The Invention of Ancient Israel (29 page)

Rainey's ostensible disagreement is with Davies' objections to the reading of the phrase ‘house of David' as a reference to the Davidic dynasty and his claim that the lack of a word divider suggests that this might be a place name. It is used instead as an attack upon the shifts in historical studies which threaten Israel's control of the past. The rhetorical use of a phrase such as ‘everyone seriously interested' is designed to signal that Davies or anyone linked with him cannot be ‘serious' and can ‘safely be ignored'. It is the emphasis on ‘safely' which signals to the reader that it would be dangerous even to contemplate questioning the representation of the past presented in the biblical traditions and championed by Rainey. The reader is then given further severe warnings of the dangers of this route:

Here the full weight of the discourse of biblical studies is brought to bear in an effort to silence alternative claims to the past. It is now a question of competence and integrity, not of Davies's reading of the inscription, but of any questioning of the biblically inspired construction of the past. The final vitriolic attack confirms that it is these wider issues which are at stake. The reader is informed that lay persons and teachers of the Bible want to know what the inscription ‘really signifies': its real significance can only be determined by an ‘authority' such as Rainey:

The reader is never informed as to the identity of these dilettantes apart from a reference to Thompson. This personal and vitriolic attack upon Davies is used as an opportunity to disparage the shifts in historical studies which have been taking place in the discipline. This movement, however, can be ‘safely ignored' because not to ignore it would undermine the construction of the past promoted in the discourse of biblical studies which has sustained Israel's claim to the past and its success in excluding Palestinian history. The stele might confirm the existence of a Judaean kingdom in the ninth or eighth centuries but what it does not do is confirm the construction of the extent of that kingdom or the belief that the monarchy under David represented a first-rank ‘empire'. The kingdoms of Judah and Israel still need to be understood as part of Palestinian history rather than the only elements in that broader regional history.

It is clear that biblical scholars and archaeologists have been aware
of the lack of archaeological evidence for a long time but have persisted in constructing the massive edifice of a Davidic empire as one of the major powers in the ancient world.
³⁶
Thompson's (1992a: 412) point about the lack of a transregional political or economic power base in Palestine has been blithely ignored by the discourse of biblical studies in its blind pursuit of the Israelite state in the early Iron Age. A study of the wider aspects of imperialism ought to have led to a more cautious approach which should have tempered the extravagant claims that the Davidic state was one of the foremost powers in the ancient world. The monarchy of David and Solomon is seen as escaping the outside imperial control which has been a constant feature of the history of Palestine from the Bronze Age to the present day, that wider reality of imperial power and domination which has sought to control and
define
Palestine throughout its history. Yet the proponents of an imagined past of a Davidic empire have failed to take into account the structural features of empire. This is not to suggest that all empires are structurally identical; there are clear differences between such organizations both in the past and in the present. However, we can see similarities and make comparisons between different periods of imperial control. The discourse of biblical studies has failed to ask a series of important questions. Why has Palestine been the subject of constant imperial control? How has this affected its economy, settlement patterns, and demography? Are there common features that accompany the rise or decline of empire in relation to the region? How are periods of an imperial power-vacuum, if they exist, to be explained? It has been noted that Palestine can hardly be defined as a unity: the geographical and climatic differences have meant that we are forced to talk of the many diverse Palestines that go to make up the singular entity Palestine. The consideration of a major state power in Palestine cannot be understood in isolation from a consideration of these wider structural features and questions.

The important study of the rise and fall of great powers by Kennedy (1988) reveals a very important correlation between economy and power which challenges the perpetuation of an imagined past of a Davidic super-power in the ancient world. The kinds of questions raised by Kennedy are an area of study which has been neglected in the consideration of the involvement of imperial powers in Palestine in antiquity. Kennedy (1988: xxiv–xxvii) outlines a number of important principles in the study of world empires, or what he terms ‘the Great Powers'. Although his study is concerned
with the modern period, the sixteenth century to the present, his findings are also germane to any consideration of power shifts in the ancient world. Most importantly, he detects a causal relationship between shifts in the general economic and productive balances and the position of individual powers in the international system. In particular, he highlights the move in trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and north-west Europe from the sixteenth century onwards, and the redistribution in the shares of world manufacturing output away from Western Europe in the decades after 1890. These economic shifts were followed by the rise of new great powers which altered the military and territorial order. The historical record shows a very clear connection
in the long run
between an individual great power's economic rise and fall and its growth and decline as an important military power (or world empire). The correlation is reasonably straightforward in that economic resources are necessary to support large-scale military establishments. However, a further important principle, which again is not surprising in itself, is that wealth and power are always relative. Kennedy found that a nation's relative economic and military power did not rise and fall in parallel. Very often there was a noticeable time-lag between the trajectory of a state's relative economic strength and the trajectory of its military and territorial influence. A power with an expanding economy might well decide to become richer rather than invest significantly in military power. But priorities change over time and Kennedy suggests that a half-century or so later the burden of overseas obligations brought about by the economic expansion, the necessity of and dependence on foreign markets and raw materials, bases and colonies, means that the power has to invest in armaments to protect its markets, trade routes, and raw materials against other competing and expanding powers. He concludes that in conflicts between great powers victory invariably goes to the power with the more flourishing productive base. A good example is that of the decline of Spain in the seventeenth century. Spanish agriculture suffered from extortionate rents, the actions of the Mesta, and military service, which were exacerbated by a series of plagues that depopulated the countryside around the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was at such a point that American silver was brought back to Spain and caused price inflation which severely damaged the Spanish economy. ‘The flood of precious metals from the Indies, it was said, was to Spain as water on a roof – it poured on and then was drained away' (Kennedy 1988: 70). The result of all this was the eventual decline of Spanish
military power, which did not manifest itself until the 1640s, but whose causes Kennedy (1988: 70) has identified as existing decades before.

The conclusions which Kennedy draws from his magisterial analysis of the last five centuries of the modern era are instructive for any study of the shifts in power in the ancient world and worth quoting at length:

It is important in the light of this study to consider the impact of economic and technological developments upon the relative shifts in power in the ancient world and the ways in which these affect Palestine in relation to ‘world economies'. It will help to explain why Palestine has been rarely, if ever, a regional power in its own right and certainly calls into question the standard assertion that the Davidic–Solomonic state was a leading world power in the Iron Age.

Furthermore, the second major conclusion of Kennedy's (1988: 566) study that the relative military power and strategical position
of states is dependent upon the uneven pace of economic growth is also important for our consideration of ancient empires. It might seem obvious that military power, the ability to finance and equip an effective army, is dependent upon ‘a flourishing productive base' and technological development. Yet many of the standard treatments of the reign of David and Solomon and other periods of Israelite history seem to ignore the obvious. It is the case that

Kennedy's study confirms the dynamics of world power from 1500 CE to the present day. The technological advances of antiquity or the shifts in productive base may not have happened with the rapidity and frequency of the modern period, but none the less the history of Palestine and the rise and fall of ‘world empires' from the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period illustrates that it is a dynamic that was just as important in the ancient world. A consideration of some of the factors highlighted by Kennedy in relation to Palestine's position in the geopolitics of the ancient world will help to explain why it was part of a succession of empires: a dynamic of world power in which a number of regions fell behind in absolute terms to such an extent that they could no longer retain their position in this nexus of power.

The three essential characteristics of empire are control, land, and profit. We are not here concerned with the theological, that is, ideological justification of empire but with its practical effects upon the region. These three factors, control, land, and profit, coincided in the case of Palestine in order to explain why empire has been such an enduring reality throughout its history. In order to understand this constant factor of imperial presence it would be necessary to examine some of the key elements in the dynamics of world power identified by Kennedy: productive base, geography, economics, and technology. Coote and Whitelam (1987: 64) stress that the infrastructural inferiority of Palestine in comparison with its neighbouring riverine civilizations has been a constant factor in its dominance by outside powers. Agricultural production was always
labour intensive in ancient agrarian economies, a situation that continued into the present in many regions. This has meant that regions with the greatest local agricultural resource and largest labour pool had the greatest production and possessed a vital natural advantage. Palestine simply could not compete with the far superior riverine agrarian economies and demographic base of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Later it would be the natural advantages of the Anatolian and Persian plateaux, and eventually Europe, in the form of the Greek and Roman powers, which would come to dominate Palestine. A region with the infrastructural inferiority of Palestine could not compete with contemporary military powers while agricultural production and demography remained such key factors in the dynamics of world power. The imagined past of a Davidic empire needs to be examined in light of this fundamental reality.