A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars

By Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. and Paul D. Wegner

 Kaiser : Cedar Grove, WI

Wegner : Scottsville, AZ  

• Language: English
• Publisher: BH Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781433643170

Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.

Walter C. Kaiser Jr. (PhD, Brandeis University) is distinguished professor emeritus of Old Testament and president emeritus of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. Dr. Kaiser has written over 40 books, including Toward an Exegetical Theology: Biblical Exegesis for Preaching and Teaching; The Messiah in the Old Testament; and The Promise-Plan of God; and coauthored An Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics: The Search for Meaning. Dr. Kaiser and his wife, Marge, currently reside at Kerith Farm in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin. Dr. Kaiser’s website is www.walterckaiserjr.com.

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Introductory

Matters

INTRODUCTION

The ancient Land of Israel was a geographical bridge between the great political and cultural centers of Mesopotamia in the northeast and Egypt in the southwest. . . . Holy to the major monotheistic religions, the country, throughout the centuries, attracted pilgrims, scholars, and students who went there to trace the history of their religions. However, serious study of the country did not begin until the 15th century. Palestina ex monumentis veteribus. [1850].¹

It has become increasingly common for scholars to see a difference between biblical Israel and historical Israel. Not long ago scholars generally believed that the Bible is a reasonably accurate depiction of Israel’s history. Today, however, biblical Israel is viewed in many circles as a literary construction with little or no relationship to Israelite history. ² V. Philips Long, OT Professor at Regent College, Vancouver, delineates this divergence:

What is the distinction between biblical Israel and historical Israel?

Philip R. Davies, professor emeritus of the University of Sheffield, has gone so far as to distinguish three Israels: One is literary (the biblical), one is historical (the inhabitants of the northern Palestinian highlands during part of the Iron Age) and the third, ‘ancient Israel,’ is what scholars have constructed out of an amalgamation of the two others.⁴ Davies goes on to argue that the biblical Israel is a Persian Period (ca. fifth century BC) reconstruction of the history of Israel and is thus a literary fiction about the nation and its relationship with Yahweh. Fortunately, few researchers hold this view. Nevertheless, the boundaries for using the Bible in reconstructing the history of Israel have been successively moved back toward the post-exilic times or even later.

HISTORY OF OT HISTORIOGRAPHY

There has indeed been a significant change in the historiography of the OT in the past four or five decades.⁵ Modern literary approaches have attacked the more traditional historical-critical methods without providing a unified literary approach, leaving many questions unanswered. Robert Morgan describes the current literary approaches as a hurricane of conflicting tendencies⁶ that leave many scholars and lay people wondering what can be known about Israel’s history and how to piece it all together. Can the biblical text be used to discover historical, theological, and sociological truths, or is it simply historical fiction created to inspire a defeated, discouraged, post-exilic nation? Are socio-archaeological scholars correct that the genuine history of Israel must be confirmed by objective data provided by archaeology? Yet, even so-called objective archaeological data must be interpreted and analyzed to achieve a meaningful synthesis. V. Philips Long summarizes the current state this way:

The historicity of Israel is in a state of flux.

This is one of the reasons why we stated earlier, This is the best and worst of times to attempt this project. But when things are in flux, we want to make sure that the evangelical voice is heard, since history has taught us that this is not always the case.

Attacks on the historicity⁸ of the biblical books, especially the Pentateuch, gained momentum in the seventeenth century with scholars like Hugh Grotius (1583–1645), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77; Fig. 0.1), and Richard Simon (1638–1712), who laid the foundation for the Documentary Hypothesis.

FIG. 0.1 BENEDICT DE SPINOZA

Hayes points out, It should be noted that Grotius, Hobbes, and Spinoza had moved away from the typical Jewish and Protestant view of religious authority and revelation and that their criticism was probably the result rather than the cause of such a move.⁹ Thus, Hayes argues it was the letting go of the traditional Jewish and Protestant view of the authority of Scripture, as well as a belief in divine revelation, that allowed them to develop their new theories. These attacks were strengthened by the deistic controversies in England in 1700–1750 that questioned a factual, literal reading of the Bible.¹⁰ While deists have held a variety of beliefs about the Bible, generally they are skeptical concerning the supernatural or miraculous elements, and they attempt to separate these elements in order to arrive at what they feel is the original essence of Christianity.

Another scholar who undermined the authority of Scriptures was the German classicist, Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812). Heyne argued that mythology was primitive man’s attempt to understand life and nature. Once his views were applied to the early chapters of Genesis, their historical reliability was naturally questioned. In time, many scholars assumed Genesis 1–11 contained nothing of historical worth.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, another major work appeared on the history of Israel by Heinrich Georg August Ewald (1803–75), a well-known German Oriental and Semitic scholar, who claimed that his ultimate aim is the knowledge of what really happened—not what was only related and handed down by tradition, but what was actual fact.¹¹ He believed that the traditions handed down in the OT were rooted in actual facts, but had been shaped by memory and even imagination. Thus, the job of the historian was to use these traditions to find out the real facts.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, one of the most influential OT and Oriental scholars was Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918; Fig. 0.2).

FIG. 0.2 JULIUS WELLHAUSEN

He is most notable for popularizing the Documentary Hypothesis concerning the formation of the Pentateuch, but he also wrote a reconstruction of Israel’s history based on his findings.¹² Since he based his reconstruction solidly upon the Documentary Hypothesis, he concluded,

Interestingly, Wellhausen concluded this about the Pentateuchal period, but not the later historical periods.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Wellhausen was followed by a number of German scholars who developed what has become known as the form critical and traditio-historical approaches. Well-known scholars like Herman Gunkel (1862–1932), Albrecht Alt (1883–1956), Martin Noth (1902–68), and Gerhard von Rad (1901–71) argued that the sources for the OT traditions were initially passed down orally through much of Israel’s history in sagas and finally were recorded in a late stage of its development. The Bible’s record of Israel’s history, then, was basically a combination of these sagas and had little connection to the actual history of the nation.

In this critical context, William Foxwell Albright (1891–1971; Fig. 0.3), an American archaeologist and biblical scholar, was a breath of fresh air.

During what is sometimes called the Golden Age of Near Eastern archaeology,¹⁴ Albright developed the thinking that the patriarchal materials in Genesis 12–50 contained a historical core of information that could be trusted and that archaeological evidence supported. He claimed, Archaeological and inscriptional data have established the historicity of innumerable passages and statements of the Old Testament; the number of such cases is many times greater than those where the reverse has been proved or has been made probable.¹⁵ Others followed in his wake. George E. Mendenhall envisioned a wider scope for archaeological evidence:

FIG. 0.3 WILLIAM F. ALBRIGHT

The important work of correlating archaeology and biblical evidence has to some extent been carried on by Albright’s students, G. Ernest Wright ¹⁷ and John Bright.¹⁸ Hayes describes the advances in this area:

These works sparked a lively controversy with the German school and largely prevailed in America until about the 1970s.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, there appeared a growing disillusionment with the so-called assured results of biblical criticism. Some even questioned whether a solid background for the biblical texts could be created by archaeology. The amount of data collected overwhelmed any attempt to synthesize.²⁰ Over time, the need to specialize unwittingly caused a great chasm between literary critics and the archaeologists—both of whom have in-depth knowledge on relatively narrow topics but tend to lose sight of the big picture.

Albright and the scholars who followed in support of his position were well trained in a variety of areas, such as ancient Near Eastern (hereafter ANE) languages, archaeology, stratigraphy, and others, and thus were actually able to synthesize a significant amount of data to come to their conclusions. However, not everything fit so nicely into the structure they were creating. Two OT scholars, Thomas L. Thompson (1974)²¹ and John van Seters (1975),²² raised so many questions (some legitimate and some less so) regarding Albright’s alleged evidences for the historicity of the Pentateuch that a general cynicism ensued.

It is easier to question older theories than to develop a new theory that faithfully answers the questions.

Thompson argued that archaeology should not be used to confirm the Pentateuch since the patriarchal narratives are written as expressions of Israel’s relationship to God and are not intended to be historical. Van Seters argued along similar lines, raising further questions as to when the oral narrative motifs became associated with particular people such as Abraham.

Mistrust of the historicity of the Pentateuch led scholars to doubt the Bible’s account of the exodus and the conquest of Canaan. One of the most difficult problems regarding this era occurs at the first city the Israelites were supposed to have conquered, Jericho.

John Garstang thought the issue was settled in the 1930s when he excavated Jericho, announcing that the destruction of that key city in the conquest had occurred about the spring of 1400 BC. But subsequent excavations by Kathleen Kenyon countered Garstang’s opinions, continuing the debate. Kenyon dated the violent destruction of the city to the end of the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1950–1550 BC) and attributed the devastation to an earthquake. Afterward, she argued, the site was totally abandoned.²³

In the 1950s, Yohanan Aharoni argued that instead of an Israelite conquest of the land, there was a peaceful infiltration into Canaan. Simultaneously, Albrecht Alt, Martin Noth, and others²⁴ were coming to similar conclusions. Eventually, the question became not whether Israel took the land of Canaan by force or by peaceful penetration, but whether there was any evidence for a nation of Israel at all.

Fortunately, a stele from the Egyptian Pharaoh, Merneptah (1213–1203 BC), found by Flinders Petrie in 1896 in Thebes, contains the word Israel with a determinative sign to indicate "a people (Fig. 0.4).Hershel Shanks reflects: But for this accidental find [by Sir Flinders Petrie], the biblical minimalists might have won the day among mainstream scholars, who often feel defensive about maintaining the historicity of obviously tendentious biblical narratives."²⁵

The Merneptah Stele (ca. 1209 BC) primarily describes Merneptah’s victory over the Libyans and their allies, but it also mentions a separate campaign against Canaan. It states,

But the minimalists did not concede the case, even on these strong grounds. One argued it was only a geographical term, and not an ethnic designation,²⁶ while another argued that this Israel had no relationship with the group we know then, or now, as Israel.²⁷ On these questionable grounds, they cast doubts not only on the Bible as a reliable historical source, but also on the Merneptah Stele.

Soon the battle lines moved again. This time the era of the united monarchy of Kings David and Solomon became the focus of skepticism. Some scholars argued that both David and Solomon and the kingdom that they had brought to its peak was largely fictitious—even after a significant inscription from Tel Dan mentioning the house of David was found in 1994. Philip Davies dismissed the inscription from Tel Dan, saying it was built on sand and that David himself was "as real as King Arthur! (Fig. 0.5)"²⁸

FIG. 0.4 MERNEPTAH STELE

What makes such a disclaimer even more surprising is that this eighth-century stele found in 1993 also told of the victories over [Jeho]ram son of [Ahab], King of Israel and [Ahaz]iah son of [Jehoram, kin]g of the House of David.²⁹ This certainly confirmed the existence of a Davidic dynasty.

In rebuttal it was argued that the lack of a word divider dot between Beth and David suggests it should be read as a toponym (House of David), much as Bethlehem is a place name. Anson Rainey answers Davies’ charges conclusively:

BIRAN AND NAVEH TRANSLATED THE MAJOR PART OF THE TEXT AS FOLLOWS:

FIG. 0.5 TELL DAN INSCRIPTION (9TH CENTURY BC)

1.And my father lay down, he went to his [fathers]. And the king of I[s-]

2.Irael entered previously in my father’s land. [And] Hadad made me king.

3.And Hadad went in front of me, [and] I departed from [the] seven[…]

4.of my kingdom, and I slew [seve]nty kin[gs], who harnessed thou[sands of cha-]

5.riots and thousands of horsemen (or horses).

[I killed Jeho]ram son of [Ahab]

6.king of Israel, and I killed [Ahaz]iahu son of

[Jehoram kin]g

7.of the House of David. And I set [their towns into ruins and turned]

8.their land into [desolation……………]

(A. Biran and J. Naveh, An Aramaic Stela Fragment from Tel Dan, IEJ 43 [1993]

Rainey’s example is almost an exact parallel to this passage, but still some were not convinced.

In 1996, Keith Whitelam published The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.³¹ He argued that the concept of an ancient Israel was an invention created to exclude a Palestinian history. Thus, Israel itself was a fiction, and any search for it is both illegitimate and useless.

Is it any wonder that today many are hesitant to attempt to write a history of Israel? If clear archaeological evidence can be discounted or overlooked, imagine what will happen to a book that claims to be theological history. One of our main sources for many of the events of this history is the Bible itself. But if it is discounted, must we not also discount and disregard the ancient histories of Herodotus, Josephus, or any archaeological inscriptions or other ANE literature? Why should we treat any of the claims of the ancient hieroglyphic and cuneiform monuments with any more respect?

HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ISRAEL

Historiography is commonly defined as a written account of the past based on source inquiry.³²

Historiography: a written account of the past based on source inquiry.

The OT is largely a history about God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. A number of modern scholars have become skeptical of any source that expounds miracles or supernatural events; thus, they dismiss the OT out of hand. Iain Provan, however, presents a more balanced approach:

Thus, a careful and rigorous examination of the OT is crucial to the evaluation of Israel’s history. The place to start, then, is in the OT sources themselves.

William P. Brown describes John Bright’s A History of Israel as a balance between modern skepticism and a too-literal understanding of the biblical text:

The history of Israel you are about to read has been compiled based on a slightly different approach than that which is popular among some modern scholars. As noted above, we will treat the biblical text along with other written materials from the ancient Near East as innocent until proven guilty by the evidence. Along with Bright, we believe that the archaeological evidence will enlarge our understanding of many of the key events and the times in which the episodes of the eras occurred. Ancient Israel was not an invention intended to suppress a Palestinian history; it was and continues to be the basis for much that is found in the three major religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

FIG. 0.6 PEOPLE SHISHAK CLAIMS TO HAVE CONQUERED

Rather than moving the lines farther back in time in an effort to find the lowest common denominator on which all scholars can agree, it is high time that we dig into the evidence in a more vigorous manner and test whether the things believed are indeed sustained by the facts, times, cultures, and epigraphical materials themselves.

We would be the major losers if we rejected the information we have in favor of a safer consensus that would earn us the plaudits of colleagues. Neither academic, religious, nor political approval should be our motivating force as we examine each piece of evidence for its contribution to this history. The truth should be our final resting place, for in no other haven are we credible as scholars.

¹R. Patai, ed., Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel (New York, NY: Herzl Press and McGraw-Hill, 1971) I:67.

²V. P. Long, Historiography of the Old Testament, in The Face of Old Testament Studies: A Survey of Contemporary Approaches, ed. D. W. Baker and B. T. Arnold (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1999), 145–75.

³Long, Historiography, 145–46.

⁴In Search of Ancient Israel, JSOTSup 48 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 11. Long admits that in principle this distinction between the three perspectives is useful, but few scholars are likely to be happy with the size of the wedge that Davies drives between the three (Long, Historiography, 146n2).

⁵R. Rendtorff, The Paradigm Is Changing: Hopes—and Fears, BibInt 1 (1993): 34–53.

⁶R. Morgan, with J. Barton, Biblical Interpretation, OBS (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988), 217.

⁷Long, Historiography, 147.

⁸See the detailed discussion of J. H. Hayes, The History of the Study of Israelite and Judaean History, in Israelite and Judaean History, ed. J. H. Hayes and J. M. Miller, OTL (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1977), 1–69; and R. S. Hess, Introduction: Foundations for a History of Israel, in Ancient Israel’s History: An Introduction to Issues and Sources, ed. B. T. Arnold and R. S. Hess (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2014), 1–22.

⁹Hayes, History, 46.

¹⁰The attacks on the literal reading of Scripture came from throughout Europe. Voltaire (1694–1778), a Frenchman, constantly attacked Scripture by pointing out what he called its absurdities, inconsistencies, and low morality (see Hayes, History, 49). H. S. Reimarus (1694–1768), from Germany, questioned the plausibility of the crossing of the Red Sea (Hayes, History, 50).

¹¹H. G. A. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel bis Christus, vols. I–V (Göttingen, Germany: Dieterichschen Buchhandlung, 1843–55, 1851–59 [2nd ed.], 1864–68 [3rd ed.]; repr. The History of Israel, vols. I–VI [London, England: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1869–83] I:13).

¹²J. Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (Berlin, Germany: Georg Reimer, 1894, 1895 [2nd ed.], 1897 [3rd ed.]; repr., Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 1958).

¹³J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, vol. I (Berlin, Germany: Georg Reimer, 1883); repr. and trans. Prolegomena to the History of Israel (Edinburgh, Scotland: A & C Black, 1885), 318–19.

¹⁴Hayes, History, 71.

¹⁵W. F. Albright, Archaeology Confronts Biblical Criticism, American Scholar 7, no. 2 (1938): 181.

¹⁶G. E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation: The Origin of the Biblical Tradition (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973), 143.

¹⁷Biblical Archaeology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1957); God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital, SBT 8 (London, England: SCM Press, 1952).

¹⁸Recent History Writing: A Study in Method, SBT 19 (London, England: SCM Press, 1956); A History of Israel, 4th ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1959, 1972, 1981, 2000).

¹⁹Hayes, History, 71.

²⁰Ibid., 72.

²¹T. L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (Berlin, Germany: de Gruyter, 1974). Up until 2009, Thompson taught at the University of Copenhagen.

²²J. van Seters, Abraham in History and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1975). Until 2000, van Seeters taught at the University of North Carolina.

²³K. M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho: The Results of the Jericho Excavations 1932–1956 (New York, NY: Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), 174–75, 262; and Excavations at Jericho, vol. 3: The Architecture and Stratigraphy of the Tell, ed. T. A. Holland (London, UK: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1981), 339.

²⁴G. E. Mendenhall, The Hebrew Conquest of Palestine, BA 25 (1962): 66–87; J. Dus, Mose oder Josua? (Zum Problem des Stifters des israelitischen Religion), ArOr 39 (1971): 16–45; repr. Moses or Joshua? On the Problem of the Founder of Israelite Religion, Radical Religion 2 (1975): 26–41; and N. K. Gottwald, Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).

²⁵H. Shanks, The Biblical Minimalists: Expunging Ancient Israel’s Past, BRev 13, no. 3 (June 1997): 38.

²⁶G. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1988), 37–43.

²⁷R. B. Coote, Early Israel: A New Horizon (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1990), 85–93.

²⁸P. R. Davies, ‘House of David’ Built on Sand, BAR 20, no. 4 (1994): 54–55.

²⁹See A. Biran, ‘David’ Found at Dan, BAR 20/2 (1994): 26–39; D. N. Freedman and J. C. Geoghegan, ‘House of David’ Is There! BAR 21, no. 2 (1995): 78–79.

³⁰A. Rainey, The House of David and the House of the Reconstructionists, BAR 20, no. 6 (1994): 47.

³¹K. W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (New York, NY: Routledge, 1996).

³²K. L. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to Background Literature (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005), 361.

³³I. Provan, Knowing and Believing: Faith in the Past in Behind the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. C. Bartholomew, C. S. Evans, M. Healy, M. Rae, Scripture and Hermeneutic Series, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 262–63.

³⁴J. Bright, A History of Israel, 4th ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 5.

1THE CURRENT STATE OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

History is important. In centuries past this statement would have seemed self-evident. Ancient cultures devoted much time and effort to teaching their children family history. It was thought that the past helps a child understand who he is. Modern society, however, has turned its back on the past. We live in a time of rapid change, a time of progress. We prefer to define ourselves in terms of where we are going, not where we come from. Our ancestors hold no importance for us. They lived in times so different from our own that they are incapable of shedding light on our experience. . . . Our ignorance of the past is not the result of a lack of information, but of indifference. We do not believe that history matters.¹

According to modern consensus in the field, the volume you are holding is a book that should never have seen the light of day. For example, J. Maxwell Miller, commenting in 1994, summarized his view about the possibility of writing a history of Israel: In view of the wide range of approaches and views described above, it is impossible to present a reconstruction of the history of Israel that represents scholarly consensus. There simply is no consensus at the moment. ²

TWO TRENDS IN OT SCHOLARSHIP

1.Biblical narratives are merely the creative constructs of the authors.

2.Biblical scholars allowed their ideologies to guide their conclusions.

Keith W. Whitelam went even further to announce the death of biblical history: It is now time for Palestinian History to come of age and formally reject the agenda and constraints of ‘biblical history.’ . . . It is the historian who must set the agenda and not the theologian.³ Whitelam argues that history as found in the Bible is nothing more than a literary fiction created by the ideological concerns of its authors in the Persian period.⁴ Iain Provan notes two recent trends in biblical scholarship that have further advanced Whitelam’s ideas:

It is understandable given these types of trends in biblical studies that skepticism of the biblical texts has led to skepticism regarding the history these texts have recounted. However, it must be remembered that the so-called facts of archaeology are nothing more than someone’s reconstruction of the archeological data and that modern scholars are no more objective than earlier scholars—it is just that being skeptical of biblical sources has become in vogue today.

NO CONSENSUS ON METHODOLOGY AND DEFINITIONS

Interestingly, the disagreement among scholars is not so much over the facts in the field; rather, it is over how one should interpret those facts, and with what sorts of presuppositions one may legitimately approach the study of OT history.

DEFINITIONS

History: the overarching term that relates to the study of past events as well as the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about these events

Historie: actual events of history

Historiography: a written account of the past based on source inquiry

Because of these two major areas of disagreement, a variety of methods for the study of the OT have emerged, with little or no consensus among them.

The problem, however, is much more serious than that; it has called into question the definition and nature of history itself. For instance, some believe that history emerges from particular perceptions of reality (usually those of educated, upper-class, male scribes) that may not be in line with contemporary concerns of the underclasses, ethnic minorities, or feminist groups. According to this view, dependency on any written documents—much less the use of biblical materials for constructing the history of Israel—is therefore out of the question.

Added to this is a further complication. For some the Bible is suspect as being a religious document more concerned with proliferating a privileged point of view than in representing fairly the real state of affairs of all concerned parties.⁶ Is this a legitimate conclusion based on fair appraisal of all the available materials? Should the Bible be excluded as a source from which to write a history of Israel?

As pointed out earlier, if historiography is a written account of the past based on source inquiry,⁷ then the OT is a significant text that claims to relate God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. William P. Brown ties together Israel’s historical events:

NO PRIORITY GIVEN TO THE BIBLE AS A SOURCE

Keith Whitelam asserts that the Bible should not be given a primary role as a source in the formulation of a history of Israel; in fact, he believes, it may detract from the task. The continued conviction that the biblical text remains the primary source for all periods of history of Israel means that many historians perpetuate this unnecessary restriction in their consideration of other forms of potential evidence, he states.⁹

Of course, it is agreed that in the real technical sense of the term, the Bible is no more a history book than it is a science textbook, law book, ethics manual, or even a systematic theology. It is not organized according to the formats of these disciplines, nor does any one of those approach the principle reason why the Bible was written. But the Bible purports to include a chronicle of real events from the ancient Near East; these are the backdrop against which the revelation of God was communicated. We agree with Brown’s conviction that history constitutes the arena of revelation and theology.¹⁰ The work of Yahweh in the OT depicts him as being an active participant in history itself.¹¹ See the claims that God makes in Isaiah 40:21–25.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Has it not been declared to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? The one who is sitting above the horizon of the earth, whose inhabitants are like grasshoppers, the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. The one who makes rulers nothing, and he makes the judges of the earth into confusion. No sooner have they been planted, no sooner have they been sown, no sooner has their stem taken root in the earth, But he even blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like chaff. "To whom will you liken me that I would be like him?" says the Holy One.

Why are moderns so skeptical about the whole prospect of writing a history of anything, much less a history of Israel? And why is it that tensions arise when it involves the Christian Scriptures and the presence of God in that narrative? The answers to these and related questions must be found in an analysis of some modern fallacies that have arisen since the days of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

SOME MODERN FALLACIES

¹²

Fallacy 1: History cannot include the unique, the miraculous, and the intervention of the divine. One of the most prized principles of modernity is the principle of analogy that assumes that all historical phenomena must be subjected to an analogous explanation—one that explains events in terms of other known happenings. But should the event being examined claim to be unique, miraculous, or involve the intervention of God, it is immediately disqualified by this Enlightenment definition since the definition is influenced by both the philosophical approaches of rationalism and humanism.

FIG. 1.1 DAVID HUME (1711–1776)

David Hume (1711–1776) stated: The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish; . . . When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. . . . If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion" (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Millican, Oxford World Classic [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007], 83).

This definition contends that there are no other analogous happenings by which such unique, miraculous, or divine events could be measured, inspected, and evaluated.

J. Maxwell Miller describes three basic differences between the critical and precritical (i.e., a historian who lived and wrote prior to the critical era) historian:

But two objections can be made to this preemptory disregard for potential materials for historical construction that have any reference to the unique, the miraculous, or to a deity. First, it is based on the somewhat arbitrary definition of history established in the Enlightenment. In that case, as Westermann observes, "The Old Testament has no concept of history, in the sense that history is only history that can be documented and that follows a verifiable course governed by causal laws."¹⁴ But besides such a cavalier redefinition of what does and does not constitute history, it has a second flaw. The principle of analogy is not applied evenly to all other ancient documents. The presence and activities of the gods in inscriptions, such as the Mesha Inscription and the Behistun Stone (Fig. 1.2), or in histories such as that of Herodotus, did not automatically eliminate them from being considered as accurate sources for the histories to which they contribute.¹⁵ It is possible to multiply these examples many times over, for divine references are frequent in ANE writing.

FIG. 1.2 BEHISTUN INSCRIPTION CONCERNING DARIUS THE GREAT (522–486 BC)

William Abraham, in his Divine Revelation and the Limits of Historical Criticism,¹⁶ notes that the principle of analogy is too narrowly based if it is defined as being restricted to one’s own personal experience. There are just too many real events that lie outside the realm of one’s own experience; therefore, this principle must operate within a wider context. Analogical thinking can only operate as far as the network of one’s background beliefs allow it to do so. Abraham gives an analogy to help clarify what he is saying: What happens if a historian tries to convince a primitive tribe that someone has landed on the moon? This possibility is not in their normal realm of events, and they would dismiss it immediately—even though it did indeed happen. Abraham explains how one would go about convincing the tribe that this event did indeed happen:

It is possible that in time the tribe would believe that this event really happened even though it was a single event previously unimaginable to them. Similar to the actions of God in history, analogy is limited to the background beliefs of those drawing the conclusions—but analogy must be understood against a wider background than what a certain person has experienced.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metaphysical as: of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses (Merriam-Webster, metaphysical, n.p. [cited 19 January 2012. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metaphysical).

Fallacy 2: History cannot include anything that does not have external documentation. Another fallacy is the rejection of everything in Scripture for which there is no external documentation or external corroboration. So serious are scholars about this principle that they refuse to begin their histories of Israel in those periods that they judge to be without such external evidences. Accordingly, Miller and Hayes¹⁸ see no history prior to the time of the judges, while Soggin¹⁹ starts his reconstruction of Israel’s history with David and Solomon. The most radical of all are Whitelam and Garbini,²⁰ who argue that the biblical texts are literary fictions created in the Persian or Hellenistic eras.

Such a reduction of usable historical data to those materials that are verifiable from existing artifacts or epigraphical remains could lead to premature foreclosing of the case. For example, Yamauchi reminds us that it was not until 1932 that we had any external verification for the exile of Jehoiachin in Babylon—a fact confirmed by the tablets translated by E. Weidner.²¹ Nor did we get attestation for Pontius Pilate until 1961, procurator Felix until 1966, or the house of David until the Aramaic stele fragment was found at Tel Dan and published in 1993.²²

Often the absence of evidence may not be a lack of evidence at all. It may only indicate the randomness of our knowledge of the past, or it may suggest that our methodologies for recovering the past are still in need of development. For example, the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites continues to be frequently denied today because sites such as Jericho, Ai, and Gibeon do not provide any evidence of Late Bronze Age (hereafter LB) materials. But, to take Gibeon for the moment, LB materials were found in its cemetery. It is conceded that the modern village of El-Jib sits unexcavated on the mound of Gibeon, so how can this site be used as evidence that it was not in existence during the days of Joshua? James Pritchard, the one who excavated Gibeon, stated, We have dug into but a fraction of the total area.

FIG. 1.3 SEAL IMPRESSION FROM JUG AT EL-JIB

Archaeological excavations of El-Jib led by James Pritchard in 1956, 1957, and 1959, confirmed its identification by the discovery of 56 jar handles inscribed with the Semitic gb’n (S. S. Brooks, Saul and the Monarchy: A New Look, SOTS Monograph [Franham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005], 93–94). These inscriptions are dated to the eighth century BC, and there appears to be a large city at El-Jib with about 66 wine cellars discovered there.

Although modern El-Jib covers much of the ancient tell, Pritchard hopes that the great city of Joshua’s day will eventually come to light.²³ No evidence may only indicate that there is no evidence yet. Meanwhile, the debate also continues over the interpretation of the data from Jericho and over the true location of Ai.

Fallacy 3: History cannot include narratives about individuals, but must focus on nations instead.²⁴ Here is another arbitrary restriction that is limited by formal definition. Why would the histories of individuals, families, and tribes be excluded from consideration, unless this too is another remnant of the Enlightenment? Westermann notes, "At the basis of this critique is the assumption that familial affairs have no place in historical-political events, which have to do instead with the nation, not with the family."²⁵ This is no doubt the reason many modern histories of Israel are reluctant to commence their recounting prior to the times of the monarchy when the nation first appears on the scene as a geopolitical entity. But such a tactic is hardly fair to the large bulk of materials found in the OT that discuss events that occurred prior to the emergence of the geopolitical nation.

Fallacy 4: History must not focus on individuals as shapers of the times, but on sociological factors that influence historical change. Some sociological approaches to history fail to maintain a balance between the individual and societal forces in shaping history. But any honest survey of history will indicate that certain leaders can change the direction of whole nations; conversely, familial corruption can destroy a nation.²⁶

In the middle of a historical text about the battles of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) is a description of one of his banquets:

"When Ashurnasirpal, king of Assyria, inaugurated the palace in Calah, a palace of joy and (erected with) great ingenuity, he invited into it Ashur, the great lord and the gods of his entire country, (he prepared a banquet of) 1,000 fatted head of cattle, 1,000 calves . . .

When I inaugurated the palace at Calah I treated for ten days with food and drink 47,074 persons, men and women, who were bid to come from across my entire country" (ANET, 560).

FIG. 1.4 ASHURNASIRPAL II (883–859 BC)

Some societal approaches prefer to see impersonal processes, rather than human agents, as having control over the destinies of mortals. When a text does indicate the apparent influence of the individual, these scholars argue that it does not portray the true historical reality. But in place of the text’s view of reality, another must be substituted—which usually ends up being the socio-historian’s own view of reality.

Additionally, another mistake is now possible: the anachronism of projecting one’s present history back onto the past. For example, liberation theologians have retrojected liberation motifs over the ancient history of the exodus of Israel from Egypt in such a way that the past is practically swallowed up by the present concerns, regardless of their own merits. But is such a procedure a fair reading of what happened back then? In a contrary but astonishing move, as Andrew Hill and Gary Herion noted, the role of personal faith is largely excluded from the discussion of sociopolitical processes as an unworthy participant in the discussion. More specifically they state, The application of modern social-science concepts to the Old Testament often fails to disclose adequately the true nature of the relationship between the politics and religion of ancient Israel. This is due in large measure to the inability of such concepts to account fully for the dynamic variable of individual faith in Yahweh.²⁷

Fallacy 5: Historical writing must not give logical and necessary priority to written evidence over material culture. Recently, a greater emphasis has been placed on non-textual evidence and the development of models based on this evidence, leading to anthropological and sociological models that show little or no consideration of the textual evidence.²⁸ Typically, conjectures based on archaeological assumptions are preferred over what is claimed in biblical or ancient texts. For example, it is asserted that a Transjordanian site, such as Dibon, could not have been involved in the Transjordanian conquests in the Bronze Age, for it was not occupied in that century.

However, as K. A. Kitchen has shown,²⁹ the name does appear as tbn in a list of conquests across the Jordan by Ramesses II (1279–1213 BC) and may now have been found in Egyptian texts from the reigns of Thutmoses III (1479–1425 BC; ANET, 242; Fig. 1.2) and Amenhotep III (1309–1352 BC). Since Dibon was known to scribes during these periods, it is plausible that there is a problem in the archaeological evidence or that the site is improperly identified. Thus, non-textual evidence needs to be interpreted and evaluated just like written sources.

FIG. 1.5 THUTMOSE III STRIKING HIS ENEMIES

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL

Currently, there are five major schools or approaches to how one may evaluate the historical worth of the written and material evidences for a history of Israel and how one goes about reconstructing that history. The five schools are the Traditional Approach; the Albright, Wright, and Bright Baltimore School; the Alt and Noth School; the Gottwald School; and the Non-Pan-Israelite Tribal Confederation School. Each of these merits at least a brief discussion, since interaction with each view will follow in this history.

APPROACH 1: THE TRADITIONAL SCHOOL

Since John Bright’s assertion in 1956 that Protestant fundamentalism has been singularly unproductive of late where history writing is concerned,³⁰ a significant number of scholars have contributed to the traditional approach to Israel’s history: F. F. Bruce, R. K. Harrison, K. A. Kitchen, E. H. Merrill, C. F. Pfeiffer, I. Provan, V. P. Long, T. Longman, E. R. Thiele, and others.³¹ The traditional approach has tended to argue that the text of Genesis to Kings embodies the only ancient, continuous written source that deals directly with Israel’s origins. The materials depicted in these books are taken at face value on the principle that the text is innocent until proven guilty by external facts. Therefore, the history of Israel is the story of the patriarch Jacob and his family, which later became Israel, and which multiplied into a nation of 600,000 fighting men, plus women and children. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years after escaping Egypt, and they finally conquered Canaan under Joshua.

One of the main difficulties with this approach, critics charge, is that the chronological framework of the Bible does not square with the evidence coming from a number of other sources. For instance, the Bible would seem³² to require a fifteenth-century BC (LB) date for the conquest of Canaan, but archaeologists are saying of late that they have found little or no evidence of any LB occupation or destruction of such key cities as Arad, Heshbon, Jericho, or Ai. However, the biblical text does not really mention a destruction of Arad,³³ although it clearly mentions destructions at Jericho and Ai (presently there is significant debate as to the location of Ai).³⁴ Scholars have argued for the destruction of Jericho in 1550 BC by the Egyptians who were chasing the Hyksos after evicting them from Egypt (see later discussion of the Hyksos), but at this point there is no clear evidence that the Hyksos ever went to Jericho.

John Garstang found Cypriot bichrome ware at Jericho, but Kathleen Kenyon dated the destruction of Jericho to 1550 BC because she did not find any bichrome ware.

FIG. 1.6 BICHROME WARE

Egyptian evidence mentions only the cities of Sharuhen (northern Negev) and Naharin (upper Euphrates River) as being locations to where the Hyksos fled (ANET, 233–34). There are other cities archaeologists suggest were destroyed or at least damaged in the battle between Egypt and the Hyksos around 1500 BC; for example, Tell Beit Mirsim (southwest of Hebron), Gezer, Aphek, Hebron, Jerusalem, and Shiloh.³⁵ However, while these cities may have been destroyed around this time, there is little evidence to suggest it was the Egyptians that destroyed these cities in pursuit of the Hyksos. Still, this position is widely held.³⁶

APPROACH 2: THE ALBRIGHT/WRIGHT/BRIGHT BALTIMORE SCHOOL

This school has argued for the general trustworthiness of the biblical account in Genesis to Kings, but it does not claim that all the details of Scripture are accurate and true.³⁷ John Hayes defines Albright’s view as based on two principles:

Whenever the Bible did not correlate with archaeological interpretations, this school felt free to depart from the Bible in favor of the external evidence without harmonizing the two sets of data. Accordingly, John Bright’s A History of Israel treated the patriarchs as figures connected with movements of the Amorites around 2000 BC—with a negotiable margin of 800 years (Fig. 1.3).³⁹

FIG. 1.7 JOHN BRIGHT (1908-1995)

This approach is the result of a compromise between the Bible’s version of what happened and an over-confident reconstruction of the extra-biblical evidence. It understands the Bible primarily through the eyes of a modified historical-critical approach. William P. Brown describes Bright’s view:

Since in this view the details of the Bible are not taken in a strictly literal fashion, any problems that appear from the alleged contradictions with the Bible are immaterial. Thus, the exodus is placed in the thirteenth century during the days of Ramesses II (ca. 1279–1213 BC), shortly before the stele inscription mentioned the people of Israel in Canaan at the time of Merneptah’s fifth year as pharaoh.

APPROACH 3: THE ALT/NOTH SCHOOL

Alt and Noth (Fig. 1.3) expressed extreme doubt that the portrayal of events found in Genesis to Kings contributes much to its historicity.⁴¹ Many of their views were based on Hermann Gunkel’s (1862–1932) works and, according to Alt and Noth, this biblical account is probably a revisionist form of history. Using historical-critical analysis of the text, only a few older literary units and traditions survived the revisionists’ hands, according to this school. Even archaeological evidence contributes little when tested against models of ancient historical parallels and ethnographic and sociological studies. Noth, therefore, chose instead to base his work on studies of the ancient Greek and Italian tribal leagues known as amphictyonies, on the sociological theories of Max Weber, and on extensive traditio-critical analysis of the Bible. Noth believed the amphictyonic organization was something like the golden age from which the rest of the Greek and Italian cultures were derived.

FIG. 1.8 MARTIN NOTH (1902–1968)

Amphictyony (ancient Greek: ἀμφικτυονία) means a "league of neighbors." Amphictyonic League describes an ancient association of Greek tribes that joined together before the rise of the Greek polis (city).

In the judgment of Albright, Alt and Noth stressed three guiding principles in forming their histories: (1) they rigidly applied the methods of form criticism; (2) they constantly emphasized etiology (i.e., the study of an explanation or origination of something) in explaining the origin of a tradition; and (3) they held tenaciously to the view that certain names and tales adhered to certain geographical locations (Ortsgebunden, tied to places).⁴²

All three guiding principles could be faulted, argue Albright and Bright. The classification of literary forms did not automatically render a verdict on a text’s historicity. Moreover, the etiological factor is often a historically secondary function with little or no evidence that it ever was primary. Finally, traditions can and do shift locations, for they are more tied to people (Volksgebunden) than they are tied to places (Ortsgebunden). Alt and Noth tended to build one theory on top of another as they skipped over the patriarchs and the exodus as being without any historical reality. They spoke of the ancestors of Israel as semi-nomads who ranged between the fringes of the desert and Canaan, searching for pastures until they finally settled down and took up agriculture. These tribes then formed an amphictyonic league around a central shrine. Thus, there never was a conquest of Canaan until Saul and David’s time.

Besides the problems already noted, the whole amphictyonic model, once a reigning concept among scholars, is now largely rejected. Weber’s theories about semi-nomads are also suspect, as is the heavy dependence on form criticism to supply historical data. Evidence of amphictyonic leagues, where they did exist, had either three, seven, eleven, or twenty-three members—not twelve. Moreover, the biblical tribes were the members of a family and not primarily a religious or political organization, as were the amphictyonic leagues. Hayes points out one more significant flaw:

APPROACH 4: THE NORMAN GOTTWALD SCHOOL

Gottwald did not choose to go the route of using historical-critical analysis of the Scripture or to side with the Max Weber-Alt-Noth assumption that the nomadism of ancient Palestine⁴⁴ was essentially different from the social structures of the peasant farmers or city dwellers of Canaan.⁴⁵ Instead, he based his conclusion on what he regarded as the results of ethnographic studies. These studies allegedly showed that semi-nomadic herding was not an intrusive element from the desert fringe; it was derived from sedentary agriculture in ancient Palestine. Accordingly, Gottwald followed in part an article in Biblical Archaeologist written by George E. Mendenhall in 1962, which claimed that Israel did not enter Canaan as conquerors, but instead arose from the indigenous Canaanite population. Overshadowed by Egypt, oppressed by the rulers of the city-states in the lowlands, the peasants finally had enough and staged a revolt at the end of the LB as they retreated to the hill country to form an egalitarian tribal society under the aegis of a new god, Yahweh.⁴⁶ Hayes points out major differences among these scholars, but generally they hold to the following five principles:

Gottwald’s work rested almost entirely on social theory, again building one hypothesis on top of another. However, there is no textual evidence suggesting a peasant revolt rather than a conquest ever took place. While Gottwald succeeded in attracting only a large number of liberation theologians, two of the concepts he stressed have remained: (1) Israel, most contemporary scholars agree, probably emerged from an indigenous Canaanite population, and (2) from here on out, explanations about Israel’s so-called conquest and occupation of Canaan must have ethnographic and sociological research behind them if they wish to be considered by the reigning scholarly community. A few voices could still be heard for grounding discussions of Israel’s origins in epigraphy and archaeology, but they continued to be marginalized in the academy.

APPROACH 5: NON-PAN ISRAELITE TRIBAL CONFEDERATION SCHOOL

Each of the four previous schools argues for some kind of tribal confederation from which a united Israel would emerge during the days of Israel’s united monarchy of Saul, David, and Solomon. But a growing number of scholars regard the whole idea of a tribal confederation as contrived, openly expressing their doubts that such a state of affairs ever existed. Among those who doubt this construction are J. A. Soggin, J. M. Miller, J. H. Hayes, J. Van Seters, and T. L. Thompson.⁴⁸ Miller and Hayes believe early Israel gradually invaded the smaller agricultural settlements that began to appear in the Palestinian highlands and then they gradually began tribalization. They also argue, The same is probably true of Israelite identity; that is, the sense of ‘Israelite’ kinship and solidarity probably emerged gradually, remained somewhat vague, and did not apply to everyone settled in ‘Israelite’ areas.⁴⁹

Israel and Judah, they argue, were separate peoples only temporarily joined under David and Solomon and perhaps later kings. In fact, even David and Solomon were legendary figures, brought about largely by the re-imag[ing] of the Genesis-to-Kings account, which was done by the editors of Chronicles–Nehemiah in order to idealize Israel’s past for theological reasons.⁵⁰

Thompson is no less severe. He claims the whole story about the rise and fall of the Israelite monarchy was constructed during the