The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Isreal and the Origin of Sacred Texts (55 page)

This textual reconstruction of the boundaries of the province of Yehud is confirmed by archaeological finds. The most indicative of these are various seal impressions found on pottery vessels from the Persian period, bearing Aramaic or Hebrew characters that spell out the Aramaic name of the province—Yehud. A few hundred examples have so far been found. Their distribution, at least in meaningful quantities, is identical to the boundaries of the province of Yehud as described above: from the area of Mizpah in the north to Beth-zur in the south, and from Jericho in the east to Gezer (near Lod) in the west. In fact, almost all the impressions were found in Jerusalem and in the sites immediately to its north and south. One type of these impressions carries, in addition to the name of the province, a personal name and the title “the governor.” Such personal names are identified by most scholars as otherwise unknown governors of the province of Yehud, that is to say, officials who held the same post as Nehemiah.

1
By Israelite “monotheism” we refer to the biblically mandated worship of one God in one place—the Jerusalem Temple—that was imbued with a special holiness. The modern scholarly literature has identified a wide spectrum of modes of worship in which a single god is central but not exclusive (i.e., accompanied by secondary deities and various heavenly beings). We recognize that during the late monarchic period and for a long time afterward the worship of the God of Israel was regularly accompanied by the veneration of divine attendants and other heavenly beings. But we suggest that a decisive move toward modern monotheism was made in the time of Josiah, with the Deuteronomic ideas.

2
Throughout this book we use the name “Israel” in two distinct and alternative senses: as the name of the northern kingdom and as a collective name for the community of all Israelites. In most cases, we refer to the northern kingdom as “the kingdom of Israel” and the wider community as “ancient Israel” or “the people of Israel.”

1
It is important to note that some of this genealogical material in Genesis, such as the list of the sons of Ishmael, belongs to the P source, which is dated, in the main, to postexilic times. While some scholars argue that P has a late monarchic layer, and therefore may very well reflect interests and realities of seventh century Judah, it is possible that some allusions may also reflect realities of the sixth century
BCE
. But in no case is there any convincing explanation for the mention of all these desert dwelling peoples in the patriarchal genealogies except as late literary attempts to incorporate them in a systematic way into the early history of Israel.

2
Another example of the unification of northern and southern traditions under Judahite supremacy is the location of the tombs of the patriarchs. This sacred place—where Abraham and Isaac (southern heroes) as well as Jacob (a northern hero) were buried—is located at Hebron, traditionally the second most important city in the hill country of Judah. The story of the purchase of the tomb of the patriarchs is generally ascribed to the Priestly (P) source, which seems to have more than one compositional layer to it. If this tradition is late monarchic in origin (though its final version came later), it is a clear expression of the centrality of Judah and its superiority over the North. The specific land transaction described in the story has strong parallels in the Neo-Babylonian period—another clue to the late realities underlying the patriarchal narratives.

3
Since the Priestly (P) source in the Pentateuch is dated by most scholars to post-exilic times, and the final redaction of the Pentateuch was also undertaken in that period, we face a serious question of whether we can also identify a post-exilic layer in the stories in Genesis. In many ways, the needs of the post-exilic community were quite similar to the necessities of the late monarchic state. Yet, as we try to demonstrate here, the basic framework and initial elaboration of the patriarchal narratives point clearly to a seventh century origin.

4
The territorial ambitions of seventh-century Judah to reclaim Israelite lands conquered by the Assyrians are also expressed in the Abraham traditions. In the story of the great war in Genesis
14
, Abraham pursues the Mesopotamian kings who captured his nephew Lot, chasing them all the way to Damascus and Dan (
14
:
14
–
15
). In this act he liberates his kinsman from Mesopotamian bondage and ejects foreign forces from the later northern boundary of the kingdom of Israel.

Also relevant to Judah’s territorial ambitions in this period is the special focus on the “Joseph” tribes—Ephraim and Manasseh—and the strong message of separation of the Israelites from the Canaanites in the patriarchal narratives. The immediate agenda for Judah after the fall of the northern kingdom was expansion into the former Israelite territories in the highlands directly north of Judah—namely the territories of Ephraim and Manasseh. The Assyrians, after destroying Samaria, settled deportees from Mesopotamia in the territories of the vanquished northern kingdom. Some were settled in the area of Bethel, close to the northern border of Judah. The Pan-Israelite idea had to take into consideration this situation of new “Canaanites” living in the territories Judah saw as its inheritance. The patriarchal narratives, which place strong emphasis on the importance of marriage with kinfolk and avoidance of marriage with the other peoples of the land also perfectly fit this situation.

1
This date, as we saw in the last chapter, was suggested by presumed references to the Ramesside pharaohs in the Exodus narratives and by the date of the Merneptah Stele (1207
BCE
) that indicated “Israel” was present in Canaan by that time.

2
The story of the Gibeonites, who had “come from a far country” and sought to make a covenant with the invading Israelites (Joshua
9
:
3
–
27
), may also reflect an adaptation of an old tradition to a seventh century reality. Expanding northward into the area of Bethel after the retreat of Assyria, Judah faced a problem of how to integrate the descendants of the deportees brought by the Assyrians from afar and settled there a few decades earlier. The mention of Avvim in this area in Joshua
18
:
23
recalls the name Avva—one of the places of origin of the deportees listed in
2
Kings
17
:
24
. Especially crucial in the Josianic era was the question of how to absorb those who were sympathetic to Judah into the community. The old story of the Gibeonites could provide a “historical” context in which the Deuteronomist explained how this might be done.

1
Although there is no way to know if ethnic identities had been fully formed at this time, we identify these distinctive highland villages as “Israelite” since many of them were continuously occupied well into the period of the monarchies—an era from which we have abundant sources, both biblical and extrabiblical, testifying that their inhabitants consciously identified themselves as Israelites.

1
The Shishak alternative raises a problem: Why would the Egyptian king destroy the cities in the Jezreel valley if he intended to continue dominating Canaan? And why would he erect an elaborate victory stele in a destroyed city like Megiddo? Another possible candidate for the agent of destruction of the Canaanite cities could be the northern kingdom of Israel in its early days.

1
The dates of the water systems have now been called into question and may relate to a later period in the history of the kingdom of Israel. Yet their absence does not diminish the grandeur of the network of royal cities that was apparently centrally planned and constructed in the course of the ninth century
BCE
.

2
A C14 sample from the gate area was dated to the late 9th century
BCE
(personal communication from the excavator, Michèle Daviau). The possible chronological range of this reading does not exclude a mid-ninth century
BCE
construction. Nonetheless, we cannot dismiss the possibility that the “Omride” features at the site represent a Moabite version of the building activity in the northern Kingdom.

1
The Bible mentions two kings from roughly the same era—one from Israel and one from Judah—who are
both
referred to by the alternative Hebrew names Jehoash and Joash. For the sake of clarity, we will refer to the northern king (who ruled
800
–
784
BCE
) as “Joash” and to the southern king (who ruled
836
–
798
BCE
) as “Jehoash.”

2
We base this assumption on a rough population estimate, arrived at by using a combination of archaeological and ethnographic data. In this technique of estimating ancient populations, the built-up area of all sites occupied during the eighth century
BCE
(determined by the presence of distinctive eighth century pottery types) is multiplied by a density coefficient, that is, the average density of population observed in traditional, premodern societies of the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century.

1
It is important to stress that while some of the basic ideas that would later characterize Deuteronomy (and perhaps even an early version of a “national” history) may have been formulated in the late eighth century
BCE
, those ideas reached maturity only in the late seventh century
BCE
, when the texts of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History were compiled in their recognizable forms.

2
The excavator of both sites, the Israeli archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni, identified a small temple at Arad, which he believed was erected in the ninth century
BCE
, and suggested that its altar—if not the temple itself—was dismantled in the late eighth century. He linked this change to Hezekiah’s reform. But other scholars have argued that Aharoni misdated the Arad temple. They contend that it was built only in the seventh century; in other words, it is post-Hezekiah in date. At Beersheba, some smoothly carved stone blocks of a large sacrificial altar were found dismantled and reused in late-eighth century storehouses, while others were tossed into the fill of the earthen fortification rampart of that city. Aharoni proposed that the dismantled altar had originally stood in a temple in the city, and that it was removed and dismantled in the course of Hezekiah’s reform. Just to complicate things we should note that the famous Assyrian relief of the conquest of Lachish by Sennacherib in
701
BCE
casts some doubt on the success of Hezekiah’s policy of religious centralization. The relief depicts what seem to be cult items removed by Assyrian troops from the vanquished city, possibly indicating the continuing existence of a cult place there until late in the days of Hezekiah.

1
If the list of the fortresses built by Rehoboam
(2
Chronicles
11
:
5
–
12
) has any historical basis, it may rather date to the time of Hezekiah, as some historians argue, attesting to the preparations in other centers in the countryside.

1
This temple was excavated at the fortress of Arad in the south. According to the excavator Yohanan Aharoni, the temple went out of use in the late seventh/early sixth century, when a new fortification wall was built over it. This apparently signified the temple’s closure or abandonment, close to the time of Josiah’s reforms. However, other scholars question this dating and are not so certain that the Arad temple ceased to function in this period, as Josiah apparently would have wished.

Author’s Note:
Although there is a rich and relevant scholarly literature on the subjects covered in this book also in Hebrew and in German, French, and other European languages, we have selected the main sources in English for this bibliography. In a very few cases, German or French sources are cited when they are the only relevant references to a particular subject.

Reference encyclopedias:

I. The main archaeological sites in Israel and Jordan:

Stern, E. (editor). 1993.
The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land.
Jerusalem.

II. Bible entries:

Freedman, D. N. (editor). 1992.
The Anchor Bible Dictionary.
New York.

III. The Ancient Near East:

Meyers, E. M. (editor). 1997.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East.
New York.

Sasson, J. M. (editor). 1995.
Civilizations of the Ancient Near East.
London.

On the physical geography of Canaan/Israel:

Orni, E. and Efrat, E. 1971.
Geography of Israel.
Jerusalem.

On archaeological method:

Renfrew, C. and Bahn, P. 1991.
Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice.
London.

On the history of archaeological research in Palestine:

Silberman, N. A. 1982.
Digging for God and Country: Exploration in the Holy Land 1799–1917.
New York.