The Invention of Ancient Israel (22 page)

What Bright has constructed is a biblically inspired view of ‘Greater Israel' which coincides with and helps to enhance the vision and aspirations of many of Israel's modern leaders. Ben-Gurion expressed the view that the borders of Israel ought to include southern Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan, all Cisjordan, and the Sinai. Chomsky notes Ben-Gurion's view that:

Ben-Gurion even referred to the founding of ‘the Third Kingdom of Israel' following the 1956 capture of the Sinai (cited by Chomsky 1983: 163 from Nar-Zohar 1978: 91–2; 166; 186–7; 249–50). Any scholarly construction of the Israelite past, particularly the construction of the Israelite monarchy and its boundaries, has to be read in this contemporary context since it is both informed by and informs contemporary claims and aspirations. The implications of biblical scholarship for the world of politics, whether the scholar acknowledges this or not, are brought out in Begin's statement following the establishment of the state in 1948:

The biblically inspired political vision and claims of the modern world are confirmed, for the most part, by the construction of an imagined past of the ancient Israelite state within the discourse of biblical studies. Furthermore, here ironically is an imperial control, constructed by the Hebrew Bible and modern ‘biblical historians', which mirrors the dominant theme of empire in the history of the region to such an extent that Palestinian history no longer exists: all we have is a history of an imagined imperial Israel.
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Confirmation of the importance which the discourse of biblical studies has always placed upon this period can be found in Soggin's assessment of the inauguration of an Israelite monarchy:

Soggin's view is noteworthy for several reasons since he had argued against the possibility of using the biblical traditions to construct early pre-monarchic Israel, the essential Israel of biblical scholarship discussed in the previous chapter. His
History of Israel
was one of the first to take seriously the growing objections to standard assumptions about the historicity of the biblical traditions. For Soggin, the search for Israel in the Late Bronze Age had to be abandoned since the source material was not available. Instead the real starting point for a history of Israel was, for him, the foundation of a monarchy. However, it is clear that he is working with the common assumption in biblical studies that ‘history proper' can only be written on the basis of written documents. Without such documents we are condemned to ‘pre-history' which somehow does not carry the same weight, is not real somehow, and so these periods and their peoples
are silenced. This is the principle of Western historiography of the nineteenth century as it developed in the context of the nation state. It is now reinforced in the construction of Israelite history by the fact that it is only with the Israelite state (nation state) that we enter the realm of ‘history proper'. History, in effect Palestinian history, before this time cannot be ‘proper'. For most other scholars, who have been content to date parts of the biblical tradition much earlier or argue that late traditions still accurately reflect a much earlier historical reality, the ‘emergence' of Israel, as we have seen, is the other defining moment in the history of Palestine.

It is not simply the assumption that the rise of an Israelite state, and in particular the Davidic monarchy, brings us to history proper but that this is the defining moment of Israelite history and so of the region as a whole. The assertion of Bright (1972: 179) that Israel under the monarchy became ‘one of the ranking powers of the contemporary world' and that this is ‘one of the most significant in Israel's entire history' is representative of a common view in biblical studies. The emphasis on the crucial nature of this period is found throughout our standard histories and reference works. It is necessary to trace the discourse of biblical studies in relation to the invention of an Israelite state or ‘empire' in the context of the Zionist agitation for and eventual realization of a modern state of Israel.
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The two processes are intricately linked in that the scholarly discourse has been conducted in the context of the struggle for a state in the first part of this century and then dominated by the existence of that state ever since. If ‘politics is everywhere', as Said (1994b: 16) claims, then the discourse of biblical studies has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that the construction of the past is a political act. Biblical scholars and archaeologists have sought to escape to the haven of objectivity effectively ignoring, or even denying, the context in which they work and the contexts in which their work is received and read. The cumulative effect of frequently circulated ideas and values both shapes and is shaped by their findings. This is particularly true of any history of ancient Israel and particularly one which deals with the creation of a state. The attachment to place, the claim of ‘historic right' to the land, excludes any counter-claims. Biblical studies in imagining a past dominated by an Israelite state, elevated to the rank of a world power, simply adds to the legitimacy of the claim of ‘historic right' by excluding any other possible construction of the past.

Furthermore, as we saw with the discussion of the so-called
emergence of Israel, there are a number of domain assumptions which have permeated considerations of the inauguration of an ancient Israelite state. The presentation, invariably, has been in terms of objective scholarship divorced from the sordid realities of the world of politics. It has not been seen as a matter worthy of comment that biblical scholarship's discussion of an Israelite state in the past has no bearing upon or implications for claims in the present for the land of Palestine. It is simply assumed that biblical studies has no part in contemporary struggles for identity and land, when in fact the very silence, the fact that the ‘problem' of Palestine and the existence of a Palestinian past remains unspoken in the discourse of biblical studies, has only served to legitimate Israel's claims to the past and the exclusion of any alternative competing Palestinian claims. The discourse of biblical studies has imagined an ancient Israelite state that is remarkably similar in many aspects to the modern state. What is striking are the recurrent themes, images, and phrases which appear throughout this discourse from the 1920s onwards to the present day: the Davidic monarchy as the defining moment in the history of the region, the existence of a Davidic empire to rival other imperial powers in the ancient world, the defensive nature of David's state, the paradox of the alien nature of the monarchy to Israel, and Israel as a nation set apart from surrounding nations.

Imagining an Ancient Israelite State

Just as with the study of Israel's emergence, Alt's seminal work (1966) on the Israelite monarchy, originally published in 1930, represents the classic formulation of the formation of an Israelite state in Palestine which sets and continues to set the agenda for the study of the history of the period. The underlying presupposition that the history of the region must be understood in terms of national entities is set out in the opening sentences of his study. He states that the time during which the tribes of Israel were migrating from ‘the southern wastelands in the mountain regions of Palestine' (1966: 173) coincided with the arrival in the lowlands of Aegean groups including the Philistines. He claims that it is not possible to ‘understand the history of Palestine during the following centuries without first grasping the difference in the way of life and in the achievements of the two nations after they had settled in Palestine' (1966: 173). The
claim that subsequent Palestinian history can only be understood from this vantage-point emphasizes that this is the defining moment in the history of the region. Furthermore, it is a struggle between the expression of Israelite national consciousness and the Philistines. Yet the Philistines are not responsible for this defining moment. This is a claim that must be reserved for Israel. The Philistines' failing is that they are identified with indigenous political structures. They more or less adopted the existent form of political organization: ‘we are justified in seeing in the little states of the Philistines and the other Aegean peoples in the plains of Palestine the heirs and successors to the early Canaanite system of city-states' (1966: 174). Although he admits that they developed a distinctive form of political organization which could not be attributed to the Canaanites, ultimately they failed because they were contaminated by indigenous political structures. As we have been told repeatedly, indigenous political structures could not compare with external forms of organization. Indigenous ‘states' were always small. The defining moment in the history of the region was dependent upon a political system of a completely different order, the formation of an Israelite state. His explanation of this development and the ultimate failure of the Philistines is very revealing:

Interestingly, the indigenous peoples cannot be considered to be a nation in contrast to Israel. He then goes so far as to say that the Philistines had the opportunity to create ‘an empire of the first rank' (1966: 175).
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This is to be contrasted with the slow, mostly peaceful, immigration of Israelite tribes into the hill country of Palestine in which they were separated by chains of non-Israelite tribes, as we have seen in
chapter 3
. He stresses their nomadic origin, lacking the military superiority of the Aegean groups. Yet it is Israel who is able to create an ‘empire', not the Philistines. Israel of the imagined past, as of Alt's own present, claims to take possession of an empty and unpromising land:

It is not just that they take possession of this empty land but because they remained isolated they do not suffer the same fate as the Philistines who are dragged down by the indigenous Canaanite system.

Alt was writing, of course, well before the realization of a modern state of Israel. But the context in which he worked is not an insignificant factor in determining his conception of the past, as we have seen (Sasson 1981). His guiding principle is that it is the nation state which defines history: thus the struggle for national self-determination and self-consciousness is the key element in Israel's imagined past. This articulates well with Alt's own training in German historiography, itself a product of the struggle for German unification, and is reinforced by the contemporary struggle in Palestine, at the time he was writing, of the Zionist struggle for a
‘national homeland'. The themes of national awareness and self-determination inform his work throughout.

Alt (1966: 177) goes on to stress that Israel's nomadic past contained ‘some rudimentary functions of a national nature' – we are not told what these are – but that their settlement in a ‘civilized country' made the development of ‘national functions' almost inevitable. This provides an interesting contrast with more recent studies of state formation which stress that crossing the threshold to statehood is by no means inevitable.
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Yet we find that Israel's move to statehood is ‘almost inevitable'. For Albright and much of subsequent American biblical scholarship, this inevitability is explained in terms of evolutionary development in the context of a divine providential plan. Alt offers no explanation for the inevitability of Israel's move to statehood beyond the assertion of its inevitability. However, he stresses the Philistine threat as the crucial factor which pushed Israel towards state formation but in so doing emphasizes just how far this is the defining moment in the region and in terms of world history: