The Invention of Ancient Israel (40 page)

The same process needs to be applied to later Persian and Hellenistic periods, where, for example, the claims to the past of the tiny province of Yehud have been allowed to silence virtually all other competing claims (Davies 1992: 58). The danger inherent in the reassessment of the Persian and Hellenistic periods is that the
methodological mistakes of the past will simply be repeated here. There is a danger that as the starting point of Israelite history is pushed back even further, the Persian period will come to represent one more (temporary) plug to fill the gap. The location of the biblical traditions in the Persian and Hellenistic periods, rather than in the periods of emergence or monarchy, allows the discourse of biblical studies to continue to claim the past for Israel. The insistence of this discourse that written texts form the basis for writing history means that the methodological circularity of the earlier search for Israel is likely to be transferred to the Persian period. The literary construct that is ‘ancient Israel', which has obscured the history of ancient Palestine in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, will be allowed to achieve the same objective for later periods. The tiny province of Yehud (Ahlström 1993: 843–4) has been allowed to monopolize and dominate discussions of the period. It is a period desperately in need of reassessment in order to free Palestinian history from the tyranny of the discourse of biblical studies.

A rhetoric of Palestinian history would also provide a much more positive appreciation of the material and cultural achievements of the inhabitants of the region as a whole. The evolutionary scheme which has presupposed the replacement of Canaanite by Israelite culture has detracted from the aesthetic and cultural qualities exhibited in the rich deposits of ceramics, faience, glass, jewellery, etc., evidenced throughout Palestine. The discovery of female figurines and statuettes in the different levels at many Palestinian sites is invariably presented as evidence of a widespread fertility cult.
⁵
The implication is that the degenerate and immoral indigenous religions have been replaced by a monotheism: a monotheism which is conceived as the basis of Western civilization. In the same way, Israel has replaced the indigenous population, the Canaanites. Little thought is given to the aesthetic qualities of the representation and modelling of the human form or what that might reveal about the values or achievements of the artist or the society of which she or he was a part. The positive elements of indigenous religious systems, the concern for the marginalized and underprivileged or the notion of harmony, are masked by the representation of a static and degenerate culture which must inevitably be replaced. The lack of an appropriate rhetoric to represent indigenous cultural achievements has meant that the only rhetoric available has been adopted: a rhetoric which is designed to denigrate any cultural achievement which is not thought to have been
derived from Israelite religion which formed the basis of later Judaism and Christianity.

We have concentrated on the two defining moments for biblical studies because it is these two periods which have represented Israel's control of the past. The ‘first moment of true civilization', as Dharwadker (1993: 175) has pointed out, takes on a crucial significance in the history of any people. It is historically and historio-graphically the key moment which, if understood in its totality, provides the basis for understanding all subsequent history. The periods of the ‘emergence' of Israel in Palestine and the development of an Israelite state have been accorded that status in biblical studies. They define the essential nature of Israel, its sense of national identity, which is portrayed as unchanging throughout subsequent periods of history connecting the past with the present. The construction of the past, then, is a struggle over the definition of historical and social identity. If we can alter the perspective from which these are viewed to show that the discourse of biblical studies has invented a past, often mirroring its many presents, then it will be possible to free Palestinian history and progress toward a rhetoric which will allow alternative constructions of the past. It will also free previous and subsequent periods of the region from control by Israel's past.

Locating Palestinian History

The production of a ‘master story' of ancient Israel has formed part of a theological enterprise conducted mainly in faculties of theology and divinity in the West. Said makes a very telling point about the audience of scholarship: ‘None of the Orientalists I write about seems ever to have intended an Oriental as reader. The discourse of Orientalism, its internal consistency and rigorous procedures, were all designed for readers and consumers in the metropolitan West' (Said 1995: 4). This is equally true of the intended and actual audiences of the outpouring of works on the history of ancient Israel, those works reviewed in
chapters 2
,
3
,
4
, and
5
. They are not addressed to a Palestinian or non-Western, non-Israeli audience. The audience furthermore is principally Christian and Jewish. ‘Orientalism was', in the words of Prakash (1990: 384), ‘a European enterprise from the very beginning.' Biblical studies has been part of, and in many ways an extension of, Orientalist discourse. At no point is the intended reader shown to be Palestinian or any other non-Western
reader; they are European, American, and Israeli. These histories are couched in the language of reasonableness, of a profaned detached objectivity. Yet as part of that wider interlocking discourse of Orientalism they are implicated in the politics of representation. The indigenous cultures of Palestine are represented as incapable of unified action, national consciousness, or outright immorality. They are often anonymous, rarely named as Palestinians, the opposite of the sophisticated, rational, objective Westerners who have a clear notion of their own national identity. This has been reinforced during this century in the growth of Israeli scholarship which continues the theme of Israel as set apart from its environment, bringing civilization and progress to the region, and achieving a level of political development of which the indigenous groups were incapable. Biblical studies, as a discipline, has evolved a rhetoric of representation which has been passed down without examination, which has dispossessed Palestinians of a land and a past. It is a discourse of power; seen from a non-Western, and particularly Palestinian, perspective, this discourse has excluded the vast majority of the population of the region in a search for Europe's and, latterly, modern Israel's roots in the past. It is also a discourse which through its location in faculties of Theology and Divinity has been given the full weight and authority of Western universities.

The question remains, however, as to where such a history of ancient Palestine, and with it the histories of Israel and Judah, will be located. If it is no longer to be excluded from the discourse of history, if it is to form part of the contested versions of the past, it has to have a location from which it can be pursued. The location of alternative narratives of the past is crucial, therefore, since it is an acknowledgement of the permission to narrate. If Palestinian history is to be freed from the tyranny of the discourse of biblical studies, it must be freed from the theological constraints which have governed the history of the region. This means that an alternative location, outside the confines of biblical studies, will need to be found. Palestinian history has to be recognized as a subject in its own right, as part of the study of history and ‘cultural studies discourse', if it is to be given a voice of its own to challenge the invention of ancient Israel and to contest the past of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

Liberation movements of the twentieth century have given voice to the marginalized and underprivileged of society and history. One of the ironies of Said's
Orientalism
is that, though it focuses upon the
Middle East, its greatest success in terms of reclaiming the past has been achieved by Indian historiography. Yet there is no body of comparable material which offers a critique of the Orientalist assumptions of the discourse of biblical studies or ancient Near Eastern history, for instance, even though Said himself acknowledges that biblical studies is part of the Orientalist enterprise (1985: 17, 18, 51). Whereas the past has become a contested territory in so many other fields of study, in so many other areas of history, this has not been the case in biblical studies. The struggle for the Palestinian past is only just beginning. For it to succeed, it will be necessary to expose the political and religious interests which have motivated the invention of ancient Israel within the discourse of biblical studies. It will also need to create its own space, in order to produce its own contested narrative of the past, thereby helping to restore the voice of an indigenous population which has been silenced by the invention of ancient Israel.

The Subaltern project has been successful in challenging dominant models of Indian historiography, drawn from its colonial past, because it has been able to claim an academic context from which to work and from which to subvert ‘official' narratives. It has also created a forum,
Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society
, to present and develop its research strategies and findings. The scholars involved in this movement have been located, to a large extent, in departments of History. They have been contesting both an ancient and a modern space. By contrast, attempts to articulate a history of ancient Palestine, to challenge the dominant narratives of ancient Israelite history, have come from biblical specialists located in departments of Biblical Studies. If Palestinian history is to be freed from the constraints of biblical studies, which it must if it is to have a voice, it will need to create its own space or contest the current spaces available. It is not clear where this space might reside which will allow the permission to narrate ancient Palestinian history. To begin with, the contest will take place within current academic locations, within departments of Biblical Studies and its cognate subjects, which means by and large within departments and faculties of Theology. The reason for this is because the most immediate task is the need for self-reflection of its practitioners on the development of biblical studies in the context of the colonial enterprise. The task is to demonstrate the politics of biblical scholarship and its construction of the past. It will require an investigation of the archival materials which exist in order to allow
a complete reappraisal of the motives and interests which have been masked in the public writings of the discipline.

Only after that task has been undertaken with sufficient rigour will it be possible to prise ancient Palestinian history from the grasp of the vested interests which have helped to silence it for so long. Yet the question of its location remains crucial. There is no forum within the discipline, comparable with
Subaltern Studies
, which permits the narration of this history. Nor is it granted permission to narrate within departments of History. In order for the idea to be realized, it will be necessary to break free from the confines of biblical studies and try to claim its rightful location within the academic discourse of history which has ignored it as part of the biblically based history of ancient Israel. The principal challenge, however, still remains to (re)discover the rich cultural heritage of ancient Palestine which testifies, through its written texts and traditions (including the Hebrew Bible), ceramics and artifacts, monuments and material remains, to the achievements of its many peoples. It is, surely, an idea worth pursuing.

Notes

Introduction

  
1
  Prakash (1990: 401) states that ‘rather than seeing these events as important because they were well regarded in the past, it interrogates the past's self-evaluation … The purpose of such disclosures is to write those histories that history and historiography have excluded.'

  
2
  See Dever (1985; 1992) for the background to the debate and relevant literature. He has claimed of late that ‘Syro-Palestinian archaeology' has come of age (Dever 1993).

  
3
  A search of recent titles in
International Dissertation Abstracts
reveals than an increasing number of Ph.D. theses within biblical studies and cognate areas now contain the word ‘Palestine' in their titles compared with Israel or ancient Israel. It is not clear whether this signals a radical shift in approach or not. The use of the terms ‘Palestine' or ‘Palestinian' is no guarantee that Palestinian history has been given a voice.
Chapter 2
will deal with the ways in which these terms have often been emptied of meaning thereby denying the notion of Palestinian history.

  
4
  See Whitelam (1995b) for a consideration of this shift and the ways in which the so-called ‘sociological approach' to Israelite history has helped in exposing the need for the pursuit of Palestinian history.

  
5
  Thompson (1992b) sees a strong influence from Chicago and Tübingen. However, he rightly sees this as a convergence of different scholars drawn from biblical studies, archaeology, and semitics rather than a separate approach. For the view that it has emerged particularly in a European context in association with European scholars and those who have close connections with Europe, see Whitelam (1995b).

  
6
  See
chapter 1
for the importance of the concept of ‘deep time'. Viewed from this perspective, ancient Israel represents but a moment in the larger context of Palestinian history.

  
7
  This is not to privilege ‘third world' nationalist traditions but rather to suggest that it is important to have competing formulations of history from all perspectives. Said points out that: