The Invention of Ancient Israel (25 page)

For Herrmann, also, the period of the Davidic–Solomonic monarchy becomes the defining moment in the region's history. He refers to ‘the ideal extension of the empire of Israel and Judah' (1975: 159) as represented in 1 Kings 5: 1, the text which informs Ben-Gurion's vision of ‘Greater Israel', but argues that this never corresponded to the reality of David's power. Nevertheless, ‘David's historical achievements certainly do not pale in the light of so ambitious an ideal' (1975: 159) since his control over a variety of territories meant that it is appropriate to refer to a Davidic ‘empire'.
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Herrmann stands firmly in the tradition of ‘biblical histories' which imagine a Davidic ‘empire' founded upon the cult of personality, the result of ‘the personal achievement of the king'. He even goes so far as to talk in terms of an ‘imperial ideology' (1975: 162). He sees it as highly probable that the conception of an ‘all Israel' stems from the period of David. It is clearly the defining moment in the history of the region:

The indigenous culture, it seems, was incapable of such national awareness or the formation of written traditions. The paradox of
trying to represent the Davidic monarchy as both unique and a part of mundane history is brought out clearly in his discussion: ‘The Davidic empire was a unique creation, but a product of history, subjected to conflicting trends from within and threatened by dangers from without' (Herrmann 1975: 167). Israel was set apart. Its national state was unique but still a product of history. The only evidence for this uniqueness is derived from a paraphrase of the biblical traditions which are conceived to be the product of the Davidic court. Herrmann's evidence for his assertions of the existence of a Davidic empire and its territorial boundaries are procured, therefore, from a self-serving narrative of the Davidic bureaucracy. Herrmann, like other biblical historians, offers no corroborative evidence to support such a construction of the past.

Soggin (1984: 41) also refers to an ‘empire' and follows Alt's thesis that it was held together by ‘personal union'. He follows the standard pattern of presentation claiming that ‘the region was unified for the first and last time in its history, though only for a short while, under a single sceptre, instead of being divided into dozens of autonomous entities' (1984: 42). The uniqueness of the Davidic monarchy is therefore that it unites the region for ‘the first and last time in its history'. Again this confirms – unwittingly, it seems – the claim to the ‘historic right' to the land on the principle of priority. He is more cautious about the extent of this entity than others, acknowledging that the existence of an empire is not confirmed by outside sources but that it is ‘quite probable' given the decline of Egyptian power and the absence of Assyrian influence.
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Why this imperial vacuum does not allow for the possibility of an Ammonite or Moabite empire but permits ‘the possibility of an Israelite empire' is a question which is not addressed. He then concludes that the Davidic monarchy exploited the political vacuum to create an empire in Palestine and Syria for approximately seventy years at the beginning of the tenth century BCE before succumbing to the reappearance of the ‘great empires' (1984: 44). What had been at first a possibility, with no external evidence to confirm it, has become a reality which survived for three-quarters of a century. It is an imagined past which corresponds to the biblically inspired modern concept of ‘Greater Israel' in control of the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Lebanon. Biblical scholarship cannot divorce itself from the realities of the present which inform and are informed by such powerful imagined pasts.

Just how powerfully the present imposes itself upon the imagined
past, whether consciously or unconsciously, is made apparent in Meyers's study (1987) of the Davidic–Solomonic periods. Meyers (1987: 181) follows in the long tradition stemming from Alt in presenting the Davidic–Solomonic periods as ‘the Israelite empire', a brief period in the history of the region when Palestine had a unified government.
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Here is the presentation of history as the result of the actions of ‘great men'
par excellence
. The period is presented as being exceptional in ‘the pre-modern Levant'. Notice how it is implied that the modern period, the creation of the modern state of Israel, is the only parallel to this exceptional unification of the region. She goes even further in arguing that the biblical sources in their concern for the emergence and dissolution of the ‘United Kingdom' ‘tends to obscure the fact that (sic) kingdom was not a simple self-contained national state but rather was the seat of an empire' (1987: 181). Although it might have been modest in comparison with Egypt or Mesopotamia, it was an empire nevertheless: ‘Yet Israel during the time of David and Solomon, during the Golden Age of the United Monarchy, was nonetheless a minor imperial power' (1987: 181). Surprisingly, in light of the above, she claims that this has not been appreciated by biblical scholarship. She is concerned with reassessing the role of Solomon, who is usually portrayed as of secondary importance to David. In doing this, she describes David as ‘the first Israelite ‘‘emperor'', a brilliant initiator who unified the region' and Solomon as the second and last Israelite ‘emperor' ‘who held the disparate territorial components together for an unprecedented period of stability, who created a glorious cosmopolitan capital and built up a series of royal cities throughout the land' (1987: 182). This is described as a ‘brief and uncharacteristic Levantine political configuration' (1987: 182). Clearly other indigenous powers were incapable of such an uncharacteristic achievement. She argues that social scientific studies of empires show that ‘we must place the Davidic state within the category of a pre-modern empire, that is, a supranational state with a centralized bureaucracy ruled by a monarch with claims to traditional-sacred legitimacy' (1987: 184).

Meyers takes one of Alt's influential themes, the notion of the Israelite state as defensive, and develops it to an extreme not witnessed elsewhere, as far as I know, in the discourse of biblical studies. The novel aspect of her presentation is an attempt to deny that this ‘Israelite empire' was aggressive or that it could be described as ‘imperialistic'. She argues (1987: 184) that the most difficult problem in defining an empire is that of describing the motivation
for its establishment. The key factor, it seems, is whether or not it was motivated by an ideology of superiority which results in pure aggression and which could then be designated as ‘imperialistic'. But if the motivation was economic, self-interested but not superior, it would still surely be described as an empire. This she terms as ‘accidental imperialism' and cites Rome, surprisingly, as a case in point:

Her definition seems to confuse the definition of empire and the use of the term ‘imperialistic' to describe aggression and exploitation. This parallels various descriptions of the modern state of Israel as involved only in defensive wars and not as an occupying power whether in the West Bank and Gaza or in southern Lebanon (see Chomsky 1983). Here we have a description of the Davidic monarchy which is a mirror image of the kind of apologetic offered to justify the modern state's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the southern Lebanon.

Meyers presents the period of Solomon's succession and rule as that of a period of consolidation of David's territorial gains by diplomacy and ideology, the result of which was that:

She then argues that the Solomonic temple was critical in providing the ideological justification for the right to dominate foreign territories. Even though, as she acknowledges, there is no archaeological evidence for this important symbol of power, the comparison of the biblical description (1 Kings 6–8) with sanctuaries from Syria and Palestine shows it to be ‘the largest and grandest' of its kind. This leads her to the conclusion (1987: 190) that ‘this striking fact is fully in accord with the Solomonic empire's unique position as the most extensive polity to have existed in ancient Syria–Palestine'. Her view of history, as presented in this article, as the result of the actions of
great men is reinforced with her pronouncement on the achievements of David and Solomon (1987: 195): ‘If it took the charisma and genius of a David to create an empire, against major economic, political, and historical odds, the maintenance of that empire for another regal span rested upon Solomon's unique gifts of wisdom and of successful diplomacy.'

What is remarkable about Meyers's imagined past, and those pasts of other major scholars reviewed above, is the way it accords with the realities of the present of a modern state of Israel which from its very existence has claimed to be involved only in defensive wars, a claim that has been maintained, officially at least, despite the invasion of Lebanon and eventually Beirut in 1982. The various works which have been cited above and commented upon are but an influential and representative sample of the discourse of biblical studies on the creation of an Israelite state in the Iron Age. They need to be read in the context of the contemporary struggle for land and identity which involves a struggle for the past. This representative sample of biblical scholarship shows that it has endorsed one particular creation of the past – what can only be described as an imagined past, in the light of available evidence – which has silenced or blocked any Palestinian claim to that past. The influences are subtle, not easy to substantiate, but the accumulation of recurrent themes and phrases which become assertions of fact, often on the flimsiest of evidence or in the absence of any evidence at all, helps to confirm common claims to the land advanced in the political realm. Biblical scholars and archaeologists are participants, however unwittingly, in the claims and counterclaims between Israel and the Palestinians: they are part, at the very least, of what Said (1994a: xxvi) terms a ‘passive collaboration' which has silenced Palestinian history. The weight of biblical scholarship presents a past which conforms to and confirms the claims of the modern state. This silencing of Palestinian history arises out of the social and political context in which the work has been done, for it has arisen out of European historiography and imposed a model of the European nation state upon the ancient Middle East which has been confirmed by Europe and the West's sponsorship of the modern state. It forms an important part of that ‘massed history' which has presented the public with a remarkably uniform view of the past. Palestinian history has no claim upon the past because it does not exist. It has been excluded by the discourse of biblical studies.

It might be argued that Ahlström's
The History of Ancient
Palestine
(1993) invalidates any such claim. Surely here we have a voice for Palestinian history in contrast to the domination of the Davidic empire? This is a work that explicitly questions the historicity of the biblical traditions proposing to present a history of the peoples of Palestine rather than of Israel and Judah alone. He questions the historicity of the texts which deal with the monarchy, arguing that they were edited from a Davidic perspective and are often late. Nevertheless, he stands broadly within the tradition of the historical critical movement in excavating the texts for historical information. His discussion of this period contains many elements found in standard ‘biblical histories'. He discusses the period in terms of great men: Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon. The only distinguishing feature of his presentation is a much more positive appraisal of Saul than standard histories of Israel which are more closely wedded to the presentation of the biblical narratives. He argues (1993: 434) that, although it had been difficult for chiefdoms in the hill country to develop into military powers that were able to oppose Philistine military power, ‘one man succeeded, however, and freed for some time the hill population from Philistine rule: Saul'.
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Although Ahlström provides this more positive appraisal of Saul, his interpretation of the period as providing a defining moment in the history of the region is broadly in line with more traditional treatments: ‘Saul had created a territorial state that the greater Palestinian region had never seen before. Saul can therefore be regarded as the first state-builder in Palestine' (1993: 449).
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Ahlström goes so far as to say that Saul ruled over most of Palestine and Transjordan. In effect, he attributes (1993: 449) many of the achievements in bringing about this defining moment in the history of the region to Saul whereas, as we have seen, this is usually reserved for David. Similarly, Saul took advantage of the power vacuum created by the decline of the traditional powers in the region. Ahlström (1993: 454) recognizes that this is an unusual state of affairs which reverses the normal course of events in Palestine but, nevertheless, sees this as a period in which the history of the region was transformed by an indigenous power. In his view (1993: 454), three tried – Hadadezar of Aram-Zobah, Nahash of Aram, and Saul of Israel – but only Saul succeeded for a short time though ultimately he failed in the face of the Philistine threat. But he does not depart radically from standard treatments and eventually presents David as the key figure in this defining moment: