The Invention of Ancient Israel (2 page)

This is equally as applicable to biblical studies as to Orientalism. There exists, then, what we might term a discourse of biblical studies which is a powerful, interlocking network of ideas and assertions believed by its practitioners to be the reasonable results of objective scholarship while masking the realities of an exercise of power. We are faced with the paradox of the invention of ‘ancient Israel', as pointed out by Davies, an entity that has been given substance and power as a scholarly construct, while Palestinian history lacks substance or even existence in terms of our academic institutions. Attempts to challenge this powerful narrative are likely to be dismissed as politically or ideologically motivated and therefore unreasonable.

Why this should be so is tied very closely, I believe, to the social and political context out of which modern biblical studies has emerged. The implications of this for the study of ancient Israel and for the silencing of Palestinian history are explored in
chapter 1
. The exploration of the political arena in which biblical studies has been forged is little understood, much less acknowledged: it is an engagement which is only just beginning. The central theme of this study is an attempt to articulate the implications for historical research of the profound changes which biblical studies has experienced over the last two decades or more. The powerful convergence of literary studies of biblical texts allied to more explicit social scientific approaches to the construction of Israelite history has led to what many perceive as a major paradigm shift in the study of the Hebrew Bible – a shift which is more apparent than real in terms of the representation of ancient Israelite history or the realization of ancient Palestinian history. It is usual, in discussing this perceived shift, to concentrate upon the study of narrative in the Hebrew Bible and its implications for biblical studies. Thus literary studies in all its aspects has become for many, to use David Gunn's (1987:65) term, the ‘new orthodoxy'. Biblical scholars have been slower to appreciate the
equally profound implications of these paradigm moves for historical studies. The election of Norman Gottwald as the President of SBL in 1992 was more than a symbolic event. It marked an acceptance of the so-called ‘sociological approach' as an important element in defining the new orthodoxy.
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What has begun to emerge in recent years, in a variety of different places, is a conception of a wider Palestinian history as a separate subject in its own right increasingly divorced from biblical studies as such.
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This means that Israelite history and second Temple Judaism, the domain of biblical studies until very recently, form part of this Palestinian history, whereas Israelite history, under the influence of biblical studies, has dominated the Palestinian landscape to such an extent that it has silenced virtually all other aspects of the history of the region from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period. There are, of course, times when we might say, with Braudel, that ancient Israel or, more particularly, second Temple Judaism, bursts into sight and dominates the landscape, the only way it has been conceived of for much of the history of biblical studies, but at other times plays a minor role, is hidden, or even nonexistent. Viewed from the longer perspective, the history of ancient Israel is a moment in the vast expanse of Palestinian history.
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It is appropriate for historians to focus upon these short spans of time or particular societies, of course. However, it is also necessary to stand back in order to provide a different perspective from which to view the larger picture. The study of ancient Israel has become so all-consuming that it has all too often come to represent the whole picture rather than an important detail on the canvas. It is important, then, to try to redress the balance by focusing on that periqd of time which has been the domain of biblical studies and which has been dominated by ancient Israelite history in order to show how it might be understood from the perspective of Palestinian history.

It is for this reason that I have decided to concentrate on two crucial periods, the periods of the so-called ‘emergence' or ‘origins' of Israel in Palestine during the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition and the subsequent period of the founding of an Israelite state in the Iron Age. The analysis could be carried further to include what is variably referred to as the Exilic or second Temple periods or, in terms of a wide-ranging history of Palestine, would need to move both backwards and forwards. However, the periods of the ‘emergence' and the creation of a state have for a long time been a focus of biblical scholarship in its search for ancient Israel. They have become defining moments in the history of the region for the discourse of
biblical studies. If these periods can be freed from the constraints and limitations of the constructions of the past imposed by this discourse, then all other (prior and subsequent) periods in the history of Palestine will be easier to free from a past claimed and dominated by Israel. The analysis of
chapters 2
,
3
,
4
, and
5
takes the form of a commentary on many standard and representative works which have shaped and been shaped by the discourse of biblical studies. It attempts to illustrate how a network of recurrent ideas and assumptions has functioned to provide a perception of the past which has resisted virtually all attempts to imagine alternative constructions of that past. I have deliberately chosen to use a large number of quotations, many of them from works familiar to those in the field, in order to illustrate the discourse of biblical studies in its own words, rather than simply my distorted reporting of what many influential figures have had to say.

Yet little attention has been paid to the factors which have led to the present situation. Current scholarly attention is focused more on trying to work out the practical implications of the shifts: the academic contest for methods and approaches in reading the Hebrew Bible or writing ancient Israelite history. It will be obvious to many readers that there is a growing number of attempts to realize a history of ancient Palestine in the works of G.W. Ahlström (1993), E. Knauf (1988; 1989), N.P. Lemche (1988; 1991), T.L. Thompson (1992a), H. Weippert (1988), and many others. It might be argued that these works and Ahlström's (1993) massive study on the history of ancient Palestine, in particular, negate my claim that Palestinian history does not exist as an academic subject. However, his work, like the others, is still dominated by the concerns of biblical studies and presuppositions drawn from the traditions of the Hebrew Bible. This is revealed most clearly in the peculiar arrangement of the book which begins with a chapter on ‘Prehistoric time' ranging from the Palaeolithic to the Chalcolithic periods, followed by ‘The Early Bronze Age', ‘The Middle Bronze Age', ‘The Late Bronze Age', but then switches to the ‘Twelfth century BCE', ‘The increase in settlement during the 13–12th centuries BCE', ‘Transjordan in the 12–1 Oth centuries BCE', and ‘The Judges' before concentrating on the rise of the state. The switch, of course, to a more narrow focus on the thirteenth to twelfth centuries BCE, away from archaeological periodization, is due to the long-held belief by biblical scholars and archaeologists that this is the period when Israel ‘emerged' in Palestine. Thus Ahlström's study, while set in the broader context
of Palestinian history, remains involved in the search for early Israel that has been the goal of biblical studies since its inception. Ahlström has been a pioneer in the move towards a concern with Palestinian history, yet his volume is still conceived within the constraints of the discourse of biblical studies. The spate of recent works has helped to prepare the ground and has been particularly influential in bringing about an important change in historical studies, though they often remain on the polemical margins of the discipline when judged in terms of mainstream activities. Furthermore, they have not addressed in any detail the crucial question of the cultural and political factors which have constrained ancient Palestinian history as one of the many ‘excluded histories' silenced by Eurocentric or Western constructions of the past.

One of the greatest drawbacks to the realization of a history of ancient Palestine is that even as it is freed from the constraints of biblical studies it remains the preserve of Western scholarship. Said (1985; 1992) has drawn attention to the intimate connections between culture and imperialism both in the development of Orientalism and the narratives of the West. What we lack above all is, to use his phrase, a ‘contrapuntal reading' of Palestinian history from a non-Western point of view.
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The Subaltern project is one of the most striking examples of an attempt to reclaim the past by Indian historians who claim the right to represent themselves and their past in competition with the long-dominant narratives of European and colonial scholarship.
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The development of a modern Palestinian identity and expression of self-determination has focused upon the recent rather than the ancient past. ‘Palestinian history' is concerned only with the last couple of centuries in the struggle with the Zionist movement and the realization of a modern state of Israel. The ancient past belongs to Israel since this is the way it has been presented from the inception of modern bibical studies. Modern Israeli scholarship has been concerned with the history of ancient Israel written largely from a Western and Orientalist perspective as the ancient expression of the modern state and its Jewish population. The growth of Palestinian nationalism has not resulted in an attempt to reclaim the past similar to the movements in India, Africa, or Australia. The problem here is that the notion of a ‘Palestinian history' is confined to the modern period, an attempt to articulate accounts of national identity in the face of dispossession and exile.
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It is as if the ancient past has been abandoned to Israel and the West. The concluding essay in Said's
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestine
Question
, ‘A profile of the Palestinian people' (Said
et al.
1988), opens with the observation that Palestine had been the home to a remarkable civilization ‘centuries before the first Hebrew tribes migrated to the area' (1988: 235). The achievements and nature of this civilization are passed over in a few sentences while the period of Israelite migration, a now outdated view as will be seen below, is abandoned to Israel without further comment. The authors then concentrate on the history of Palestine from the Arab and Islamic conquest of the seventh century CE to the present day. It is precisely the period from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period which needs to be reclaimed and given voice in the history of Palestine. Asad (1993: 1) has drawn attention to the overwhelming importance of Western history in shaping the views of non-Western peoples who have ‘felt obliged to read the history of the West (but not each other's histories) and that Westerners in turn do not feel the same need to study non-Western histories'. Although I might argue for an idea, the separation of ancient Palestinian history from the confines and limitations of biblical studies, the task cannot be completed until we can compare the different perspectives of Western and non-Western scholarship. The following views might represent a counterpoint to a dominant discourse that has been conducted within biblical studies but it lacks the perspective and force of a contrapuntal reading from a Palestinian or non-Western perspective. The irony and paradox of this situation is quite evident: the attempt to articulate a Palestinian history as a subject freed from the constraints of biblical studies or related discourses remains a European expression of an ancient excluded past.

The faltering movements towards a more complete history of Palestine – I refrain from referring to a ‘new' history as has become fashionable – are bound to take wrong paths as well as hopefully open up new ground.
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The failures will inevitably be seized upon by those who disagree with such a project as evidence that there are no alternatives to the standard approaches to biblical history. Yet the time is past when we can merely fine-tune the standard approaches and methods of biblical studies. What is required is a fundamental alteration in our approach to the history of the region. I would hope that my own shortcomings and failures as represented in this book will not put off others from exploring the issues which will lead us to a more satisfactory understanding of the history of this region. Biblical studies has remained removed for too long from the critical discourse that has raged within history, anthropology, ethnography,
and economics, exposing the ways in which supposed rational results of Western scholarship have been part of a complex network of ideas and associations which are tied to relationships of power.

The tools we have to use are imprecise and crude compared with the precision of the cliometricians with their studies of census, voting, or other forms of quantifiable data. Medieval and modern historians enjoy the comparative luxury of vast amounts of quantifiable data which have remained hidden and unused in state archives and registrary offices for decades or even centuries. New archaeological surveys of Palestine are able to provide much better quantifiable data which have added significantly to our knowledge of particular areas and periods of ancient Palestine and contributed to the paradigm shift. But the information we can glean from these surveys is still imprecise when compared to the sources available to our colleagues in medieval and modern history. The historian of ancient Palestine has to be content with understanding history in a broad sweep. This might be an uncomfortable situation for those brought up on standard biblical histories which prefer the certainties of political history with its alluring portrayal of great individuals as the shapers of historical destiny. This form of history still dominates our bookshelves and academic departments despite the work of Braudel, McNeill and the Annalistes. The cult of the individual which dominates all forms of modern politics in the USA, Britain, Europe, and elsewhere with the use of the power of television, video and satellite only confirms the prejudice that it is great men, and a few women, who shape the destiny of humanity. Any attempt to investigate the underlying currents which have helped shape the preconceptions of these individuals or help to explain their success in ‘persuading' the populace to support them is dismissed as crude materialism or an unsophisticated Marxist reading of history. However, like many others in biblical studies, I have become dissatisfied with these theological and political histories that have dominated our discipline for so long. The magisterial works of Braudel, full of original insights which help fire the imagination, have taught me that there are so many facets of history that our political and theological histories do not address.
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It was the excitement of this perspective which first allured me in the grandiose design of trying to produce a history of ancient Palestine. It only gradually became apparent that the difficulties inherent in the project needed to be related to the wider political and social context of twentieth-century scholarship.