The Invention of Ancient Israel (20 page)

Gottwald, like Mendenhall, does not view Israel as unified ethnically:

What is interesting about this view is that it sounds remarkably like a description of early Zionism where Jews from many different European countries, or more recently from the influx of American, Russian, and Ethiopian Jews, among others, ‘diverse ethnically and culturally', have been welded together as a modern nation ‘forging together a common life of mutual defense and self-development'. He
adds later that ‘the model may have to be adjusted to the possibility that some Canaanite settlements were not so much polarized by the entering exodus tribes as neutralized, thus adopting a kind of live- and-let-live policy which Israel was willing or obligated to accept' (1979: 219). This offers a striking analogy with the modern period where Zionist immigration produced a situation in which Palestinian and Zionist settlements were located in close proximity, along with periods of conflict in which many Palestinian settlements have been driven out and deprived of their land. This again is reflected in his understanding of the rise of an Israelite state which ‘overthrew the entire balance of power between Israelites and non-Yahwistic Canaanites' (1979: 219).

The fact that this model, just as much as the immigration and conquest models, is about claiming the land is made abundantly clear by Gottwald's elaboration of key questions of social structure which he believes have been overlooked or ignored by biblical scholarship because of a reluctance to draw upon social scientific data or models. He talks in terms of ‘Israel's occupation of the land' or ‘how groups of Israelites came to hold the land' (1979: 220). He elaborates that ‘the conflict over models of land-taking is in reality a much larger conflict over the proper understanding of Israel as a social system' (1979: 220).

The focus on Israel is so all-consuming that there is no question that this is Israel's land: the problem of the rights of the other indigenous groups to a land or history is not raised. This is surprising given Gottwald's sensitivity to contemporary struggles for liberation, especially given his own involvement in the anti-Vietnam protests and acknowledgement of the importance of this in shaping his views. Yet what it demonstrates above all is the overwhelming power of the search for ancient Israel within the discourse of biblical studies. It is so overwhelming, so powerful, so all-consuming, that even within a critique that is sensitive to all kinds of socio-political implications the problem of Palestine remains unspoken. Palestinian time is
claimed as part of Israel's past with the insistence that those indigenous groups who rejected the oppressive socio-political regimes and joined Israel were in effect ‘proto-Israelites' (1979: 30, 32–43, 77, etc.). The Israel of the past and present have combined within the discourse of biblical studies to silence Palestinian history by laying claim to its time and its land.

Gottwald, despite various provisos, perpetuates the domain assumption of the discourse of biblical studies that Israel is unique. He is well aware of the problem of theological explanations:

Yet he continues to emphasize the radical distinction between social systems of Israel and Canaan which he sees, following Mendenhall, can only be explained on the basis of the novelty of Israel's ‘religious movement and motivation': ‘I find myself in almost total agreement with Mendenhall on this point. The cult and ideology of Yahweh, the god of Israel, are at the nub of Israel's uniqueness' (1979: 233). Although his distinctive emphasis is to stress the material aspect of Israelite culture in trying to make sense of the articulation and realization of this religious ideology, it is clear that he remains rooted to the dominant view which professes the uniqueness of Israel, implying a lack of value in indigenous culture or history. His disagreement with Mendenhall is that he had imagined a community which attributed power to its god but did not wield power itself: for Gottwald, Israel took power for itself while attributing the source of that power to Yahweh (1979: 233). Yet even though he characterizes religion as ‘the unmoved mover of the Israelite mutation', he is essentially wedded to the central role of the uniqueness of Israelite religion in distinguishing it from its Palestinian context.

The paradox inherent in Mendenhall's work is equally apparent in Gottwald's alternative formulation of the revolt hypothesis. His insistence upon the central role of Canaanite peasants throwing off the control of the urban elite appears to offer a voice to Palestinian history. In fact, he goes so far as to say that ‘it is only in the literature of early Israel that the revolutionary consciousness of the Canaanite underclasses finds an articulate voice' (1979: 409). These groups are only given voice by Israel. Thus, Israelite tribalism is described as the
result of a conscious choice by individuals and groups to reject the Canaanite centralization of power. Although his insistence upon ‘retribalization' (1979: 325) is a distinctive aspect of Gottwald's proposals, it is little more than a variant on the fundamental assumption that has informed the discourse of biblical studies since the time of Alt, that Israel's political system is different from and fundamentally superior to that of the indigenous culture. The indigenous forms of organization were disjointed and incapable of unified action: ‘we know of no such sustained collective leadership among the older Canaanite city-states which, even when faced with extreme external threats, had been capable only of episodic alliances markedly unstable in their membership and longevity' (1979: 412).
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While there is an important focus on the conflict between indigenous groups, it is never articulated in terms of Palestinian history. It is only given voice as part of the history of Israel:

The choice of the phrase ‘aggressive self-defence' is particularly noteworthy since it mirrors apologetic language often used to describe the modern state of Israel in its foreign adventures into Lebanon, or elsewhere, in striking back against what it perceives as terrorist actions. This is not to suggest that Gottwald supports such aggression but simply to point out the way in which influential contemporary language and ideas become part of the vocabulary used by historians to construct the past.

The past is seen to be every bit as much a struggle for self-determination and the control of land as the present:

Here is an invention of the Israelite past which mirrors the ideological projection of the present of the modern state of Israel which contrasts its democratic (egalitarian) ideal with the undemocratic (centralized and stratified) Arab states which surround it. His understanding of Israelite origins in the Late Bronze–Iron Age transition provides a striking parallel with conceptions of the Zionist movement prior to the founding of the modern state. Gottwald, in rejecting the validity of Noth's amphictyonic hypothesis, makes the striking claim that
‘the Israelite confederacy was a consciously contrived surrogate state for its peoples'
(1979: 383; his emphasis). His description of this imaginary Israelite past could quite easily function as a description of early Zionism prior to 1948 in which Israel is perceived as ‘an egalitarian, extended family, segmentary tribal society with an agricultural-pastoral economic base' (1979: 389). Ben-Gurion wrote, before leaving Russia, that he wished to create ‘a model society based on social, economic, and political equality' (cited by Elon 1983: 81). Similarly, Elon adds that ‘the pioneers of the second wave saw themselves less as nation builders than as
chalutzim
of a new social order' (Elon 1983:112). We might compare this with Gottwald's emphatic statement of the nature of ancient Israel:

This could quite easily serve as a manifesto of early Zionist ideals in the construction of a society by those fleeing the persecution and racism of Europe, a broad collection of imperial powers ranging from the modern nation states of Western Europe to the feudalisms of Eastern Europe.
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It is a view of an egalitarian society, however, which fails to deal with the rights of the indigenous population.

In discussing the importance of Israelite religion he takes issue with Bright's view that Israel was not unique in the way that it took possession of the land and that its uniqueness stemmed from its
religion. Instead, Gottwald (1979: 593) argues that ‘Israel's sociopolitical egalitarian mode of life, involving an entire populace of formerly oppressed peoples, was unique in its explicitiiess and in its spatio-temporal effectiveness' (Gottwald 1979: 593). His complaint against Bright is that he isolates Israelite religion from its social setting. Similarly, he rejects Mendenhall's view of Israelite religion as idealist in the way it places it in ‘an asocial and ahistorical vàcuum' (1979: 601). Nevertheless, Gottwald does agree ‘with Bright that Israel's religion was innovative in the ancient world in significant ways' (1979: 594). He claims that it is misleading to speak of Israelite religion as ‘unparalleled' or ‘unique' and prefers to use the phrase ‘Israel's innovative distinctiveness' (1979: 595). It is innovative and distinctive, for Gottwald, precisely because it is the expression of an egalitarian social revolution. Despite Gottwald's dispute with Bright, he is open to the very same criticisms as Albright, Wright, Bright, and Mendenhall in undervaluing the indigenous value system which can only be transformed from outside since the religious ideology is carried by the small group of Exodus Israelites. He does not deny that there is some continuity dr comparability but suggests that this has been transformed in a way that simply was not possible without outside intervention.

Gottwald's programme of ‘cultural-material research into early Israel', which he proposes towards the end his massive volume (1979: 650–63), highlights the central paradox of the volume: these proposals are crucial to the realization of a Palestinian history in its own right. The pursuit of settlement history, demography, economy, etc., in broad detail over a long period of time must be at the heart of any reappraisal of the Palestinian past. The irony here is that it is again Gottwald's distraction with the search for early Israel which does not allow him to see the need for the wider application of such a programme and prevents him from giving voice to Palestinian history. As with the Conquest hypothesis of Albright, it is the ever-increasing range and quality of archaeological data from the region which has shown that Gottwald's proposal, including various reformulations, is an imagined and invented past. Although there are important features of Gottwald's work which are essential to the realization of a Palestinian history in its own right, it fails to achieve this because of the distraction with ancient Israel. Any Palestinian claim to the past is effectively silenced by the pursuit of ancient Israel: it is a past that has no self-definition apart from its definition in relation to Israel.

Conclusion

The changes in perspective on reading the Hebrew Bible which have raised serious questions about standard historical critical assumptions and use of the biblical traditions for historical reconstruction, along with the accumulating archaeological data from single site excavations and regional surveys in Palestine, have shown these various models or theories to be inventions of an imagined ancient past. The increasing inability of the three major constructions of Israelite origins to deal with this growing body of evidence, along with the undermining of its notion of a text, has highlighted the extent to which Israel has been invented. It is only in retrospect that it becomes possible to ask hoiv this has come about. The driving force of biblical studies has been the need to search for ancient Israel as the taproot of Western civilization, a need that has been reinforced by the demands of Christian theology in search of the roots of its own uniqueness in the society which produced the Hebrew Bible. This has been reinforced with the foundation of the modern state of Israel, giving rise to a search by Israeli scholarship for its own national identity deep in the past.