The Invention of Ancient Israel (43 page)

21
  Davies believes that Miller and Hayes (1986) represents the pinnacle of
biblical histories
since it is unlikely that this particular kind of history can be written much better. He goes on to add:

Gunn also believes that the study of history will proceed in a similar manner. He predicts that ‘The results will be nothing like a what-happened-next history, its periodization will be broad, and it will depend upon literary criticism (including structuralist criticism) for its appropriation of texts' (Gunn 1987: 67).

3 Inventing Ancient Israel

  
1
  Asad (1975: 274; see also Said 1994a: 85) criticizes A. Cohen's study of
Arab Border-Villages in Israel
for its use of the
hamula
to emphasize that Arab villages in Israel were only collections of village clans incapable of national identity. Cohen (1965: 149) argues that a number of factors prevented the development of a united Arab political front particularly as ‘the Arabs in Israel do not constitute a united, integrated, community'. This representation of contemporary political organization, or lack of it, is mirrored within the discourse of biblical studies.

  
2
  This body of archaeological data and its implications for the realization of a history of ancient Palestine will be considered in the next chapter

  
3
  The collection of articles in
Biblical Archaeologist
(1993) provides an overview of the conscious design behind the propagation of Albright's ideas. I have also had access to Burke Long's unpublished research on Albright and the Biblical Colloquium.

  
4
  Alcalay (1993: 35–52) describes how the indigenous Jewish population of Palestine and the Levant was deprived of its cultural heritage after Zionist immigration and dominance in the region. He reveals a rich Arab and Jewish cultural heritage which existed throughout the Levant prior to the modern period.

  
5
  The major reassessment can be found in Running and Freedman (1975), van Beek (1989), and
Biblical Archaeologist
(1993).

  
6
  
Freedman (1989: 33), in his assessment of Albright as a historian, makes it quite clear that he was ‘an apologist for a somewhat traditional, even archaic outlook'. His underlying philosophy of history was a Christian synthesis which relied upon Aquinas, Augustine, and Calvin.

  
7
  This influence is extensive, with many of his students dominating American biblical scholarship through their appointment and promotion to senior academic positions. Their publications and the training of subsequent generations of students have meant that Albright's views and scholarship have left an indelible mark on the field. Burke Long has explored the mechanisms of how Albright's views were propagated in some of his, as yet, unpublished work. The creation and maintenance of this network is also a major factor in the problem of where the study of ancient Palestinian history might be located in the future as it breaks free from the control of biblical studies.

  
8
  Running and Freedman (1975: 377–8) provide further information on Albright's political opinions which sheds valuable light on the political views which clearly informed his construction of the past. Professor Aviram is quoted as reporting that Albright advised the audience at a dinner in his honour at the home of the President of Israel in March 1969 not to give up any land captured in the Six Day War. Revealingly, Malamat reports that in 1967 Albright had urged Israel not to return the Sinai to the Russians. Malamat expressed the view that for Albright the Suez canal represented the border between the Western world and the Communist East. Israel, in Albright's understanding, was the buffer between Western civilization and democracy and the undemocratic, uncivilized East. The authors also cite Yadin as complaining that Albright had been ‘so free and open in supporting Israel politically, even in public press conferences, that I had to caution him a bit that he should perhaps be more careful on that' (Running and Freedman 1975: 378). He describes Albright as a champion of Israel but one who recognized the problem that the creation of the modern state caused for the Arabs. ‘
But on balance
, as he always used to say, be that if there were two just causes here, the justification for Israel to have a state was the greater one' (Running and Freedman 1975: 380). It is clear from these reported views and the statement in
New Palestine
that Albright's construction of the past, as a mirror of the present, was informed by his political views.

  
9
  Wright's use of mutation to describe the uniqueness of Israel needs to be contrasted with the standard biological understanding of mutation as a change in the chemical structure of a gene which is rarely beneficial. Mutational changes in genes are random, and a random change in such a delicate mechanism is more likely to be harmful than beneficial (Keeton 1967: 541–2). Wright tries to counter this by arguing, like Albright, that evolution is divinely controlled and so the Israelite mutation is not a matter of chance but part of the divinely guided evolutionary scheme.

10
  Elsewhere, he denies the uniqueness of Israelite historical experience. However, interestingly, the comparison is with the history of the USA. Ancient Israel's experience mirrors that of the USA:

The uniqueness comes not in the event itself, but in the event as revelation of the divine plan. It can be seen how the past informs his understanding of the present and vice versa.

11
  Bright (1981: 137–43) revised his understanding of the Israelite conquest in later editions by incorporating aspects of Mendenhall's revolt hypothesis.

12
  He states explicitly in the foreword to the first edition that it was ‘prepared with the particular needs of the undergraduate theological student in mind' (1960: 10). The epilogue to his work is a discussion of the theological implications of the history of Israel or, as he puts it, ‘the
theological
destination of this history' (1960: 447). These are not questions for the historian to answer by the examination of data but for ‘each man according to the faith that is in him' (1960: 447). This ‘salvation history' (
Heilsgeshchichte
) points to the future promise of ‘the ultimate triumph of God's rule in the world' (1960: 448). Bright proposes that there are two legitimate answers to the question of ‘whither the history of Israel?' The first is the Jewish answer that it continues in Judaism; while the second, and more importantly for Bright, is the Christian answer which finds its theological fulfilment in Christ and the gospel:

It is clear from this that the historical enterprise of Bright was motivated primarily by his theological convictions while assuring the reader throughout of the ‘objectivity' of scholarship. Israel is the theological root of Bright's conception of his Christian present, and so the origins of Israel, this ‘peculiar people', are crucial to his faith. Little wonder, then, that the silencing of Palestinian history is a question that is not raised in this account or others of the Baltimore school.

13
  His critique has been extended by Gottwald (1979), Lemche (1985), and Coote (1990), among others, in questioning the conceptualization of nomadic societies and its application in the understanding of ancient Israel. Mendenhall (1973: 165) claims that there is not an adequate or well-documented model for understanding ancient Israelite tribes.

14
  See further Mendenhall (1973: 175). However, note his statement (1973: 183) that although studies were still in their infancy ‘such an approach
demonstrates the usefulness of the new evolutionary study, now several decades old, in anthropology'. Mendenhall, in appealing to the work of Service, recognized that the move from tribal organization to chiefdom was reversible.

15
  His theological premise, underpinning his historical analysis, is stated as ‘the rejection of God is the rejection of love and certainly, of life' (1973: 164).

16
  Mendenhall's insistence on the social construction of ethnicity provides an important corrective to the usual assumptions in biblical studies:

Once again, however, he has drawn a direct connection between Israelite religion and Christianity implying that it is the latter which is the true expression of the biblical revolution.

17
  Lemche (1985: 433) pointed out that such a caricature fails to recognize the central importance of social justice, the protection of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the importance of the harmony of society in such religious systems. Instead they are dismissed as concerned only with sexual orgies and social abominations.

18
  Gottwald, in answering various objections to the revolt model, particularly the claim that it lacks biblical evidence and retrojects Marxist ideology on to the past, is well aware of the subjective influences on constructing history:

19
  He offers (1979: 45–187) an extensive but very traditional source analysis of the biblical traditions which acknowledges the influence of Alt, Noth, and von Rad.

20
  This presentation mirrors the conception of Israel as an egalitarian lower-class society central to the left-wing, largely secular ideology of European Zionism and the kibbutz movement.

21
  He says this in relation to the incursion of the Philistines and the imposition of a strong military aristocracy on the Canaanite city-states. However, he implies, like Alt, that the Philistines failed to achieve the ultimate move to statehood because they ‘fell heir to the old internal Canaanite subdivisions by city-states and incorporated those city-state entities as a mode of their hegemony, just as the Egyptians before them had done' (1979: 411).

22
  He draws distinctions between what he terms ‘Canaanite feudalism' and ‘medieval European feudalism' (1979: 391–4). It is the nature of the analogy which he draws which is important. He also emphasizes the interrelationships between Canaanite feudalism and Egyptian imperialism within the exploitative system as a whole (1979: 391–4). Again it is interesting to note the parallels with the period of Zionist immigration as a period of first Turkish and then European imperialism in the region. Elon (1983: 41–56) describes the brutal conditions of Jews living in Eastern Europe in the latter half of the nineteenth century, emphasizing the extreme form of egalitarianism of the
shtetl
which grew out of it: