonialism:

The history of ancient Palestine has effectively been denied time of its own. Instead it is subject to the tyranny of biblical time through the periodization of the Hebrew Bible which has been an essential element of the discourse of biblical studies. The history of the region has long been seen as neatly compartmentalized into Patriarchal,
Exodus, Conquest, or Settlement periods followed by the United Monarchy of David and Solomon, the Divided Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, Exile, and then Restoration.
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The history of the region is, then, the history of the principal characters and events of the biblical traditions: it is the classic pursuit of the history of great men and unique events. Palestinian history is effectively silenced by this tyranny of biblical time which has been perpetuated by Western scholarship.

This situation has not been changed by the agonized debate in recent years over the starting point of Israelite history which has seen the loss of the Patriarchal, Exodus, and Conquest periods in the wake of the conjunction of literary studies and archaeological data. Rather than reclaiming Palestinian time from the nineteenth through the thirteenth centuries BCE, it has only served to highlight the fact that Palestinian history is denied time. Soggin (1977: 332) may find his datum point with the rise of the monarchy, or Miller and Hayes (1986) provide their ‘best guess' with the treatment of David, but the time which precedes this beginning for their accounts of Israel does not become Palestinian time. Rather it remains the domain of Israelite history and thus Western civilization as the prehistory or protohistory of ancient Israel (Malamat 1983; Soggin 1984). Noth's starting point for his history of Israel arrives with the occupation of Palestine by the ‘fully united' tribes of Israel: it is only at this point that ‘the real “History of Israel” can take its departure' (1960: 5). He claims that there is no information on the historical evolution (note the term) of Israel or ‘primeval Israel' but ‘only traditions about events in pre-historical times' (1960: 5). Ancient Israel, which only becomes a reality according to Noth with the twelve-tribe structure in Palestine, is able to reach back over centuries to lay claim to time thereby denying this temporal span to Palestinian history. Noth's attitude to the documentary and archaeological evidence from the region is representative of the discourse of biblical studies: he is able to state that the Amarna letters ‘reveal clearly the historical background of the beginnings of Israel in Palestine and are thus one of the direct sources for the history of Israel' (1960: 19) or that the Ras Shamra finds ‘help to illuminate the situation which the Israelite tribes found on their arrival in Palestine' (1960: 20). Palestinian history only has significance and meaning as the locus of, or background for, the development of Israelite history.

The debate over the problems of constructing the early periods of Israelite history has resulted in a switch of scholarly attention to the
second Temple period. Yet once again it is the biblical conception of time which dominates and silences any other claims to the past. It has been common to refer to this period as the ‘Intertestamental period', thus betraying the tyranny of biblical time in the understanding and presentation of the history of the region. Biblical scholarship for much of the century has presupposed an evolutionary scheme moving from the ‘Old Testament' through the ‘Intertestamental' period and culminating in the ‘New Testament' era: a periodization which owes nothing to historical reality and all to theological presuppositions about the progressive nature of revelation. The theological conception of the ‘Intertestamental' period is revealed in the striking judgement that it was all too often deemed to be ‘a mere empty chasm over which one springs from the Old Testament to the New' (Wellhausen 1885: 1). The welcome re-evaluation of the seventh century BCE to the first century CE, the second Temple period from a biblical perspective, has shown this to be a crucial period in the formation and crystallization of the traditions which make up the Hebrew Bible. Yet the perspective has remained parochial and introspective. In the same way that the Amarna or Ras Shamra material has found its primary significance for biblical historians as background to understanding the emergence of Israel in Palestine, so the Dead Sea Scrolls and other extrabiblical materials have found their significance as the backdrop to the history of Israel. Biblical scholars have accepted the claims to monopoly advanced by the tiny province of Yehud, as Davies (1992: 58) has recently pointed out. The periodization of the history of the region has been dominated, then, by Judaeo–Christian theological concerns since the study of Israelite history has remained, and remains, the preserve of faculties of Theology, seminaries, and departments of Religion. The definition of time and the notion of historical progress, fundamental to European Christian teleology, is embodied in the belief that ancient Israel represents the origin of ‘historical consciousness' and the agent of divine action within history. The progression of history is then traced to the development of European and Western societies which come to represent the pinnacle of civilization. The indigenous cultures of Palestine and the ancient Near East remain static and stagnate; they represent a failure in the divine scheme of historical evolution.
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There is no history of Palestine because it is Israel and not Palestine which is the focus of theological attention. The progressive scheme of revelation coupled
with the search for ancient Israel has combined to deny any temporal reality to Palestinian history.

An alternative to the tyranny of biblical time ordained by biblical scholars has been the archaeological periodization which has been developed throughout the century. This is a further expression of the evolutionary scheme of ‘natural' time which moves in its inexorable fashion from the Stone Age through the Bronze and Iron to the present. It might seem at first sight that this schema is more neutral than the biblical periodization, thereby allowing time to Palestinian history. However, biblical historians, particularly in the wake of Albright, have tried to equate the periodization derived from the Hebrew Bible with the schema developed by archaeological research. Thus the Bronze Age becomes the time of the Patriarchs, while the Late Bronze Age is the era of the Exodus and Conquest or Settlement, and the Iron Age sees the emergence and development of the monarchy; the Exile or second Temple period is covered, of course, by the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods. The denial of time to Palestinian history is confirmed by this attempt to claim the past for ancient Israel. This becomes more explicit in the alternative nomenclature for archaeological periods which has been developed by Israeli scholarship.

The classic treatment of Israelite archaeology by Aharoni (1982) is representative of the way in which time has been used in biblical scholarship. Aharoni begins his vast temporal sweep with the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Epipaleolithic, Neolithic) and Chalcolithic period. The Early Bronze Age is designated as the Early Canaanite I–IV, with the Middle Bronze as the Middle Canaanite, and the Late Bronze Age as the Late Canaanite I–II. Aharoni then follows the normal convention of Israeli scholarship by designating the Iron Age as the Israelite period. This is a strongly evolutionary scheme with a clear movement in which the ‘prehistoric' and Canaanite periods are replaced by the Israelite. Aharoni describes the Early Canaanite period as significant in the ‘history of Eretz-Israel' since it laid the foundations for Canaanite culture (1982: 49), although it is still a ‘mute period' which is ‘suitably called protohistoric'. Although this might be termed the Canaanite period, it is still claimed by the ‘history of Eretz-Israel', confirming the interrelationship of time and space. His evolutionary scheme is made explicit with the designations prehistoric and protohistoric. The fully historic, he claims, is found in neighbouring lands which have a rich deposit of written documents: ‘Eretz-Israel, located between them, remains in the shadow
while the search lights of history are illuminating its neighbours' (1982: 49). The way in which the period is divested of any inherent significance of its own is revealed in his discussion of terminology (1982: 50): ‘Therefore, it would seem to us that the name “Canaanite” is more suitable. This is the general name for the population of the country during the Israelite conquest, when more extensive historical illumination begins!' We only reach history with the appearance of Israel and the biblical traditions. His Middle Canaanite I (EBIV–MBI) ‘concludes the protohistoric era in the history of Eretz-Israel' (1982: 80). When we turn to the Middle Canaanite II and Late Canaanite periods (2000–1200 BCE) we find that:

He follows this immediately with his claim that this is also the period when the Hebrew tribes entered, being ‘the first and only people to make the country its natural homeland'. The evolutionary presuppositions are now made explicit with the rise and eventual decline of Canaanite culture to be replaced by Israelites who claim the country as their natural homeland. It is not explained why the Canaanites, who according to Aharoni's periodization have been
in situ
for roughly a millennium, failed to make this their natural homeland. By comparison, the Israelite period lasts for six hundred years. The evolutionary process means that these ‘temporary' inhabitants, no matter how long their length of residency, are replaced in the natural scheme of things by a higher culture and civilization. The effect of this is to deny time and therefore reality to Palestinian history: the past is either the domain of Israel or is claimed by Israel as its own prehistory or protohistory.