The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (35 page)

Hemmed into the immediate vicinity of Samaria, the rump kingdom of Israel proved to be little more than a tidbit to be gobbled up at the first opportunity by the ascendant Assyrian state. Yet Hoshea, the assassin of Pekah and the last king of Israel, having quickly offered tribute to Assyria, just as quickly began a disastrously dangerous plot. In the brief period of uncertainty about succession between the death of Tiglath-pileser III and the accession of Shalmaneser V, Hoshea reportedly sent secret word to one of the regional lords of the Egyptian delta, hoping that Egypt would now be ready to enter the anti-Assyrian fray. Taking the ultimate gamble, Hoshea ended his tribute payments to the new Assyrian king forthwith.

Who could have been surprised at what happened? Shalmaneser V immediately embarked on a campaign of liquidation. He reduced the countryside around Samaria and laid siege to the city itself. After a long siege, the city was stormed and at least part of its surviving population was marshaled off to concentration points from which they were eventually resettled in distant Assyrian domains. There is considerable debate among scholars whether Shalmaneser V survived to see the capture of Samaria or whether his successor, Sargon II, who came to the throne in
722
BCE
, was responsible for the coup de grâce. In any event, it is from Sargon’s chronicles that we have the fullest Assyrian account of what transpired:

The inhabitants of Samaria, who agreed and plotted with a king hostile to me not to endure servitude and not to bring tribute to Assur and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords. I counted as spoil
27
,
280
people, together with their chariots, and gods, in which they trusted. I formed a unit with
200
of their chariots for my royal force. I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samaria more than before. I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hands. I appointed my commissioner as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians.

Sargon’s account provides us with the number of the deportees from Samaria—though it is unclear whether it refers to the population of the capital and its immediate surroundings or to the total number taken from the kingdom over the preceding years. The Bible mentions some of the destinations—“Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of Medes” (
2
Kings
17
:
6
). But the ultimate fate of most of them—the ten tribes of northern Israel—would never be known. In the beginning the deportees might have tried to preserve their identity, for instance by continuing Israelite forms of worship or giving Israelite names to their children. But they were soon Assyrianized and assimilated into the empire.

It was all over. Two stormy centuries had come to a catastrophic end. The proud northern kingdom and a significant part of its population were lost to history.

As they had probably done in resettling key sites in the north such as Megiddo with dependable subjects, the Assyrian authorities brought in new population groups to settle in the heartland of the Israelite highlands in place of deported Israelites: “And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel; and they took possession of Samaria, and dwelt in its cities” (
2
Kings
17
:
24
). A few historical and archaeological clues suggest that these new groups, from rebellious areas of southern Mesopotamia, were settled not only in Samaria but also in the particularly strategic area around Bethel—the old Israelite cult center—on the northern border of the still-independent kingdom of Judah. The biblical historian provides circumstantial testimony about this in the
inclusion of Avvim as one of the towns of seventh century Judah in the area of Bethel (Joshua
18
:
23
). This name probably relates to Avva, which is mentioned as one of the places of origin of the deportees. An Aramaic text mentions deportees who were settled in Bethel itself. In addition, a few seventh century cuneiform texts bearing Babylonian names that have been found in Gezer and its vicinity provide tangible evidence of the presence of these deportees in the southwestern territory of vanquished Israel, also near the border of Judah. Finally, Adam Zertal of Haifa University suggested that a special type of pottery carrying cuneiform-like signs, which is found at some sites in the highlands of Samaria, may also be related to these newly arrived groups.

But the population exchange was far from total. The gross number given in the Assyrian sources for both deportations—by Tiglath-pileser III from Galilee and by Sargon II from Samaria—is about forty thousand people. This comprises no more than a fifth of the estimated population of the northern kingdom west of the Jordan in the eighth century
BCE
. Tiglathpileser III seems to have deported mainly the troublesome villagers of the hills of Galilee and the population of the main centers, such as Megiddo, and it seems that Sargon II deported mainly the aristocracy of Samaria, and possibly soldiers and artisans with skills that were needed in Assyria. As a result, most of the surviving Israelites were left on the land. In the hill country around the city of Samaria, which was destined to serve as the hub of the new Assyrian province of Samerina, the deportation was apparently minimal. The Assyrians had good economic reasons not to devastate the rich, oil-producing area. In the northern valleys, the Assyrians destroyed the Israelite administrative centers but left the rural population (which was basically Canaanite, Phoenician, and Aramean in tradition) unhurt—as long as they remained docile and contributed their share to the Assyrian tribute demands. Even the brutal Assyrian conquerors recognized that wholesale destruction and deportation of the rural population of Israel could have devastated the agricultural output of their new province, so when possible they opted for stability and continuity.

Indeed, surveys and excavations in the Jezreel valley confirm the surprising demographic continuity. And about half of the rural sites near Samaria continued to be occupied in subsequent centuries. We may even have a biblical reference to this demographic situation. A few years after the destruction
of the northern kingdom, the Judahite king Hezekiah celebrated the Passover in Jerusalem. He reportedly “sent to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, to keep the passover to the Lord the God of Israel” (
2
Chronicles
30
:
1
). Ephraim and Manasseh refer to the highlands of Samaria to the north of Judah. While the historicity of Chronicles may be questioned, Jeremiah also reports, about
150
years after the fall of the northern kingdom, that Israelites from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria came with offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem (Jeremiah
41
:
5
).

The fact that a significant number of Israelites were still living in the hill country of Samaria, including the southern area of Bethel, alongside the new populations brought by the Assyrians would play a major role in the foreign policy of Judah and in the development of the biblical ideology of the seventh century
BCE
.

We can never know how reliable were the traditions, texts, or archives used by the biblical authors to compile their history of the kingdom of Israel. Their aims were not to produce an objective history of the northern kingdom but rather to provide a
theological explanation
for a history that was probably already well known, at least in its broad details. No matter what popular legends might have said about individual kings of Israel, the biblical authors judge each and every one of them negatively. The reigns of most merited only a few words of summation: such-and-such a king “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat.” A noteworthy few—like Jeroboam I and the Omrides—were condemned in harsher words and stories. But even the best of the northern kings are still considered sinners: Jehoram, son of Ahab, is credited with removing the
massebah,
or cult monument, of Baal, and Jehu is praised for wiping out its worship, but at the same time, both are condemned for walking in the footsteps of “Jeroboam son of Nebat.” Even Hoshea, the last king of Israel, who belatedly tried to break Israel away from the iron grip of Assyria, is judged in only a marginally milder way: “He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord yet not as the kings of Israel
who were before him” (
2
Kings
17
:
2
). Hence, starting with the sins of Jeroboam, the Bible offers a story of doom foreseen.

The periods of prosperity that the kingdom of Israel enjoyed, and that were probably remembered for centuries through the monumental remains still visible in many of the north’s cities, posed a serious theological problem for the later Judahite observers who compiled the books of Kings. If the northern kingdom was so evil, why didn’t YHWH wipe it out while Jeroboam I was still in power, or immediately after his reign, still in the days of his own dynasty? Or at the latest, in the days of the Omrides, the lovers of Baal? If they were so evil, why did YHWH allow them to prosper? The Deuteronomistic historian found an elegant way of rationalizing the almost-two-century life of northern Israel by suggesting that its doom was postponed because YHWH found some merits even in the sinful monarchs of the northern kingdom. Seeing “the affliction of Israel,” he could not resist saving it on a few occasions of great calamities.

There were undoubtedly competing, elaborate explanations of the rising and falling fortunes of the northern kingdom from the official priesthoods of the northern shrines of Dan and Bethel. It is only natural to assume that there were northern prophets—“who prophesy falsely,” as the Bible might have put it—who were closer to the royal institutions in Samaria. This kind of material could not possibly have entered the Bible as we know it today. Had Israel survived, we might have received a parallel, competing, and very different history. But with the Assyrian destruction of Samaria and the dismantling of its institutions of royal power, any such competing histories were silenced. Though prophets and priests from the north very likely joined the flow of refugees to find shelter in the cities and towns of Judah, biblical history would henceforth be written by the winners—or at least the survivors—and it would be fashioned exclusively according to the late Judahite Deuteronomistic beliefs.

From the point of view of seventh century Judah, in full awareness of the terrible destruction that had been visited on the northern kingdom, the meaning of Israel’s history was clear. It is described succinctly and eloquently in the eulogy for Israel after the description of the fall of Samaria. From the point of view of the Deuteronomistic historian the climax of the story of the northern kingdom is not in the days of Ahab or Jeroboam II,
not even in the tragic end, but in the summary that tells the story of Israel’s sins and God’s retribution. This theological climax is inserted in the middle of the great drama, between the two calamities—immediately following the description of the capture of Samaria and the deportation of the Israelites and before the mention of the repopulation of Israel’s land by foreign people: