The Invention of Ancient Israel (27 page)

Their conclusion reveals how far they were distracted by the search for ancient Israel. The processes of historical change for studying Palestinian history are appropriate but the concern is with the search for and location of ancient Israel. It is assumed, on the basis of the discourse of biblical studies, that Israel is to be identified with the highland settlements of the early Iron Age and that the development of an Israelite state can be traced from there. The power of the discourse of biblical studies is illustrated in Frick's conclusion that ‘the emergent Israelite society in the highlands was … a revolutionary development when viewed over against the Late Bronze Age Canaanite city-state system which had prevailed in the plains' (1985: 196). The appeal to social scientific data and theories has not freed these studies from Alt's domain assumption that Israel's political development represents a radical break with and replacement of (inferior) indigenous political structures. Furthermore, all these studies assume, however minimally, the broad outline of the biblical traditions for their constructions of the past.
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Although they might be said to have contributed to the general climate which has led to a more radical questioning of this dominant discourse and its assumptions about Israel's claim to the past, they have failed to escape the stranglehold which that discourse has exerted over our understanding of this past. Coote and Whitelam (1987: 164) do provide a proviso in trying to see the creation of an Israelite state as part of the study of Palestinian history: ‘The emergence of Israel and the inauguration of the monarchy must be seen as part of the long-term trends and processes if progress is to be made towards a more realistic appraisal of this phase of Palestinian history.' However, it is a Palestinian history dominated by Israel, it is a Palestinian history in name only: in reality it is no more that the study of Israelite history, admittedly seen at least as part of wider Palestinian history, but no nearer the realization or articulation of such a history.
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Yet even these modest proposals which raised the possibility of a challenge to the dominant construction of the past and which questioned the dominant role of Israel could not be allowed to go unchallenged.

Finkelstein (1989: 43–74) offers a response to these reappraisals of the emergence of the monarchy in Israel in which the dominant discourse reasserts itself. The opening paragraph of the article indicates that, despite an appeal to new archaeological data, his understanding of the significance of the development of an Israelite
state stands firmly within the discourse of biblical studies since the time of Alt:

Here is a picture of the European nation state transposed to Palestine. We are told, without need for justification, that ‘for the first time' the region reached the pinnacle of political evolution, the pinnacle of civilization, a national ethnic state with a ‘
distinctive
ideological and religious identity'. Presumably, all other political entities in the region prior to this event were not distinctive. The claim to the land on the basis of ‘historic right' is reinforced with the notion that this is the first ‘powerful state' and ‘local independent entity' in the region. The underlying assumptions, drawn from the biblical traditions and the dominant discourse of biblical studies, have been reached before he begins his re-examination of biblical scholarship in light of ‘the most important archaeological dimension for tracing processes of this kind – the study of settlement patterns' (1989: 43).

Again he is reliant upon ‘the Land of Ephraim' survey to provide the archaeological data which had not been available to previous scholars. He contrasts the distribution of settlement at the beginning of Iron I (twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE) with that during the eleventh century BCE, and with the Iron II settlement pattern. The problems inherent in his attempt to define ‘Israelite settlement' on the basis of archaeological evidence alone will be reserved for
chapter 5
. Clearly Finkelstein is heavily dependent upon his reading of the Hebrew Bible for this conclusion: a fact that places his work firmly within the mainstream of the discourse of biblical studies. He concludes that over 75 per cent of early Iron I sites were located in the eastern half of what he terms ‘the Ephraim territory' (1989: 57). The settlement process in the western half intensified during Iron I with 62 per cent of the sites established in the latter phase of the period situated on the slopes and foothills; 76 per cent of the
population lived in the eastern units (63 per cent of the population of all Iron I sites) at the beginning of Iron I with 46 per cent of the inhabitants of sites established in late Iron I living in western units. In comparison, ‘for the first time in the demographic history of the land of Ephraim' (1989: 58), the western units (51 per cent) outnumbered eastern units. This shows an increase of 95–100 per cent in the number of western sites with 54 per cent of the large villages and 53 per cent of the population. He concludes that the western expansion ‘meant a struggle with the harsh topography' (1989: 58) of the western part of the area. He notes that Zertal detected a similar process in his survey of ‘Manasseh' and Kochavi's survey of ‘Judah and Benjamin'; again the terminology is important. Thus it appears from his data, assuming that his chronological conclusions are correct, that ‘Israelite settlement' initially took place in the desert fringes and in the central range between Jerusalem and the Jezreel Valley. Settlement increased in the western areas only in the latter stages of the eleventh century with the intensification reaching its height in Iron II: ‘However, the ultimate “conquest”, that of the ecological frontier of the central hill country – the western slopes of Samaria and the Judaean hills – took place only in Iron II' (1989: 59). As with his study of the ‘emergence of Israel', he is reliant upon his reading of the biblical traditions in order to determine that this settlement shift represents ‘Israelite settlement'. Noticeably, the area of demographic expansion which he is interested in is located on the ‘western slopes of Samaria and the Judaean hills', the West Bank. He is then able to conclude that the ‘Israelite population' in the early Iron I sites west of the Jordan was in the region of 20,000, excluding non-sedentary groups, ‘while the settled Israelite population at the end of the eleventh century BCE is estimated at c. 55,000' (1989: 59). His appeal to his earlier study (1988: 27–33) for an understanding of the term ‘Israelite' means that his work suffers from the same weaknesses. He has assumed that this settlement shift is Israelite and related to the internal and external conditions which contributed to the emergence of an Israelite monarchy. This is Israel's past alone.

The catalogue of statistical information he puts forward is very impressive. Yet the crucial point is that his assumption that these data relate to Israelite settlement immediately asserts a claim to the land and to the past – an impressive claim at that given the nature of the statistics. But what if this settlement shift is referred to as ‘Palestinian' and not ‘Israelite', what if we see it as a continuation of the transformation and realignment of Late Bronze Age Palestinian
society? Immediately, the change of terminology and the change of perspective offer an alternative construction and claim on the past. The data he puts forward are essential to the examination of crucial processes in the continuing transformation and realignment of Palestinian society in the early Iron Age. He notes, for example, that the switch to a more specialized agriculture in the horticultural regions encouraged the villages of the desert fringe, eastern central range and parts of the foothills to specialize in grain growing and animal husbandry, and to intensify efforts to produce greater surpluses (1989: 60). Such an economic system, he reasons, ‘necessitated a certain level of organization, which served as the springboard for public administration' (1989: 60). The production of surpluses led to stratification and the emergence of central sites resulting in a ‘crucial shift of the Israelite population from a rural society of small isolated groups to the beginning of organization into larger socio-political systems' (1989: 60). It may be possible to infer from the archaeological evidence that such sociopolitical developments took place at this time but it moves way beyond the evidence to conclude that this is ‘Israelite settlement' or the emergence of an Israelite state in the terms it is described in the Samuel traditions in the Hebrew Bible. His focus is solely upon an imagined Israelite past which helps to underpin claims to the land, ‘historic Samaria and Judaea', the modern West Bank, which is crucial to modern conceptions of identity and a claim to the land on the basis of ‘historic right'. Finkelstein's construction of the period, following his presentation of the data, is a reassertion of the domain assumptions of the discourse throughout this century: he is able to conclude that ‘at this point, part of the “classic” reconstruction of the monarchy's incipience should be accepted' (1989: 62–3).

His construction of the imagined past stands firmly in the mainstream of the discourse of biblical studies. This is confirmed with his assertion that:

He tries to temper this with the qualification that such a ‘Great Man' can only arise under suitable socio-historical circumstances. Yet there is nothing in his presentation of the archaeological data for
settlement shift and development in the Palestinian hill country and desert fringes which allows for an identification with Saul or Samuel. This is assumed, at no point argued, on the basis of his correlation of the biblical traditions and the archaeological data. He is able, then, to go on to confirm that it was only with David that ‘the national state of Saul became a strong and large territorial state' (1989: 63). All this is predicated on the inference that the expanding villages need to produce larger surpluses, thereby increasing stratification and eventually moving towards centralization. Yet we suddenly move from this inference to find that what is really being discussed is a ‘national state' which is carved out by Saul and completed by David. Then we find that ‘the expansion of the monarchy into the coastal plain, the fertile northern valleys and Galilee united most of the country
for the first time in its history
under one local rule' (1989: 63; emphasis added). Finkelstein's presentation of new archaeological data is little more than a reiteration of the series of domain assumptions from the time of Alt which has invented an imagined Israelite past, the defining moment in the history of the region. The processes discussed in the settlement shift are crucial to any pursuit of Palestinian history for this period. However, such a history has been silenced by the continuing search for ancient Israel in the Iron Age. This is true of all the apparent re-evaluations of the emergence of an Israelite state which have appeared in recent years. Although they have challenged particular aspects of the dominant construction, they remain located firmly within a discourse which has effectively excluded Palestinian history from the academic sphere.

Challenging the Davidic Empire

The consensus presentation of the Davidic monarchy, although still dominant within the discourse of biblical studies, has gradually begun to fracture in recent years. Some of the reassessments of the formation of the monarchy, referred to above, have helped to contribute to a critical climate, but have fallen short of a sustained critique of the dominant discourse. The dominant construction of the past has begun to fracture as a result of the same convergence of factors which led to the reassessment of the ‘emergence' of Israel; the implications of these earlier studies on the ‘emergence' of Israel have been applied only slowly to the study of an Israelite monarchy in the early Iron Age. The guarded discussion of Miller and Hayes indicates that by the mid-1980s the convergence of factors which had challenged
the dominant constructions of the origins of Israel had begun to produce cracks in the projection of an Israelite empire that dominated Palestine in the Iron Age. The overwhelming factor has been the sea-change in literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible which at first undermined standard historical-critical assumptions pertaining to the period of Israel's emergence and to a lesser extent the re-evaluation of archaeological data. The shift in approaches to the emergence of Israel was brought about by the convergence of these newer literary approaches and new archaeological data which raised serious questions about previous constructions of the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition. What is interesting about the creation of an Israelite state in the Iron Age is that there is very little unambiguous archaeological evidence which pertains to the so-called period of the Israelite monarchy. Thus the discourse of biblical studies has created this entity solely on the basis of a reading of the biblical traditions, supplemented by extra-biblical documentary evidence.

One of the most sceptical assessments of the biblical traditions along with the notion of some glorious age of Israelite empire is Garbini's (1988: 1–20) sharp critique of modern ‘biblical histories' as little more than paraphrases of the biblical text stemming from theological motivations. His critical perspective is taken from a philological stance within Assyriology, attacking what he sees as a remarkably uncritical attitude of modern biblical historians to the text of the Hebrew Bible. He also provides a sharp critique of the standard presentations of the reigns of David and Solomon as that of an empire and golden age (1988: 21–32). He finds it remarkable that biblical scholarship has failed to recognize that ‘the historical framework gives the impression of being nearer to the mythical vision of an original golden age than to a convincing reconstruction of human actions' (1988: 21). Although he raises important questions about the nature of the text which throw doubt on its historical veracity and usefulness for construction, sounding a suitably sceptical and critical note, he is not always well informed as to the debates within biblical scholarship on these issues.